Quotes of the Day:

"Every damn thing is your own fault, if you are any good."

– Ernest Hemingway

"I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party, and I attended with my real face."

– Franz Kafka

"Education isn't something that you can finish."

– Isaac Asimov

1. Israel’s Strike on Iran Also Hit Russian Arms Industry’s Once-Strong Image

2. Sitting Bull’s Strategy of Resilience: Lessons from Lakota Resistance to Modern Asymmetric Warfare

3. Frictionless Government and the National Security Constitution

4. Behind the Curtain: The big media era is over

5. No new limits on Ukraine's use of US arms if North Korea joins Russia's fight, Pentagon says

6. Israel approves two bills that could halt UNRWA's aid delivery to Gaza. What does that mean?

7. Ukraine: What Next? by Lawrence Freedman

8. Forget Gaza and Ukraine, East Asia's brewing war will matter more

9. The Curious Case of Ariane Tabatabai (at ASD SO/LIC)

10. Marines continue to make female infantry officers, with little fanfare

11. Leading the Free World: Reasserting U.S. Leadership on Democracy and Human Rights

12. Russia blurring lines between physical and cyber war on the West

13. Opinion: Americans are not each other's enemies. Citizens must reject polarizing rhetoric

14. Pentagon Runs Low on Air-Defense Missiles as Demand Surges

15. Misinformation About the Military and Climate Change

16. Restoring Our Maritime Strength

17. Laser, microwave, and other directed-energy weapons ready for the battlefield

18. Poor Quality Control and Outdated Equipment at Steel Company Behind Failed Gears on Ill-Fated CV-22 Osprey

19. How Would the U.S. Handle a Nuclear Iran?

20. The Covert War for American Minds

21. CIA director floated 28-day Gaza ceasefire, hostage deal in Doha

22. To focus on China, US needs to wean off Europe and Middle East missions

23. Attrition’s Apostle? Reading Vegetius in an Age of Protracted Warfare

24. Rutte's statement on DPRK soldiers in Ukraine demand a NATO response

25. General George on the From The Green Notebook Podcast

1. Israel’s Strike on Iran Also Hit Russian Arms Industry’s Once-Strong Image

Israel’s Strike on Iran Also Hit Russian Arms Industry’s Once-Strong Image

Destruction of Iran’s antimissile systems supplied by Moscow follows Ukraine’s hits on more-advanced Russian defenses

https://www.wsj.com/world/israels-strike-on-iran-also-hit-russian-arms-industrys-once-strong-image-2b986ba7?mod=hp_lead_pos9

By Daniel Michaels

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 and Rajesh Roy

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Oct. 28, 2024 8:13 am ET

A rocket launched from a missile system in southern Russia in 2020. Photo: dimitar dilkoff/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Israel’s airstrikes early Saturday didn’t just destroy critical Iranian military infrastructure. They also battered the reputation of Russian military equipment, which has already been pummeled by poor performance during Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Iran’s Russian-made air-defense equipment stopped few if any of the missiles that Israel launched from 100 jet fighters, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. Among Iran’s losses in the strikes were its three Russian S-300 air-defense systems. Israel earlier this year hit Iran’s only other S-300. 

The destruction comes atop similar strikes on S-300s by Ukrainian forces fighting Russia, plus even more embarrassing losses for Moscow. Kyiv has hit more-advanced S-400 systems, including strikes in May and in August that destroyed components or entire air-interceptor complexes. 

The S-400, first deployed in 2007, is Russia’s most sophisticated air-defense equipment, its answer to the U.S. Patriot system. Western security analysts have been concerned for years that it significantly weakens the long-held air superiority of countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and their allies. The S-300 has been repeatedly updated since its introduction in the late 1970s. 

S-300/SA-10

Weight: 50 tons

Firing range: 15.5 to 93.2 miles (depending on warhead)

In service: 1978

Origin: Soviet Union

Four surface-to-air-missiles

16.4 ft.

13.1 ft.

39.4 ft.

Note: Dimensions shown for S300V

Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies (S-300); Military Factory (S-300 crew); Military Today (S-300 dimensions)

Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Both Russian systems are used by some of Moscow’s closest allies, including China and Belarus, and its biggest arms customers, including India, Vietnam and Algeria. 

These countries don’t necessarily face potential foes whose offensive capabilities are equivalent to Israel’s. The precision of Israel’s weekend attacks against the S-300 systems and critical parts of Tehran’s missile-production facilities once again demonstrated Israel’s deep intelligence penetration of Iran, which was also highlighted by the assassination of Hamas’s political chief in Tehran in August and previous hits on its nuclear program.

No missile shield is impervious. Russia has hit at least one Patriot system in Ukraine. Israel has the world’s most advanced missile-defense system, yet Iran and its allies managed to penetrate it during strikes with missiles and drones this year.

Russian systems’ performance is also unlikely to have an immediate impact on Moscow’s military exports because it is using every piece of weaponry it can produce, leading to frustration among some customers. Russian arms exports have plunged since its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 

Moscow’s foreign weapons sales fell 52% last year from 2022, according to SIPRI, based on its own calculations of export values. A low volume of outstanding orders “suggests that Russian arms exports are likely to remain well below the level reached in 2014-18, for at least the short term,” said a SIPRI report.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a public-relations disaster for its defense industry,” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a think tank in Singapore. “Russia’s traditional customers have lost faith in the country’s defense industry and are looking for new suppliers,” he said.

An Iranian military truck carried parts of an air-defense missile system during a military parade in Tehran in September. Photo: atta kenare/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Russia’s biggest customers have few near-term alternatives, so are likely pressing Moscow for details on recent events, analysts said. 

“You’re going to be asking questions of your supplier” about levels of performance and measures to improve it, said Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute of Security Studies, a London think tank.

Potential beneficiaries of Russia’s troubles include South Korea, Israel, the U.S. and China, say analysts.

Among Russia’s most critical customers—and most exposed—is India, which accounted for more than one-third of Russia’s military exports between 2019 and last year, according to SIPRI. India has been among Moscow’s top clients since the Cold War, when relations with the Soviet Union were close.

India has received three S-400 systems out of five it ordered. The delivered units are positioned along borders with Pakistan and China, according to Indian security officials.

The Indian Air Force expects Russia to deliver the remaining two by the end of next year. Indian authorities have pressed Moscow on several occasions to accelerate delivery of the system, which officials say has been delayed by the war in Ukraine.

Indian officials said they didn’t see Israel’s strike on Iran as a warning for them.

“There is no comparison of S-400 with any other air-defense system in the world,” said a serving Indian security official. “What Iran has is an inferior version. There is no concern for us at all with regard to its advanced technology or performance,” the official said of the S-400.

Still, India has over recent years reduced its purchases of Russian arms and worked to develop its own systems, independently and in cooperation with other countries. Indian imports of Russian military gear in the period from 2019 to 2023 fell 34% from the preceding five-year period, according to SIPRI.

India relies on S-400s as long-range interceptors. For short- and medium-range systems it uses indigenously developed equipment and some developed in collaboration with Israel. 

Indian authorities are also locally developing a long-range surface-to-air missile system that is expected to have a range similar to the S-400, according to security officials.  

Israel’s strike on Iran is being noted in India, said another security official. “But as far as India is concerned, it’s not dependent solely on Russian technology. Its basket is diversified.”

Feliz Solomon and Laurence Norman contributed to this article.

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com and Rajesh Roy at rajesh.roy@wsj.com

2. Sitting Bull’s Strategy of Resilience: Lessons from Lakota Resistance to Modern Asymmetric Warfare

Excerpts:

 Conclusion: Enduring Cultural Resilience

Sitting Bull’s strategic patience and alliance-building allowed his people to maintain cultural cohesion amid dispossession, a powerful testament to the merits of defensive resilience over offensive militancy. By focusing on preservation rather than conquest, Sitting Bull achieved what Sun Tzu might call “victory without war,” as he safeguarded his people’s culture and identity well beyond the battlefields. His legacy remains a powerful reminder of resistance rooted in enduring values, highlighting the potential of strategic patience, unity, and calculated engagement as tools for withstanding even the most powerful adversaries.

In contrast, Hamas’s more aggressive approach reveals the pitfalls of asymmetrical warfare that relies heavily on provocation and direct confrontation with a much stronger military power. Unlike Sitting Bull, Hamas often sacrifices cultural and civil resilience for immediate, albeit costly, displays of force. Such strategies highlight a fundamental divergence from the tenets of Sun Tzu, who cautions that provocation without the strength to sustain conflict can yield disastrous outcomes.

In examining Sitting Bull’s strategy, modern resistance movements may glean lessons from his defensive philosophy, focused on the protection and endurance of the community rather than high-cost offensives. This approach, rooted in the wisdom of Sun Tzu, suggests that underdog forces, when guided by clear objectives of preservation rather than destruction, can achieve a form of victory that resonates far beyond the battlefield. The resilience Sitting Bull championed underscores the power of a culturally grounded, patient resistance, presenting an enduring model of dignified opposition against overwhelming odds.

Sitting Bull’s Strategy of Resilience: Lessons from Lakota Resistance to Modern Asymmetric Warfare

Strategy Central

By and For Practitioners

By Monte Erfourth, October 27, 2024

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/sitting-bull-s-strategy-of-resilience-lessons-from-lakota-resistance-to-modern-asymmetric-warfare?utm

Introduction

Sitting Bull, the great Hunkpapa Lakota leader, is remembered for his resilience, spiritual leadership, and unrelenting commitment to preserving his people’s way of life amid overwhelming adversity. His approach to resisting U.S. expansion during the late 19th century stands as a compelling historical lesson in asymmetric resistance against a technologically advanced adversary. Sitting Bull’s strategy shares elements with modern resistance movements, yet it notably diverges in its grounding in a defensive, culturally protective philosophy, rather than an ideologically offensive or destructive one. By analyzing Sitting Bull’s resistance through the lens of Sun Tzu’s teachings and contrasting it with contemporary instances of asymmetrical resistance, such as Hamas in Gaza, we gain insights into the complexities of opposition strategies in situations of deep power imbalances.

 Preservation Over Conquest

Sitting Bull’s primary objective was not conquest but preservation. His strategy was centered around the goal of securing the Lakota people’s autonomy and safeguarding their culture, land, and way of life. Unlike modern insurgencies, where ideological conquest can sometimes fuel conflict, Sitting Bull’s motivations were rooted in cultural and existential imperatives. His methods were patient, reflective, and primarily defensive, embracing Sun Tzu’s philosophy that “to fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” When Sitting Bull recognized that armed conflict was unavoidable, he refrained from seeking direct confrontation with U.S. forces until he deemed his people ready.

 Alliance Building for Strength in Unity

In the years leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull focused on consolidating tribal unity. U.S. expansionism and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills had made the Sioux homeland a target, leading to increased incursions by the U.S. military. Rather than directly engaging with these forces, Sitting Bull pursued alliances with other Plains tribes, notably the Cheyenne and Arapaho, realizing that unity among Indigenous tribes was crucial to counterbalance U.S. numerical and technological advantages. In Sun Tzu’s view, creating alliances is a fundamental aspect of strategic planning, as he emphasizes the importance of exploiting the “balance of power.” Sitting Bull’s coalition reflected this understanding, and the alliance-building enabled him to command a larger, more versatile fighting force when necessary.

 Spiritual Resilience as Psychological Warfare

Sitting Bull’s resistance also integrated spiritual leadership, which played a dual role in both rallying his people and intimidating adversaries. He conducted traditional rituals and ceremonies, such as the Sun Dance, to invoke spiritual resilience and envision outcomes of battles. Before Little Bighorn, he reportedly had a vision of U.S. soldiers “falling like grasshoppers,” which bolstered the resolve of his warriors. This commitment to spiritual resilience aligns with Sun Tzu’s principle of “mystifying the enemy,” wherein he advises that appearing invulnerable can diminish the enemy’s morale and prevent open confrontation. Sitting Bull’s visions and prophecies were powerful tools for psychological warfare, providing his warriors with a sense of destiny while instilling hesitation in their enemies.

 Calculated Conflict and Strategic Retreat

At the same time, Sitting Bull was pragmatic. His strategy avoided high-casualty confrontations that would threaten the tribe’s survival. He recognized that prolonged and costly engagement with a technologically superior opponent would ultimately weaken his people. After the victory at Little Bighorn, where Lakota and Cheyenne forces decimated Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, Sitting Bull refrained from continued battles and instead sought refuge in Canada. His retreat demonstrated his commitment to survival over pyrrhic victory, illustrating a calculated approach to minimizing unnecessary loss. Sun Tzu’s advice that “he who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious” resonates with this move, as Sitting Bull understood the importance of choosing battles that aligned with his broader objectives of preservation and protection.

 Comparing with Modern Resistance: Hamas and the Gaza Conflict

Sitting Bull’s resistance contrasts sharply with that of Hamas, whose methods have included attacks on civilian targets as part of a strategy to challenge Israel’s military dominance. Hamas’s tactics, which blend armed conflict with psychological operations aimed at Israel’s civilian population, often provoke widespread violence and severe retaliation, resulting in significant harm to Gaza’s residents and infrastructure. While Hamas’s resistance might share the Lakota’s imbalance of power against a superior military force, its strategy diverges fundamentally from Sitting Bull’s philosophy of protection and cultural resilience. Hamas’s methods demonstrate a more aggressive and often indiscriminate approach, illustrating Sun Tzu’s caution against strategies that might “provoke enemies by vexing them” when lacking the strength for sustained confrontation.

In addition, Sitting Bull’s methods are an example of resistance through endurance rather than attrition. His refusal to engage in continuous, high-cost warfare highlights a model of resistance that balances survival with dignity, allowing his people to regroup and adapt rather than succumb to total destruction. This aligns with Sun Tzu’s principle of “conserving strength and resources” for the opportune moment, enabling Sitting Bull’s people to survive as a cultural entity despite U.S. military superiority. In contrast, modern resistance movements like Hamas, facing similarly superior forces, often exhaust themselves in resource-draining confrontations, with heavy humanitarian costs. This approach reveals the dangers of engaging in asymmetrical warfare that lacks viable end goals or durable alliances, ultimately risking both military defeat and societal breakdown.

 Strategic Patience and Lessons for Modern Resistance

The Lakota strategy of strategic retreat, embodied by Sitting Bull’s flight to Canada following Little Bighorn, offers another lesson in enduring asymmetric resistance. When survival and cultural preservation are paramount, retreat becomes not an act of surrender but a repositioning to prolong resistance. Modern resistance movements might benefit from such restraint, recognizing the importance of tactical withdrawal in preserving resources and avoiding entrapment in conflicts that inflict debilitating losses. Sun Tzu’s philosophy, which emphasizes that “supreme excellence lies in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting,” encourages a long-term vision. Resistance movements, even those facing overwhelming forces, may thus achieve enduring influence not by aiming for military victory but by prolonging their cultural and ideological presence.

 Conclusion: Enduring Cultural Resilience

Sitting Bull’s strategic patience and alliance-building allowed his people to maintain cultural cohesion amid dispossession, a powerful testament to the merits of defensive resilience over offensive militancy. By focusing on preservation rather than conquest, Sitting Bull achieved what Sun Tzu might call “victory without war,” as he safeguarded his people’s culture and identity well beyond the battlefields. His legacy remains a powerful reminder of resistance rooted in enduring values, highlighting the potential of strategic patience, unity, and calculated engagement as tools for withstanding even the most powerful adversaries.

In contrast, Hamas’s more aggressive approach reveals the pitfalls of asymmetrical warfare that relies heavily on provocation and direct confrontation with a much stronger military power. Unlike Sitting Bull, Hamas often sacrifices cultural and civil resilience for immediate, albeit costly, displays of force. Such strategies highlight a fundamental divergence from the tenets of Sun Tzu, who cautions that provocation without the strength to sustain conflict can yield disastrous outcomes.

In examining Sitting Bull’s strategy, modern resistance movements may glean lessons from his defensive philosophy, focused on the protection and endurance of the community rather than high-cost offensives. This approach, rooted in the wisdom of Sun Tzu, suggests that underdog forces, when guided by clear objectives of preservation rather than destruction, can achieve a form of victory that resonates far beyond the battlefield. The resilience Sitting Bull championed underscores the power of a culturally grounded, patient resistance, presenting an enduring model of dignified opposition against overwhelming odds.

 Bibliography

- Ambrose, Stephen E. Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors. Anchor Books, 1996.

- Marshall, Joseph M. The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History. Viking Penguin, 2004.

- Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Translated by Lionel Giles. Allandale Online Publishing, 2000.

- Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull. Holt, 1993.

- Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet, and John Hudson. "Exclusive: Hamas Documents Reveal Sinwar's Planning with Iran." The Washington Post, October 12, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/10/12/exclusive-hamas-documents-sinwar-planning-iran/

3. Frictionless Government and the National Security Constitution

Friction is a deliberate feature, not a bug of our system. Not only are we supposed to have friction, we need it. I think we need to embrace that.

Excerpts:

The risks posed by the collapse of interagency, partisan, and interbranch checks leads us to turn, as Koh does (295-96), to potential sources of friction external to the U.S. government as well. These potential external counterweights, including state and local governments, foreign governments, and private companies, are all imperfect checks. Each has its own interests, separate and apart from serving as checks to U.S. government policies. In some cases, those interests may be adverse to those of the United States; in others, their interests may lead them to accelerate frictionlessness rather than check it. U.S. states are arguably exacerbating frictionlessness with respect to China policy today, adopting investment restrictions and drone bans that go beyond those of the federal government.

Nonetheless, in some situations of frictionless government, external actors may step in to provide friction or nudge entities within the U.S. government to reactivate as internal sources of friction. They may create friction by filing litigation that brings courts into the picture, by lobbying legislators, or by highlighting domestic economic consequences of government decisions. Or they may leverage their role as necessary partners to federal government policy implementation to raise concerns or slow roll implementation.

Layering different kinds of friction is crucial. In any given case, one or more of the checks may fail. Checks that may restrain a unilateralist Executive, such as empowering Congress structurally to push back effectively, can still fail in situations of frictionlessness, where Congress lacks the policy or political incentives to restrain the Executive.

* * *

In his Conclusion, Koh quotes Justice Brandeis’s dissent in Myers v. United States for the point that “the purpose of separation of powers is ‘not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy’” (329). Considering both the story Koh tells about executive unilateralism, congressional acquiescence, and judicial deference, and the story we tell about situations of frictionless government reveals that friction is, for one reason or another, too often lacking in acute moments of foreign policy-making. With the benefit of hindsight on the 20th century and nearly the first quarter of the 21st, we can see that friction is in fact not inevitable. It is, however, still crucial

Frictionless Government and the National Security Constitution​

by Ashley Deeks and Kristen Eichensehr

October 28, 2024

justsecurity.org · by Ashley Deeks, Kristen Eichensehr · October 28, 2024

October 28, 2024

Editor’s note: This article is part of the Just Security Symposium on Harold Hongju Koh’s “The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century”.

Over 35 years ago, a young Yale Law School professor explained “Why the President (Almost) Always Wins in Foreign Affairs.” After decades of experience as an executive branch lawyer and scholar, Yale’s now Sterling Professor of International Law Harold Hongju Koh has adapted his theory of the “National Security Constitution” for the 21st century in his new book. The “National Security Constitution,” according to Koh, “rests upon a simple notion: that the power to conduct American foreign policy is not exclusively presidential, but is a power shared among the president, the Congress, and the courts” (1). But this ideal of “balanced institutional participation” in national security policy-making has gotten badly out of balance. Koh’s diagnosis of the pathologies in the U.S. constitutional system for national security policy-making runs like this: “When national security threats arise, weak and strong presidents alike have institutional incentives to monopolize the response; Congress has incentives to acquiesce; and courts have incentives to defer” (2). This description covers many, but not all, of the dysfunctions in national security policy-making.

In a forthcoming article, we warn of another kind of concern with U.S. foreign relations and national security policy-making, one born not of congressional acquiescence but of unbridled congressional enthusiasm for executive branch policies. We deem these situations examples of “frictionless government.”

Frictionless government occurs when there is overwhelming bipartisan and bicameral consensus about a particular set of policies, as well as consensus between Congress and the President. In frictionless government, the usual tensions between congressional and executive desires disappear; the contentious partisan interactions between Republicans and Democrats quiet; and the often fractious inter-agency negotiations within the executive branch are streamlined. The disappearance of partisan, interbranch, and interagency checks can amplify cognitive biases that often arise in decision making, including groupthink, and result in governmental actions that spark or escalate conflict, trigger actions by U.S. adversaries that undercut U.S. security goals, and unlawfully target domestic constituencies perceived to be linked to foreign adversaries.

In adding to the picture of ways foreign affairs policymaking can go wrong, we aim to ensure that it more often goes right. Koh’s story and ours both highlight situations in which actors outside the Executive either cannot or will not naturally introduce friction into policymaking at a time when friction would improve those policies. It is not surprising, then, that our concern about frictionless government leads us to turn to some of the same entities that Koh suggests for restoring checks and balances more broadly and to some similar suggestions for specific reforms.

Youngstown and Category 1 Complacency

The lodestar for Koh’s ideal of “balanced institutional participation” in national security decision-making is Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (14). Jackson recognized that “[p]residential powers are not fixed but fluctuate, depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress.” He famously set out a tripartite framework for assessing exercises of presidential power. In Category 1, “the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress,” and “his authority is at its maximum.” In Category 2, the President acts without “either a congressional grant or denial of authority,” placing him in a “zone of twilight.” And in Category 3, where the President takes acts “incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb.”

Much of the concern over unconstrained presidential actions has focused on presidential actions in Categories 2 and 3. This focus is understandable, since those categories are most indicative of potential presidential power grabs—that is, aggressive claims of executive authority without the support of or over the opposition of Congress. To his credit, Koh goes further, interrogating just how the President ends up in Category 1 in some cases. Koh points out that Presidents have often construed laws such as the War Powers Resolution and International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which were designed to constrain executive actions, as authorizations instead (92). And he argues that “Congress has usually acquiesced in what the president has done, through legislative myopia, inadequate drafting, ineffective legislative tools, or lack of political will” (92). He places a share of blame on the courts as well, including for invalidating legislative vetoes in key statutes that Congress intended to check the Executive and for declining to adjudicate other disputes.

But even Koh’s more nuanced account risks complacency about Youngstown Category 1. Many recent congressional enactments related to national security are aimed not at constraining the President, but at empowering him. This isn’t congressional acquiescence; it’s a congressional shove. Congress is putting the President into Category 1 not by accident or because of court disruption of a statutory scheme, but precisely because there is bipartisan support in Congress for the executive branch to do more and faster to address perceived national security threats. Category 1 cases, Jackson said, are “supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation,” but they can still go wrong.

The Risks of Frictionless Government

In our forthcoming article, we examine three historical examples of frictionless situations and the resulting harms they caused: the internment of Japanese-Americans in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor; the aftermath of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and deep U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War; and the policies that followed the September 11 attacks. These examples illustrate instances in which policies produced in frictionless situations were deeply flawed.

Decisionmakers sometimes relied on faulty factual premises that went unchallenged. Or they embraced xenophobic or racist beliefs. Or they sought short-term gains at the cost of longer-term strategic goals. And yet all of these policies rested on or were supported by statutes that Congress passed by wide margins, with bipartisan support, and with the encouragement of the White House.

To be clear, not all frictionless situations inexorably lead to poor foreign policy choices: the contemporary case study of the response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine provides a counterpoint. Nevertheless, as Amy Zegart put it, “When everyone’s agreeing, you shouldn’t be comforted. You should be worried.”

By that metric, current U.S. policymaking with respect to China is worrisome. China policy has been a rare area of bipartisan agreement in the midst of an otherwise deeply fractured political environment. In this context, Congress has consistently urged the Executive to go further, passing new authorities for the Executive to deploy and urging the Executive to do more with existing programs.

The historical examples of frictionless government illustrate a range of reasons to be concerned, which is why we think it is important to ask skeptical questions of the government, even—or perhaps especially—in settings in which Congress is not simply acquiescing to executive action, but affirmatively pushing the Executive to act. Perhaps the most significant concern is the risk that the United States will unintentionally slide into war or escalate a conflict.

Robert Jervis famously conceptualized a “spiral model” of international conflict, in which actions by states that are simply seeking to enhance their own security create a vicious circle of security competition. When the United States hastily takes steps to improve its own security, adversaries may perceive these steps as aggressive and react to having their security reduced in ways that could make the outbreak of conflict more likely.

A second category of harms from frictionless government comes from the reactions of countries targeted by U.S. policies—reactions that can undercut the policy goals the United States intends to achieve. The U.S. use of economic tools of national security provides an example. The incautious imposition of sanctions or export controls, driven by strong pressure from Congress or from public fervor about an outside threat, might stimulate their targets to avoid the U.S. financial system or to develop indigenous industries faster than they otherwise would in order to have an alternative source of products not subject to U.S. restrictions.

Finally, several of the historical examples we explore illustrate that it is easy in frictionless times for Congress to enact new laws or for the Executive to deploy existing statutes in ways that unlawfully target domestic constituencies perceived to have links to foreign adversaries. Although civil liberties may return to their prior equilibrium once friction re-enters the system, affected individuals suffer real harm during the frictionless period, and the United States can suffer long-term reputational damage.

In sum, while there are undoubtedly reasons to worry about undue accretions of executive power when the President is acting in Youngstown Categories 2 or 3 or dubiously claiming to be in Category 1, even instances where the President is clearly in Category 1 can be deeply problematic when the political branches and political parties are all aligned in pursuit of a policy. Whereas Koh focuses on “reduc[ing] the isolation that currently surrounds executive-branch activities” (267) in some cases, we cannot lose sight of the risks when the Executive is not isolated at all, but is instead surrounded by enthusiastic external cheerleaders.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Concern about unchecked government action, whether by a unilateralist Executive (as Koh and others discuss) or by a deeply empowered and encouraged one (in our frictionless government scenarios), naturally leads to calls for reimposing checks and balances. The difficulty, of course, is how exactly to do so.

We propose reliance on both friction imposed by the political branches on themselves (or on each other) and sources of friction external to the U.S. government. Self-imposing friction in advance of foreign policy crises could serve as precommitment devices for the political branches. A range of techniques could fulfill this role. For example, the Executive could require dissent by having someone within the Executive play the role of “devil’s advocate,” pressure-testing policy choices that have garnered too much unanimity. Other efforts could foster dissent by diffusing to other agencies a mechanism like the State Department’s long-standing “dissent channel,” which allows employees to communicate contrary views to department leaders without fear of retaliation.

Another technique is for executive officials or Congress to mandate reason-giving to justify policy choices. Reason-giving can improve the quality of decisions, deter abuses, and ensure adherence to legal standards. A final technique of self-imposed friction is to build in policy off-ramps. Such off-ramps might take the form of sunset clauses in statutory authorizations or periodic review of policies that might lead decision-makers to reconsider policies made at a time of broad consensus and with undue speed at a later time, when cooler heads may prevail.

Some of these techniques of self-imposed friction may also guard against a unilateralist Executive, and for that reason, we see overlap with some of Koh’s robust suggestions for reform in his book’s closing chapters. Koh supports strengthening the Executive’s internal checks and balances, and we agree that the Executive would benefit from a more adversarial approach that fosters contestation in foreign policy decision-making (266-68). Koh also pushes for the establishment of a “joint committee on national security” in Congress to become “a core group of expert members on national security matters” (275), advised by a “congressional legal adviser” (278). Such institutions could force greater reason-giving by the President. Koh envisions a Congress with these institutions engaging in “adversarial” review of executive branch legal opinions and presidential national emergency declarations (under a revised version of IEEPA).

Of course, there would remain a risk that the congressional joint committee on national security might not serve as a counterweight to the Executive, but rather could become an enabler in situations of frictionlessness. The committee members’ status within Congress as the branch’s experts could lead other potential congressional counterweights to defer to the committee, which might itself defer to the Executive. Care must be taken to ensure that efforts to solve one problem don’t inadvertently exacerbate another.

The risks posed by the collapse of interagency, partisan, and interbranch checks leads us to turn, as Koh does (295-96), to potential sources of friction external to the U.S. government as well. These potential external counterweights, including state and local governments, foreign governments, and private companies, are all imperfect checks. Each has its own interests, separate and apart from serving as checks to U.S. government policies. In some cases, those interests may be adverse to those of the United States; in others, their interests may lead them to accelerate frictionlessness rather than check it. U.S. states are arguably exacerbating frictionlessness with respect to China policy today, adopting investment restrictions and drone bans that go beyond those of the federal government.

Nonetheless, in some situations of frictionless government, external actors may step in to provide friction or nudge entities within the U.S. government to reactivate as internal sources of friction. They may create friction by filing litigation that brings courts into the picture, by lobbying legislators, or by highlighting domestic economic consequences of government decisions. Or they may leverage their role as necessary partners to federal government policy implementation to raise concerns or slow roll implementation.

Layering different kinds of friction is crucial. In any given case, one or more of the checks may fail. Checks that may restrain a unilateralist Executive, such as empowering Congress structurally to push back effectively, can still fail in situations of frictionlessness, where Congress lacks the policy or political incentives to restrain the Executive.

* * *

In his Conclusion, Koh quotes Justice Brandeis’s dissent in Myers v. United States for the point that “the purpose of separation of powers is ‘not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy’” (329). Considering both the story Koh tells about executive unilateralism, congressional acquiescence, and judicial deference, and the story we tell about situations of frictionless government reveals that friction is, for one reason or another, too often lacking in acute moments of foreign policy-making. With the benefit of hindsight on the 20th century and nearly the first quarter of the 21st, we can see that friction is in fact not inevitable. It is, however, still crucial.

IMAGE: The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S. Photographer: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg

justsecurity.org · by Ashley Deeks, Kristen Eichensehr · October 28, 2024

4. Behind the Curtain: The big media era is over

Fascinating thesis. Will the future 4th Estate be able to contribute to democracy? (or will democracy die in darkness as the Washington Post warns)

Column / Behind the Curtain

Behind the Curtain: The big media era is over

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/28/election-news-media-trump-harris?utm

• Jim VandeHei
• ,
• Mike Allen
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Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios

The mainstream media's dominance in narrative- and reality-shaping in presidential elections shattered in 2024.

• The future of news and information is upon us. Welcome to the shards of glass election — and news era.

Why it matters: How and where Americans get informed has broken into scores of pieces — from young men on Joe Rogan's podcasts, to suburban women following Instagram influencers.

Both campaigns have targeted small, often little-appreciated shards to reach hyper-specific pockets of potential voters. The campaigns are doing this with unorthodox, sometimes lengthy media appearances and precision ad targeting.

• Former President Trump reached way more potential male voters with his three-hour Rogan conversation (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.
• Vice President Kamala Harris reached more young women on Alex Cooper's "Call Her Daddy" podcast, a show about sex and relationships, than she could on CBS' "60 Minutes" and ABC's "The View" combined. Both shows skew very old, too.
• Memes, prediction markets and long-form podcast interviews shape the conversation as surely as any front page.

This new fragmented reality is the future — not just of elections, but also for how America learns about business, products, technology, culture and current events.

• It's how reality will be shaped and "truths" hardened.
• It's where partisans will sharpen and spread their ideas — or lies.

• It's where trends and misinformation will be born and trafficked.
• It's where products and brands will be judged and sold.
• It's where a new generation of information stars are spawned.

(For a field guide to a dozen information bubbles, read our March column introducing the "shards of glass" phenomenon)

The big picture: When we speak around the country, we often tell audiences that when you're sitting at a table of people of different ages and politics, several of them probably get their information on platforms you've never visited ... from popular influencers you've never heard of ... on topics that might seem exotic or totally new.

• Big, traditional media still has its moments — presidential debates, town halls and sit-down interviews. But even then, most of the narrative-shaping is done in quick-twitch video bites or reinterpretation on podcasts, social platforms or YouTube.

Behind the scenes: Top executives and officials tell us that reaching people ages 35 and under with any message — or even major event — is almost impossible. Or they've seen an eight-second clip with no context, so they have a very different understanding of what happened than someone who saw a mainstream report. These are the TV cord-cutters, living in fractured communities on Instagram, TikTok and streaming audio.

• Ben LaBolt, White House communications director and senior adviser, told us: "Whether you're president or CEO, when you reach the [network] evening news, you're only hitting [a total of] 20 million Americans — and we've increasingly found that Americans 35 and under aren't consuming news from traditional outlets at all."
• "Video platforms, influencer engagements and streaming of all forms — especially podcasts — must be part of your media mix to reach a younger, diverse, persuadable demographic," LaBolt added.

Inside the campaigns: Harris focuses on traditional media more than Trump does. But her staff is equally focused on chopping her appearances into small clips.

• When she sat down with "60 Minutes," her comments about owning a Glock (quickly clipped and posted by her campaign) soon had 1 million views on TikTok.
• This shift — partly a reaction to plummeting trust in traditional media, partly the reality of younger people gobbling up news/info on new platforms — has reordered the information ecosystem at an epic scale.

Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer, who tracks the business of media better than anyone, walked through but a few recent examples of the new world order:

• Harris targeted undecided Latinos on Nueva Network with Stephanie "Chiquibaby" Himonidis for a radio interview last month. Nueva is the largest independently owned Spanish-language audio network in the U.S.
• Harris reached young Black men on the NBA-focused "All the Smoke" podcast, hosted by Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
• She aimed for young Black women on "The Shade Room," an online culture brand that reaches primarily young Black people.

• Harris taped an interview last Thursday in Georgia with former NFL player Shannon Sharpe for his podcast "Club Shay Shay."

Trump's long-form interviews put a premium on young conservative, libertarian or agnostic men.

• He appeared on a livestream with controversial streamer Adin Ross — hosted on the niche live streaming video platform Kick, which is known for looser moderation than a rival like Twitch. At its peak, it had over 580,000 viewers.
• Trump sat for podcasts with comedian and actor Theo Von, comedian Andrew Schulz's "Flagrant" and Barstool Sports' "Bussin' with the Boys," hosted by former NFL football players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan. The Theo Von conversation racked up 14 million views on YouTube, the nation's most powerful video platform.
• Trump also went on Logan Paul's "Impaulsive" podcast — reportedly a recommendation from Trump's 18-year-old son, Barron.

What's next: TV is dying, slowly but surely. The audience for TV is old and shrinking. That's even changing where the candidates spend their TV budgets.

• "Political ads used to be all local broadcast essentially. Now it's CTV [connected TV] and streaming and digital," Fischer says.

Threat level: When attention is scattered across scores of shards, it's easier to propagate conspiracy theories and manipulate "news." It's way harder to catch Russian misinformation campaigns when they are unleashed inside a dozen different information bubbles.

• It also makes it harder to operate a divided and diffuse population on shared facts or truths.
• America's new challenge: Can a land of 50 different states thrive with 50 different info-ecosystems — and realities?

Reality check: Jeffrey Katzenberg — the legendary Hollywood executive, who's a co-chair of the Harris campaign — advocated for her heavy use of nontraditional outlets. "You gotta fish where the fish are," he told us. "They're not on cable and they're not on broadcast. They're not watching and not listening."

• But Katzenberg said legacy news organizations still set major national narratives — that then filter out to the masses through fractured information bubbles. He said old-school outlets are still "the top of the waterfall, but no longer have the ability to reach the customer, the consumer, the people. They give context and relevance and focus and priority — then the tidal wave happens."

The winner of the election might speed or slightly slow this lightning-fast transition. If Harris wins, she and her staff are much closer — and responsive — to traditional media. If Trump wins, the shift will accelerate.

• Just imagine, if Trump wins, the power of Elon Musk after he bought Twitter, and turned it into X — and then went all-in to elect Trump. The X-Rogan-right-wing podcaster network would form a new mass media industrial complex.
• 
  

5. No new limits on Ukraine's use of US arms if North Korea joins Russia's fight, Pentagon says

But the US is still NOT approving the unrestricted use of US weapons for deep strikes into Russia. I hope no one thinks that saying it will not place NEW limits on the use of US weapons has any kind of strategic effect on Russia or north Korea.

No new limits on Ukraine's use of US arms if North Korea joins Russia's fight, Pentagon says

By Phil Stewart and Andrew Gray

October 28, 20246:51 PM EDTUpdated 9 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nato-chief-says-he-can-confirm-north-korean-troops-are-russias-kursk-2024-10-28/?utm

Item 1 of 3 Ukrainian service members from a battalion, fire a howitzer M119 at a front line, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine March 10, 2023. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak

[1/3]Ukrainian service members from a battalion, fire a howitzer M119 at a front line, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near the city of Bakhmut, Ukraine March 10, 2023. REUTERS/Oleksandr Ratushniak Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

• NATO confirms North Korean troops in Russia's Kursk regionPentagon estimates 10,000 North Korean troops deployed to eastern RussiaUkraine urges allies to lift restrictions on long-range strikes

WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. will not impose new limits on Ukraine's use of American weapons if North Korea joins Russia's war, the Pentagon said on Monday, as NATO said North Korean military units had been deployed to the Kursk region in Russia.

The North Korea deployment is fanning Western concerns that the 2-1/2-year conflict in Ukraine could widen, even as attention shifts to the Middle East.

It could signal how Russia hopes to offset mounting battlefield losses and continue making slow, steady gains in eastern Ukraine.

"The deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is a threat to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security," NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters after talks with a South Korean delegation about the North Korean deployments.

U.S. President Joe Biden said the development was "very dangerous."

The Pentagon estimated 10,000 North Korean troops had been deployed to eastern Russia for training, up from an estimate of 3,000 troops last Wednesday.

"A portion of those soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine, and we are increasingly concerned that Russia intends to use these soldiers in combat or to support combat operations against Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk Oblast near the border with Ukraine," said Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, using a term for a Russian region.

The Kremlin had initially dismissed reports about a North Korean deployment as "fake news". But Putin on Thursday did not deny North Korean troops were in Russia and said it was Moscow's business how to implement a partnership treaty with Pyongyang.

The Russian leader also said over the weekend that Moscow will respond accordingly if the U.S. and its allies help Ukraine to strike deep into Russia, with Moscow seeing the West's potential approval as "direct involvement of NATO" into the war.

The United States, however, has given no indication that it will approve Ukraine's deep strike request.

A North Korean foreign ministry official did not confirm media reports about a troop deployment to Russia but said if Pyongyang had taken such action, he believed it would be in line with international norms.

Ukrainian military intelligence said on Thursday that the first North Korean units had been recorded in the Kursk border region, where Ukrainian troops have been operating since staging a major incursion in August.

But the Pentagon declined to confirm that North Korean forces were already in Kursk.

"It is likely that they are moving in that direction towards Kursk. But I don't have more details just yet," Singh said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the move was an escalation by Russia.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv had been warning about the deployment for weeks, and accused allies of failing to deliver a strong response.

"The bottom line: listen to Ukraine. The solution: lift restrictions on our long-range strikes against Russia now," he said on X.

Since their leaders met in Russia's Far East last year, North Korea and Russia have upgraded their military ties. They met again in June to sign a comprehensive strategic partnership that includes a mutual defense pact.

A flurry of bilateral visits of high-ranked officials have followed between the two countries, which share a small piece of border. North Korea's foreign minister Choe Son Hui departed Pyongyang on Monday for her second trip to Russia in six weeks.

Rutte said the the deployment of North Korean troops was a sign of "growing desperation" on Putin's part, Rutte said.

"Over 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Putin’s war and he is unable to sustain his assault on Ukraine without foreign support," Rutte said.

The Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said sanctions alone would not be a sufficient response to North Korean involvement.

He added that Kyiv needs "weapons and a clear plan to prevent North Korea's expanded involvement".

"The enemy understands strength. Our allies have this strength," Yermak said on X.

The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here.

Reporting by Andrew Gray in Brussels, Phil Stewart in Washington; additional reporting by Yuliia Dysa in Gdansk and Gabriella Borter in New Castle, Delaware, Susan Heavey in Washington, Hyonhee Shin in Seoul and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; editing by Bart Meijer, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Mark Heinrich, Angus MacSwan, Rod Nickel, David Gregorio and Sonali Paul

Phil Stewart

Thomson Reuters

Phil Stewart has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award.

Andrew Gray

Thomson Reuters

Andrew Gray is Reuters' European Affairs Editor. Based in Brussels, he covers NATO and the European Union and leads a pan-European team of reporters focused on diplomacy, defence and security. A journalist for almost 30 years, he has previously been based in the UK, Germany, Geneva, the Balkans, West Africa and Washington, where he reported on the Pentagon. He covered the Iraq war in 2003 and contributed a chapter to a Reuters book on the conflict. He has also worked at Politico Europe as a senior editor and podcast host, served as the main editor for a fellowship programme for journalists from the Balkans, and contributed to the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent radio show.

6. Israel approves two bills that could halt UNRWA's aid delivery to Gaza. What does that mean?

Israel approves two bills that could halt UNRWA's aid delivery to Gaza. What does that mean?

By JOSEPH KRAUSS, JULIA FRANKEL and MELANIE LIDMAN

Updated 5:28 AM EDT, October 29, 2024

AP · by JULIA FRANKEL · October 28, 2024

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel’s parliament has passed two laws that could prevent the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, a main provider of aid to Gaza, from being able to continue its work.

The laws ban the agency, UNRWA, from operating and cut all ties between the agency and the Israeli government. It’s the culmination of a long-running campaign against the agency, which Israel contends has been infiltrated by Hamas. But supporters say Israel’s real aim is to sideline the issue of Palestinian refugees.

The agency is the major distributor of aid in Gaza and provides education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The head of the agency, Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, called the move “unprecedented” on X following the vote and said the bills “will only deepen the suffering Palestinians, especially in Gaza where people have been going through more than a year of sheer hell.”

Israel accuses the agency of turning a blind eye to staff members it says belong to Hamas, divert aid and use UNRWA facilities for military purposes. Israel says around a dozen of its 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. The agency denies it knowingly aids armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants among its staff.

The bills severely hamper UNRWA

One of the bills passed Monday evening bans all UNRWA activities and services on Israeli soil and is set to take effect in three months.

The second bill severs all ties between government employees and UNRWA and strips its staff of their legal immunities.

Together, the bills likely bar the agency from operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories, because Israel controls access to both Gaza and the West Bank. It could force the agency to relocate its headquarters from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Lazzarini warned earlier this month that humanitarian operations in Gaza “may disintegrate” if the legislation passes, disrupting the provision of food, shelter and health care as winter sets in.

Gaza’s population of some 2.3 million is almost entirely dependent on aid to survive. Around 90% of the population has been displaced. Hundreds of thousands live in tent camps and schools-turned-shelters, most run by UNRWA. Experts say hunger is rampant. Israel’s campaign in Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose count does not differentiate between civilians and militants.

Israel is reportedly considering taking over aid distribution itself or subcontracting it, but it has yet to put forth a concrete plan. Any such effort would likely require a large number of troops and other resources at a time when Israel is at war on two fronts in Gaza and Lebanon.

Other U.N. agencies and aid groups say there is no substitute for UNRWA, which also runs 96 schools hosting around 47,000 students, three vocational training centers and 43 health centers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

A decades-old mission rooted in the conflict’s bitter history

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East was established to help the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation,

UNRWA supporters say Israel hopes to erase the Palestinian refugee issue by dismantling the agency. Israel says the refugees should be permanently resettled outside its borders.

Palestinians say refugees and their descendants, who now number nearly 6 million, should be allowed to exercise their right under international law to return home. Israel refuses, saying the result would be a Palestinian majority inside its borders.

The issue was among the thorniest in the peace process, which ground to a halt in 2009.

UNRWA operates schools, health clinics, infrastructure projects and aid programs in refugee camps that have grown into urban neighborhoods in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

A long-running dispute over UNRWA’s neutrality

Israel says hundreds of Palestinian militants work for UNRWA, without providing evidence, and that more than a dozen employees took part in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

UNRWA immediately fired the employees accused of taking part in the Oct. 7 attack, in which Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted around 250.

An independent investigation earlier this year found that UNRWA had “robust” mechanisms to ensure its neutrality but pointed to gaps in implementation, including staff publicly expressing political views and textbooks with “problematic content” in UNRWA-run schools.

UNRWA says it thoroughly investigates any allegations of wrongdoing and holds staff accountable, and that it provides lists of all of its staff to Israel and host countries. It says Israel has largely ignored its requests to provide evidence for its claims against staffers.

Israel has repeatedly struck U.N. schools-turned-shelters, claiming Hamas fighters operate inside them. It also says it has uncovered tunnels running near or under UNRWA facilities.

UNRWA has long been the biggest single employer in Gaza, where the population has been impoverished by years of Israeli and Egyptian blockade. Hamas has ruled the territory since 2007, and it has civilian political operations alongside its armed wing.

The militant wings of Hamas and other groups are highly secretive, their members virtually unknown outside of intelligence agencies. That complicates efforts by civilian organizations to vet employees.

Fatah Sharif, an UNRWA teacher in southern Lebanon, was killed last month along with his family in an Israeli airstrike. It then emerged that he was a senior Hamas commander, something he had kept secret.

Lazzarini, UNRWA’s head, said Sharif was suspended without pay in March after the agency learned he belonged to Hamas’ political party, and that an investigation had been launched. He said he didn’t know Sharif was a militant commander until after his death.

UNRWA has strong international support

Several Western countries suspended funding for UNRWA after the allegations related to the Oct. 7 attack. All except the United States, which had been its biggest donor, have since restored it.

The Biden administration recently warned Israel that if it did not allow more aid into Gaza it could lose out on some of the crucial American military assistance it has relied on throughout the war.

The letter sent by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to their Israeli counterparts said they shared Israeli concerns about “the serious allegations” of UNRWA employees taking part in the Oct. 7 attack and of “Hamas misusing UNRWA facilities.”

But it said enacting the bills’ restrictions “would devastate the Gaza humanitarian response at this critical moment ... which could have implications under relevant U.S. law and policy.”

A joint statement from Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain last week expressed “grave concern” over the legislation. It said the agency provides “essential and life-saving humanitarian aid,” the provision of which would be “severely hampered, if not impossible” without it.

___

Frankel and Lidman reported from Jerusalem.

___

This version has corrected that the agency was not designated a terror organization.

___

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

JULIA FRANKEL

Frankel is an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem.

twittermailto

MELANIE LIDMAN

Lidman is an Associated Press reporter based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

AP · by JULIA FRANKEL · October 28, 2024

7. Ukraine: What Next? by Lawrence Freedman

All one can say is that if Trump wins, how he engages with Putin and the possible outcomes of any negotiations will soon dominate all considerations of this issue. If Trump loses we will have President Harris. This would be an opportunity to revitalise the West’s Ukraine policy, recommit to its support, and look for ways to add to the pressure on Russia. With the uncertainty of the election out of the way Putin will have to accept that Ukraine will not be abandoned and that if he is going to cut his losses he might as well do so quickly.

There is another possibility that Russia might just decide to reduce the tempo of its operations, concentrate as it did in late 2022 on defensive preparations, keeping up the attacks on Ukraine’s civil society, denying its economy the chance to recover and waiting for something else to turn up.

The stakes are extraordinarily high for Europe. While I would not argue that Russia’s next step after defeating Ukraine would be to move immediately against the Baltic states, this would usher in a period of intense instability in Europe and recriminations among the allies. Given the combined strength of European countries, leaving aside the US, it would represent a failure of political will and judgement.

Autocracies are different from democracies. To return to the question posed in the title: I don’t know what comes next. There are big decisions to be made in Kyiv and in Moscow. But there are also decisions to be taken in Western capitals, and how those decisions are made over the coming months will determine Europe’s stability and security for the rest of this decade and beyond.

Ukraine: What Next?

Lawrence Freedman

Oct 29, 2024

https://samf.substack.com/p/ukraine-what-next?r=7i07&utm

Last week on 23 October I was privileged to give the BEARR Trust annual lecture which is reproduced here with their kind permission. Details of this charity which supports civil society organisations in Ukraine and Moldova can be found at the end of the piece.

I have managed to pose for myself a question that is impossible to answer. It might be easier to answer when we know who has won the presidential election, although even then it will probably still be unwise to draw definite conclusions. Predicting the course of a war is a foolish thing to try to do, especially without access to the situation on the frontlines or the most secret conversations in the relevant national capitals.

The history of this conflict is already littered with discredited expectations, both optimistic and pessimistic. Most importantly, what happens next depends on decisions that have yet to be made. Governments still have choices.

Yet this question of ‘what next?’ is hard to duck because it is asked so regularly and so urgently that it is not one that can be easily put aside. There is currently quite a lot of doom around as people ask how long Ukraine can cope with the Russian onslaught and whether it is time to consider some compromise peace. This line of commentary often assumes that a compromise peace could be readily found if only Kyiv would abandon its dreams of total victory and appreciate the seriousness of its position. The compromise peace those urging this course usually have in mind is not, however, on offer. It bears very little relationship to the one that Putin proposes, which involves no compromises at all. He only demands Ukraine’s surrender.

That does not mean that compromises might not be found in the future. In situations such as this, with ferocious and ongoing fighting, neither side will wish to convey weakness or suggest that they are at all desperate for a way out. In private both sides might be thinking about how to bring the war to a conclusion. They might have some possible future concessions in mind. But for now they are seeking to improve their positions. Neither wishes to show their hand.

I am not an impartial observer of the war. More than most, this is a conflict that can be approached with moral clarity. It is not difficult to work out who is the aggressor and who is the aggrieved. Attempts to turn this round to show that somehow Russia had no choice but to invade in February 2022, or for that matter seize Crimea in March 2014, have either to play games with the historical record or to assume that whatever provocations they can discern in NATO policies or Ukraine’s domestic politics these can somehow be used to justify the occupation and subjugation of a neighbouring country. Vladimir Putin undoubtedly had his reasons for ordering the invasion but we are not obliged to find them compelling.

Yet while I am partial my task is to be dispassionate in analysis. Wars do not always end cleanly or in a way that serves justice as well as peace. In war good does not always triumph over evil. So little can be taken for granted and it is important to be clear-eyed about the situation and not to allow our hopes for Ukraine to guide our analysis to a suitably optimistic conclusion. Some of the current gloom and doom is overdone but not all of it can be discounted.

One of the reasons to be clear-eyed is to help identify the role that Western countries can play in supporting Ukraine to achieve a better outcome than might otherwise be the case. If Russia was not a member of the UN Security Council, wielding a veto, then it might have been put under pressure to follow the UN Charter. If it was not a nuclear power then NATO might have considered such blatant aggression in the heart of Europe to justify direct intervention to secure Ukraine’s freedom. As it is we have confined ourselves to economic and military assistance. We are not at war and our economies also should have no difficulty supporting the current levels of support and should be able to do more. At the moment, unfortunately, a more pressing question is whether election results in the US and financial pressures in Europe will lead us to do less.

I will return to that question at the conclusion of this lecture. I will first consider the strategies being adopted by Ukraine and Russia, before looking at the military situation and then the possibilities for negotiations.

Zelensky’s ‘victory plan.’

President Zelensky’s plan as presented to the Rada in Kyiv on 16 October has five key elements.

1. First, an immediate and unconditional invitation to join NATO. This is to set the process in motion rather than reach an early conclusion. This is a direct challenge to one of Putin’s key war aims which is to keep Ukraine out of the alliance.
2. Second, a permanent strengthening of Ukraine’s security through guarantees from partners that their weapons can be used for strikes inside Russia and that Ukraine’s neighbours will conduct joint air defence operations to protect Ukraine’s skies. This would also allow for continued operations inside sovereign Russian territory to ensure buffer zones that protect Ukraine, such as that undertaken in Kursk.
3. Third, a nonnuclear deterrence plan. Before full membership of NATO there needs to be security guarantees relating to how partners will come to Ukraine’s aid if attacked again. Some of these security agreements are already in place but Kyiv would want them to be firmed up.
4. Fourth, guarantees to protect Ukraine’s economic security and natural resources. These resources are of importance to Ukraine’s partners while if they can be denied to Russia that will weaken its economy and ‘war machine.’
5. Fifth, an offer for the post-war period to replace some US military contingents stationed in Europe with Ukrainian units that have gained real experience in modern warfare, the use of Western weapons, and cooperation with NATO troops. This is to underline the fact that Ukraine is not just a supplicant but could make its own significant contributions to the alliance.

The obvious and acknowledged feature of this plan is that it very much depends on Ukraine’s international partners to make it work, and in particular the United States. This means that there is little chance that the big issues of principle – NATO and long-range strike authorisations – will be addressed until a new administration is in place, although there are things that can and are being done before then. President Biden has just approved a new $425 million package of support and already indicated that he is prepared to set in motion a process for NATO accession. The interest from frozen Russian assets, although as yet not the assets, is being handed over to Ukraine.

Another feature of the plan, that has gained less comment, is that it does not presume a series of successful offensives to liberate territory. Remember that Russia still holds some 20 percent of Ukrainian territory and that it is Ukraine’s stated war aim to get it all back. It therefore requires Russia to abandon its own war aims and agree to withdraw its forces . The plan will succeed, according to Zelensky, by persuading Putin, at some point during the coming year, ‘that his geopolitical calculations are doomed.’

The emphasis therefore is on demonstrating to Putin that he cannot win even it is harder to show that he is bound to lose. In these situations not losing can be as important objective as winning – and one that is easier to attain. This is one reason why wars drag on and why it remains difficult to see Russia agreeing to accept that this war has been a terrible mistake while Putin remains in power.

The more military aspects of Zelensky’s plan are geared to ensuring that Ukraine does not lose. These include providing more protection to critical infrastructure and Ukrainian towns and cities, supporting Ukrainian forces trying to hold their positions with more ammunition and equipment, and facilitating the long-range strikes that can disrupt all Russian military preparations. Zelensky’s plan was light on what extra steps Ukraine will need to follow. It is doing a lot – with Western support - to develop its own defence industry but is still struggling with mobilisation. As Jack Watling has observed ‘the training pipeline has failed provide enough personnel or give those soldiers sufficient training.’

As the weather deteriorates in Ukraine the fighting may slow down somewhat, although it has not stopped during previous winters. The main concern about the coming months is the loss of so much energy generating capacity because of the deliberate Russian campaign to take it out. Peak electricity generation may only be a third of what is required. One point of contention within Ukraine has been whether to stay with large power stations which are vulnerable to future Russian strikes or move towards a more decentralised system of small plants, which might be privately run, carrying the risk of corruption. For now the limits on supply means that blackouts and shortages will have to be endured.

Yet as we consider the ordeal to which Ukraine has been subjected we can also note its remarkable resilience. I was struck by a recent tweet from Anton Gerashchenko, of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future

‘Yes, things are consistently bad. But the key word here is not 'bad,' but 'consistently.' We have not been defeated, our allies have not abandoned us, the frontline has not been broken through, our military industry continues to work and develop, the enemy has not captured a single regional center, logistics is functioning, air defense defends cities, the military command maintains control, the parliament is working, volunteers are working, taxes are being paid, Russian oil and weapons depots are burning, wheat is being harvested and bread is being baked daily, trolleybuses are running, and the third year of the great war is underway.’

Russian Strategy

The hope for a dawning sense of futility in the enemy capital is one important feature that Russian strategy shares with Ukrainian. There is no peace offer on the table other than a reiteration of Moscow’s most absolute objectives. Ukraine is required to accept the loss of four oblasts to Russia – Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as well as Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. A formal neutrality is also demanded, so no membership of NATO, plus other measures designed for demilitarisation and denazification, which would limit Ukraine’s ability to sustain serious armed forces and presumably require changes to the constitution to protect Russian language speakers. Putin has demanded that Kyiv agree to all of this before a cease-fire can be considered. He is not offering a cease-fire to be followed by peace negotiations, which is the sequence expected in the West.

What was supposed to be a limited ‘special military operation’ has now been going on for almost 1,000 days. The costs to Russia have been immense in both human and material terms. It has made itself dependent on China, along with North Korea and Iran, while collapsing its political and economic relations with Europe. And after all this effort it is no closer to victory. So long as it does not control the Ukrainian government – which was its objective on 24 February 2022 – then it has no way of forcing Ukraine to accept its loss.

Because of Ukraine’s dependence on external support, Russia can work on Ukraine’s partners to get them to do less or even abandon Kyiv altogether. This has always been a key element of its strategy, from the energy crunch with accompanying inflation that it caused in 2022 to the sabotage and misinformation campaigns that have been stepped over the past year. The head of MI5 has spoken of how Russian agents have been on a mission to generate ‘sustained mayhem on British and European streets’.

Russia has sought to encourage ‘Ukraine fatigue’, a term it should be recalled was first heard over two years ago and has yet to manifest itself in terms of a significant loss of public support for Ukraine in its struggle. The evidence of fatigue is however found in finance ministries and in those responsible for enforcing sanctions. If it comes in the United States it will not be because of a general shift in opinion but because of an election decided for other reasons that puts in place a president with a known antipathy to Ukraine and a proclaimed determination to arrange a peace in days. Putin has denied in the past that he was waiting with any special eagerness for a Trump victory but it would have been surprising if he had not calculated that this might provide him with a lifeline.

Putin’s other advantage over Ukraine is the size of the country, its economy, and its population. Extraordinary resources have been devoted to the war – Russia is planning to spend 13.2 trillion rubles, or approximately $95.4 billion, for the year 2025, that is about $275 million a day. The working assumption by many in the West is that this can be sustained almost indefinitely. That is certainly safer than the alternative assumption, more regularly heard after a succession of sanctions packages were imposed on Russia, that the economy was rapidly approaching a cliff edge. Nonetheless I don’t think one should underestimate the problems that those in charge of the Russian economy face (bearing in mind that they have shown themselves to be more accomplished than those in charge of military strategy).

The most serious and obvious problem is that the economy is overheating. This is reflected in intense labour shortages, aggravated by the demands of the front line and to some extent hostility to immigrants, and by inflation at 7% which has yet to be tamed by high interest rates, which have just gone up to 21%. Sanctions clearly don’t help even if ways round them can be found, including with the help of China. The opportunity costs in terms of the civilian sector and infrastructure are considerable. Last winter there were problems with public utilities and breakdowns may be worse this time. There is also the question of the oil price. If the price of oil falls then the Russian economy will be in more trouble. Equally it will buoyed if the price goes up.

The Military Balance

Against this backdrop what has been noticeable is that Russia has not been fighting this war as if it expects it to be long but instead has been throwing resources and people into it at a frantic pace. Ever since the Ukrainian offensive petered out a year ago Russian forces have been pushing hard in all fronts with their own offensives, despite incurring heavy losses in men and equipment. They have succeeded in keeping Ukrainian forces on the back foot. In recent months they have had some breakthroughs in Donetsk, the result of exhaustion on the Ukrainian side, with units outgunned and outmanned, and glide bombs making the life of those trying to hold lines especially difficult. In some areas they have failed – the Kharkiv offensive which was launched last summer did not create the buffer zone Putin said it would.

In addition, Ukraine managed its own offensive into Russia’s Kursk region a couple of months ago, and while this had yet to see Russian troops diverted away from the main fronts in Ukraine nor have the Ukrainians as yet been pushed out. While this is only a tiny fraction of Russian territory it is embarrassing for Putin that it is still held by Ukraine. Zelensky has spoken of it as providing a Ukrainian buffer zone, and it could also be potentially traded in any peace deal.

Lastly while Ukraine cannot hurt Russia in the same way and to the same extent as Russia can hurt Ukraine, and it is frustrated by the lack of authorization to use Western systems against targets deep in Russia, it is developing long-range systems of its own which it is producing in numbers. These can be used against any targets it wishes. The most important targets are those storing weapons systems and ammunition, and a number have been attacked successfully. We have also seen some attacks on weapons factories. Earlier in the year oil refineries presented soft targets which took out some Russian capacity. With so many potential targets these strikes pose a challenge for Russian air defence in setting priorities.

The number of First-Person View (FPV) drones on the battlefield has surged from just dozens to tens of thousands in under a year, helping to compensate for the shortfall in artillery shells. Ukraine has successfully developed and deployed its own long-range drones, as well as sea drones, which have allowed Ukraine to destroy a quarter of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, denying Russia the ability to impose a blockade, and keep military facilities in Crimea on edge.

According to US estimates Russia has lost more than 600,000 personnel, dead and wounded during the course of a war that was supposed to be a limited ‘special military operation’ to be concluded in a matter of weeks. Putin is also trying to avoid further mobilisation, and is scrambling around to find more people to send to the front. Now North Koreans are being deployed, apparently in Kursk (itself a possible indication that the Ukrainians are proving to be harder to dislodge than assumed). It will be interesting to see how they are used by Russian commanders - as other disposable troops or requiring special treatment? Will some be tempted to defect? How will NATO and for that matter South Korea respond to it appearing as a belligerent in a European war?

Russian Industry is working overtime to keep the front lines supplied. The Russian generals have adapted in many ways to the demands of the war and their tactics have been refined but they still rely on the expendability of their soldiers. Without further mobilisation this may limit their ability to sustain the current level of activity into the new year. And while they have pushed Ukraine back, and continue to do so, they have not yet achieved their objectives for this year, and may be running out of time to do so.

We also have an assessment from Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Directorate of Intelligence, dealing with Russia’s ability to replace losses. Take tanks. Russia has relied on refurbishing its older Soviet-era tanks. These are no longer in production. These are being lost at a remarkable rate and new production of the T-90M tanks, at the planned rate of 150 a year, can’t fill the gaps. One estimate is that by 4 October 2024, Russian forces had lost over 539 tanks (out of total losses of 1,830 vehicles) fighting in the Pokrovsk direction this year.

Dara Massicot of the Carnegie Corporation reports that military equipment production, aside from drones, plateaued early this year, while its stockpile of multiple Soviet-era military equipment may be exhausted by 2026. Equally new jet production is unimpressive. Budanov noted that Russia plans to produce only 14 Su-57 fighters in 2024. North Korea and Iran have played an important part in keeping Russia going. Budanov described the importance of North Korean artillery shell supplies by noting how combat intensifies within 8-9 days after the arrival of a new shipment and that this effect lasts for a couple of weeks. What is unclear is the extent of North Korea’s stockpile and its readiness to run it down when it has its own needs.

Where Russia has been able to ramp up production and cause Ukraine real difficulties has been with glide bombs, long-range drones, and Iskander missiles. It flies, according to Watling, between 1,000 and 1,300 long-range reconnaissance drones over Ukraine every day, and there is little Kyiv can do about that. That is why its own electronic warfare and interceptor drone capabilities need to be scaled up. This capability has helped Russia at the front because it is difficult for Ukraine to move its own artillery forward, and it is also why Ukrainian towns and cities, especially those close to the front lines, have taken such a battering in recent months. It has insufficient Patriot systems to protect cities and the entire frontline. This is why Ukraine is so keen to find means to attack missile storage sites from a distance.

Negotiations?

The story of the past two years has been that fast-moving offensives are hard to achieve unless defences have already been thinned out. If there is still no dramatic movement on the battlefield, and even the possibility that the intensity of the battles may slow down during the course of next year, what are the possibilities of either a cease-fire or a full negotiated settlement?

Ukraine feels that it has little choice but to continue with the war. It notes Putin’s regular dismissal of Ukrainian sovereignty let alone the legitimacy of its government, the cruel behaviour of his forces in areas that it has occupied, and the disregard of past promises to respect Ukrainian security, including the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. For all these reasons it is unsurprisingly reluctant to do a deal with Russia without guarantees from NATO states.

Does that mean that it would reject all compromise deals? Looking at Ukrainian polling one can imagine some territorial concessions, for example over Donetsk and Luhansk. That will be up to the Ukrainians (and the government did once promise to put any deal to a referendum). At any rate I don’t think that Ukraine could accept any deal that did not come with proper security guarantees.

What about Russia? In discussions of possible outcomes over the past couple years a hierarchy of Russian territorial claims has been identified: Crimea; Donetsk and Luhansk; Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. This reflects the order in which Putin thought about annexing them.

The last two are already problematic because they are not yet fully under Russian control. Getting full control of Donetsk along with Luhansk has been a military priority since the summer of 2022 and remains the focus of the current fighting. As of now a deal on Russia’s preferred lines would require Ukraine agreeing to withdraw troops from its own territory. But it is important to keep in mind that they have all been formally annexed and as far as Moscow is concerned, if nobody else, they are now part of the Russian Federation. Moreover even recognising Crimea as the most important acquisition then other territories are also important to provide a land bridge and to ensure that it can be kept supplied and safe. (I suspect Crimea is also Ukraine’s top priority for liberation).

So at most one can imagine a negotiation around Kherson and Zaporizhzhia leading to some Russian troop withdrawals. (Anders Aslund recently picked up on an article by one newspaper owner, Konstantin Remchukov, who appeared to be flying a kite along these lines, concentrating on the Donbas and Crimea but also recognizing Ukrainian sovereignty).

All the territories held by Russia, other than Crimea, have been ruined by the war: towns and villages have been obliterated, and infrastructure and industries wrecked. They are full of unexploded ordnance and the environment generally has been degraded. They have been depopulated and much of the population remaining is hostile to an occupation and will need policing. To reconstruct and revive these territories will be extraordinarily expensive and require continuing subsidies to keep them afloat. From Moscow’s perspective, if Ukraine is not kept demilitarised and out of NATO then there will be a long new border to be defended and this will require a major commitment of Russian forces for the indefinite future, with the possibility of sabotage and subversion to the rear. This is why Putin wanted a puppet government in Kyiv in the first place. Without one the situation for Russia is unstable.

With control over the media Putin could spin any deal as representing a great victory, and from what we can tell from polling this would be welcomed by the Russian people who do want negotiations even though they accept official rationales for its continuation and remain proud of their armed forces and unwilling to challenge Putin. But a situation in which the rump Ukraine was independent and able to reconstitute its army and forge new security relationships with NATO countries would not be seen as a great victory. The acquisition of ruined territories would be a mixed blessing, remaining desolate for some time as a testament to a foolish war.

This takes us again to the importance of not losing even when there can be no decisive victory. While the war continues Putin can avoid an awkward reckoning – for this gain was the sacrifice really worth it? But it also means that when the eventual reckoning does come it will be more severe.

Zelensky’s route to winding down the war envisages building on agreements on specific things, for example prisoner exchanges and allowing grain exports. He has spoken of the possibility of an agreement not to target critical infrastructure, although that would require Russia to abandon one of its most effective forms of pressure on Ukraine. It is hard to see Moscow agreeing to that, at least not until Ukraine has shown it can cope with another winter.

Putin’s preferred route has been through Washington. This is in line with his dismissal of the Ukrainian government as neo-Nazis, his belief that it is at any rate a puppet of Western governments so that the war is really one with NATO and can only be resolved at that level.

This is why he would welcome direct communication with the US President, and he could look forward to it should Trump return to power. Trump believes that he can do a deal. The one that Vice-Presidential candidate J D Vance has spoken about is not far from that proposed by Putin. We can also assume that Trump could use the threat of the immediate withdrawal of support to get Zelensky to agree at least to be part of the negotiations, although Putin will have little interest in talking to him. How quickly this could happen is unclear: key positions in government would have to be approved, and the ease with which that could be done would depend on what happens in the Congressional elections as well the presidential. If Ukraine insists on continuing with the fight, still helped by European partners, I am not sure that Trump would consider it a good look to be abandoning a country in a fight against Russia so decisively. Trump has hinted in the past he would give Ukraine even more support if Putin refused to offer any concessions.

All one can say is that if Trump wins, how he engages with Putin and the possible outcomes of any negotiations will soon dominate all considerations of this issue. If Trump loses we will have President Harris. This would be an opportunity to revitalise the West’s Ukraine policy, recommit to its support, and look for ways to add to the pressure on Russia. With the uncertainty of the election out of the way Putin will have to accept that Ukraine will not be abandoned and that if he is going to cut his losses he might as well do so quickly.

There is another possibility that Russia might just decide to reduce the tempo of its operations, concentrate as it did in late 2022 on defensive preparations, keeping up the attacks on Ukraine’s civil society, denying its economy the chance to recover and waiting for something else to turn up.

The stakes are extraordinarily high for Europe. While I would not argue that Russia’s next step after defeating Ukraine would be to move immediately against the Baltic states, this would usher in a period of intense instability in Europe and recriminations among the allies. Given the combined strength of European countries, leaving aside the US, it would represent a failure of political will and judgement.

Autocracies are different from democracies. To return to the question posed in the title: I don’t know what comes next. There are big decisions to be made in Kyiv and in Moscow. But there are also decisions to be taken in Western capitals, and how those decisions are made over the coming months will determine Europe’s stability and security for the rest of this decade and beyond.

Details of the BEARR Trust’s emergency appeal for Ukraine and Moldova can be found here.

8. Forget Gaza and Ukraine, East Asia's brewing war will matter more

Excerpts:

For China, however, these exercises are both provocative and an impetus for further enhancing its own military presence in disputed areas. The PLA-Navy’s Dongdiao-class surveillance ship Tianshuxing (795) was sighted last week just 62 miles west of the island of Amami Oshima of Japan before heading for the Philippine Sea in the Western Pacific.

Chinese Liaoning Carrier Strike Group, meanwhile, reportedly sailed north through the Taiwan Strait.

China is also preparing for high-tech warfare by strengthening its electronic war capacity. According to the Chatham House report, China is building new stealth-penetrating radar systems based on satellite imagery that show distinctive hexagonal grouping of SIAR synthetic impulse and aperture radar) poles, a control tower and several mobile missile staging pads on the Triton Island in the disputed Paracel Islands archipelago

According to the Chatham House report, “Once completed, the radar on Triton will form what is believed to be a wider network of at least three overlapping counter-stealth radars built across Chinese bases in the South China Sea over the past decade.”

China seems to be reacting to growing American combat stealth aircraft deployments across the region, including F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and F-35 stealth fighters.

Forget Gaza and Ukraine, East Asia's brewing war will matter more - Asia Times

US, China and Russia all flexing military muscles in East Asian waters, threatening a great power conflict that will truly shake the world

asiatimes.com · by Richard Javad Heydarian · October 28, 2024

MANILA–All major global powers are flexing muscles in East Asian waters, with the US, China and even Russia conducting major drills across the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia in recent days. While global attention focuses on the potential for a major conflagration in the Middle East, great powers are sleepwalking toward conflict in Asia.

Last week, the US destroyer USS Dewey (DDG-105) and Royal Australian Navy frigate HMAS Stuart (FFH153) conducted bilateral operations in the Strait of Malacca, a show of joint force in a crucial maritime chokepoint. China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy responded by deploying its Dongdiao class surveillance ships to the East and South China Sea.

Beyond naval deployments, Washington and Beijing have also been fortifying their military presence in the area. The US will likely retain the Typhon missile system in the Philippines for the foreseeable future after its controversial deployment ahead of the Balikatan annual exercises earlier this year.

A top US general publicly hailed the move as “incredibly important” to American regional strategy, namely the Biden administration’s aim to establish an arc of military alliances and missile defense systems across the Western Pacific in anticipation of a potential direct conflict with China.

For Beijing’s part, the Asian superpower is building its own network of stealth-penetrating radars in adjacent waters to counter American air superiority in the event of a contingency.

Once completed, the new facilities will “significantly increase China’s signals intercept and electronic warfare capabilities across the disputed Paracel Islands archipelago and add to a wider surveillance network spanning much of the South China Sea,” a report by the UK think tank Chatham House argues.

Although concentrated on Ukraine, Russia has also flexed its naval muscle and doubled down on its military diplomacy by conducting drills in Myanmar and, for the first time, Indonesia, where newly inaugurated President Prabowo Subianto is expected to adopt a more proactive and multi-aligned foreign policy.

To underscore its growing resolve, Southeast Asia’s largest nation also recently drove away a Chinese coast guard vessel entering Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in the so-called North Natuna Sea.

Meanwhile, Vietnam, following a few short years of relatively calm ties with its northern neighbor, is also doubling down on its military footprint in the disputed waters.

To prepare for possible conflict with China in adjacent waters, the Southeast Asian dynamo is adding a new 1.5 kilometer to its sprawling network of military facilities across the South China Sea, where it controls up to 27 land features.

Decades of rapid economic growth and expanding trade have disincentivized any major conflict in Asia over the past quarter of a century. The last time two regional states came to blows was the bloody skirmishes between Vietnamese and Chinese troops in 1988 over the disputed Johnson South Reef in the South China Sea.

Over the next three decades, however, China managed to build vast networks of influence and trade across the region, while also dramatically deepening its economic interdependence with the US and its key Asian allies of Japan, Australia and South Korea.

Today, Southeast Asia is the largest export destination for Chinese products, while China is a major investor and source of technology in much of the region. Bilateral trade between Beijing and major Western economies is also in the trillions of dollars annually, underscoring the depth of economic ties among all major players in the Indo-Pacific.

For the past three decades, almost all regional states, regardless of their political systems, have relied on economic performance for public legitimacy. But China’s rapid rise, America’s domestic and foreign policy troubles and intensified disputes across the Western Pacific have created a geopolitical tinderbox of unprecedented magnitude involving multiple major powers and the world’s biggest and most dynamic economies.

The Biden administration has relied on an “integrated deterrence” strategy, which seeks to leverage its vast network of alliances in the region to constrain China’s assertiveness. Accordingly, it has also expanded joint drills with key regional allies such as Australia.

“Every time we operate together, we strengthen our capabilities and shared commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” US Vice Admiral Fred Kacher, commander of the US 7th Fleet, said in a statement following the latest US-Australia drills reaching from Taiwan Straits to the Malacca Straits. “This exercise further builds on our existing interoperability and combined readiness we have with the Royal Australian Navy,” he added.

For China, however, these exercises are both provocative and an impetus for further enhancing its own military presence in disputed areas. The PLA-Navy’s Dongdiao-class surveillance ship Tianshuxing (795) was sighted last week just 62 miles west of the island of Amami Oshima of Japan before heading for the Philippine Sea in the Western Pacific.

Chinese Liaoning Carrier Strike Group, meanwhile, reportedly sailed north through the Taiwan Strait.

China is also preparing for high-tech warfare by strengthening its electronic war capacity. According to the Chatham House report, China is building new stealth-penetrating radar systems based on satellite imagery that show distinctive hexagonal grouping of SIAR synthetic impulse and aperture radar) poles, a control tower and several mobile missile staging pads on the Triton Island in the disputed Paracel Islands archipelago

According to the Chatham House report, “Once completed, the radar on Triton will form what is believed to be a wider network of at least three overlapping counter-stealth radars built across Chinese bases in the South China Sea over the past decade.”

China seems to be reacting to growing American combat stealth aircraft deployments across the region, including F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and F-35 stealth fighters.

Earlier this year, the US Air Force deployed as many as 186 F-22s to participate in Australia’s major Pitch Black international air combat exercise. American stealth fighters – both F22s and F-35s – have also visited Singapore, Indonesia (Bali), Brunei, Thailand and the Philippines.

US Pacific Air Forces commander Kevin Schneider said the fighters’ rising presence in the South China Sea is a reflection of the “growing understanding and awareness of the threat posed by Beijing in their illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive activities.”

He claimed there is a “greater desire [of our regional partners] to do more and a willingness to allow us to transit airplanes through their locations, their willingness to expand exercises to be perhaps more realistic for the threat environments that we face.”

Meanwhile, a Russia Navy surface action group consisting of corvettes, consisting of RFS Hero of the Russian Federation Aldar Tsydenzhapov (339), RFS Rezkiy (343) and RFS Gromkiy (335) recently conducted joint drills with Myanmar counterparts in the Indian Ocean.

“The main objective of the exercise is to comprehensively develop and strengthen naval cooperation between the countries, jointly counter global threats and ensure the safety of civilian shipping in the Asia-Pacific region,” Russia said in a joint statement.

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In coming weeks, the Russia Navy contingent will join Indonesian counterparts in Surabaya, Java, for the Orruda 2024 exercises. Under the newly installed Prabowo administration, Indonesia is expected to adopt an Indian-style assertive and multi-aligned foreign policy vis-à-vis all major powers.

“The China Coast Guard-5402 (CCG-5402) re-entered the Indonesian jurisdiction on Friday,” Indonesia’s Maritime Security Agency said in a statement issued on October 26 after repelling a Chinese coast guard vessel intruding into Indonesian waters at the southern edge of the South China Sea.

“Indonesia has a sovereign right to explore the natural resource in that area and that cannot be disturbed by any country,” the Indonesia maritime agency said in a statement.

Neighboring Vietnam, in turn, is also expected to adopt an increasingly assertive stance amid ongoing disputes with China in disputed waters. Last month, several Vietnamese fishermen were severely beaten and injured after being apprehended by Chinese authorities in the disputed Paracel Islands.

Vietnam condemned China and “demanded that Beijing respect its sovereignty in the Paracel Islands, launch an investigation and provide it with information about the attack.” Far from confined to diplomatic protests, Vietnam is quietly preparing for military contingencies by building what could be its largest airstrip in the disputed South China Sea.

Since 2021, Vietnam has dramatically enhanced its military presence on the Barque Canada reef, which could soon host a modern airstrip that could extend as long as three kilometers in coming years amid rapid reconstruction.

“The new airstrip will considerably expand Vietnam’s maritime patrol capabilities as the existing runway on Spratly Island is too short for larger aircraft,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told the media.

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @Richeydarian

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asiatimes.com · by Richard Javad Heydarian · October 28, 2024

9. The Curious Case of Ariane Tabatabai (at ASD SO/LIC)

Two points;  

First, "SO/LIC activities are more sensitive than the CIA?" I don't think so except maybe in the mind of the person who made that statement. But I guess that is a judgment call. Where you stand depends on where you sit?

Second, if all the allegations are true, why does the FBI and Justice spend more time investigating and targeting people like Dr. Sue Mi Terry and her work with an ally South Korea, yet those who are allegedly working as foreign agents for an enemy power remain in government jobs? Either there is insufficient or no evidence of wrongdoing and all the allegations are unfounded or someone is protecting people. Again, my sense is that she and others are part of a faction in the US who seek better relations and engagement with Iran to try to change Iranian behavior. And I think that group is led by people like Jake Sullvan and Colin Kahl and other academics who dabble in national security policy. Are they supporting Iran or are they pursuing their policy preferences which certainly seem to be favorable to Iran? Of course the nuance of this is either lost on some or there really is no nuance and the allegations of supporting Iran are true. But it seems that there should be at least the same scrutiny of these people (not just in the media) as there has been of Dr. Sue Mi Terry.

For transparency, I worked with Dr, Tabatabai for a number of years when we were both at Georgetown and I never saw any indication of these allegations. I also worked with Dr. Terry over the years and did not see any eviidence of her wrong doing either.

And on a lark I applied for what I think was Dr. Tabalatabai's position at ASD SO/LIC but USA JOBS informed me of the following:

This is a record of the results of your application for the position of Program Specialist with Office of the USD for Policy

as detailed in Announcement Number ST-12563422-25-AMY. This is not a job offer.

Ineligible for the following position or positions:

• GS-0301-15; You are ineligible because you do not possess the specialized experience required for this position.

Here are the duties of the position that I do not possess the specialized experience for.

Incumbent typical work assignments may include the following:

• Advises the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretaries of Defense (PDASDs) on the formulation of highly sensitive policy issues of nationwide importance.
• Manages and executes Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (ASD(SO/LIC))'s oversight authorities, roles, and responsibilities through development and implementation of OASD(SO/LIC) guidance and standard operating procedures.
• Provides management officials with expert assistance and advice on various policies and procedures and their implementation, and coordinates numerous, complex, and high priority special assignments.
• Prepares communications for ASD(SO/LIC) and the two PDASDs, as needed, on issues of varying complexity and audiences, both nationally and internationally, in and outside of government.
• Serves with other high-ranking staff on various OASD (SO/LIC) committees that have far reaching organizational significance, such as those related to records management; new enterprise systems for financial, digital asset, data management, and personnel policy.

Excerpts:

“Everyone that is in the know understands that this is not a promotion, right? She wants to be active in the policy space, and going over to education and force training is not,” said Garrett Exner, who served in SO/LIC during the Obama and Trump administrations, and is currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute. 

Exner added: The Biden administration transferred Tabatabai to a department “where she can’t really touch any classified material.”

A second SO/LIC veteran said the Iranian American academic has exited a post that’s among the most secretive in the entire U.S. government. “I cannot underscore: The things SO/LIC. . . are doing are more sensitive than what the CIA is doing.” 

Ariane Tabatabai. (via CSPAN)

The Curious Case of Ariane Tabatabai

A senior Pentagon official faced scrutiny when her past ties to Iran came to light. Is that why she’s been transferred?

https://www.thefp.com/p/ariane-tabatabai-pentagon-iran-ties-exposed

By Jay Solomon

October 27, 2024

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—In the weeks leading up to Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iran this Saturday, someone from inside the U.S. government leaked a cluster of highly sensitive documents outlining the Jewish state’s military deployments. 

We may never know the identity of the leaker—there are probably thousands of bureaucrats across the U.S. government who had access to the documents. But of those masses, a single name has been circulating online: Ariane Tabatabai, who’s served as a senior Defense Department official for the past two years.

There is no evidence we have found that Tabatabai is the leaker, despite the fact that various Arab and Israeli news sites reported as much. In fact, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin this week all but ruled out the culprit being Tabatabai or anyone else from the Pentagon.

But at the same time, the Defense Department, in recent days, quietly transferred the Iranian American academic out of her Pentagon post, which is among the most sensitive in the entire military: chief of staff in the Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, or SO/LIC. The job has provided Tabatabai unique access to the highest levels of classified intelligence as well as knowledge of virtually all global U.S. special military operations. 

Instead, the Pentagon notified Congress on Friday, October 25 that Tabatabai was “transitioning to her new office” in troop education and training, without specifying the exact date when she left her last post. The new position, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training, has significantly less access to intelligence and covert military programs, according to former Defense Department officials interviewed by The Free Press. 

The Pentagon press office declined to answer questions provided by The Free Press about Tabatabai’s status or the reasons for her transfer. And her job change is likely to deepen questions from Capitol Hill Republicans who’ve been seeking answers for more than a year about Tabatabai’s past interactions with the Iranian government.

Tabatabai was brought into the Biden administration in 2021 to serve on the State Department negotiating team with Iran. Her initial boss, Special Envoy Robert Malley, however, was stripped of his security clearance in the spring of 2023 and is currently being investigated by the FBI for the mishandling of classified information. Shortly before Malley’s departure, Tabatabai relocated to the Pentagon and eventually took up her position in SO/LIC.

Tabatabai began facing scrutiny last year after a large tranche of Iranian government emails were obtained by the U.S. media outlet Semafor (where I used to work), and Iran International, a Farsi-language television channel. Included in the data were communications between Tabatabai and senior Iranian diplomats, beginning in 2014, that showed she had been a leading member of the Iran Experts Initiative, an Iranian Foreign Ministry–led program that sought to amplify Tehran’s positions on key national security issues in Western think tanks and the media. In some of the emails, Tabatabai can be seen seeking guidance from Iranian officials on her foreign travels and appearances before Congress. 

Tabatabai has never publicly disclosed her role in the IEI. 

And a number of Republican members of Congress have been pressing the Pentagon over the past year to strip Tabatabai of her security clearances because of her reported ties to Tehran. The Pentagon declined on Friday to say if her transfer was related to her work with the IEI. 

This month, a conservative government watchdog also sued the Pentagon for what it claims has been the department’s failure to answer questions and provide documents related to the activities of Tabatabai and Malley. 

Tabatabai’s status is particularly sensitive for the Biden-Harris administration. The academic has worked closely in the past with Vice President Harris’s national security adviser, Philip Gordon, as outlined in an August piece in The Free Press. This included co-authoring a string of opinion pieces in the summer of 2020 that called for the U.S. to return to its nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and to soften some of Washington’s economic sanctions on Tehran.

Tabatabai’s switch at the Pentagon, on paper, is a promotion: The UK-educated PhD is now ranked as a deputy assistant secretary of defense rather than a chief of staff. But in reality, a number of former U.S. defense officials told The Free Press, it’s a clear step down. 

“Everyone that is in the know understands that this is not a promotion, right? She wants to be active in the policy space, and going over to education and force training is not,” said Garrett Exner, who served in SO/LIC during the Obama and Trump administrations, and is currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute. 

Exner added: The Biden administration transferred Tabatabai to a department “where she can’t really touch any classified material.”

A second SO/LIC veteran said the Iranian American academic has exited a post that’s among the most secretive in the entire U.S. government. “I cannot underscore: The things SO/LIC. . . are doing are more sensitive than what the CIA is doing.” 

Jay Solomon is an investigative reporter for The Free Press. Read his August piece: “Meet Philip Gordon: Kamala Harris’s Foreign Policy Guru.”  

To support The Free Press, become a subscriber today: 

10. Marines continue to make female infantry officers, with little fanfare

The three most important words: "with little fanfare." That is the way it should be. Just get on with it.

But I would not use percentages to compare graduation data. The raw numbers are more instructive.

Excerpts:

According to data from the last four years provided to Marine Corps Times, women are now making it through the course with a success rate of better than 50%, though the number of volunteers opting to attend IOC remains low. The course attrition and redesignation rate for male officers, meanwhile, has at times been as high as 25%.

...

The following are the outcomes for women at IOC since 2020, according to data provided by Marine Corps Training and Education Command spokesman Capt. Jacoby Getty.

• In fiscal 2020, two women attended the course; both did not pass and were redesignated to another MOS.
• In fiscal 2021, five women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 80%. Three received an 0302 infantry officer MOS and one opted to train as a ground intelligence officer.
• In fiscal 2022, seven women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 57%. Three received the 0302 MOS and two went on to train as ground intelligence officers.
• In fiscal 2023, seven women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 57%. All took the 0302 MOS.
• In fiscal 2024, eight women attended IOC; five achieved the infantry officer MOS, for a pass rate of 63%.

As of the end of the fiscal year, Getty said, 12 female 0302 infantry officers are currently serving.

Marines continue to make female infantry officers, with little fanfare

militarytimes.com · by Hope Hodge Seck · October 28, 2024

Marine 1st Lt. Marina Hierl made national headlines in 2017 when she became the first woman to graduate the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course in Quantico, Virginia, earning the 0302 Infantry Officer military occupational specialty in the process.

Not only was Hierl the first woman in an MOS that had been restricted to men just two years earlier; she had also made it through the grueling 13 weeks of IOC, a feat of physicality and endurance that many previously thought was beyond the capability of women.

But since then, even without the press releases and news profiles, women have continued to graduate from IOC in small, but consistent, numbers.

According to data from the last four years provided to Marine Corps Times, women are now making it through the course with a success rate of better than 50%, though the number of volunteers opting to attend IOC remains low. The course attrition and redesignation rate for male officers, meanwhile, has at times been as high as 25%.

RELATED

Marine gender study reveals importance of ‘explosive strength’

A major predictor of training injury and attrition was reduced muscular power and lower relative peaks in explosive strength, the study found.

By Hope Hodge Seck

The following are the outcomes for women at IOC since 2020, according to data provided by Marine Corps Training and Education Command spokesman Capt. Jacoby Getty.

• In fiscal 2020, two women attended the course; both did not pass and were redesignated to another MOS.
• In fiscal 2021, five women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 80%. Three received an 0302 infantry officer MOS and one opted to train as a ground intelligence officer.
• In fiscal 2022, seven women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 57%. Three received the 0302 MOS and two went on to train as ground intelligence officers.
• In fiscal 2023, seven women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 57%. All took the 0302 MOS.
• In fiscal 2024, eight women attended IOC; five achieved the infantry officer MOS, for a pass rate of 63%.

As of the end of the fiscal year, Getty said, 12 female 0302 infantry officers are currently serving.

Prior to Hierl’s graduation, 36 female officers had attempted the IOC course over five years, only to wash out through injury or inability to complete requirements or meet standards.

The Marines opened the course to women on an experimental basis in 2012, four years before a decision by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened ground combat specialties to women, allowing female officers to actually hold an infantry MOS.

In 2014, 2nd Lt. Sage Santangelo wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post explaining her experience of dropping out during the infamous Combat Endurance Test on Day One of the course.

“There came a point when I could not persuade my body to perform,” she wrote. “It wasn’t a matter of will but of pure physical strength.”

Santangelo went on to argue, though, that it wasn’t innate ability, but training, that was to blame for the female failure rate.

“I believe that I could pass, and that other women could pass, if the standards for men and women were equal from the beginning of their time with the Marines, if endurance and strength training started earlier than the current practice for people interested in going into the infantry, and if women were allowed a second try, as men are,” she wrote.

While Santangelo never got a second attempt at IOC, her op-ed persuaded then-Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller to allow future female attendees a second shot at the course.

After the first several women graduated IOC, some changes were also made to the program of instruction.

In 2018, officials announced they’d reduce the number of evaluated hikes with combat loads from six to three, and remove passage of the Combat Endurance Test from the list of graduation requirements. At the time, officials said the change acknowledged climbing attrition rates for men as well as women.

With goading from Congress, the Corps has also moved toward a more gender-integrated model of training, most notably at boot camp. The service got rid of its all-female 4th Recruit Training Battalion last year and now trains enlistees in integrated battalions at both of its recruit training locations.

An independent study commissioned by the Marine Corps and published in 2022 contained a host of recommendations focused on strength training and injury prevention, many of which the service has said it’s implementing.

For some women who served in the Marines as trailblazers, seeing women quietly and consistently accomplish a feat previously seen as impossible is gratifying, and also validating.

Riane Moser served in 2010 on a Female Engagement Team in Afghanistan, working as a cultural support and adjunct to a male infantry unit a half-decade before women were technically allowed in the infantry.

Moser said she had confronted differences in strength and physicality between the genders early in her Marine Corps training with tasks like shouldering heavy combat loads. But her FET deployment also convinced her that, with the right training, success was more than possible.

“I do not doubt that there are females who can complete infantry courses,” she said. “I know women who would have been great at it if they had the opportunity 15 years ago.”

Zoe Bedell played a role in women receiving that opportunity to prove themselves. The former officer-in-charge of a Marine Corps FET team, Bedell was a plaintiff in the 2012 lawsuit against the Defense Department that helped lift combat exclusions and open all previously closed jobs to women.

Bedell told Marine Corps Times that the continued progress of women through IOC helped validate her convictions that led to the lawsuit.

“It turns out that this is, in fact, exactly as doable as we thought it was,” Bedell said. “There are real differences. Not every woman is going to be able to do it, but we’ve always said not every man is going to be able to do it either. So, it’s a real improvement and really strengthens everyone involved.”

The small numbers of women attempting IOC on an annual basis don’t worry Bedell, she added, as her desire was simply to grant female Marines an option and a pathway that had previously been denied them.

“I’m very relieved to see that ... some women do want this. And the fact is, that men always got to choose what they wanted, and now women do, too,” she said. “I’m glad to see that the Marine Corps is at least making some moves to live up to what I think it should have been doing as an institution all along.”

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militarytimes.com · by Hope Hodge Seck · October 28, 2024

11. Leading the Free World: Reasserting U.S. Leadership on Democracy and Human Rights

Excerpts:

Conclusion

The above actions are designed to be illustrative rather than exhaustive. More important than any one recommendation is adopting a sense of gravity and urgency. Democracy and human rights are declining around the world.34 Autocracies are on the march and working together to overturn key elements of liberal international order.35 The United States, for all its flaws and other priorities, remains the indispensable champion of values and rights abroad. Now is the time to fuse values with interests at the core of U.S. foreign policy and to go on the offense. The United States must contest the expansion of dictatorship, outcompete autocracies, and demonstrate that democracies work—individually and together—more effectively than strongmen ever can.

The good news is that America is wholly equipped to answer such a call to arms. It possesses the population, the geography, the resources, the allies, and the experience to support democracy and fundamental rights everywhere. Doing so is no easy task, and it involves difficult tradeoffs and judgments. But the global situation has grown more dire. It requires a renewed American commitment today.

This paper is the product of a bipartisan task force that examined the role that democracy and human rights do and should play in U.S. foreign policy. While individual signatories may differ on particular points herein, all endorse the broad scope of the paper’s analysis and recommendations.

October 28, 2024

Leading the Free World

Reasserting U.S. Leadership on Democracy and Human Rights

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/leading-the-free-world?utm

By: Richard Fontaine, Shanthi Kalathil, Tod Lindberg, Tom Malinowski, Sarah Margon, Gibbs McKinley, Derek Mitchell, Nicole Bibbins Sedaca, Corban Teague and Daniel Twining

The United States has led the free world for eight decades, helping to usher in an era of unprecedented human flourishing. For much of that period, democracies expanded in number and quality. Governments recognized and increasingly protected human rights.1 Americans identified the solidity of their own democracy with the support of freedom abroad, and those seeking to abridge fundamental rights appeared increasingly ineffectual and anachronistic.2 The United States, working with an expanding number of free nations, enjoyed greater security, prosperity, and liberty.

Developments over recent years have pulled in the opposite direction. Global democracy has contracted over the past decade, and autocracies such as China and Russia are both newly emboldened and working together.3 Populations doubt democracy’s efficacy to a greater degree than before, and some find attraction in the notion of strongman rule.4 Transnational repression and foreign malign influence have risen, along with the movement of illicit funds across borders.5 Americans increasingly question the quality of their own democracy, along with their traditional role in supporting rights and freedoms abroad.6

The next year could mark a turning point in the contest between freedom and authoritarianism. With a presidential election looming, now is the time for the United States to reassert global leadership on democracy and human rights. Doing so strengthens the U.S. position amid strategic competition with key autocracies and helps protect America’s own democratic way of life. Failure to do so would amount to unilateral disarmament in a defining contest of the 21st century.

This short paper urges U.S. policymakers to seize the moment, recommit to a values-based foreign policy agenda, and combine their defense of U.S. democracy with an affirmative effort to support democracy and human rights abroad. The time to act is now.

The next year could mark a turning point in the contest between freedom and authoritarianism.

For the United States, supporting democracy is a matter of both values and interests. It helps mobilize the American public around U.S. foreign policy. It provides purpose and direction to Washington’s international efforts, beyond narrowly construed national interests. And history demonstrates that democracy promotion has been a powerful way to advance global stability.7

The task is urgent today. Freedom declined across the world for an 18th consecutive year in 2023.8 Beijing and Moscow seek a global order conducive to their own forms of authoritarian governance, and they work increasingly with countries such as Iran and North Korea in the pursuit of their preferred norms. They see their assault on democracy as a pursuit of strategic advantage, enabling them to enhance their own power by eroding the internal cohesion of democracies and the solidarity of democratic alliances.9 They wish to show that pluralism fragments a population, leaving it unable to produce results or project power that can match the strongmen. The future shape of global and domestic politics—whether based on liberal order and universal values or autocracy and might-makes-right—will be determined in significant part by how Washington engages the contest.

U.S. leadership in that contest appears particularly ill-timed to some. America’s domestic maladies are obvious and include deep partisan divisions, political gridlock, declining respect for democratic institutions and processes, and even politically motivated violence.10 Some observers suggest that, given America’s difficulties, it simply lacks the credibility to stand up for democracy and freedom elsewhere.11 Others cite close U.S. ties with autocrats and wars of regime change to emphasize inconsistency and hypocrisy.12 Amid sharpened great power competition, still others argue that a values-based foreign policy agenda is a luxury better suited for less contested times.13

Beijing and Moscow seek a global order conducive to their own forms of authoritarian governance, and they work increasingly with countries such as Iran and North Korea in the pursuit of their preferred norms.

Yet promoting democracy abroad and addressing deficiencies at home are not mutually exclusive activities—they are, rather, reinforcing lines of effort. Threats to democracy, after all, do not respect borders. The United States is not unique in experiencing political violence, deep divisions, or eroded trust in democratic processes. These and other pressing challenges, including state-based political interference, are often best addressed in concert with partners and allies.14 And societies, including our own, ebb and flow, but genuine democracies retain fixed ideals. America should embrace its founding principles and expand the enjoyment of universal rights and liberties. To abandon the effort because of our own flaws would be unfaithful to the fundamental idea of America.

It would also undermine U.S. security. Fostering democratic values not only aligns with America’s deepest ideals, but also helps create a more secure, stable world in which the United States can advance its national interests.15 Democracies are unlikely to go to war with one another, the United States’ closest allies are democracies, and its most reliable trade and investment partners are liberal societies.16 Open, transparent governance abroad is good for U.S. diplomatic, defense, and commercial relationships. A world in which the institutions of liberal democracy are strong is safer for the United States than one in which autocracy is on the prowl.17

If U.S. policymakers decline to seize the values imperative, they risk a world shaped by autocratic preferences and dominated by dictatorships. Acting now is the best chance to defend democracy and champion a robust agenda for protecting and enlarging the free world. The current administration and the next should recommit to putting human rights and democracy at the center of U.S. foreign policy.

A world in which the institutions of liberal democracy are strong is safer for the United States than one in which autocracy is on the prowl.

The effort will need to go well beyond rhetorical exhortations. Washington must combine all instruments of national power to reinforce democracies, sustain them, and make them successful. Tradeoffs with other objectives will be inevitable, and an exhaustive list of activities goes beyond the scope of this analysis. We recommend, for a start, the actions below.

Expose human rights abuses and corruption. The U.S. government has effectively collected and declassified information about Russian depredations amid its war in Ukraine.18 Washington should do the same in cases of human rights violations. Doing so would employ public exposure to hold governments accountable for their actions—and possibly deter further abuses. At a minimum, such efforts could catalog human rights abuses and corruption for future efforts at accountability.

Counter corruption and hybrid threats. Washington should prioritize countering and building resilience to hybrid threats from authoritarian governments, including but not limited to weaponized corruption. Washington should identify and publicize instances of corruption by malign foreign actors. The Department of Justice can play an anticorruption role by boosting its efforts to monitor illicit commercial spyware and enforce antibribery laws such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Treasury Department may need greater funding to monitor corruption and implement sanctions against foreign transgressors.

Speak out. Senior policymakers and members of Congress should lend their voices and images to democratic dissidents and activists. This tool has fallen out of favor over the years but previously had been used to great effect by Republicans and Democrats alike.19 Meetings with political opposition figures, independent media actors, and others should be a regular feature of congressional delegations and administration trips abroad. Members of Congress and administration officials should direct speeches, opinion articles, resolutions, and statements at both the general human rights conditions of particular countries and individual actors who may be at risk.

Emphasize the role of Congress. Congress has historically served as a guardian of the democracy agenda and it should continue to do so today. In 2019, for instance, Republicans and Democrats alike blocked the White House’s attempt to slash foreign aid by an estimated $4 billion.20 A bipartisan group introduced legislation earlier this year to hold Georgian officials accountable for corruption, human rights abuses, and antidemocratic efforts.21 Congressional initiative is essential to maintain focus on these issues across administrations and among competing White House priorities.

Protect individual privacy. Dictatorships today are more resilient in part because of how they harness technology—often of U.S. design and source—to influence and control their citizens.22 The United States should take better care to protect individual privacy as a basic right and foundation of democratic societies. The U.S. government has already taken steps to design an export and sanctions regime aimed at preventing the proliferation of hacking tools, facial recognition technology, and other surveillance technologies.23 These efforts should be expanded. Future administrations should, for instance, examine the export of advanced U.S. semiconductors that can train AI systems aimed at social repression.

Partner with other democracies. The United States cannot defend its values without like-minded partners. In the past, for instance, each country subject to election interference responded individually and on an ad hoc basis.24 A coalition of key democracies, adopting a mechanism akin to NATO’s Article 5, should pledge a collective, nonmilitary response to election interference by foreign states, such as compromising voting machines or illicitly hacking campaigns.25 Democratic partners should also forge new issue-based multilateral groupings that collaborate in areas such as technology, foreign aid, and electoral assistance to ensure that each is infused with democratic values.

Contest authoritarianism in international organizations. Key international bodies, ranging from the UN Human Rights Council to more tailored groupings such as the International Telecommunication Union, have emerged as venues of competition between democracies and their autocratic opponents.26 Washington should work with its allies to counter authoritarian influence in the multilateral system and promote liberal values in decision-making arenas.

Combat transnational repression. Transnational repression (TNR)—actions by a government to reach beyond its borders to stifle dissent, most commonly by suppressing democracy and human rights advocates—is on the rise. Countries such as China have attempted to harm dissidents even inside the United States, infringing on rights intrinsic to U.S. democracy.27 A more vigorous approach is necessary to prevent autocratic waves from washing onto American shores. Washington should allocate increased funding to identify and combat such efforts, including through indictments, extraditions, sanctions, and other measures, and work more closely with allies to expose and arrest TNR elsewhere.

To these ends, policymakers should consider an incentive framework to deter acts of transnational repression, perhaps one modeled on the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) framework. The TIP report, published annually by the U.S. government, places countries into one of three tiers based on their efforts to combat human trafficking.28 A similar framework could assess a government’s acts of transnational repression or its efforts to mitigate such acts.

Publicizing tiered rankings based on TNR, as has been done with the TIP framework, could incentivize governments to act. If incentives prove insufficient, more punitive approaches should be considered. Engaging in acts of transnational repression on U.S. soil, for example, could incur reduced arms sales or diplomatic sanctions. U.S. officials should also take steps to better enforce existing laws, including by implementing Section 6 of the Arms Export Control Act.29 That provision enables the president to prohibit arms transfers to countries that habitually intimidate or harass individuals in the United States.

Increase transparency. Military assistance to front-line states such as Ukraine is vital, as are sanctions and other punitive measures levied against Russia and other autocratic aggressors. Oversight of and transparency in such regimes would help ensure that Washington is aiding only those worthy of American support and punishing entities undermining key values. It may also enhance the domestic political sustainability of such efforts. Instead of neglecting congressional oversight for enormous defense aid packages, for instance, Washington should integrate oversight mechanisms into them across both the executive and legislative branches.30 Providing Congress with the details of sanctions regimes should receive similar attention.

Prioritize budgets. Effective work on democracy or human rights requires appropriate funding—some of which is wanting. The administration’s FY25 budget request allocates over $3 billion for bolstering global democracy—up $88 million compared with the FY23 enacted level, including investments in the Summit for Democracy.31 That funding is, however, spread across projects as varied as election assistance and new infrastructure in emerging democracies—making it a less impressive amount than at first glance.32 It also remains far outpaced by the increased global demand for democracy assistance. Individuals around the world risk their lives in the pursuit of democracy and liberal values, from soldiers fighting in Ukraine to Afghan women resisting social and political exclusion.33 Washington, together with its allies, should meet their needs with the urgency—and financing—they deserve.

Conclusion

The above actions are designed to be illustrative rather than exhaustive. More important than any one recommendation is adopting a sense of gravity and urgency. Democracy and human rights are declining around the world.34 Autocracies are on the march and working together to overturn key elements of liberal international order.35 The United States, for all its flaws and other priorities, remains the indispensable champion of values and rights abroad. Now is the time to fuse values with interests at the core of U.S. foreign policy and to go on the offense. The United States must contest the expansion of dictatorship, outcompete autocracies, and demonstrate that democracies work—individually and together—more effectively than strongmen ever can.

The good news is that America is wholly equipped to answer such a call to arms. It possesses the population, the geography, the resources, the allies, and the experience to support democracy and fundamental rights everywhere. Doing so is no easy task, and it involves difficult tradeoffs and judgments. But the global situation has grown more dire. It requires a renewed American commitment today.

This paper is the product of a bipartisan task force that examined the role that democracy and human rights do and should play in U.S. foreign policy. While individual signatories may differ on particular points herein, all endorse the broad scope of the paper’s analysis and recommendations.

About the Authors

Richard Fontaine is the chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security.

Shanthi Kalathil is a visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Tod Lindberg is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.

Tom Malinowski is an American politician and diplomat who was the U.S. representative from New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District from 2019 to 2023.

Sarah Margon is the U.S. foreign policy director at the Open Society Foundations.

Gibbs McKinley is research associate to the CEO at the Center for a New American Security.

Derek Mitchell is a nonresident senior advisor to the Office of the President and the Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Nicole Bibbins Sedaca is the interim president of Freedom House.

Corban Teague is director of the Human Rights & Freedom Program at the McCain Institute at Arizona State University.

Daniel Twining is president of the International Republican Institute.

The author affiliations indicated above are for identification purposes and do not imply institutional endorsements of this report’s contents.

Acknowledgments

This report would not have been possible without contributions from our colleagues at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), including Emma Swislow and Maura McCarthy. The project that produced it was made possible with the generous support of Humanity United.

As a research and policy institution committed to the highest standards of organizational, intellectual, and personal integrity, CNAS maintains strict intellectual independence and sole editorial direction and control over its ideas, projects, publications, events, and other research activities. CNAS does not take institutional positions on policy issues, and the content of CNAS publications reflects the views of their authors alone. In keeping with its mission and values, CNAS does not engage in lobbying activity and complies fully with all applicable federal, state, and local laws. CNAS will not engage in any representational activities or advocacy on behalf of any entities or interests and, to the extent that the Center accepts funding from non-U.S. sources, its activities will be limited to bona fide scholastic, academic, and research-related activities, consistent with applicable federal law. The Center publicly acknowledges on its website annually all donors who contribute.

Endnotes

1. Larry Diamond, “Facing Up to the Democratic Recession,” Journal of Democracy 26, no. 1 (January 2015): 144–155, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/facing-up-to-the-democratic-recession/. ↩
2. Ronald O’Rourke and Michael Moodie, U.S. Role in the World: Background and Issues for Congress (Congressional Research Service, February 24, 2020), 3–4, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44891/42; “Freedom in the World Timeline,” Freedom House, accessed October 1, 2024, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/50-Year-Timeline. ↩
3. “Global Patterns” in The Global State of Democracy 2023: The New Checks and Balances, Global State of Democracy Initiative, 2023, https://www.idea.int/gsod/2023/chapters/global/; Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine, “The Axis of Upheaval: How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order,” Foreign Affairs 103, no. 3 (May/June 2024): 50–63, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/axis-upheaval-russia-iran-north-korea-taylor-fontaine. ↩
4. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Record Low in U.S. Satisfied with Way Democracy Is Working,” Gallup, January 5, 2024, https://news.gallup.com/poll/548120/record-low-satisfied-democracy-working.aspx; Richard Wike et al., Representative Democracy Remains a Popular Ideal, but People Around the World Are Critical of How It’s Working (Pew Research Center, February 28, 2024), 7–21, 53–58, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/02/28/satisfaction-with-democracy-and-ratings-for-political-leaders-parties/. ↩
5. Freedom House, “NEW REPORT: More Governments Engaged in More Transnational Repression during 2022,” press release, April 6, 2023, https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-more-governments-engaged-more-transnational-repression-during-2022; U.S. Department of Justice, “Foreign Malign Influence,” https://www.justice.gov/voting/foreign-malign-influence; 2024 National Strategy for Combating Terrorist and Other Illicit Financing (U.S. Department of the Treasury, May 2024), 2, https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/2024-Illicit-Finance-Strategy.pdf; Joseph Foti et al., “A Better Anti-Corruption Machine: Breakthroughs Needed to Fight Illicit Finance and Protect Democracy,” The Brookings Institution, June 17, 2024, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-better-anti-corruption-machine-breakthroughs-needed-to-fight-illicit-finance-and-protect-democracy/; and Trevor Sutton and Ben Judah, Turning the Tide on Dirty Money (Center for American Progress, February 26, 2021), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/turning-tide-dirty-money/. ↩
6. Emma Ashford, “America Can’t Promote Democracy Abroad. It Can’t Even Protect It at Home,” Foreign Policy, January 7, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/07/america-cant-promote-protect-democracy-abroad/. ↩
7. Richard Fontaine and Daniel Twining, “Standing Up for Democracy: American Values and Great Power Competition,” Foreign Affairs, July 18, 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-07-18/standing-democracy?cid=int-fls&pgtype=hpg. ↩
8. Freedom House, “NEW REPORT: Freedom in the Americas Declined in 2023 amid Crackdowns against the Political Opposition and Escalating Criminal Violence,” press release, February 29, 2024, https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-freedom-americas-declined-2023-amid-crackdowns-against-political-opposition-and. ↩
9. Fontaine and Twining, “Standing Up for Democracy.” ↩
10. Caitlin Owens, “America’s Deepest Partisan Divides Are Getting Deeper,” Axios, August 7, 2023, https://www.axios.com/2023/08/07/americans-disagree-political-issues-divide-gallup-poll; Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa, “This Is How Democracy Dies,” The Atlantic, January 29, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/confidence-democracy-lowest-point-record/605686/; Rachel Kleinfeld, “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States,” Journal of Democracy 32, no.4 (October 2021), 160–76, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-rise-of-political-violence-in-the-united-states/#f2. ↩
11. Ashford, “America Can’t Promote Democracy Abroad. It Can’t Even Protect It at Home.”; Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass), “It is not just it will be a long time before we can credibly advocate for the rule of law. It will also be a long time for us to persuade allies to rely on us or lecture others they are not stable enough to have nuclear weapons. This is a domestic crisis w enormous forpol impact,” X (formerly known as Twitter), January 6, 2021, https://x.com/RichardHaass/status/1346934657623838723. ↩
12. Thomas Carothers and Benjamin Feldman, Examining U.S. Relations with Authoritarian Countries (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December 2023), 34, https://carnegie-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/files/Carother_Feldman_-_Authoritarian_Relations.pdf; Katrina vanden Heuvel, “America’s hypocrisy over Ukraine and ‘spheres of influence,’” The Washington Post, April 12, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/12/americas-hypocrisy-over-ukraine-spheres-influence/. ↩
13. Christopher Preble, A Credible Grand Strategy: The Urgent Need to Set Priorities (Stimson Center, January 25, 2024), 25, 33, https://www.stimson.org/2024/a-credible-grand-strategy-the-urgent-need-to-set-priorities/. ↩
14. Thomas Wright, “The US must now repair democracy at home and abroad,” The Brookings Institution, January 11, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-must-now-repair-democracy-at-home-and-abroad/. ↩
15. “Human Rights and Democracy,” U.S. Department of State, accessed September 27, 2024, https://www.state.gov/policy-issues/human-rights-and-democracy/. ↩
16. Fontaine and Twining, “Standing Up for Democracy.” ↩
17. Fontaine and Twining, “Standing Up for Democracy.” ↩
18. Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, and Kylie Atwood, “How the Biden Administration Is Aggressively Releasing Intelligence in an Attempt to Deter Russia,” CNN, February 11, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/11/politics/biden-administration-russia-intelligence/index.html. ↩
19. Raymond Tanter, “The Importance of McCain’s Meeting with Prodemocracy Iranian Dissidents in Albania,” The Hill, April 20, 2017, https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/329619-the-importance-of-mccains-meeting-with-prodemocracy/; Senator Susan Collins, “Senator Collins Meets with Noted Burmese Political Dissident Aung San Suu Kyi,” press release, May 31, 2012, https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/senator-collins-meets-noted-burmese-political-dissident-aung-san-suu-kyi; and Speaker’s Press Office, “Pelosi Statement on Meeting with Chinese Human Rights Activists,” press release, February 22, 2022, https://pelosi.house.gov/news/press-releases/pelosi-statement-on-meeting-with-chinese-human-rights-activists. ↩
20. Edward Wong, Annie Karni, and Emily Cochrane, “Trump Administration Drops Proposal to Cut Foreign Aid after Intense Debate,” The New York Times, August 22, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/us/politics/trump-foreign-aid.html. ↩
21. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, “Shaheen, Risch Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Hold Georgian Officials Accountable for Corruption, Human Rights Abuses and Anti-Democratic Efforts,” press release, May 24, 2024, https://www.shaheen.senate.gov/shaheen-risch-introduce-bipartisan-legislation-to-hold-georgian-officials-accountable-for-corruption-human-rights-abuses-and-anti-democratic-efforts.
22. ↩
23. Rule by Law: China’s Increasingly Global Legal Reach: Hearing Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 118th Cong. (2023) (statement of Paul Scharre, Vice President and Director of Studies, CNAS), https://www.cnas.org/publications/congressional-testimony/the-dangers-of-the-global-spread-of-chinas-digital-authoritarianism; Robert Morgus and Justin Sherman, “How U.S. Surveillance Technology Is Propping Up Authoritarian Regimes,” The Washington Post, January 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/17/how-us-surveillance-technology-is-propping-up-authoritarian-regimes/. ↩
24. United States International Cyberspace & Digital Policy Strategy (U.S. Department of State, May 6, 2024), https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/United-States-International-Cyberspace-and-Digital-Strategy-FINAL-2024-05-15_508v03-Section-508-Accessible-7.18.2024.pdf. ↩
25. Richard Fontaine, “Election Interference Demands a Collective Defense: How Democracies Can Fight Back Against Foreign Meddling,” Foreign Affairs, August 7, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/election-interference-demands-collective-defense. ↩
26. Richard Fontaine, “How to Stop Rogue States Like Russia from Interfering in Our Politics,” The Washington Post, September 10, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/10/election-foreign-interference-russia-iran/. ↩
27. Ted Piccone, China’s Long Game on Human Rights at the United Nations (Brookings Institution, September 2018), https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FP_20181009_china_human_rights.pdf; Mark Scott and Clothilde Goujard, “Digital Great Game: The West’s Standoff against China and Russia,” Politico, September 8, 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/itu-global-standard-china-russia-tech/. ↩
28. Eric Tucker, Didi Tang, and Nathan Ellgren, “As China and Iran Hunt for Dissidents in the US, the FBI Is Racing to Counter the Threat,” The Associated Press, May 6, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/iran-china-harassing-dissidents-united-states-ee48c1b9c32d187b183faaa616d9ab16. ↩
29. Brianna Gehring, “What Is the Trafficking in Persons Report,” Human Trafficking Institute, July 19, 2022, https://traffickinginstitute.org/what-is-the-trafficking-in-persons-report/. ↩
30. Matt Berg, Miles J. Herszenhorn, and Eric Bazail-Eimil, “An Obscure Law Could Deter Assassination Plots on U.S. Soil,” Politico, June 18, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/06/18/an-obscure-law-could-deter-assassination-plots-on-u-s-soil-00163990. ↩
31. Andrew Desiderio, Lara Seligman, and Connor O’Brien, “Pentagon vs. Congress tension builds over monitoring billions in Ukraine aid,” Politico, June 2, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/02/congress-pentagon-ukraine-aid-oversight-00036463. ↩
32. Another Mismatch for Global Resources? Constrained Funding for Growing Challenges Threatens America’s Ability to Protect National Interests (U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, March 13, 2024), https://www.usglc.org/the-budget/constrained-funding-for-growing-challenges-threatens-americas-ability-to-protect-national-interests/. ↩
33. White House, “FACT SHEET: The President’s Budget Confronts Global Challenges and Defends Democracy,” press release, March 11, 2024,
34. https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2024/03/11/fact-sheet-the-presidents-budget-confronts-global-challenges-and-defends-democracy/; Private roundtable, Center for a New American Security, March 5, 2024. ↩
35. Clifton B. Parker, “Two Years of War and Ukraine’s Fight for Democracy Amid Stalled U.S. Support,” Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, February 27, 2024, https://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/news/two-years-war-and-ukraines-fight-democracy-amid-stalled-us-support; Mahjooba Nowrouzi, “What Happened to the Women Who Took on the Taliban,” BBC, June 14, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9xxklr0070o; and Wahida Amiri, “Women, Protest and Power- Confronting the Taliban,” Amnesty International, March 7, 2023, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2023/03/women-protest-and-power-confronting-the-taliban/. ↩
36. Yana Gorokhovskaia and Cathryn Grothe, Freedom in the World 2024: The Mounting Damage of Flawed Elections and Armed Conflict (Freedom House, February 2024), 2–12, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2024/mounting-damage-flawed-elections-and-armed-conflict. ↩
37. Kendall-Taylor and Fontaine, “The Axis of Upheaval.” ↩

12. Russia blurring lines between physical and cyber war on the West

Excerpts:

Anne Keast-Butler, director of the UK’s Intelligence, Cyber and Security Agency, has expressed concern about Russian intelligence collaborating with proxy groups to conduct cyberattacks.

Unit 29155 of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, previously blamed for coup attempts, assassinations and bombings, now also runs a hacking group called Cadet Blizzard, which targets Ukraine, the US and Europe.

The group has been linked to cyberattacks such as the WhisperGate malware, which hit Ukrainian organizations ahead of Russia’s 2022 invasion. According to Western intelligence, Unit 29155 is blurring the lines between physical and cyber warfare, using both traditional sabotage tactics and disruptive cyber operations.

...

Russia has also resorted to recruiting criminals to sabotage Western factories supplying arms to Ukraine. On March 21, 2024, a London warehouse containing aid shipments to Ukraine was destroyed in a fire.

Then, in mid-April, an American artillery shell factory, which supplies some of its products to Ukraine, also went up in flames. Just two days later, on April 17 an explosion occurred at the Welsh factory of BAE Systems, a British defense contractor that manufactures weapons for Ukraine.

...

The goal of Russia’s hybrid warfare is not only to punish the West for supporting Ukraine but also to divert Western resources and attention away from aiding Kyiv. Moscow’s strategy hinges on the belief that targeting critical infrastructure and intensifying attacks on Western nations, can strain their financial and operational capacities.

The Kremlin anticipates that if European citizens begin to feel the direct impact of the war on their daily lives, they will pressure their governments to push for a peace settlement – one that would favor Russia and allow Vladimir Putin to claim victory.

Russia blurring lines between physical and cyber war on the West - Asia Times

Hybrid warfare strategy targets critical infrastructure of Ukraine’s allies, causing EU and US citizens to feel the war’s impact on their daily lives

asiatimes.com · by David Kirichenko · October 29, 2024

Over the past few years, Russia-affiliated hackers have conducted attacks against critical American and European infrastructure networks and disrupted hospital operations across the US. The scope and boldness of these attacks have increased as Russia seeks to expand its war against Ukraine and its supporters on multiple fronts.

In recent years, Russia has not only focused on waging cyber war on Western states but has attempted to infiltrate the heart of the internet through open-source software. The heads of MI6 and the CIA made a joint statement highlighting that Russian intelligence has been conducting a “reckless campaign of sabotage throughout Europe.”

In January 2024, Russian hackers targeted a water facility in rural Texas, causing a water tower to overflow. Similar malicious activities were detected in other towns in north Texas. In March 2024, President Biden’s administration warned US governors about escalating cyberattacks on water and wastewater systems. Further cyberattacks occurred in Indiana and targeted healthcare provider Ascension in May.

Russia’s cyberattacks are not limited to the US. In March, Russian hackers mistakenly targeted a mill in France, believing it to be a hydroelectric dam. They also attacked Poland’s water infrastructure due to its strong support for Ukraine. Poland called out Russian state-sponsored hackers for targeting its government networks in May 2024.

The cybersecurity vulnerability of critical infrastructure, especially in small towns with limited resources, makes it an easy target for hackers. Healthcare organizations are prime targets, with attacks capable of disabling medical equipment and diverting ambulances.

In June 2024, Russian hackers were responsible for a ransomware attack on several major London hospitals, affecting blood transfusions and test results and leading to canceled operations and diverted emergency patients. Hundreds of operations and appointments continued to be canceled after the June 3, 2024, cyberattack on NHS provider Synnovis.

In the first week following the attack, doctors were forced to delay 800 planned operations and 700 outpatient appointments. They had to revert to using handwritten records due to the system disruptions. Additionally, one hospital even had to solicit blood donations from its clinical staff to manage the crisis caused by the hack.

As Russia faces challenges on the battlefield in Ukraine, its cyber activity will continue to evolve to support espionage and battlefield enablement. Countries leading aid efforts for Ukraine, such as the UK and the US, remain prime targets of Russian cyber aggression.

Anne Keast-Butler, director of the UK’s Intelligence, Cyber and Security Agency, has expressed concern about Russian intelligence collaborating with proxy groups to conduct cyberattacks.

Unit 29155 of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, previously blamed for coup attempts, assassinations and bombings, now also runs a hacking group called Cadet Blizzard, which targets Ukraine, the US and Europe.

The group has been linked to cyberattacks such as the WhisperGate malware, which hit Ukrainian organizations ahead of Russia’s 2022 invasion. According to Western intelligence, Unit 29155 is blurring the lines between physical and cyber warfare, using both traditional sabotage tactics and disruptive cyber operations.

Ukraine served as a testing ground for Russian cyber weapons through the initial invasion in 2014 and the 2022 full-scale invasion. Ukraine has significantly hardened its defenses with Western support.

However, Russia has learned from its initial mistakes, launching one of its most disruptive cyber-attacks in December 2023 on Ukraine’s largest telecom operator, Kyivstar, leaving millions without mobile and internet service for days.

Factory sabotage

Russia has also resorted to recruiting criminals to sabotage Western factories supplying arms to Ukraine. On March 21, 2024, a London warehouse containing aid shipments to Ukraine was destroyed in a fire.

Then, in mid-April, an American artillery shell factory, which supplies some of its products to Ukraine, also went up in flames. Just two days later, on April 17 an explosion occurred at the Welsh factory of BAE Systems, a British defense contractor that manufactures weapons for Ukraine.

Russia has also conducted electronic warfare against Western aviation in the Baltic region. This has led to incidents like GPS jamming, which caused Finnair to suspend flights from Finland to Tartu, Estonia. Russia has also made thousands of attempts to disrupt European rail networks as part of a broader campaign to destabilize the EU and sabotage critical infrastructure, according to the Czech Republic’s transport minister.

In April 2024, two German-Russian nationals were arrested in Germany on suspicion of plotting sabotage attacks, including targeting US military facilities. The suspects are believed to have been planning these attacks as part of a broader strategy to disrupt aid flows to Ukraine.

In July 2024, CNN reported that earlier this year US intelligence uncovered Russian government plans to assassinate the CEO of a prominent German arms manufacturer that has been producing artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine. The assassination plot was part of a broader Russian strategy to target defense industry executives across Europe who are supporting Ukraine’s war effort.

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Ukrainian law enforcement agencies also dismantled a Russian-run network planning arson attacks in Ukraine and the EU, targeting shopping centers, gas stations, pharmacies, and markets in July 2024. The group, consisting of 19 people from various Ukrainian regions, was acting on Russian intelligence services’ instructions and aimed to sow social instability and undermine support for Ukraine.

The goal of Russia’s hybrid warfare is not only to punish the West for supporting Ukraine but also to divert Western resources and attention away from aiding Kyiv. Moscow’s strategy hinges on the belief that targeting critical infrastructure and intensifying attacks on Western nations, can strain their financial and operational capacities.

The Kremlin anticipates that if European citizens begin to feel the direct impact of the war on their daily lives, they will pressure their governments to push for a peace settlement – one that would favor Russia and allow Vladimir Putin to claim victory.

This piece is an excerpt from a report presented by the author at the UK Parliament on October 9, on behalf of the Henry Jackson Society, titled “Military Lessons for NATO from the Russia-Ukraine War: Preparing for the Wars of Tomorrow.”

Read the original report, which includes extensive footnotes to show the sourcing of facts and quotations. Asia Times is republishing this excerpt with permission.

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asiatimes.com · by David Kirichenko · October 29, 2024

13. Opinion: Americans are not each other's enemies. Citizens must reject polarizing rhetoric

Dehumanization. If you hate the "other" then you should consider if you are really supporting our great American experiment.

Excerpts:

It is clear to us that the Constitution's checks and balances were not meant for political gain but to encourage bipartisan problem-solving, with integrity and cooperation, in order to govern in a positive way.

... 

Polarization of American society has reached dangerous levels. Dehumanization of people who hold opposing views undermines trust in our democratic process and increases the risk of civil unrest, especially in contested elections.

Opinion: Americans are not each other's enemies. Citizens must reject polarizing rhetoric

Our leaders must prioritize clear communication and a commitment to democratic principles to avoid domestic instability

Louis Buck and John "Glad" Castellaw

https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/contributors/2024/10/28/american-politics-enemies-within-unity/75846950007/

Guest Columnists

This guest opinion column was updated to address a technical issue related to a hyperlink.

America has become trapped in a cycle where the language of war dominates our political campaigns and the relations between parties.

This "take no prisoners" mentality has seeped into public discourse, reducing debates to little more than mudslinging. The use of combat related terms creates an atmosphere of constant conflict that deepens divisions and erodes trust.

Instead of engaging in destructive rhetoric, we must focus on making our government work to address the critical challenges facing our nation — national security, economic security, and social stability.

Constitution was mean to encourage bipartisan problem-solving

Our call to action is inspired by a retired Fort Campbell elementary school teacher’s courage to engage in democracy through a social media posting.

Her post emphasized that elections shape our nation's future, and 2024 is no exception. We join her in questioning whether presidential or down-ballot candidates have proposed serious solutions to reduce the deficit, tackle other domestic challenges, or address foreign threats.

It is clear to us that the Constitution's checks and balances were not meant for political gain but to encourage bipartisan problem-solving, with integrity and cooperation, in order to govern in a positive way.

We open a path to our enemies if we fight each other

Polarization of American society has reached dangerous levels. Dehumanization of people who hold opposing views undermines trust in our democratic process and increases the risk of civil unrest, especially in contested elections.

When political language mirrors the terminology of war, potential for violence rises, threatening the integrity of our political system, economy, and social fabric.

The window for effective action, though the ballot box, is closing. As we struggle with internal gridlock, the U.S. faces significant external threats from a new “axis of evil” consisting of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. These nations, each with its own agenda, pose grave risks to global stability and U.S. security.

China pursues global dominance through economic and technological means; Russia uses military aggression to destabilize its neighbors; Iran leverages its military and proxies to threaten Israel and the U.S.; and North Korea actively seeks nuclear capabilities to extort neighbors. Acting alone or together, these rogue states form a complex web of challenges we must be prepared to confront—fighting each other prevents unified action.

Commitment to democratic principles is paramount

To effectively manage internal challenges and defend against external threats, we must shift the tone of our political discourse. The focus must be on electing those willing to move away from rhetorical warfare and toward collaborative, bipartisan solutions. Our elected senior leaders must address internal issues while crafting a national security strategy that integrates our military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural strengths.

Our leaders must prioritize clear communication and a commitment to democratic principles to avoid domestic instability. Treating politics like warfare, digging in on political positions, prevents compromise that can produce meaningful solutions to our nation's problems. Instead, fostering cooperation and healthy debate can address the challenges we face, ensuring a more secure future for all Americans. Bipartisan leadership is essential to building a unified nation capable of meeting complex global threats.

Perhaps the most important lessons really are learned in elementary school. As the late comedian George Carlin once said: "Don't just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything."

Or, as the retired Fort Campbell teacher urged us: "Get out and vote. Just make sure you can honestly justify your vote — to yourself."

Louis Buck, a Republican, is currently employed in the development of alternative energy and regenerative agriculture projects. Previously, he was appointed to both State and Federal Department of Agriculture leadership positions. He champions global rural economic development and international trade emphasizing innovation and entrepreneurship.

John “Glad” Castellaw, a Democrat, is a retired Marine lieutenant general who served for 36 years before returning to his family farm in West Tennessee. He remains involved in national security issues through a variety of organizations advocating for food and climate security as well as leading businesses developing tools to defend against pandemics in humans and animals.

14. Pentagon Runs Low on Air-Defense Missiles as Demand Surges

​Very troubling. Dangerously troubling.  Will we have to draw from our stocks in Korea, Japan, and Guam as well as from afloat prepositioned stocks? Does the Navy have to redistribute among combatant commands? 

Pentagon Runs Low on Air-Defense Missiles as Demand Surges

Large number of interceptors used to strike missiles, drones in Middle East raises concerns about U.S. military readiness in Pacific

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-runs-low-on-air-defense-missiles-as-demand-surges-7fc9370c?mod=djem10point

By Nancy A. Youssef

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 and Gordon Lubold

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Updated Oct. 29, 2024 12:08 am ET

A Standard Missile is launched from the USS McCampbell during a flight test off the coast of the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. Photo: Missile Defense Agency

WASHINGTON—The U.S. is running low on some types of air-defense missiles, raising questions about the Pentagon’s readiness to respond to the continuing wars in the Middle East and Europe and a potential conflict in the Pacific.

Interceptors are fast becoming the most sought-after ordnance during the widening crisis in the Middle East, as Israel and other U.S. allies face an increasing threat from missiles and drones fired by Iran and the militias it supports. The shortfall could become even more urgent after Israel’s Friday night strikes on Iran, which U.S. officials fear might spark another wave of attacks by Tehran.

Standard Missiles, which are usually ship-launched and come in various types, are among the most common interceptors the U.S. has used to defend Israeli territory from Iranian missile attacks, and are critical for stopping Houthi attacks on Western ships in the Red Sea. The U.S. has launched more than 100 Standard Missiles since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, the U.S. officials said.

The oil tanker Sounion in August after it was attacked in the Red Sea by Houthi rebels. Photo: Eunavfor Aspides/Reuters

The Defense Department says it doesn’t publicly disclose its stockpiles because the information is classified and could be leveraged by Iran and its proxies.

“Over the course of the last year, the Department of Defense has augmented our force posture in the region to protect U.S. forces and support the defense of Israel, while always taking into account U.S. readiness and stockpiles,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said.

The heavy use of the Pentagon’s limited stockpile of missile interceptors is raising concerns about the ability of the U.S. and its allies to keep pace with unexpected, high demand created by the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. The Pentagon worries it could run through its inventory faster than it can replace them, leaving the U.S. vulnerable in a potential conflict in the Pacific, analysts and officials said.

“The U.S. has not developed a defense industrial base intended for a large-scale war of attrition in both Europe and the Middle East, while meeting its own readiness standards,” said Elias Yousif, a fellow and deputy director of the Conventional Defense Program at the Stimson Center in Washington. “And both of those wars are extended conflicts, which was not part of the U.S. defense planning.”

Increasing production of weapons has proved difficult for the Pentagon, since it often requires that companies open new production lines, expand facilities and hire additional workers. Companies are often reluctant to invest in that expansion without knowing that the Pentagon is committing to buying at increased levels over the long term.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro. Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told lawmakers in May testimony that he was pressing industry to increase production of Standard Missiles because the U.S. had deployed so many interceptors in the Middle East. There are “some increases” in two variants of Standard Missiles, he said, but acknowledged the difficulty of ramping up production. 

“The more sophisticated the missile, the harder it is to produce them,” he said.

The concerns over a shortage of interceptors have prompted senior Pentagon officials, including Del Toro, and Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, to look at alternate technology, including drawing on newer companies to help increase production of new types of air-defense missiles. 

The U.S. had built up interceptor stocks over recent years, but the U.S. in any one month of the conflict in the Middle East has launched dozens of missiles, and production capacity can’t keep up, according to analysts and defense officials.

RTX, producer of the Standard Missiles, can make a maximum of a few hundred a year, a U.S. defense official said. That production, however, isn’t all for the Pentagon, since at least 14 allies also buy Standard Missiles, according to RTX.

The company declined to comment on its production capacity, but RTX spokesman Chris Johnson said, “We work closely with the Department of Defense to meet their production needs for Standard Missiles.”

Since the war between Hamas and Israel began last year, U.S. ships have launched more than $1.8 billion worth of interceptors to stop Iran and its proxies from attacking Israel and ships traveling through the Red Sea, according to the Navy.

The Navy often launches two interceptors for every one missile when responding to attacks, essentially as an insurance policy to ensure the target is hit. A single Standard Missile can cost millions of dollars, making it an expensive way to defend against Iranian-made weapons, which cost much less.

“Those are really expensive munitions to shoot down crappy Houthi targets,” one congressional official said, “and every one they expend takes months to replace—and at high, high cost.”

The U.S. launched a dozen Standard Missiles during Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attack on Israel, in addition to employing other air-defense systems, but American and Israeli forces let through some of the 180 Iranian missiles that they knew wouldn’t strike valuable sites to preserve its stock of interceptors, U.S. officials said.

A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad system, launching station in Israel in 2019. Photo: US Army/AFP/Getty Images

Earlier this month, in the run-up to Israel’s retaliatory strike on Iran, the Pentagon deployed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad system, to Israel, a move that allows the U.S. to use interceptors other than Standard Missiles to bolster Israel’s defenses. The Pentagon has also moved additional Patriot missile-defense systems to the Middle East, which required shuffling around the limited number of batteries it has in inventory to also meet the demand in Ukraine.

Pentagon officials said the plan is to maintain the current overall production levels of the Standard Missiles, though there will be cuts to some of the older variants to fund newer ones.

The heavy use of weapons such as interceptors in the Middle East is also putting at risk the Pentagon’s ability to fight in the Pacific, said Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral and now a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank in Washington. 

“We’re spending a year’s worth of Standard Missiles—those are standard missiles that are supposed to be part of rearming ourselves for China,” he said. “So, 100%, we have, once again in the Middle East, set back Navy readiness to execute operations in the Pacific.”

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Israel’s military has some of the most advanced air defense systems in the world in its arsenal. Here’s how the U.S.-deployed Thaad will bolster it even further. Photo: U.S. Department of Defense

Write to Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com and Gordon Lubold at gordon.lubold@wsj.com

15. Misinformation About the Military and Climate Change

Conclusion:

At a moment when America’s national security situation is worse than any time in recent years, putting climate change on par with real threats - China, Russia, Iran and North Korea - is not only a dangerous distraction, it amounts to misinformation that disregards sound science and strategy.

Misinformation About the Military and Climate Change

By Tim Gallaudet

October 29, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/10/29/misinformation_about_the_military_and_climate_change_1068353.html?mc_cid=9164ce116b

Misinformation About the Military and Climate Change Disregards Sound Science and Strategy

A recent opinion piece in Politico from a former Department of Defense (DoD) official in the Obama Administration claimed that the U.S. military’s response to climate change confirms that the topic is a top national security consideration. CNN echoed the conclusion a day later.

With all due respect to the author, I feel compelled to correct the articles’ scientific inaccuracies and unfounded assertions about our armed forces and climate change.

First off, conflating every extreme weather event with climate change is imprecise, incomplete, and incorrect. The most glaring example is the author’s emphasis on North Atlantic hurricanes, citing the extensive damage at Tyndall Air Force Base from Hurricane Michael in 2018, as well as disaster preparedness efforts by the National Guard in advance of Hurricanes Helene, Beryl, and Milton this year. While various climate model projections point to the potential for some climate change scenarios to see more frequent and intense tropical cyclones, satellite data over the past 50 years show no upward or downward trend in these types of storms.

The author also refers to a recent increase in National Guard deployments to combat wildfires as evidence that climate change is impacting military missions. In fact, wildfire frequency in the U.S. is decreasing, and whatever the case, they are an ineffective metric because factors other than climate, such as forest management, are important in determining their occurrence.

The author cites DoD’s recent response to storm surges, extreme heat, drought, and flooding as another indicator that climate change “poses an unprecedented risk to national security”. Such a deduction runs counter to the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that, “Scientists cannot answer directly whether a particular event was caused by climate change, … any specific weather and climate event is the result of a complex mix of human and natural factors. Instead, scientists quantify the relative importance of human and natural influences on the magnitude and/or probability of specific extreme weather events.” 

For many types of extreme events, the IPCC has been unable to conclusively detect changes in their frequency or intensity. For example, the IPCC has reported increases in heat waves and in heavy precipitation, but not tropical cyclones, floods, tornadoes or drought.

More problematic is the implication in the article that the initiatives by the DoD to reduce greenhouse gas emissions signify that “the military” is taking climate change seriously. To be clear, current DoD emission reduction efforts are entirely driven by political appointees implementing the Biden Administration’s delusional DoD climate directives.

For example, the Navy’s Climate Action 2030 directs the Department of the Navy to reduce emissions and energy demand while increasing “carbon pollution-free” electricity at Navy installations and bases. Are the uniformed career professionals in the Navy gung ho about such misguided climate action? If recent strategic documents released by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) are a sign, apparently not. Neither the CNO Navigation Plan 2024 nor America’s Warfighting Navy make any mention of renewable energy, emissions reductions, or climate change.

It appears that the energy references in the article are aligned with the prevailing “climate crisis” narrative seeking to discredit and impose penalties on the fossil fuel industry in the U.S. Efforts aimed at undermining the primary providers of America’s energy independence are divorced from larger global security realities. First, even if the entire U.S. were to cease emissions, the rest of the world, led by China, will not. Second, the economic and national security benefits of affordable and abundant energy are both enormous and undeniable. We must not forget that those benefits are what drove Japan to enter World War II and attack the U.S. at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

I do not mean to totally dismiss climate change as a national security consideration. The author rightly points to the rapidly warming Arctic, where warming induced sea ice loss is opening new shipping lanes and access to natural resources, enticing both China and Russia to become more assertive in the region.

However, it is difficult to justify the author’s summary that says, “the military has identified climate change as a dangerous enemy.” Such a statement is a stretch at best. If anything, America’s armed forces have long held that severe weather can be a serious adversary, not climate change. General George Washington acknowledged this during the brutal winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge, as did Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower prior to a break in the weather that allowed the Allied invasion at Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Unfortunately, the DoD has not done very well in combatting hazardous environmental conditions over the past few years. 2022 was particularly concerning, with a period of entirely preventable mishaps involving the Navy, Army, and Marine Corps. More recently, a severe storm damaged several Army helicopters, weather was a factor in the fatal crash of a Marine Corps helicopter and the total loss of an Air Force fighter jet, and failure to adequately consider sea state constantly plagued the Gaza pier operation. Preventing mission kills like these should be the DoD’s top climate concern, as I’ve detailed here, here, and here.

At a moment when America’s national security situation is worse than any time in recent years, putting climate change on par with real threats - China, Russia, Iran and North Korea - is not only a dangerous distraction, it amounts to misinformation that disregards sound science and strategy.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet (USN, ret.) is the former acting Administrator and Deputy Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), acting Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and Oceanographer of the U.S. Navy. Among the variety of positions which he held over his 32-year career in the Navy, Gallaudet served as the Director of the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change.

16. Restoring Our Maritime Strength

Excerpts:

It should begin well before the president takes office. The first thing that a president-elect must consider is the national-security team. As is often said, personnel is policy: Without the right people, good ideas remain just ideas. In his first term, despite a campaign commitment to increasing the Navy’s fleet to 350 ships, President Trump was never able to “build the bench” by fully staffing the Pentagon, including the Department of the Navy, and hence was never able to build the fleet that he had promised. As for President Joe Biden, the low priority he has placed on defense, and on the Navy specifically, resulted in a failure to staff the Navy’s political leadership before the final year of his term. Whether Trump or Kamala Harris wins the White House this time, the nation cannot afford to repeat such mistakes.

...

As elections approach, U.S. citizens must heed the lessons of the past to prevent sea blindness from turning into a national calamity. We must pick leaders committed to returning our nation to maritime viability through both the building of commercial ships and their operation under the U.S. flag. Many in Congress are beginning this process, and it should be championed in the next administration. A bicameral and bipartisan effort has been launched by Senators Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Representatives Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) and John Garamendi (D., Calif.) to begin the revitalization of our nation’s maritime sector. It has been supported by the current secretary of the Navy but inadequately by the White House. Their bill, which has been named the “Ships for America Act,” would modernize U.S. commercial shipyards, create industrial-job-training programs, and provide incentives to once again make it profitable to move goods on U.S. ships. Ushering in a revolution in shipping could allow the U.S. to realize comparative advantage and enjoy a renaissance in the maritime sector that protects American security and economic interests put at risk by China.

As we move toward becoming a net exporter of liquefied natural gas, it makes economic sense for it to be transported on U.S.-built and -operated vessels. Moreover, Vladimir Putin’s suspension of energy exports to Western Europe following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine makes clear that our nation must provide allies with energy-supply resiliency. Therefore, if the Ships for America Act is not passed in the current Congress, it should be reintroduced in the first 30 days of the next administration to re-shore shipbuilding jobs and industrial capacity back to the United States.

But state-led industrial policy alone will not suffice to outcompete the Chinese Communist Party’s nonmarket forces; also required is a market approach, in league with like-minded allies such as Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, that allows America to benefit from other nations’ comparative advantages even as it nurtures its own critical technologies. Within the first hundred days, the next president should establish an informal group of like-minded maritime nations — a maritime G-7.

Our nation has been in dire straits before, but it has always found a way to get ahead of our adversaries. The next president will need to act quickly to avert what could be a disastrous war with China in the next few years and prevent the ignobility of having domestic political decisions foisted on us by the economically coercive communist regime in Beijing.

Committing to a maritime national-security strategy that will restore our naval and commercial fleets would allow us to influence events abroad and strengthen ourselves economically without necessarily becoming entangled in drawn-out wars. The United States was founded as a sea-power state. The first hundred days of the next administration provide a perfect chance to remember that fact.

Restoring Our Maritime Strength

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/12/a-plan-to-restore-the-navy-for-trumps-first-hundred-days/?mc_cid=9164ce116b

By Jerry Hendrix

&

Brent Sadler

October 24, 2024 1:27 PM

An agenda for the next president’s first hundred days

The “first hundred days” myth has had a hold on American politics ever since Franklin Roosevelt’s first inauguration. In March 1933, the president summoned Congress to a three-month special session in which it passed 15 major bills to correct the downward trends of the Great Depression. Nearly every Democratic president to succeed him, and even a handful of Republicans, has tried to recapture the magic of FDR’s accomplishment. As the nation confronts numerous threats amid a deteriorating security environment, that magic is needed more than ever.

The next administration, in its first hundred days, will face an urgent problem: the need to rebuild the U.S. Navy to deter China, which, in its global push for dominance, is backed by a rapidly expanding modern navy, maritime constabulary, and commercial fleet. But an effective effort will involve more than just the Navy. It will also require investing in the broader maritime industry and ensuring that the nation has adequate shipping in peacetime to prevent China from dictating our terms of trade and subordinating our economic interests to its own.

What would a successful maritime first hundred days look like?

It should begin well before the president takes office. The first thing that a president-elect must consider is the national-security team. As is often said, personnel is policy: Without the right people, good ideas remain just ideas. In his first term, despite a campaign commitment to increasing the Navy’s fleet to 350 ships, President Trump was never able to “build the bench” by fully staffing the Pentagon, including the Department of the Navy, and hence was never able to build the fleet that he had promised. As for President Joe Biden, the low priority he has placed on defense, and on the Navy specifically, resulted in a failure to staff the Navy’s political leadership before the final year of his term. Whether Trump or Kamala Harris wins the White House this time, the nation cannot afford to repeat such mistakes.

The secretary of defense and the senior civilian positions in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force are important, but so too are the Senate-confirmed undersecretaries and assistant secretaries who implement decisions. The day after winning the election, the next president should begin building a national-security team supportive of his or her overall policy goals, possessed of the knowledge and experience to drive required changes through, and able to be confirmed by the Senate. A second priority during the transition should be to review all the Biden executive orders to ascertain whether they impeded the operational or material readiness of the fleet.

When retired admiral Arleigh Burke attended the commissioning ceremony for his namesake ship in 1991, he famously said to its crew, “This ship was built to fight. You better know how.” The Navy needs to burn away the regulatory and administrative layers that have adhered to it like so many barnacles on a ship’s hull and sharpen its focus on the warfighting challenges immediately at hand. On Day One, the next president should establish that the re-expansion of the Navy will be the highest priority, to speed up lower-level Pentagon decision-making when it comes to budgets and defense-program rankings. A precedent for such prioritization can be found in the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, who oversaw the accelerated creation of the nation’s intercontinental-ballistic-missile program during the early days of the Cold War.

Also on Day One, the president should order a review, to be completed within 60 days, of the material readiness of the current fleet, its supporting shipyards, and the associated industrial base.

If a newly elected President Trump, in particular, wants to pursue the substantial changes to the Navy that he advocated at the end of his first term, he should transmit a slate of nominees for Navy secretary, undersecretary, and the five assistant-secretary positions to the Senate as soon as the new Congress is sworn in. To help revive the nation’s defense–industrial base, he should also consider appointing a maritime special assistant to the national-security staff or reestablishing the Office of Defense Mobilization (ODM), which was stood up in 1950 and got the nation onto a Cold War industrial footing. The ODM leveraged authorities established under the Defense Production Act to align the nation’s industrial base to meet wartime and later peacetime defense requirements. The still-existing Defense Production Act has been invoked by the Biden administration ten times to accelerate the production of everything from baby formula to components for hypersonic weapons, but the role of overall coordination of critical production decisions that once resided inside ODM has been spread throughout the executive branch. It should be refocused once again in a single office.

During the Cold War, President Reagan called for a 600-ship Navy. We need another numerical goal today. Given current limitations on shipbuilding, the next president should call for a battle force of 333 warships before the end of his or her term in January 2029 — a goal achievable through investments in the nation’s commercial-shipbuilding capacity.

Currently, much of the fleet is sidelined because of backlogs in maintenance. Surface ships are deploying with many weapons systems operating in degraded modes. Over a third of the force of submarines, with higher “sub-safe” requirements imposed by their use of nuclear reactors, cannot leave the pier because of a nearly three-year backlog in maintenance. By law and by regulation, submarines must be maintained in public (Navy) shipyards or in the shipyards where they were built, and there aren’t enough dry docks to hold all the “boats” that require servicing.

During the “peace dividend” days of the 1990s, when base-realignment and -closure commissions abounded, Congress shut down too many shipyards. Today the Navy requires at least three, but more realistically five, additional dry docks. The next secretary of the Navy should immediately request from Congress authorization to pursue a private–public partnership (PPP) to establish one or two new shipyards with sufficient repair capacity to meet all current and projected maintenance requirements. These PPP arrangements should be structured as “rent-to-own” opportunities whereby private operators, backed by public, state-sponsored bonds, would effectively build and outfit the yards to Navy standards, allowing the service to rent them over a 30-year period to retire the debt. Such an approach skirts the high up-front costs that, under current law, accompany base-infrastructure investments.

The Navy also does not have enough ordnance — missiles, shells, and torpedoes — to arm every ship in the fleet. The next administration must therefore make a significant investment in the ordnance-manufacturing industrial base by authorizing overtime and additional factory shifts and by directing, through a dispersal policy, the establishment of new production capacity in currently underused parts of the nation. To help attract needed investment, “maritime prosperity zones” could be created on the model of Trump’s first-term “opportunity zones” but with a focus on waterfront communities all over the country — on the East, West, and Gulf Coasts, in the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys, and certainly around the nation’s Great Lakes.

United States Navy

The U.S. Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) transits the Pacific Ocean on its way to participate in Exercise Rim of the Pacific 2024, June 22, 2024.

Mass Communication Specialist Third Class Marissa A. Johnson/U.S. Navy

Expanding the Navy to 333 ships would require adding almost 40 warships to the fleet. The Biden administration has ordered too few ships and not supported authorizations to accelerate the delivery dates of ships already under construction. Given that it takes between three and five years to commission a ship into the Navy from the time a contract is signed, simply planning to build more ships will not guarantee the necessary expansion over a four-year presidential term. The next administration should therefore recommend a “five-ocean Navy act” along with a 35 percent increase in the Navy’s budget, or about $90 billion more in spending, in line with the pre–World War II and Reagan-administration precedents. The Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 effectively began the construction of many of the ships that entered the fleet in 1943 and turned the tide of World War II, and Reagan’s massive investment in the Navy during his first term helped to win the Cold War. A new naval act should fund the building of proven stable-design warships currently planned for construction. Naval shipbuilders could be assured that orders are fixed, making it both necessary and financially smart to make capital investments in labor and shipyards to increase shipbuilding and repair capacity.

The most important step for the Navy to take immediately is to stop retiring ships. In March 2024, the Navy announced that it planned to decommission 19 ships, including ten that would be retired ahead of schedule. The next secretary of the Navy should stop all decommissioning of ships before their end of service life and should request supplemental funding from Congress to cover repairs, operating expenses, and activation of naval reservists to serve on the ships being retained. These new monies should facilitate the signing of contracts with ship-repair yards around the country capable of extending ships’ service lives and modernizing older vessels.

Taking a page from the Reagan administration’s buildup, which added 73 ships to the fleet over eight years, the next administration should survey all ships currently retained in the unmanned “ghost fleet” and the 116 ships on the Navy’s “stricken” list. This survey should be completed within the first 30 days and include cost estimates for manning and operating the ships. Not every ship in the battle force is required to proceed to the first island chain of the western Pacific or into the Red Sea. There are many missions in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the South Atlantic that can be performed by hulls equipped with older sensors and weapons systems. Once the Navy’s leaders have a good idea of the material state of the inactive fleet, they can request funds from Congress in line with its Article I responsibility to “provide and maintain a Navy” sufficient to “provide for the common defense.”

To monitor all of these initiatives, the secretary of the Navy and his subordinates should establish a war room within the offices of the civilian secretariat, where reports of progress or regress can be gathered and assessed on a daily basis. Every aspect of the first-hundred-days plan should be reported on to the secretary each week, and the secretary should issue a monthly report to the secretary of defense, who, in turn, should report to the president.

In October 2023, the U.S. Navy took station in the Red Sea to defend merchant shipping. It was a modest first step, after 20 years of counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, back toward a focus on war at sea. The Houthis in Yemen, however, must be understood as presenting nothing like the threat that the Chinese military does. While the Navy has done well in the Red Sea to date, its operations don’t come anywhere near the intense requirements of fighting a major battle in the South China Sea. Thus, on Day One of the next administration, the secretary of the Navy should direct that the commanders of the Pacific Fleet and Fleet Forces Command execute major exercises, off Hawaii and in the North Atlantic, respectively, within a hundred days. These exercises should be designed to stretch strategic, tactical, and logistical limits and should use no less than 20 percent of the active and reserve naval forces assigned to each region. Such an exercise, on a scale reminiscent of the fleet exercises of the 1930s, would provide the Navy’s top brass with an opportunity to evaluate leaders at all levels of command and assess fleet readiness for a modern major naval war.

Thirty-five years after the end of the Cold War, there is no officer in the United States Navy who has experience in managing an aggressive, expanding Navy. Bending the downward curve of the nation’s maritime strength back upward will require a change in leadership and culture. Every service has its mixture of bean counters and warfighters, and during the 40 years of the Cold War these two groups were kept in balance according to the shore- and sea-based requirements of the service. During that period, however, the Pentagon always kept an “in case of war, break glass” list of warfighting officers to move into fleet- and strike-group-command slots in the event of conflict. These commanders were often not adept at giving testimony to Congress or sitting for media interviews, but they could be counted on to fight and win a war.

Accordingly, the next Navy secretary and undersecretary should undertake a series of one-on-one interviews of current three- and four-star admirals to determine their potential as wartime commanders and their readiness to execute an aggressive program of national maritime rejuvenation. If some are found wanting, they should be offered reassignment or retirement in grade without prejudice. Simultaneously, the five assistant secretaries of the Navy should survey the warfighting character of the Navy’s current two- or one-star admirals, as well as its senior captains, with an eye toward their potential for promotion to senior roles. When, in 1955, Secretary of the Navy Charles Thomas found Admiral Robert “Mick” Carney lacking in support for innovation and modernization, Thomas forced him into early retirement and selected Rear Admiral Arleigh Burke for promotion to admiral, naming him chief of naval operations (CNO) over the heads of 100 more-senior admirals. Burke ended up serving six years as CNO and was instrumental in helping the Eisenhower administration ready the Navy for a long-haul Cold War.

The challenge for the next administration in the maritime environment will not end with reforming and rebuilding the Navy itself. When Captain Alfred T. Mahan ushered in the sea-power era in the 1890s, his argument wasn’t that if we built a large Navy, the nation would become a great power. Rather, he argued that power came from wealth and that wealth had been tied historically to free trade protected and encouraged by a strong Navy. Mahan also pointed out that nation-states that invested in sea-borne trade reaped the largest returns on their investments, resulting in exponential rather than lineal economic growth. This is a lesson that we have forgotten, with less than 0.4 percent of our trade now carried on U.S. ships. Such strategic vulnerability passes on to other nations both the responsibility and the gains associated with transporting our goods over the world’s seas. Today, China is the largest builder of commercial ships and controls almost 100 strategically placed ports around the globe, holding our trade and access to markets in peril. In a war with China, this situation would likely cost us victory.

As elections approach, U.S. citizens must heed the lessons of the past to prevent sea blindness from turning into a national calamity. We must pick leaders committed to returning our nation to maritime viability through both the building of commercial ships and their operation under the U.S. flag. Many in Congress are beginning this process, and it should be championed in the next administration. A bicameral and bipartisan effort has been launched by Senators Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Representatives Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) and John Garamendi (D., Calif.) to begin the revitalization of our nation’s maritime sector. It has been supported by the current secretary of the Navy but inadequately by the White House. Their bill, which has been named the “Ships for America Act,” would modernize U.S. commercial shipyards, create industrial-job-training programs, and provide incentives to once again make it profitable to move goods on U.S. ships. Ushering in a revolution in shipping could allow the U.S. to realize comparative advantage and enjoy a renaissance in the maritime sector that protects American security and economic interests put at risk by China.

As we move toward becoming a net exporter of liquefied natural gas, it makes economic sense for it to be transported on U.S.-built and -operated vessels. Moreover, Vladimir Putin’s suspension of energy exports to Western Europe following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine makes clear that our nation must provide allies with energy-supply resiliency. Therefore, if the Ships for America Act is not passed in the current Congress, it should be reintroduced in the first 30 days of the next administration to re-shore shipbuilding jobs and industrial capacity back to the United States.

But state-led industrial policy alone will not suffice to outcompete the Chinese Communist Party’s nonmarket forces; also required is a market approach, in league with like-minded allies such as Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, that allows America to benefit from other nations’ comparative advantages even as it nurtures its own critical technologies. Within the first hundred days, the next president should establish an informal group of like-minded maritime nations — a maritime G-7.

Our nation has been in dire straits before, but it has always found a way to get ahead of our adversaries. The next president will need to act quickly to avert what could be a disastrous war with China in the next few years and prevent the ignobility of having domestic political decisions foisted on us by the economically coercive communist regime in Beijing.

Committing to a maritime national-security strategy that will restore our naval and commercial fleets would allow us to influence events abroad and strengthen ourselves economically without necessarily becoming entangled in drawn-out wars. The United States was founded as a sea-power state. The first hundred days of the next administration provide a perfect chance to remember that fact.

Jerry Hendrix is a retired Navy captain and a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute. Brent Sadler is a retired Navy captain and the author of U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century.

17. Laser, microwave, and other directed-energy weapons ready for the battlefield

Will these capabilities become the great drone neutralizers? Will they become effective countermeasures for drone operations?

Laser, microwave, and other directed-energy weapons ready for the battlefield

Oct. 28, 2024

Jamie Whitney

militaryaerospace.com · by Jamie Whitney

Perhaps no technology has shaped the 21st-century battlefield as profoundly as the drone. These uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), along with their land and sea counterparts, have redefined the way wars are fought by providing military forces with unprecedented capabilities in surveillance, precision targeting, and intelligence gathering -- all while reducing the risk to their own personnel. Drones have made complex operations more efficient and less costly, enabling militaries to strike with pinpoint accuracy and maintain a persistent presence over the battlefield.

As the century progresses, the influence of drones continues to expand beyond traditional state actors. Non-state groups and non-peer adversaries increasingly have adopted this technology, leveraging it to level the playing field in conflicts around the world. With commercial drones becoming more accessible, these actors can conduct reconnaissance, drop bombs, and challenge conventional military forces in ways that previously were unimaginable.

The influence of drones flows across all domains of warfare. Loitering munitions, or "Kamikaze drones," have disrupted traditional force structures by providing smaller, more agile units with the ability to strike high-value targets such as tanks, artillery, and command centers.

Meanwhile, underwater drones and ground robots are expanding the reach of unmanned warfare to new environments, further cementing their role in the future of conflict.

Now, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and allies are looking once again to gain the upper hand with a relatively low-cost alternative counter-UAS of their own in the form of laser and other directed-energy weapons.

Conflicts that involve drones in areas such as the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and Bab al-Mandeb Strait, are wreaking havoc on U.S. military forces and commercial shipping.

Likewise, Iran and the Lebanese Islamist political and paramilitary group Hezbollah have used drones to attack Israel as part of their support for Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip following the deadly Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023. The Houthis likewise justified their attacks as a show of solidarity with Palestinians.

In late 2023, the DOD reported that U.S. Navy destroyers shot down nearly 40 drones and several missiles in the Red Sea. While the Navy has succeeded in stopping uncrewed air and sea vehicles, they come at a steep financial cost.

It is estimated that Iranian-made drones cost approximately $2,000 each. While the DOD - citing operational security - has not disclosed what it is using to destroy the Houthi weapons, it is believed to employing the Standard Missile-2, which costs approximately $2.1 million per shot.

In 2021, the U.S. Army tested 50-kilowatt laser weapons mounted on Stryker combat vehicles.

"That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor,", says Mick Mulroy, a former DOD official and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. "We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us."

Speed of light

Lasers -- an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation -- have been penciled in by fiction writers as the future weapons in use across galaxies in sci-fi stories. While lasers have been in use in civilian and military applications since the technology was developed in 1960, the deployable "ray gun" remained out of reach until about a decade ago. In 2014, the U.S. Navy outfitted its Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Ponce with the AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System (LaWS), which was made by Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. in San Diego.

The AN/SEQ-3 is a 30-kilowatt solid-state ship-mounted laser developed to neutralize a range of low-level threats like small boats and drones. LaWS converts electrical energy from the ship into a focused beam of light that can be aimed at critical components of a target, such as engines or sensors, to incapacitate or destroy it. LaWS causes structural damage or detonates explosive materials onboard the target by delivering an overwhelming amount of heat. Unlike traditional kinetic weapons that rely on impact and shrapnel, LaWS employs directed energy to burn through parts of the target.

LaWS offers versatility by allowing operators to adjust its power levels. It can operate at lower intensities to dazzle or disable sensors, or at higher intensities to destroy threats. The system tracks targets through optical systems and can engage them over several kilometers with precision, providing a reliable solution for defending against several low-cost threats.

Integrated with the ship's radar and fire control systems, LaWS operates at the speed of light, enabling rapid response to emerging threats. Its precision targeting minimizes collateral damage, making it well-suited for complex and populated environments.

LaWS was developed as a prototype to test the feasibility of laser weapons in the ocean environment, and the Navy moved forward with the development and deployment of a higher-powered system produced by Lockheed Martin's Laser and Sensor Systems division in Bothell, Wash.

Dubbed the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system, it has at least double the power of its predecessor. The company said HELIOS was rated at more than 60 kilowatts. Although the specifics of HELIOS remain classified, it may see potential increases to 100 or 150 kilowatts for future deployments. The system will also feature a lower-power optical dazzler for disrupting intelligence and reconnaissance sensors. The system was installed on the USS Preble, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, after delivery in 2022.

U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, told Congress at a hearing earlier this year that "We've accelerated the development and the testing of the HELIOS laser program ... We also have six other laser projects and high energy projects, some of which are classified. And I can't talk about openly. But this is a high priority area for us. We obviously well into the future, cannot continue to shoot down drones which simply SM2 and SM6, we need to develop the high energy, high lasers and directed-energy programs to be able to counter these air drones that are being shot at us as well."

"Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy share a common vision and enthusiasm for developing and providing disruptive laser weapon systems," says Rick Cordaro, vice president of Lockheed Martin Advanced Product Solutions. "HELIOS enhances the overall combat system effectiveness of the ship to deter future threats and provide additional protection for sailors, and we understand we must provide scalable solutions customized to the Navy’s priorities. HELIOS represents a solid foundation for incremental delivery of robust and powerful laser weapon system capabilities."

The Tactical High-power Operational Responder, or THOR, a high-powered microwave counter drone weapon, stands ready to demonstrate its effectiveness against a swarm of several targets.

Earlier this year, Navy Secretary Del Toro told attendees at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington that directed-energy weapons are key to his top goal of strengthening maritime dominance.

"It is an exciting time for new technologies in our Navy and Marine Corps," Del Toro told attendees. "Our amphibious ships play a crucial role in testing and validating our newest directed-energy weapons technology, including the Laser Weapon System Demonstrator (LWSD). USS Portland (LPD 27) was fitted with LWSD and engaged a marine target in the Gulf of Aden.

He continued, "And while I was in San Diego last month, I visited USS Preble (DDG 88), fitted with the HELIOS laser weapon system. Directed energy weapons, including high-energy lasers, are the future of warfare -- offering a lower cost-per-shot against air and missile defense engagements."

In the field

The U.S. Army have also deployed a directed-energy system of its own aimed at keeping soldiers safe from UAVs and rockets, artillery, and mortars.

In 2021, the Army tested 50-kilowatt laser weapons mounted on Stryker combat vehicles, conducting additional evaluations. The Army tested the Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) system, developed by Raytheon, which features a vehicle-mounted laser powered by a gasoline generator.

In collaboration with Kord Technologies, a subsidiary of KBR located in Huntsville, Ala., the Army integrated the high-energy laser onto an eight-wheeled Stryker vehicle produced by General Dynamics Land Systems in Sterling Heights, Mich. During the 2021 trials at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the laser system tracked, targeted, and neutralized 60-millimeter mortar rounds and drones of varying sizes. This achievement is part of an ongoing effort to equip more powerful lasers on smaller, more mobile platforms.

The M-SHORAD system also demonstrated how laser weapons can integrate into broader command and control networks. While it includes its own radar system, it also can connect to the air surveillance data provided by the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Command and Control system (THAAD C2), enhancing situational awareness and coordinated defense efforts.

"There’s no doubt lasers will be on the future large-scale ground combat battlefield so it’s great to see these initial prototypes to gain understanding of its capabilities and think through where these capabilities will fit into our organizations, the impact on how we fight, and understand how we need to adjust our doctrine," says Army Maj. General Ken Kamper, commanding general of the Fires Center of Excellence in 2022. "The laser, as part of a necessary layered set of capabilities against threat unmanned aircraft systems, has tremendous potential."

HEL on wheels

This spring, BlueHalo in Arlington, Va., won a four-year support contract for the Army's Palletized High Energy Laser (P-HEL) system. The system, which is based on BlueHalo's LOCUST LaWS, is in use to counter small UAVs. LOCUST is a short-range air defense system designed for quick deployment and mobility.

The self-contained laser is built to handle all aspects of beam control, power management, thermal regulation, and safety. The system transports on standard equipment such as forklifts or pickup trucks and runs on an internal power-management system. The LOCUST LWS features modular components that operators can service or replace in the field. It operates through a single-operator interface using familiar Xbox-style controls. Setup features an integrated checklist that brings the system to full operational status within 15 minutes of powering up.

The mobility of HEL systems adds a significant tactical advantage, enabling these systems to accompany ground forces and provide a protective shield in dynamic combat environments. Mounted on wheeled or tracked vehicles, these systems can move with troops and deliver air defense against threats that would otherwise overwhelm static defenses. By enabling real-time engagement of several threats, P-HEL systems enhance force protection and operational flexibility.

The laser offers scalable output, ranging from two to 20 kilowatts, enabling it to engage a wide range of airborne threats, including drones and projectiles. The system's radar, a pulse-Doppler array, provides full hemispheric coverage and is capable of supporting counter-unmanned aerial systems, air defense, and detection of incoming hostile fire. Even in the event of a laser amplifier failure, the system continues to operate with reduced power.

Target tracking is handled by a specialized camera with zoom optics and a laser rangefinder, allowing for precise engagement of moving threats. The system's sensors provide high-definition imaging for day and night use, and its thermal and power management systems allow for extended operation in various environments. Powered by batteries, generators, or external power sources, BlueHalo says LOCUST is capable of continuous laser firing for extended periods and can operate for up to 24 hours in tracking mode.

The Navy High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system is rated at more than 60 kilowatts, and may see potential increases of 100 or 150 kilowatts for future deployments.

"With this contract, BlueHalo is now providing full-scale Directed Energy support to our customers–at home through advanced innovation, in the field through maintenance and training support, and strategically through operational guidance and battlespace management," says Jonathan Moneymaker, BlueHalo Chief Executive Officer.

This spring, Doug Bush, the Army's head of acquisitions, told Forbes that the Army had used laser weapons in the Middle East to take down hostile drones. Bush, who was nominated and confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, declined to inform Forbes what laser system earned the kills, though the P-HEL as been in use overseas since November 2022.

Microwave mindset

Beyond lasers, directed-energy technologies also include microwave weapons. These function by emitting concentrated bursts of electromagnetic energy at microwave frequencies.

Microwave systems utilize non-ionizing radiation, which doesn’t ionize atoms but is effective in disrupting electronic circuits and components. This may prove especially effective at combating swarms of drones.

One microwave weapon garnering attention is the Tactical High-Power Operational Responder (THOR), which is being developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Lab to combat the rising threat of swarming drones. When a swarm of drones is detected, THOR emits a wide-area burst of microwave energy that disables several drones simultaneously, making it highly effective against coordinated, large-scale drone attacks that are designed to overwhelm conventional defenses.

THOR's primary strength lies in its ability to engage several targets at once. While laser systems require precise aiming and can engage one target at a time, THOR’s microwave pulses affect all drones within its range, neutralizing swarms efficiently. By disabling drones' electronic systems, THOR avoids the need for physical projectiles, reducing collateral damage and eliminating the need for kinetic engagement.

The system is highly deployable and simple to operate, designed to be mounted on various platforms, including vehicles or ground-based installations. THOR’s microwave emitter is rapidly directed at incoming threats, making it highly responsive in dynamic combat scenarios. With an effectively unlimited magazine, constrained only by its power supply, THOR offers a continuous defense solution without the need for ammunition resupply.

Microwave weapons rely on devices like magnetrons, klystrons, or other microwave generators to convert electrical energy into high-frequency microwave pulses. These devices create intense electromagnetic fields, which are harnessed to produce directed microwave energy. The microwaves are channeled through an antenna or waveguide to create a concentrated beam. Depending on the system's design, this beam can be narrow for precise targeting or wider to impact several targets simultaneously.

In 2023, the AFRL put THOR to the test against a swarm of UAVs at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, and observers were impressed with what they saw from the demonstration of the microwave weapon.

"The THOR team flew numerous drones at the THOR system to simulate a real-world swarm attack," says Adrian Lucero, THOR program manager at AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate. "THOR has never been tested against these types of drones before, but this did not stop the system from dropping the targets out of the sky with its non-kinetic, speed-of-light High-Power Microwave, or HPM pulses." he says.

"We couldn’t have come this far without the perseverance and professionalism of the entire THOR team," says Ken Miller, AFRL’s high power electromagnetics division chief. "Our scientists, Airmen and contractors worked early mornings and late nights to make this swarm demo...a great success. AFRL is committed to developing such advanced technologies to defend our service members on the front lines."

Work to do

In addition to the DOD wanting to bring down the cost of developing and deploying directed-energy weapons, the military notes that there is a lot to be desired in terms of efficacy if military branches are looking to utilize lasers where traditional air defenses are currently in use.

Earlier this year at the annual Surface Navy Association symposium, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane remarked that he was in favor of getting more directed-energy systems on more ships in short order.

"I am not content with the pace of directed-energy weapons. We must deliver on this promise that this technology gives us,” McLane told a crowd at earlier this year. "I really want to put a lot of effort into accelerating [directed energy] because that gives us so much when it comes to magazine capacity and in speed and distance."

The AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System aboard USS Ponce

However, like nearly everything in the world of military and aerospace technology, size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) are a major concern with developing and deploying directed-energy weapons systems. These weapons need a continuous power supply, which is often drawn from generators, shipboard systems, or vehicle engines. The need for stable, high-power energy sources makes deploying these systems a challenge, especially in mobile or remote environments.

On ships, laser weapons may rely on integrated power systems with large electrical capacity, while land-based or vehicle-mounted lasers require specialized generators or energy storage systems. And like embedded computer systems, keeping these weapons systems cool is a battle as high-power lasers generate significant heat during operation which necessitate cooling systems that further increase power consumption.

Earlier this year, Rear Adm. Fred Pyle told attendees at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium that honesty about these technologies is necessary when envisioning the near-term future.

"Sometimes we have a tendency to over promise and under deliver," Rear Adm. Pyle says. "We need to flip that to where, when we’re intellectually honest, when we’re honest with ourselves from a technology capability, that we have an agreed upon sight picture of what it’s going to look like to deliver that capability."

While Rear Adm. Pyle urged an "over-delivering" and "under-promising" mindset, he says the Navy was bullish on what directed-energy weapons would offer sailors and Marines.

"We’re very focused on delivering directed-energy capability and we’re building it into the future [budget requests] in mind with our frigate and the DDG(X) [the next-generation destroyer]," the officer says at the Surface Navy Association symposium in January.

That optimism was echoed by Secretary of the Navy Del Toro. "This is the way of the future," the secretary says. "And we are going to be looking in the fiscal year [2026 and 2027 budgets] and into the [future] on how to accelerate the deployment of HELIOS and HELIOS-like capabilities on our [destroyers] because it is the way that we will need to address the swarm attacks of drones on our systems."

militaryaerospace.com · by Jamie Whitney

18. Poor Quality Control and Outdated Equipment at Steel Company Behind Failed Gears on Ill-Fated CV-22 Osprey

Another indication of our failing defense industrial base?

Excerpt:

Hunterbrook’s investigation, which followed both the Accident Investigation Board (AIB) and the internal Safety Investigation Board (SIB) reports, found a troubling mix of “toxic” personnel management and “retaliatory” practices at the manufacturing site. These factors compromised the rigorous standards essential for aerospace components, favoring increased production volumes and “high profit margins” instead.

Poor Quality Control and Outdated Equipment at Steel Company Behind Failed Gears on Ill-Fated CV-22 Osprey

The Aviationist · by Parth Satam · October 27, 2024

The CV-22B Osprey crashed following a catastrophic failure in the left-hand Prop Rotor Gear Box, triggered by a crack in one of the high-speed pinion gears manufactured from a special steel alloy produced by Universal Stainless.

An independent investigation by Hunterbrook has narrowed down poor manufacturing processes and inadequate quality control as the causes of the catastrophic failure in the Prop Rotor Gear Box (PRGB), which led to the crash of a U.S. Air Force CV-22B Osprey on Nov. 29, 2023, off the coast of Japan, resulting in the deaths of eight personnel. These issues were traced back to Universal Stainless, the manufacturer of the alloy used in the gear that failed on the ill-fated Osprey.

Contents

Hunterbrook’s investigation, which followed both the Accident Investigation Board (AIB) and the internal Safety Investigation Board (SIB) reports, found a troubling mix of “toxic” personnel management and “retaliatory” practices at the manufacturing site. These factors compromised the rigorous standards essential for aerospace components, favoring increased production volumes and “high profit margins” instead.

Previous accidents involving the Osprey were attributed to a recurring “hard clutch engagement,” a result of a design flaw in the component. However, in the November 2023 crash, investigators pointed to the gearbox as the cause in their preliminary findings. At that time, while they had established the “what” of the failure, they were still probing the “how” and “why.” The specific gear that failed was manufactured using a special steel alloy supplied by Universal Stainless.

BREAKING: Universal Stainless and Alloy Products (NASDAQ:$USAP) is reportedly behind the deadly crash of a USAF Osprey in Japan last year.@hntrbrkmedia found glaring issues in Universal’s operation, which supplies steel to major aircraft manufacturers including Boeing. pic.twitter.com/9arbZTrO2u

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 23, 2024

What is shocking, and bares the larger scale of the impropriety, is that Universal’s specialty steel alloys figure across the entire U.S. aviation sector, including its major customer Boeing, aircraft engines, and possibly the V-280 Valor, part of the U.S. Army’s FLRAA (Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft).

The crash of the Osprey claimed the lives of Maj. Jeffrey T. Hoernemann; Maj. Eric V. Spendlove; Maj. Luke A. Unrath; Capt. Terrell K. Brayman; Tech. Sgt. Zachary E. Lavoy; Staff Sgt. Jake M. Turnage; Senior Airman Brian K. Johnson; and Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher.

Photos comparing a new high-speed planetary gear pinion with the remains of one retrieved from the Osprey that crashed in Nov. 2023. (Image credit: U.S. Air Force via Hunterbrook)

What caused the November 2023 Osprey crash?

The USAF CV-22B Osprey (callsign Gundam 22) from the 21st Special Operations Squadron, 353rd Special Operations Wing at Yokota Air Base, crashed off the Japanese coast on Nov. 29, 2023, after taking off from Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Iwakuni, while participating in a joint interoperability exercise.

The tilt-rotor CV-22 has a prop-rotor gearbox in each engine nacelle which transmits power from the engine to the proprotor and reduces the speed of the shaft. The catastrophic failure was located in the Osprey’s left-hand PRGB. Here is an excerpt from the AIB report:

“Failure of the left-hand PRGB high-speed planetary section was most likely initiated by a crack in one of the high-speed pinion gear and fatigue cracking of the associated pinion gear’s bearing cage, which eventually fractured through the high-speed planetary carrier assembly. At least one piece of the failed high-speed planetary pinion wedged in the high-speed carrier assembly, grinding against the high-speed sun gear’s teeth until they were completely removed. The removal of the gear teeth prevented torque being applied to the left-hand mast”.

The report then mentions that an onset of rapidly cascading malfunctions occurred less than six seconds after the failure. This resulting “instantaneous asymmetric lift condition” was unrecoverable by the mishap crew. The crew received three “PRGB CHIP BURN” alerts on the CDU screen, followed by a “L PRGB CHIPS” flash. This meant the chip detectors found pieces of metal that couldn’t be burnt off.

CV-22B Osprey 10-0055 as ” XXXXXX ” departing KCOS to go to Kirtland Air Force Base. pic.twitter.com/inBkcF6zTb

— 𝙎𝙍_𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧 (@SR_Planespotter) December 7, 2022

While heading to Yakushima Island, the nearest planned divert airfield, and while waiting for traffic to clear the runway, a “CHIP DETECTOR FAIL” warning indicated one of the chip detectors completely stopped working. The pinion gear then completely failed, triggering the cascading series of malfunctions, causing the left proprotor to stop spinning. The Osprey went into a roll and crashed into the water.

‘Gear pinion manufactured by Universal Stainless failed’

The single ‘high-speed planetary gear pinion’, according to Military.com perusing the SIB report, had “begun to shred.” The resulting debris in the gearbox presumably triggered the alerts mentioned earlier, causing the crash. While both the publicly released AIB and the internal SIB blamed this single gear, the latter mentioned that the “single crack” was “similar to those seen on seven previous failures in low-speed planetary pinion gears.” Five of those prior failures, which go back to 2013, were caused by “non-metallic inclusions” – defects in the metal alloy from which the gears were made. Gundam 22’s gear also cracked “most likely due to non-metallic material inclusion.”

Universal Stainless made the alloy that “later failed in Gundam 22”. Since 2014, the company has supplied a “significant proportion” of the alloy used in the Osprey gearboxes that are now under scrutiny, Military.com said, quoting the SIB. Fortunately, however, the other incidents saw the aircrafts landing “before the gear failed completely.”

In 2014, the Osprey Joint Program Office received a risk assessment titled “Gear Metal Raw Material Impurities” from the aircraft’s manufacturers, Bell Textron and Boeing. But the SIB said the notice “did not adequately assess risk of high-speed gear failure.” There was also no testing of the high-speed gears done at the time, meaning there wasn’t an “adequate understanding of the failure that occurred in this mishap.”

NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command), under which the JPO falls, implemented contractual financial withholds, according to the SIB, hoping the contractor would “correct deficiencies in the (alloy) processing that had resulted in previous gear failures.” But this method “did not prompt corrective actions.”

The cut out of a report from APERAM, set to acquire Universal Stainless, showing the presence of its specialty steel alloys across aviation platforms. (Image credit: APERAM)

‘Deficient manufacturing, poor quality control, toxic work culture’

Universal Stainless, a key supplier for Boeing – itself facing allegations of shoddy manufacturing standards amid a standoff with workers’ unions – has a history of quality control issues dating back to 2001. At the time the company was sued by Teledyne Technologies for defective steel that caused “multiple crankshaft failures” in aircraft engines, with “over 90% of the crankshafts found to be flawed.”

Former Universal Stainless employees describe a toxic workplace culture with equipment dating back to the 1950s, pressure to prioritize production over quality, “racial discrimination and unsafe working conditions.” Universal is now facing lawsuits from multiple former employees, for racial and age discrimination, disregard for safety, and retaliation against whistleblowing employees.

Hunterbrook’s study also carried an illustrative graphic from Aperam, a European steel company that is set to acquire Universal Stainless, which showed the latter’s alloys making up the components Boeing commercial aircraft, engines and the V-280 Valor. In Boeing aircraft, it includes landing gear, actuator/hydraulic systems, hinges and actuators and fasteners.

In commercial aircraft engines, Universal’s alloys are present in the casings, shafts, bearings and blades. In the V-280 Valor, they are present in the drive shafts, gears, bearings and structural components.

A U.S. Air Force CV-22 Osprey assigned to the 20th Special Operations Squadron flies during a training exercise over the plains of New Mexico, Oct. 9, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gracelyn Hess)

‘Inclusions’ industry-wide problems or Universal Stainless-specific?

There are “varying” views over whether the defects were unique to Universal’s products. Hunterbook quoted a podcast by Aviation Week Network, where its senior editors said that “the raw material supplier for the pinion gear that ultimately shattered and failed in this case used a process that creates a higher incidence of this nonmetallic inclusions.” The podcast then continued saying “other suppliers that supply the same type of material use a totally different process where the rate of that incidence of…(non-metallic) inclusion…is much less.”

However, The Air Current called inclusions an “insidious problem that has not been fully solved in either military or civil aviation.” For instance, Bell has been working with several alloy producers over the years, but inclusions were found in products from multiple manufacturers.

Possibly, the inclusions at a broader level could be a general technological problem requiring greater internal research and development by metal fabrication and forging companies. But considering former Universal Stainless employee Ryan Smith’s statements to Hunterbrook, who cited “outmoded equipment” used by Universal Stainless, makes it hard to absolve the company.

Hunterbrook cites the 2014 case of British aerospace major Rolls Royce, which discovered a “large air pocket” in the center of a steel bar produced by Universal. Smith told Hunterbook: “We got this bar back and the ends were great, but the middle of the bar had this massive air pocket in it. I don’t understand how you miss that.” He added that somehow the bar had been passed through about “10 departments.”

In this context, Smith said that the steel is “refined by an outdated facility” at Dunkirk in New York, unlike its “state-of-the-art” and “sophisticated” plant at North Jackson, Ohio. Some equipment “dates back to the 1950s” or even “the World War era”. “You can’t even get parts for this stuff.” Smith added. During his time at Universal Stainless, meetings addressed manufacturing only “after a customer discovered a problem, rather than through internal quality control.”

The Aviationist · by Parth Satam · October 27, 2024

19. How Would the U.S. Handle a Nuclear Iran?

Excerpts:

What America would do about a nuclearizing Iran is a complicated matter. Very few people in the U.S. want another Middle East war. Yet without American help, it is possible that Israel’s only military option against the heavily fortified, regionally dispersed and deeply dug-in Iranian nuclear program would involve Israel’s use of nuclear weapons. Would Israel threaten the use of nuclear weapons against Iran as a last resort if Washington won’t help Israel block the program by conventional means? And would that threat, implicit or overt, be enough to overcome any reluctance in Washington to help Israel dismantle the nuclear sites using conventional weapons?

As I’ve written before, 2025 is going to be an interesting year.

How Would the U.S. Handle a Nuclear Iran?

Israel’s strikes expose the limits of Tehran’s ability to compete in conventional combat.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-would-the-us-handle-a-nuclear-iran-israel-strike-weapon-breakout-fbc13327?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

By Walter Russell Mead

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Oct. 28, 2024 5:10 pm ET

A billboard opposing Israel and the U.S. in Tehran, Oct. 28. Photo: abedin taherkenareh/Shutterstock

Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran, has had a bad week. Elon Musk’s X suspended his new Hebrew-language account, and the Israel Defense Forces unleashed a devastating series of air raids against his country’s military infrastructure. Given the disparity between Iran’s capabilities and Israel’s, the beleaguered ayatollah doesn’t have many good options for a counterstrike.

Israel’s prime minister, on the other hand, has had a good week. Benjamin Netanyahu pleased both his American and Gulf Arab allies by refraining from attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and oil refineries. But deterrence was restored. Israeli warplanes didn’t only cripple Iran’s air-defense systems and inflict painful blows on its missile-producing facilities. They also sent a message that Israel knows where Tehran’s strategic vulnerabilities are, and it can destroy them any time it wants.

After a tough year, Team Biden can breathe a sigh of relief. The American elections won’t take place against the backdrop of a global energy crisis or U.S. engagement in a Middle East war.

The strikes underlined a key point about the Middle East power balance that has been true since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Military forces that have access to American military technology and intelligence-gathering capabilities can wipe the floor with militaries that rely on Moscow. Russian military equipment has its uses, but American technology remains the gold standard in the world of defense—even more so for a country such as Israel that has significant intelligence and technological capabilities.

This fact has been the foundation for whatever peace and stability the Middle East has known since Henry Kissinger served as secretary of state. But military power can do only so much. Unless it is deployed in the service of an achievable political program, as Napoleon learned to his cost, even a series of victorious wars won’t win you peace.

Despite its spectacular headline achievements, Israel has a long way to go in this war. The fighting in Gaza has gone on much longer and has been far bloodier than Israel hoped, and Hezbollah is stubbornly resisting in the north. A long war in Lebanon won’t be good for Israel’s economy or its world image, and a future of endless counterterrorist operations in Gaza wouldn’t be ideal. Iran’s strategy of advancing its regional agenda by mobilizing proxies that threaten both Israel and the Gulf Arabs has been tested but not broken by the fighting so far.

As long as the Islamic Republic of Iran remains a serious and implacably anti-Israel contender for hegemony across the Middle East, Jerusalem must fight on the fronts and at the times of Iran’s choosing. Worse, Israel needs American help in any long war with Iran. That’s a big problem. Whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins next week’s presidential election, the U.S. in 2025 will likely be more interested in avoiding a war in the Middle East than helping Israel deal with the mullahs once and for all.

Israel’s ability to strike Iran and its allies essentially with impunity has weakened Iran’s allies, degraded its military strength, and damaged the regime’s prestige. There are two key questions now. Will Tehran turn to a nuclear breakout to compensate for the inferiority of its conventional weapons? If it does, will the fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon be enough to lead Washington to support Israel even at the risk of Washington’s engagement in another war?

The nuclear breakout option seems easier for Tehran to accomplish and more strategically compelling than ever before. Iran’s pursuit of initiatives from uranium enrichment to bomb design and missile production has brought Tehran to the brink of true nuclear capability. And Israel’s extraordinary strikes against Iran and its proxies demonstrate the limits of Iran’s ability to compete in the nonnuclear field.

What America would do about a nuclearizing Iran is a complicated matter. Very few people in the U.S. want another Middle East war. Yet without American help, it is possible that Israel’s only military option against the heavily fortified, regionally dispersed and deeply dug-in Iranian nuclear program would involve Israel’s use of nuclear weapons. Would Israel threaten the use of nuclear weapons against Iran as a last resort if Washington won’t help Israel block the program by conventional means? And would that threat, implicit or overt, be enough to overcome any reluctance in Washington to help Israel dismantle the nuclear sites using conventional weapons?

As I’ve written before, 2025 is going to be an interesting year.

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WSJ Opinion Docs: This 20 minute film sheds light on the worst antisemitic riot in American history, which occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991. The current wave of antisemitism makes these events newly relevant and worthy of reconsideration. Photo: John Roca/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the October 29, 2024, print edition as 'How Would the U.S. Handle a Nuclear Iran?'.

20. The Covert War for American Minds

Recognize, understand, expose, and ATTACK the enemies' strategies with a superior political warfare strategy.

(As an aside, why do these people always leave out north Korea?)

And I would be remiss in not beating the horse more dead by adding this from the 2017 NSS:

"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

Excerpts:

The United States should not just fend off foreign adversaries by publicly exposing their actions; it should go on the offensive. During the Cold War, the United States tried to win the hearts and minds of people under Soviet rule through music, modern art, and literature. It also launched channels and networks, such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, that helped reach behind the Iron Curtain and remind people there of the freedoms inherent in the American dream. To safeguard U.S. national security, Washington should again launch influence operations of its own. Just as its foes try to do, it should seek to exploit sensitive issues and overwhelm security apparatuses with a barrage of pervasive and relentless messaging. This will effectively force foreign intelligence and security services to use their resources to contend with pressures at home rather than conduct offensive operations against the United States.

China, Iran, and Russia have declared war on American democracy. They’re doing a good job of mounting their attacks while Washington has not done enough to defend the country’s information space. Without a credible deterrence policy, these enemies will keep seeking to undermine the United States. U.S. leaders can no longer allow foreign adversaries to eat away at the fabric of American constitutional democracy. The information war is here, whether they like it or not.

The Covert War for American Minds

How Russia, China, and Iran Seek to Spread Disinformation and Chaos in the United States

By David R. Shedd and Ivana Stradner

October 29, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by David R. Shedd and Ivana Stradner · October 29, 2024

In September 2024, the U.S. Justice Department charged two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, in connection with the transfer of $10 million to a Tennessee-based media startup. U.S. officials accused these individuals of money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents, but their case revealed a wider threat: the continued efforts of Russia and other U.S. adversaries to poison the information environment in the United States. Prior presidential election cycles in 2016 and 2020 saw similar attempts by Russia and other actors to introduce disinformation into the media diets of Americans. This year has been no different. With the unwitting involvement of notable right-wing influencers and commentators, the company in Tennessee produced and published English-language videos on social media platforms, such as TikTok and YouTube, that promoted views in line with Moscow’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions,” according to the Justice Department’s indictment.

Russian influence operations, as well as those advanced by China and Iran, pose a major threat to American democracy. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, foreign powers may not be trying to “attack the integrity of voting systems,” but they are using disinformation to “undermine trust in the integrity of the election and election processes, as well as to further exacerbate divisions among Americans.” Even though Russia’s election interference in 2016 attracted a great deal of public opprobrium in the United States, the Kremlin and other autocratic governments still seek to influence how Americans think and perceive the world.

The United States has reacted only tepidly to adversaries’ attempts to shape the hearts and minds of American voters. It cannot afford to be so timid. It needs to better align agencies and departments in dealing with the threat of foreign influence operations, and it must find ways to coordinate with social media companies and other private actors in curbing the disinformation that spreads on their platforms. It should stand up for the right to free speech at home while not allowing that right to be abused by malicious actors. And it should spread its own narratives in rival countries, giving authoritarian adversaries a dose of their own medicine.

IN THE CROSS HAIRS

With the meteoric growth of social media platforms in the past two decades, governments have found new channels through which they can spread their messages and undermine their opponents. Russia famously sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. According to a declassified 2017 U.S. intelligence report, Russian operatives tried to undermine both the Democrats and the Republicans by releasing information obtained through hacking and by flooding social media feeds with inflammatory content.

This year’s election is also in the Kremlin’s cross hairs. According to a July report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Russia is the “predominant threat to U.S. elections” and “is working to better hide its hand.” Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that by deepening polarization and fractiousness in the United States, he can erode American dominance and reestablish Russia as a global power. In pursuit of that goal, Russian operatives have spread incendiary messages on social media about hot-button issues in American politics, including abortion, the right to own guns, immigration, and U.S. support for Ukraine. Russian bot farms are using artificial intelligence to impersonate Americans and spread disinformation and incendiary opinions. The Kremlin has also launched smear campaigns about the presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, manipulated videos to denigrate her, and pushed narratives that cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections, such as a video that falsely shows a person tearing up ballots in Pennsylvania. Moscow’s barrage on American social media now also includes paid advertisements, fake profiles that promote AI-generated content, and links to websites that impersonate legitimate media to spread Russia-friendly narratives.

Putin wants to deepen polarization in the United States to erode American global dominance.

These efforts should come as no surprise. Russia has long conceived of information as a weapon. It believes that it is in an information war with the West and that, according to an essay published in the Russian Ministry of Defense’s journal Military Thought, “in the ongoing revolution in information technologies, information and psychological warfare will largely lay the groundwork for victory.” Russian military strategists want to use “massive psychological manipulation of the population to destabilize the state and society” of their adversaries.

Russia is far from alone in using such methods to spread confusion and division in the United States. U.S. intelligence officials have warned that Iran has attempted to influence U.S. elections. Tehran, like Moscow, seeks to foment unrest among Americans, with the larger aim of undermining American global hegemony. Whereas Russia prefers Trump, Iran prefers Harris, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Earlier this year, Iranian hackers allegedly managed to steal and then leak files from the Trump campaign to U.S. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and media outlets (none of which have published the information). According to Microsoft, an Iranian hacking group has also spread messages on social media in support of boycotting the U.S. presidential election as a form of protest against the war in Gaza.

In February, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also warned that China has stepped up its online information operations, aiming to “sow doubts about U.S. leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing’s influence.” Through social media, Chinese actors have focused on down-ballot races, attempting to attack Republicans who are generally more critical of China. Another particularly prolific Chinese influence operation known as Spamouflage has used concocted American users on social media to sow dissatisfaction with the presidential election overall. These users have criticized both candidates and posted on contentious topics such as reproductive rights and U.S. support for Israel.

SOWING CHAOS

What may just seem like a hodgepodge of posts on social media actually has tremendous power. The goal of influence operations is to engineer a shift in enemy decision-making by shaping the views of the citizenry. It is difficult to measure the full effects of influence operations while they are underway, or even after they end. These activities are long term by nature, with the intent of seeding chaos, discontent, and suspicion within a target population over an extended period. No single message can swing an election in favor of one presidential candidate or another. Rather, it is the cumulative effect of influence operations that yields results in shifting people’s views on a particular issue or person. Washington should understand that information operations are a form of protracted conflict between adversaries, in which combatants can in swift succession experience both success and failure.

Since 2016, the United States has taken some significant steps to protect the U.S. information space. For instance, U.S. Cyber Command has targeted Russian trolls and hackers to stop them from threatening U.S. elections. U.S. intelligence officials have continually exposed foreign influence operations in recent years and the U.S. government has sanctioned individuals and media outlets involved in malign activities. These measures may be steps in the right direction, but they are not enough.

The U.S. government’s response to foreign influence operations is often disjointed and insufficiently agile. Washington views these activities as principally a matter to be dealt with by law enforcement agencies. In truth, this attack on the public life of the country requires a much more comprehensive and decisive response from the administration.

As a first step, government bureaucracies can better coordinate to counter foreign influence operations. The National Security Council needs to design a whole-of-government action plan to expose election interference by U.S. adversaries and outline specific countermeasures. The national security adviser should designate an executive committee of representatives from key U.S. departments and agencies to oversee a government-wide task force on the matter. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security should require that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a body under DHS purview, review and declassify material about information warfare as it is being conducted by U.S. adversaries. The declassified information would be shared with the appropriate U.S. state and local officials. In addition, the president should issue an executive order instructing all departments and agencies to establish internal task forces to identify potential foreign malicious information campaigns aimed at undermining their work. The office in the Department of Defense that focuses on what the military calls “perception management,” its efforts to combat disinformation, should also be given additional resources and powers.

Watching the entrepreneur Elon Musk interview Trump, New York City, August 2024

Adam Gray / Reuters

But the government will not be able to rein in foreign disinformation on its own; it will need to establish a joint working group composed of top-level government and social media platform leaders. The group should identify how social media platforms with global reach can help counter information operations that undermine democratic institutions, beginning with U.S. national elections. The U.S. government needs to expose how its adversaries leverage free speech in the United States to promote disinformation aimed at undermining American democracy. This is not the kind of political coordination that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the executive branch used its power to press social media companies such as Meta to stifle questions about the origins of the virus. Instead, this is about persuading U.S. technology companies to join the battle against known adversaries.

One of the greatest challenges in fighting an information war has been, and will remain, the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to free speech. Although it allows American citizens to express themselves freely, it also makes American democracy vulnerable to the machinations of autocracies and other bad actors. After the Justice Department charged the two RT employees in September, Moscow disingenuously accused the United States of declaring a “war on freedom of speech.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry likewise blamed the United States for suppressing free speech by trying to ban the popular Chinese social media app TikTok. At home, too, the U.S. government faces pressure that might make it harder to combat the spread of destabilizing narratives by autocracies. The Global Engagement Center, an agency within the U.S. State Department, is tasked with fighting foreign influence operations. Its congressional authorization is set to expire in December. Republican lawmakers have accused the center of surveilling and censoring Americans. At a time when foreign actors are engaged in a very real information war against the United States, Congress should pass a new authorization and extend the center’s mandate. Washington should not suppress domestic free speech, but it is essential to sanction and ban those malign foreign actors who use information as a weapon to undermine the United States. Both Democrats and Republicans should resist growing polarization and division and treat election interference as a bipartisan issue.

The United States should not just fend off foreign adversaries by publicly exposing their actions; it should go on the offensive. During the Cold War, the United States tried to win the hearts and minds of people under Soviet rule through music, modern art, and literature. It also launched channels and networks, such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, that helped reach behind the Iron Curtain and remind people there of the freedoms inherent in the American dream. To safeguard U.S. national security, Washington should again launch influence operations of its own. Just as its foes try to do, it should seek to exploit sensitive issues and overwhelm security apparatuses with a barrage of pervasive and relentless messaging. This will effectively force foreign intelligence and security services to use their resources to contend with pressures at home rather than conduct offensive operations against the United States.

China, Iran, and Russia have declared war on American democracy. They’re doing a good job of mounting their attacks while Washington has not done enough to defend the country’s information space. Without a credible deterrence policy, these enemies will keep seeking to undermine the United States. U.S. leaders can no longer allow foreign adversaries to eat away at the fabric of American constitutional democracy. The information war is here, whether they like it or not.

• DAVID R. SHEDD is former Acting Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the author of a forthcoming book about Chinese industrial espionage in the United States.
• IVANA STRADNER is a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foreign Affairs · by David R. Shedd and Ivana Stradner · October 29, 2024

21. CIA director floated 28-day Gaza ceasefire, hostage deal in Doha

CIA director floated 28-day Gaza ceasefire, hostage deal in Doha

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/29/gaza-ceasefire-hostage-talks-doha

• Barak Ravid

CIA Director Bill Burns. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty

CIA Director Bill Burns discussed a new formulation for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal in a meeting on Sunday with Israeli and Qatari counterparts: a 28-day pause in the fighting, with Hamas releasing around 8 hostages and Israel releasing dozens of Palestinian prisoners, according to three Israeli officials.

Why it matters: A partial deal could break a two-month deadlock in the ceasefire talks, jump-start negotiations for a more comprehensive agreement, improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza and free some of the hostages held in Gaza.

Reality check: A breakthrough is unlikely before the presidential election, and both Israel and Hamas will likely adjust their positions based on the results.

• The plan also does not address Hamas' key demand that any deal involve an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war.
• But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that he would only agree to a partial deal, not to an end to the war. Those two positions are irreconcilable.
• "Israel agrees to a temporary pause, but Hamas wants a pause that would open a process that would lead to irreversible Israeli steps. If neither sides softens its position there isn't going to be a deal," a senior Israeli official tells Axios.

Driving the news: Burns met Sunday in Doha with Qatari Prime Minister Qatar Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Mossad director David Barnea.

• Several hours before the talks began, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi confirmed publicly that Egypt had proposed a partial deal involving a 12-day ceasefire and the release of four hostages.
• Burns, al-Thani, and Barnea had already been developing the idea of a partial deal, and discussed ways to build on the Egyptian idea during their meeting on Sunday, the Israeli officials say.

Zoom in: The plan includes a four-week pause in fighting in Gaza, the release of roughly 8 women of all ages or men over the age of 50 that are held by Hamas, and the release of several dozen Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

• The Israeli prime minister's office said in a statement that the sides discussed "a new unified framework that integrates previous proposals and also takes into account the main issues and recent developments in the region."

Between the lines: U.S. officials hoped the killing by Israel of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar — a key Israeli war aim — would make Israel more willing to move toward ending the war.

• Israeli officials, meanwhile, hoped it would improve the chances of Hamas agreeing to a smaller-scale deal — though they remain skeptical.

What to watch: Qatari and Egyptian mediators are expected to meet with Hamas officials in the coming days to discuss the new plan and the path forward.

• Burns is expected to travel to Cairo later this week to discuss the issue with Egypt's new intelligence chief, Hassan Rashad, a source with knowledge of the issue said.

Go deeper: U.S. "deeply concerned" new Israeli laws will worsen Gaza crisis

22. To focus on China, US needs to wean off Europe and Middle East missions

How many times have we heard this? So we need to be "America: A One Trick Pony?"

One problem with this argument is that China is operating directly and indirectly in regions around the world outside of INDOPACOM. Should our strategy be geographically (and single threat) focused)?

Excerpts:

To ease the logistical burden of surging American forces into the region during a crisis, the US should expand its efforts to preposition and stockpile American military hardware in the region. And the US must continue to encourage its allies and partners in the region to invest in their own defense capabilities in ways that complement American advantages in the region. Interoperability and familiarity are foundational to this approach and a key objective of the US military’s approach to peacetime campaigning in the region.

Finally, the United States must ensure that the trilateral AUKUS agreement proceeds on schedule. This landmark agreement serves as a bedrock for future security in the region and a framework for expanded cooperation with other key Indo-Pacific allies and partners.

President Xi has chosen to support his partners in the “Axis of Upheaval” in large part to sow the decline of the American-led international order — with the goal of making sure the US is stretched thinly if China decides to make moves in the Indo-Pacific. If the United States cannot rebalance its military focus toward the Indo-Pacific it risks expediting Chinese aggression in the region and furthering the decline of the US-led economic and political order worldwide.

Yes, a relative withdrawal from Europe and the Middle East is difficult to swallow and carries its own risks. But if China is the biggest threat to American interests, then it has to remain the biggest focus of America’s capabilities — even if it comes with accepting risk elsewhere.

To focus on China, US needs to wean off Europe and Middle East missions - Breaking Defense

In this op-ed, Carlton Haelig of CNAS argues the US needs to shift its priorities away from Europe and the Middle East in order to better focus on the threat of China.

breakingdefense.com · by Carlton Haelig · October 28, 2024

A Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1B interceptor missile is launched from the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70) during a Missile Defense Agency and U.S. Navy test in the mid-Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo/Released)

Earlier this month, Gen. Charles Flynn, the head of US Army Pacific, appeared at the Center for a New American Security with a clear warning: China’s build-up in land, air, and naval power has put it on an “accelerated path” toward military superiority in the region.

Concerns about China’s military capabilities are par for the course in national security circles these days, but Flynn’s direct comments serve as a good reminder that the PLA’s growth is not something just happening in hypothetical papers, but something the US military is seeing in real time.

The problem is that for all the talk about how China is the “pacing challenge” and needs to be the main focus for Washington, the US is overstretched at this most critical juncture. The uncomfortable reality: To be able to focus on China, American commitments need to change abroad.

A quick survey of America’s missions abroad sums the situation up.

In the Middle East, the US Navy has steadily chipped away at its already limited inventory of missiles intended to protect its ships in a war with China. In May 2024, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro reported that the US launched more than $1 billion in missiles during operations against the Houthis, consisting of nearly 100 SM-2 and SM-6 surface-to-air missiles. In October 2024, US Navy destroyers fired roughly one dozen of the Navy’s advanced SM-3 surface-to-air missiles in one night, intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles targeting Israel — and expending an entire year’s worth of production for the Navy’s top-flight missile defense interceptor. For years, experts have warned that the US Navy was not acquiring the missiles it needed to defend itself in the Indo-Pacific fast enough and now it is using them up at an alarming rate in a secondary theater.

In Europe, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has captured America’s attention for nearly three years, drawing the focus away from China at a crucial time. American military deployments to Europe continue to grow as Russian actions in Ukraine distract from China’s efforts to displace the United States as the guarantor of the prevailing international order. With the United States focused on the conflict in Ukraine, China has been emboldened to challenge American interests in the Indo-Pacific, raising questions about whether US support for Ukraine detracts from support for Taiwan and, more broadly, American efforts to secure a free and open Indo-Pacific.

If the United States remains overstretched, it will only further the ambitions of the so-called “Axis of Upheaval”— the term my colleagues at CNAS have assigned to the loose coalition of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea intent on disrupting the American-led international order that has ensured economic, political, and security stability since the Second World War.

The situation, however, is not hopeless. There are several options available to prevent that outcome, if political leadership in Washington is willing to make hard choices.

In Europe, American military power and its extended nuclear deterrent must remain the bedrock of European security, but the US should continue pressing its NATO allies to invest in collective defense. All NATO members should meet — and ideally exceed — the 2 percent spending target set by the alliance. Russia’s invasion prompted long-time NATO partners Sweden and Finland to formally join the alliance and spurred significant investment in military modernization and planning in Poland, and critically, among the Baltic states along NATO’s vulnerable northeastern flank.

The US should push NATO to capitalize on these developments by expanding its Enhanced Forward Presence mission, ensuring that it can support frontline NATO battlegroups with the necessary reinforcements during a crisis, and continuing to support defense innovation in key areas among its member states. That would allow the US to draw down its presence in Europe, freeing up assets for use in the Pacific — the kind of movement that was underway before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In the Middle East, the US should reduce its commitment of high-end capabilities within the region and redeploy them to the Indo-Pacific region. The rapid expenditure of advanced munitions in the region is unsustainable. The US should take the lead in organizing a multinational coalition of allies and partners to protect commercial shipping, allowing American military forces to take on a reduced role in the interception of Houthi missiles. This effort could model the success of the EU-led counterpiracy taskforces that operated off the Horn of Africa for many years.

That must go hand in hand with the US pressing Israel to reach a solution to the crisis in the Middle East that allows the Pentagon to reduce its force posture in the region. The diversion of thousands of US servicemembers and critical missile and air defense capabilities to the region detracts from the ability to place those forces in the Indo-Pacific where they may be needed on short notice in a crisis with China.

In addition to doubling-down on its own posture in the region, the US must prioritize the capacity of partners and allies in the Indo-Pacific to support US operations during peacetime competition and wartime engagement. To do so, the US must increase the production rate of the critical munitions it expects to rely on in great number during a conflict with China; while US production lines are hitting maximum output, encouraging investment from allies and partners in their own domestic production, as Australia is currently doing, can help make up shortfalls.

To ease the logistical burden of surging American forces into the region during a crisis, the US should expand its efforts to preposition and stockpile American military hardware in the region. And the US must continue to encourage its allies and partners in the region to invest in their own defense capabilities in ways that complement American advantages in the region. Interoperability and familiarity are foundational to this approach and a key objective of the US military’s approach to peacetime campaigning in the region.

Finally, the United States must ensure that the trilateral AUKUS agreement proceeds on schedule. This landmark agreement serves as a bedrock for future security in the region and a framework for expanded cooperation with other key Indo-Pacific allies and partners.

President Xi has chosen to support his partners in the “Axis of Upheaval” in large part to sow the decline of the American-led international order — with the goal of making sure the US is stretched thinly if China decides to make moves in the Indo-Pacific. If the United States cannot rebalance its military focus toward the Indo-Pacific it risks expediting Chinese aggression in the region and furthering the decline of the US-led economic and political order worldwide.

Yes, a relative withdrawal from Europe and the Middle East is difficult to swallow and carries its own risks. But if China is the biggest threat to American interests, then it has to remain the biggest focus of America’s capabilities — even if it comes with accepting risk elsewhere.

Dr. Carlton Haelig is a Fellow with the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security where he focuses on defense strategy, force planning, and innovation.

breakingdefense.com · by Carlton Haelig · October 28, 2024

23. Attrition’s Apostle? Reading Vegetius in an Age of Protracted Warfare

A long read for today but may be of interest. I struggled with Vegetius when I was a young Lieutenant but after reading this essay I may re-engage with him.

Excerpts:

For all his steely optimism, Vegetius was ultimately to prove unsuccessful in his mission to reform Rome’s legions, restore its sinking sense of purpose, and revive its moribund empire. Indeed, little could he have known that he would be more heeded by generations of his successors — from armor-clad crusaders to brocade-festooned Napoleonic generals — than by his embattled contemporaries. Today his writings have sadly fallen into abeyance — and yet, as we have seen, so much in our troubled present seems to call for a general rediscovery of his work.

Consider, for example, the brutal war in Ukraine, which has now raged for close to three years and has already gone through several distinct phases that Vegetius, as an able anatomist of protracted warfare, would have immediately recognized. It is a war that has begun, as one excellent recent study notes, to “align with historic patterns of large-scale conventional wars,” cycling through “prolonged periods of positional fighting, offensives and counteroffensives, sieges in urban terrain, phases dominated by high levels of attrition, and operations to break through a prepared defense.” The rancorous discussions over when to time said counteroffensives, whether to open new fronts (either in the Kursk Oblast or occupied Crimea), when to hoard and when to expend finite artillery shells, when to advance and when to stage a fighting retreat — these are all kairotic questions at the heart of De Re Militari. Ukraine’s tortuous internal debates over the extent and duration of mobilization and frontline service are reminiscent of Vegetius’ commentary on the challenges of balancing effective training and accelerated, large-scale recruitment in long wars. And, once again, we are reminded of the priority to be attached to morale preservation in conflicts where the passage of time can have an erosive quality in and of itself. Meanwhile, the Vegetian emphasis on logistics, lines of communication, stockpiling, and reconnaissance appears equally — indeed almost eerily — relevant to contemporary debates over U.S. military resilience and readiness in the Indo-Pacific theater. Perhaps, then, it is time to resurrect De Re Militari from the dusty intellectual catacombs to which it has been relegated, and bring its author’s world-weary wisdom back into the light.

At one point in the midst of his treatise, Vegetius suddenly breaks the fourth wall, admonishing his readers for their presentism and lack of interest in military history:

Are we afraid of not being able to learn from others? … At present all this to be found in books only, although formerly constantly practiced. Inquiries are now no longer made about customs that have been so long neglected, because in times of peace, war is looked upon as an object too distant to merit consideration. … In former ages, the art of war, so often neglected and then forgotten, was as often recovered from books and reestablished by the authority and attention of our generals.

He may have been scolding his complacent fellow Romans but, in truth, he could just as easily have been addressing us.

Attrition’s Apostle? Reading Vegetius in an Age of Protracted Warfare - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Iskander Rehman · October 29, 2024

Editor’s Note: This is part of a running series of essays by Iskander Rehman, entitled “Applied History,” which seeks, through the study of the history of strategy and military operations, to better illuminate contemporary defense challenges.

Wild nations are pressing upon the Roman Empire and howling about it everywhere, and treacherous barbarians, shielded by geography, are assailing every frontier. For usually the aforesaid nations are either covered by forests, occupy commanding mountain positions, or are defended by snow and ice, while some are nomadic and are protected by deserts and the burning sun. Others are defended by marshes and rivers and cannot easily be tracked down; yet they tear at our peace and quiet with their unexpected forays.

– De Rebus Bellicis, author anonymous, mid-4th century AD

On a scorching summer day in 378 AD, Rome’s Eastern Army — a formidable force composed of tens of thousands of cavalry, legionnaires, and auxiliaries — moved to crush a rebellion of Gothic refugees near Adrianople, in present-day Turkey. Led by Fritigern, a canny Visigothic chieftain and erstwhile ally of Rome, the fierce Germanic tribesmen had been granted resettlement on Roman territory after fleeing across the Danube. As often in this age of upheaval and mass migration, the patchwork coalition of marauding Goths had themselves been displaced by an even more fearsome foe, the Huns, “a race of men, hitherto unknown” to the Romans who had, in the words of one startled contemporary, “suddenly descended like a whirlwind from the lofty mountains, as if they had risen from some secret recess of the earth, ravaging and destroying everything which came in their way.” Disarmed and hideously abused by the Roman frontier units charged with their relocation, the Goths ultimately found themselves reduced to selling their own children into slavery in exchange for rancid dogmeat. Months of such inhumane treatment had eventually sparked widespread revolt, with Fritigern rapidly rallying thousands of fellow tribesmen to his banner. Already struggling to extinguish a series of bushfire revolts and incursions all across the “hewn edges” of its sprawling but increasingly battered empire, Rome painstakingly mobilized a large field army, with the aim of eradicating the Gothic threat once and for all. Led by the Emperor Valens himself, the Romans had good reason to believe they would prevail: They were seemingly numerically superior and far better equipped than the disparate grouping of barbarians encamped within their rustic wagon circle.

Instead, for a concatenation of reasons — ranging from poor intelligence analysis to heat exhaustion to Rome’s signal underestimation of Fritigern’s generalship — the day ended in disaster, with Valens losing his life along with close to two thirds of his army under dust-choked skies, on a sweltering plain “covered with corpses” and filled with “the groans of the dying.” As night crept over the charnel ground, it almost seemed, lamented the Greek court orator Themistius, that “an entire army had vanished like a shadow.” Both the 4th-century soldier Ammianus Marcellinus and the great 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon would compare the slaughter at Adrianople to that several centuries earlier at Cannae, during the darkest days of the Second Punic War, with Gibbon observing that:

A great number of brave and distinguished officers perished in the battle of Adrianople, which equaled in the actual loss, and far surpassed in the fatal consequences the misfortune which Rome had formerly sustained at Cannae.

Whether this is a characteristically Gibbonian overstatement remains a matter for debate. What is not, however, is the simple fact that a century after the carnage of Cannae, a resuscitated Rome was nearing the apex of its ascendant trajectory, whereas 100 years after the grim slaughter at Adrianople, the Western Roman Empire had dissolved into a congeries of barbarian kingdoms and statelets. It was in the midst of this troubled era — this damnatum saeculum of disorder and dislocation — that one of history’s most influential strategic texts was written: Publius Vegetius Renatus’ Epitoma Rei Militaris, now more commonly known as De Re Militari, which literally translates as “Of Military Affairs.” It is a text that demands to be rediscovered, given its textual richness and immediate relevance to our age of instability and protracted warfare. Indeed, many will be familiar with one of Vegetius’ most famous dictums, “He who desires peace, let him prepare for war,” which — like Sun Tzu’s maxim in The Art of War “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill” — has acquired almost a bumper sticker quality in the field of strategic studies. Beyond that, however, there is a glaring absence of Vegetius in most curriculums — an unfortunate form of historical amnesia in need of remedy.

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There remains a good deal of uncertainty over Vegetius’ exact identity. It would appear that he was a government official of some rank, but it remains unclear which office he held. It is also uncertain whether he had frontline military experience, or whether his granular knowledge of operational issues stemmed from a more administrative set of responsibilities. With his encyclopedic knowledge of earlier Roman writers, Vegetius was clearly well versed in the classical tradition, and eager to show it. Indeed, De Re Militari purportedly began its life as a memorandum of proposals on military reforms for the emperor, before being expanded into its later form. Which emperor that was — and when exactly the full version of the treatise was compiled — has been a topic of much academic debate and antiquarian quibbling over the millennia. What we do know is that the text was written sometime between 380 and 450 AD, and most likely before the sack of Rome by the Visigothic ruler Alaric in 410 AD, as this system-shattering event is never mentioned. Curiously, Adrianople is never overtly referenced either, perhaps due to its continued political sensitivity, although there are number of damning allusions and transparent innuendos sprinkled throughout the text on the kind of failures — in tactics, intelligence, and training — that had contributed to the disaster. As one historian notes, years after its occurrence, Adrianople evidently continued to gnaw at the Roman psyche, and:

in the tactical arena, he (Vegetius) often counsels how to avoid errors that correspond to those made at Adrianople: always know the strength of enemy forces — Valens grossly underestimated; avoid employing untrained recruits — Valens enlisted new men shortly before the battle; avoid engaging in open battle when raids are possible — Valens rejected similar advice; avoid marching troops too far to battle and fighting in unfavorable conditions — Valens did both in August 378.

Most famously, Vegetius urged Rome to revert to an earlier force design, with a greater focus on well-drilled heavy infantry, and to revamp its recruitment practices, with a prioritization of native citizens over foreign troops and allies. (In this, as well as on a myriad of other issues, he would greatly inspire early modern authors such as Machiavelli). Much like his near-contemporary St. Augustine, Vegetius was preoccupied with the idea of civilizational decay and the concurrent need for moral renewal. Written in an era of perpetual conflict and internecine strife, De Re Militari is not so much a manual for heady expansion as a conservative blueprint for imperial stability and territorial preservation.

If De Re Militari was simply an atavistic plea for military reform by a querulous bureaucrat, however, it would hold little interest for anyone beyond the shrinking groves of late Romanist academia. Instead, there is a reason why generations of military professionals, from the Middle Ages to the Napoleonic Age, and from John of Salisbury to Frederick the Great, held Vegetius’ intellectualized approach to warfare in deep reverence. Indeed, as one classicist pointedly asks, what other book on military affairs was as prized in the Age of Enlightenment as De Re Militari had been by the Venerable Bede? In many ways, Vegetius would prove as influential in the domain of military strategy as St. Augustine in the fields of philosophy and theology. It can be argued that his writings are no less pertinent today, especially in light of the war in Ukraine and the revival of great-power competition. This is for three main reasons.

First, Vegetius can help us think in terms of campaigns rather than individual battles, while reminding us of the importance of planning and intelligence as a means of preemptively shaping the battlefield. Second, he provides a sophisticated understanding of the close articulation between strategies of attrition and annihilation, at a time when both forms of warfare are all too often viewed in artificially dichotomous terms. And last but not least, he places a welcome emphasis on the fundamental importance of discipline, training, and morale when waging a protracted war.

Shaping the Battlespace and Preparing for Protraction

For much of Vegetius’ life, the Roman Empire was under severe and continuous pressure — both from without and within. Within, the empire was subject to increasingly debilitating fissiparous pressures as the imperial succession gradually devolved from what had once been a relatively orderly process into competing, and increasingly chaotic, forms of warlordism. Meanwhile, across the fortified belt of fortlets and watchtowers that separated the Roman world from the thick forests, craggy peaks, and rushing rivers of the barbaricum, Rome’s beleaguered garrisons struggled to fend off bands of whooping raiders and winding wagon trains of desperate migrants. When facing especially dire circumstances, these frontier forces, or limitanei, could call for assistance, with the hope that one of Rome’s mobile field armies, the comitatenses, would eventually come to their aid. In many cases, however, these expeditionary forces could take months to mobilize the requisite manpower and materiel and then arrive in theater. The ability for Rome’s often outnumbered and isolated forward-deployed forces to both husband scant resources and deny or delay enemy action was thus critical.

And indeed the importance of time — as a resource to be managed and a currency to be spent — is central to the Vegetian approach to strategy. So is the necessity to engage in proper planning and to think iteratively in terms of campaigns rather than individual engagements. As the medievalist Christopher Allmand rightly notes, if one idea dominates much of Vegetius’ work, it is “forethought,” i.e. “the military virtue of anticipation.” Thus, notes Allmand:

the successful commander looks further ahead than does the enemy: he foresees difficulties of all kinds, and he leads a well-disciplined and versatile army, prepared by its training for every eventuality, to gain both a moral and practical advantage over the enemy. Above all, the successful leader is ever-ready to seize any opportunity to harry, hinder, discomfort, or wrong-foot the enemy, thereby dissuading him from seeking a major encounter which can, as Vegetius admits, go wrong.

The risks of overly focusing on the concept of decisive battle is indeed a leitmotif of Vegetius’ work — and for several reasons.

First, in a world of finite military resources, large set-piece battles were high-risk endeavors, subject to the cruel whims of “fortuna” and rife with all manner of potential hazards. Vegetius fully recognized the heroic allure of climactic engagements, even anticipating his readers’ frustration when he advocates for a more cautious and methodical approach to campaigning:

Readers of this military treatise will perhaps be impatient for instructions relative to general engagements. But they should consider that a battle is commonly decided in two or three hours, after which no further hopes are left for a worsted army. Every plan, therefore, is to be considered, every expedient tried and every method taken before matters are brought to this last extremity. Good officers decline general engagements where the danger is common, and prefer the employment of stratagem and finesse to destroy the enemy as much as possible in detail and intimidate them without exposing our own forces.

At a later point in the treatise, Vegetius belabors this point even further, noting that any large-scale general engagement was a “conjuncture full of uncertainty” and potentially “fatal to kingdoms and nations, for in the decision of a pitched battle consists the fullness of victory.”

Second, a strategy of delay and protraction could, in some instances, play to Roman armies’ inbuilt advantages in terms of logistics and long-term mobilization. With the exception of its sole peer competitor, Sasanian Persia, Rome’s barbarian foes largely consisted of temporarily raised levies of farmers or herders, with usually only a small core of professionalized standing forces. Therefore, Vegetius coldly observes, it was often to Rome’s advantage to play a waiting game, with the hope that its adversaries, suffering from moral exhaustion and growing socio-economic pressures, would eventually collapse of their own accord:

The enemy sometimes operate under the expectation that their expedition will soon be over; and if it ends up lasting longer (than expected), their troops are either consumed by want and lack of supplies, desperate to return home to be with their families, or, having achieved nothing of note in the field, end up dispersing from despair of success. Many of them, exhausted and discouraged, will desert, whereas others will either switch allegiance or surrender. … And thus, in such cases an army which was numerous at the beginning of hostilities gradually dwindles away into nothing.

And finally, an inordinate focus on climactic, set-piece battles could cloud a commander’s judgment, preventing him from thinking creatively and iteratively about future contingencies. Much like Carl von Clausewitz, Vegetius sought to continuously remind his readers of the fundamentally interactive nature of conflict. A full millennium and a half before the Prussian military theorist described war as “a continuous interaction of opposites” and “the shock of two hostile bodies in collision,” Vegetius had laconically observed that:

It is the nature of war that what is beneficial to you is detrimental to the enemy and what is of service to him always hurts you. Its therefore a maxim never to do, or to omit doing, anything as a consequence of his actions, but to consult invariably your own interest only. And you depart from this interest, whenever you imitate such measures as he pursues for his benefit. For the same reason it would be wrong for him to follow such steps as you take for your advantage.

Thus, if one’s adversary was hankering for frontal collision and for a prompt, high-intensity engagement, they might have good reason to do so, and it might therefore make sense to adopt a strategy of exhaustion and battle avoidance — and vice versa. More broadly, the sound execution of strategy, De Re Militari repeatedly suggests, demands a certain inherent plasticity of mind, most notably the ability to think across multiple time horizons and well beyond the first clash of arms. To give one contemporary analogy, in the world of finance analysts distinguish between forecasting, which is employed for near-term predictions, and projections, which estimate financial results further into the future. Military strategy, Vegetius reminds us, is no different. Thus, he notes, “even the most unskillful” military commanders consider the terrain and meteorological conditions when arranging their troops for battle. How many, though, are prudent enough to “extend their views beyond the present” and “to take such measures as to not be incommoded over the course of the day by shifting aspects of the sun or by contrary winds which often rise at a certain hour and might be detrimental to (their action)”? This practical exemplum could easily serve as an illustrative metaphor for the entire book, which constantly warns us that — much like an initially translucent sky on a blustery fall afternoon — military fortunes can suddenly and unexpectedly darken over the course of an extended campaign.

How then, could the aspiring Roman officer best plan for the fog and friction of war, all while learning how to better connect short-lived individual military actions to more drawn-out campaign strategies? Through regular training, sound logistical planning, and exquisite intelligence work, posits Vegetius — in essence what we might today describe as “shaping” the operational environment. Much as contemporary defense planners fret about the state of missile inventories and fuel depots in the Indo-Pacific theater, Vegetius repeatedly prods his fellow Roman officials to rigorously account for forage, munitions, and materiel stockpiles and to ensure that they are well prepositioned in theater, for “when provisions begin to fail, parsimony is ill-timed and comes too late.”

Roman intelligence agents should be “constantly abroad” “tampering with their (the enemy’s) troops and encouraging deserters.” By these means, the Roman official notes, Rome could be fed a steady stream of “intelligence on their present and future designs” and “get to know thoroughly” the operational “habits of the enemy.” Once this carefully curated intelligence had arrived on the general’s desk, he was able to engage in the next step of the planning process. Importantly, this should never be done alone, but always in close consultation with his military staff over the exact nature of the threat and which direction to pursue. What should follow, Vegetius argues, sounds not too dissimilar to a contemporary net assessment, a clinical, dispassionate process he compares at one point to that of a “civil magistrate weighing between two parties.” Thus, he notes:

It is the duty and the interest of the general to frequently assemble the most prudent and experienced officers of the different corps of the army and consult with them on the state both of his own and the enemy’s forces. All overconfidence, as most pernicious in its consequences, must be banished from the deliberations. He must examine which has the superiority in numbers, whether his or the adversary’s troops are best armed, which are in the best condition, best disciplined and most resolute in emergencies.

In addition to engaging in a detailed survey of the local geography, climate, and terrain, one of the most important additional evaluations was that of the enemy’s resource base and ability to sustain a continuous tempo of high-intensity operations. For, adds the Roman official, “plenty and scarcity in either army are considerations of no small importance” and “famine, according to the common proverb, is an internal enemy that makes more havoc than the sword.”

Only then, once a clear picture of the enemy’s military strength and resiliency had been drawn, was it time to take the final, most fateful decision — i.e., to “determine whether it is most proper to temporize or to bring the affair to a speedy decision by action.” And it is here, when he fully grapples with this perennial intellectual challenge in times of protracted war — dissecting the tight interrelationship and complex sequencing between strategies of attrition and annihilation — that Vegetius can no doubt prove the most useful to contemporary defense planners.

Between Attrition and Annihilation

For decades, there has been a noted tendency among Western defense analysts and military professionals to clearly distinguish between strategies of attrition and annihilation, with many establishing something of an artificial dichotomy between the two. Famously, in the 1970s, the military historian Russell Weigley argued in his classic The American Way of War that the United States had become overly wedded, due to its “wealth and adoption of unlimited aims in war,” to strategies of annihilation, i.e., what he and others portrayed as heavily maneuverist strategies that sought, first and foremost, to rapidly overthrow or dislocate the adversary. And while Weigley personally regretted this excessive focus on annihilation, many others deemed it preferable to attrition, or strategies of exhaustion, which were often perceived as “unheroic”, “dehumanized” forms of warfare born principally out of moral or material weakness. And indeed, from its semantic beginnings in Catholic doctrine (which characterizes “attrition” as an insincere, and therefore imperfect, form of contrition), the term has come draped with negative interpretations. Stemming from the Latin atterere, meaning to “rub against” or “grind down,” attritional warfare became associated in the popular imagination with the dank trenches and mass bloodletting of World War I and thus, notes the historian Hew Strachan, became endowed with connotations of needless “slaughter and waste,” even though, of course, this would be a hugely simplistic reading of the strategies pursued by the conflict’s warring parties.

Part of the problem, no doubt, lies in the definitional slipperiness of the term. Is attrition a “destruction-centered” approach, as some have argued, or is it one that places more of an emphasis on Fabian strategies of battle avoidance and harassment? Is it solely material, or can it also be virtual, i.e., by employing clever tactics that cause the adversary to redirect its forces or, more broadly, “adjust its behavior in ways that decrease the quality, amount, of rate of combat power brought to bear”? Finally, does it seek, first and foremost, to take aim at an enemy’s military capacity, industrial resiliency, will to fight, or at all of the above? Perhaps one of the most succinct and workable definitions is provided by Antulio Echevarria, who remarks that:

Attrition is perhaps the most straightforward of military strategies. In its simplest form it means destroying an opponent’s forces faster than they can be replaced, while at the same time ensuring one’s own rate of loss remains bearable.

Beyond its deceptive simplicity, however, Vegetius provides us with a salutary reminder of attrition’s manifold varieties beyond simple kinetic destruction. His heavy emphasis on slow-burning strategies of starvation — with his famous adage that “to distress the enemy more by famine than the sword is a mark of consummate skill” — might have, until relatively recently, seemed outdated to 21st-century defense analysts. Since the war-induced famine in Tigray, however, or the horrific siege of Mariupol in 2022, when Russian forces ruthlessly and systematically targeted the Ukrainian defenders’ energy, water, and food distribution points, the late Roman official’s observations no longer seem quite so quaint. Vegetius also places much emphasis on the use of climate, terrain, and deception as a means of whittling away at enemy troops and morale, always with the hope of fomenting lasting disillusion and fatal discord, for “no nation, though ever so weak in it itself can be completely ruined by its enemies unless its fall be facilitated by its own distraction.” Once again, he emphasizes the importance of robust reconnaissance work, urging Roman officers to time their “ambuscades” when the enemy is fatigued after a long march or “taking their refreshments or sleeping, or at a time when they suspect no dangers and are dispersed, unarmed and their horses unsaddled.” Parties should also be detached to target pre-identified enemy forage and munition depots, for “scarcity of provisions, which is to be carefully guarded against in all expeditions, soon ruins such large armies where the consumption is so prodigious, that notwithstanding the greatest care in filling the magazines they must begin to fail in a short time.”

In addition to emphasizing attrition’s protean nature, Vegetius can help us better understand the fallacy of seeking to clearly differentiate or “rank” strategies of annihilation versus attrition. Much like two later and oft-cited but seldom read theorists of attrition, the German historian Hans Delbrück and the Soviet writer Alexander Svechin, Vegetius’ thought has often been overly simplified. Particularly among medievalists, the adjective “Vegetian” has almost automatically become equated with strategies of exhaustion and attrition. However, as the West Point professor Clifford Rogers has rightly noted, this greatly overstates the degree of the Roman author’s battle-avoidance. Indeed, for the latter, the choice of attrition over annihilation was largely circumstance-dependent — all of the knottiest decisions in war were intricately tied to questions of timing and opportunity. Certainly, it made sense, if a general needed to buy time or “knew himself to be inferior,” to “avoid general actions and endeavor to succeed by surprises, ambuscades and stratagems,” which “when skillfully managed … have often given … victory over enemies superior both in numbers and strength.” But if he found himself “in many respects superior to his adversary” then, Vegetius asseverates, he “must by no means defer bringing on an engagement.”

Much like Svechin, who wrote that “a strong and sudden transition from defense to offense, a shining riposte” constituted the “highest achievement of military art,” Vegetius remarks that the decision to engage in large-scale general actions or decisive battle was the “eventuality” that “above all others requires the exertion of all the abilities of a general … This is the moment in which his talents, skill and experience show themselves in their fullest extent.” There was thus a time and place for attrition, a time and place for annihilation, a time and place for entrenchment, a time and a place for maneuver, a time and place for artful shadowboxing, and a time and a place for brutish collision. The supreme art of generalship consisted in accurately diagnosing the exact moment “opportunity offers,” i.e., when that momentous change in techniques, tactics, and procedures was most urgently required. The Ancient Greeks had a specific word for this: kairos, a term distinct from the more familiar chronos and which, by characterizing that precious and elusive sense of propitiousness — either in war, athletics, or rhetoric — marked the quality of a moment in time rather than its quantity.

Correctly identifying that “kairotic moment” and deciding to transition from a strategy of attrition to one of annihilation has always been a risk-laden decision, and therefore frequently controversial. In the final years of the Second Punic War, Gen. Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator (the Delayer) wished to perpetuate the strategy of exhaustion that had allowed Rome to survive during the darkest hours of the Hannibalic War, after its terrible defeats in the battles of Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae. For Fabius, as long as Hannibal and his armies remained in Italy it made sense to concentrate the bulk of Roman military asserts and resources close to Rome, where they could engage in homeland defense, targeting Hannibal’s allies and supply lines and patiently whittling away at the invaders’ foraging parties and new-found Italian allies. For the younger Publius Cornelius Scipio (later known as Scipio Africanus), on the other hand, the only means to bring the war to a close was to transfer its costs onto enemy territory by invading North Africa and directly threatening the very nucleus of Carthaginian power, thus luring Hannibal, its most capable commander, back to his home shores. He preferred, he stated somewhat provocatively, to “devastate the territories of another” rather than witness his own “destroyed by fire and sword,” and to “draw Hannibal after him” rather than be “kept here [in Italy] by him.” Scipio’s audacious gambit ultimately proved more successful than the more defensive, attritional approach still espoused by Fabius, leading to the recall and eventual defeat of Hannibal and the surrender of Carthage.

Similarly, in 1918, Gen. Philippe Petain and Gen. Ferdinand Foch found themselves in deep disagreement over the direction of French and allied military strategy. Whereas Petain, alarmed by the early successes of the German spring offensive (and perhaps foreshadowing his loss of nerve during World War II), argued in favor of abandoning Paris and withdrawing deeper into France’s interior, Foch boldly asserted that Gen. Erich Ludendorff’s offensive was nearing its point of culmination and advocated in favor of a vigorous French-led counter-offensive. Following the Allied victory at the Second Battle of the Marne, a triumphant Foch observed in a memorandum to his fellow allied commanders that the allied armies had arrived at a “turning point of the road” and that it was now time to relaunch a war of initiative and movement, writing, “The moment has come to abandon the general defensive attitude forced upon us until now by numerical inferiority and to pass to the offensive.”

Both Foch and Scipio were duly vindicated in their respective assessments of the military situation. In each case, this was not due to the inherent superiority of one rigidly defined “form” or “category” of warfare over another, but rather to the generals’ sense of kairos in the midst of a rapidly evolving and newly fluid combat environment. More broadly, this was also a question of sequencing — neither 3rd-century BC Rome nor early 20th-century AD France could have survived to launch their successful counteroffensives absent their initial adoption of more attritional strategies.

Training, Discipline, and Morale in Protracted War

War, Clausewitz memorably observed, is often “saturated by great moral forces” that leave it “with a leaven of its own.” A protracted great-power war is above all an extended clash of national wills, and the preservation of civilian and military morale, even in the face of severe loss and deprivation, ought to be at the heart of any viable theory of victory. Time and time again in De Re Militari, Vegetius insists on the importance of strict training regimens and routinized military exercises as a precious source of Roman comparative advantage. This, in and of itself, was hardly novel — as far back as the 1st century AD, a number of both Roman and foreign observers had argued that it was the fighting cohesion and discipline of the legions that lay at the heart of their success and distinguished them from the unruly hordes of their adversaries. Flavius Josephus, an aristocratic Jewish priest who had witnessed the Roman legions in action against his own countrymen during the revolt of Galilee in 66 AD, had thus famously quipped that, “it would not be far from the truth to call their drills bloodless battles, and their battles bloody drills.”

Writing at a time of acute manpower shortages, marked by widespread desertion and a chronic recruitment crisis — and with conscripts frequently engaging in acts of self-mutilation to skirt military service — Vegetius was desperate to renew with this hallowed Roman tradition. “Few men are born brave,” he drily opines, “but many more become so through care and force of discipline.” Vegetius’ uniqueness lies in the degree to which he frames training not only as a means of perfecting a unit’s technical warfighting skills but also as indispensable to the preservation of morale during a protracted campaign. Thus, continuous training lends the man deployed far from hearth and home structure and purpose, psychologically acclimatizing him to both the grinding tedium of extended garrison duties and the inherent unpredictability of life along a savage frontier. “The difference is great,” Vegetius avers, “whether your troops are raw or veterans, whether inured to war by recent service or for some years unemployed.” He then warns of the dire consequences of even temporarily interrupting a training cycle, for “soldiers unused to fighting for a length of time must be considered in the same light as recruits.” The granite-faced Romans of yesteryear, he nostalgically sighed:

thoroughly understood the importance of hardening them (the levies) by continual practice, and of training them to every maneuver in the line and in action. Nor were they less strict in punishing idleness and sloth. The courage of a soldier is heightened by his knowledge of the profession, and he only wants an opportunity to execute what he is convinced he has been perfectly taught. A handful of men, inured to war, proceed to certain victory, while on the contrary numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to slaughter.

Barring perhaps Xenophon, no other classical author spends quite as much time focusing on the psychological dimensions of leadership — indeed, the ideal Vegetian officer is both a flinty patriot and a shrewd judge of character, with an almost preternaturally intuitive reading of his grunts’ morale. “Men,” Vegetius offhandedly remarks, are “frightened and thrown into disorder by sudden accidents and surprises” that would otherwise be of little consequence if correctly foreseen. Diligent drilling constitutes one form of curative against such precipitous collapses in morale, and regular “blooding” provides another, for “the objects with which we are once familiarized are no longer capable of inspiring us with terror.” Indeed, De Re Militari bluntly states that one of the advantages inherent to protracted guerilla campaigns and wars of harassment is that they provide a steady stream of opportunities for raw troops to be hardened “through frequent skirmishes and slight encounters.” Ideally, Vegetius observes, a commander should:

continue these kinds of encounters until his soldiers have imbibed a proper confidence in themselves. For troops that have never been in action or have not for some time been used to such spectacles, are greatly shocked at the sight of the wounded and dying; and the impressions of fear they receive dispose them rather to fly than fight.

A general’s psychological discernment should also extend, De Re Militari repeatedly stresses, to the examination of enemy morale. Famously, he observed — reprising Scipio’s well-known maxim that “a golden bridge” should be made for a fleeing enemy — that there were few things more dangerous than a cornered enemy with nothing left to lose, and that:

in such a situation, where no hopes remain, fear itself will arm an enemy and despair inspires courage. When men find they must inevitably perish, they willingly resolve to die with their comrades and with their arms in hands.

Vegetius is at his most penetrating, however, when he comments on how best to bolster morale after a temporary setback or defeat — urging Roman officers in such circumstances to remind their despondent troops that one lost battle does not a lost war make. This is where historical perspective can be the most useful, the military theorist suggests, for even in such extremities “the constancy and resolution of a general may recover a complete victory” and “there are innumerable instances where the party that gave least way to despair was eventually esteemed the conqueror.” Ever the steadfast voluntarist, Vegetius concludes the general body of his treatise with the following historically minded reminder of the perils of trying to prematurely predict the outcome of a protracted war:

If anyone should imagine no resource is left after the loss of battle, let him reflect on what has happened in similar cases and he will find that they who were victorious in the end were often unsuccessful in the beginning.

A Strategist for Our Times?

For all his steely optimism, Vegetius was ultimately to prove unsuccessful in his mission to reform Rome’s legions, restore its sinking sense of purpose, and revive its moribund empire. Indeed, little could he have known that he would be more heeded by generations of his successors — from armor-clad crusaders to brocade-festooned Napoleonic generals — than by his embattled contemporaries. Today his writings have sadly fallen into abeyance — and yet, as we have seen, so much in our troubled present seems to call for a general rediscovery of his work.

Consider, for example, the brutal war in Ukraine, which has now raged for close to three years and has already gone through several distinct phases that Vegetius, as an able anatomist of protracted warfare, would have immediately recognized. It is a war that has begun, as one excellent recent study notes, to “align with historic patterns of large-scale conventional wars,” cycling through “prolonged periods of positional fighting, offensives and counteroffensives, sieges in urban terrain, phases dominated by high levels of attrition, and operations to break through a prepared defense.” The rancorous discussions over when to time said counteroffensives, whether to open new fronts (either in the Kursk Oblast or occupied Crimea), when to hoard and when to expend finite artillery shells, when to advance and when to stage a fighting retreat — these are all kairotic questions at the heart of De Re Militari. Ukraine’s tortuous internal debates over the extent and duration of mobilization and frontline service are reminiscent of Vegetius’ commentary on the challenges of balancing effective training and accelerated, large-scale recruitment in long wars. And, once again, we are reminded of the priority to be attached to morale preservation in conflicts where the passage of time can have an erosive quality in and of itself. Meanwhile, the Vegetian emphasis on logistics, lines of communication, stockpiling, and reconnaissance appears equally — indeed almost eerily — relevant to contemporary debates over U.S. military resilience and readiness in the Indo-Pacific theater. Perhaps, then, it is time to resurrect De Re Militari from the dusty intellectual catacombs to which it has been relegated, and bring its author’s world-weary wisdom back into the light.

At one point in the midst of his treatise, Vegetius suddenly breaks the fourth wall, admonishing his readers for their presentism and lack of interest in military history:

Are we afraid of not being able to learn from others? … At present all this to be found in books only, although formerly constantly practiced. Inquiries are now no longer made about customs that have been so long neglected, because in times of peace, war is looked upon as an object too distant to merit consideration. … In former ages, the art of war, so often neglected and then forgotten, was as often recovered from books and reestablished by the authority and attention of our generals.

He may have been scolding his complacent fellow Romans but, in truth, he could just as easily have been addressing us.

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Iskander Rehman is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He can be followed on twitter at @IskanderRehman.

Image: A reproduction of a battle between Roman soldiers and Dacians, accessed via Wikimedia Commons

Special Series, Applied History

warontherocks.com · by Iskander Rehman · October 29, 2024

​24. Rutte's statement on DPRK soldiers in Ukraine demand a NATO response

What action can and will NATO take about nK troops?

Rutte's statement on DPRK soldiers in Ukraine demand a NATO response

https://global.espreso.tv/opinion-ruttes-statement-about-dprk-soldiers-in-ukraine-should-be-followed-by-natos-response

Ivanets Sofia

29 October, 2024 Tuesday

12:07

Russia-Ukraine war

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Who can guarantee that the North Koreans will not be subsequently redeployed to the Russian border with Estonia, Latvia or directly to the Kaliningrad region?

If we look at the diplomatic “language”, yesterday's statement by the NATO Secretary General regarding the deployment of North Korean troops in Europe is quite clear: “Ukraine's security is our security.“

But statements must be followed by immediate and decisive actions. Actions that are concentrated in time, resourced, and backed by clear political will and courageous leadership. 

A war that stretches over time is bound to come to NATO countries. Who is to say that the North Koreans will not later be redeployed to the Russian border with Estonia, Latvia, or directly to the Kaliningrad region, and the Chinese will not later appear on the Belarusian border with Poland or Lithuania?

Therefore, the responses must be adequate to the statements. 

If anyone is still discussing preventing escalation (which has already occurred), not spreading the war (which is already happening), or avoiding further security and defense spending (which is no longer realistic), they are not only out of touch with the aggressors but also with the flow of historical time!

The clock is ticking...

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About the author. Valeriy Chaly, Ukrainian diplomat, former Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the United States

The editors do not always share the views expressed by the blog authors.

​25. General George on the From The Green Notebook Podcast

Listen to our Chief of Staff of the Army talk about transforming in contact.

General George on the From The Green Notebook Podcast

The CSA talks modernization and innovation, bottom-up idea generation, and the Harding Project.

https://www.hardingproject.com/p/general-george-on-from-the-green?utm

Sarah Chamberlin

Oct 29, 2024

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On October 26, the 41st Chief of Staff invited Joe Byerly of From the Green Notebook to the Pentagon for a discussion on innovation, leadership, the Harding Project and the continuous transformation needed to keep the Army at the forefront of modern warfare.

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General George shared his insights on everything from mobile C2 nodes to the progress of The Harding Project to the importance of bottom-up idea generation. In his discussion of the Harding Project, General George highlighted the officer broadening opportunity at University of Kansas, as well as the end state of professional writing—improving the organization.

The Chief also alluded to the Army’s newest website, Line of Departure, when he said:

I’ve been very pleased that we were finally able to get to having our journals online and where people can actually see them and read them and they’re in an easy format…I think it was time that we actually put people back into each of our branches.

To listen to the full episode, go to FTGN - Ep 127 GEN George. It is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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