Quotes of the Day:

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”

– Robert E. Howard (American Writer)

"We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter."

– Denis Diderot

“Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.”

– Aldous Huxley

1. Two new jobs, but too few people (and robots) (Green Berets)

2. 12 Questions for a Writer: Frank Sobchak (author of "Training for Victory: U.S. Special Forces Advisory Missions from El Salvador to Afghanistan")

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, October 29, 2024

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 29, 2024

5. Special Forces trains for the next big war in the Mojave Desert

6. Special mission aircraft for covert insertion

7. X Algorithm Feeds Users Political Content—Whether They Want It or Not

8. Why our Presidential Candidates Must Choose Ukraine

9. What Election Integrity Really Means

10. ICSPOTS Event: A Pivotal Step Toward Modernizing USSOCOM Resourcing and Readiness

11. Russia test-fires missiles to simulate 'massive' response to nuclear first strike

12. New Vehicles, Face Paint and a 1,200-Foot Fall: The U.S. Army Prepares for War With China

13. How Russia, China and Iran Are Interfering in the Presidential Election

14. Pentagon unveils new plan to energize America’s defense sector

15. Conventional Arms Control and Ending the Russo-Ukrainian War

16. How America Can Succeed in a Multialigned World

17. The Least Bad Option for Lebanon

18. Harris vs. Trump: If Asia Could Vote in the US Election

19. Post-Truth and National Security: Background and Options for a New Administration

20. Air Force Chief: Small Drones Are Both 'Threat and Opportunity'

21. Political leaders need to stop standing in the way of defense innovation

1. Two new jobs, but too few people (and robots) (Green Berets)

A lot of information about the recruiting challenges and the future of SF ODAs.

Two new jobs, but too few people (and robots)

The Green Berets try to adapt to the new way of war

https://thehighside.substack.com/p/two-new-jobs-but-too-few-people-and?utm

Sean D. Naylor

Oct 29, 2024

∙ Paid

Soldiers undergoing the arduous Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course (U.S. Army photo)

Army special operations leaders are pushing for two new jobs in Special Forces formations: one to call in artillery and air strikes and another to handle robotics and other automated systems. There are just two problems: They are critically short of both people and robots.

Meanwhile, the combination of budgetary pressures, recruiting shortfalls and lessons learned from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East is forcing those leaders to make “hard choices” that may involve reducing freefall training slots and eliminating courses at the community’s schoolhouse, according to Maj. Gen. Jason Slider, commander of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Liberty, North Carolina. (The center is known within the special operations community as “SWC,” pronounced “swick.”)

Slider was speaking at an Oct. 15 panel discussion in Washington hosted by the Green Beret Foundation. The panel also featured CSM Lionel “Lee” Strong, the center’s senior enlisted leader, and Maj. Gen. Gil Ferguson, commander of 1^st Special Forces Command (Airborne). Slider and Strong then elaborated on the topics raised in the discussion during an interview with The High Side later that day.

Slider, a Civil Affairs officer, made it clear during the panel discussion that he was not underestimating the seriousness of the recruiting problem. “It’s actually an existential threat to 1^st Special Forces Command,” he said. (That command oversees all seven Special Forces groups plus Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations units.) “For a number of years, we’ve not recruited the numbers of soldiers that we needed, we’ve not produced the number of soldiers that we needed.”

The Special Forces recruiting challenge is directly related to the struggles the regular Army has had attracting new soldiers in recent years. The service announced in September that it would meet its recruiting goals in fiscal 2024, after missing its targets by wide margins in each of the two previous years. The Army’s problems derive from a booming labor market, a decreased interest in military service among young Americans, and the fact that fewer and fewer of those willing to serve meet the Army’s minimum qualifications for new recruits.

Those problems are magnified when it comes to recruiting special operations soldiers, according to Slider. “We have higher standards for the recruits that are out there to find, and so that challenge … is compounded inside [U.S. Army Special Operations Command],” he said. Many operational detachments – alpha, the 12-soldier units often known as ODAs or A-teams that form Special Forces’ lowest echelon of command, are therefore chronically short of Green Berets.

Maj. Gen. Jason Slider, head of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (U.S. Army photo)

Special Forces recruits from two different populations. Traditionally, because the most junior enlisted rank in Special Forces is sergeant, it has drawn its soldiers from the wider Army. But in 2002, under pressure to expand Special Forces force structure, the branch revived an old program to recruit soldiers from the civilian population, just as the regular Army does. Soldiers who were recruited this way were known as they were going through the SF pipeline as 18 X-Rays. (All SF soldiers have 18-series military occupational specialties, meaning the Army code for their specific MOS, such as 18D for Special Forces medical sergeant, begins with the number 18.)

At the moment, USASOC needs about 1,450 X-Rays and an equal number of in-service recruits to meet the SF community’s requirements, according to Slider. But in fiscal 2024, the numbers for each were “just under 1,000,” said SWC spokesman Lt. Col. Bobby Tuttle in an email to The High Side.

However, Slider views recruiting as only one of three factors that comprise USASOC’s manpower challenge as it relates to Special Forces. The second is how well SWC prepares soldiers for Special Forces Assessment and Selection, a physically demanding course from which candidates must graduate (or be “selected,” to use the official term) to enter the Special Forces Qualification Course. Far more Green Beret candidates fail during SFAS than do so during the “Q Course.” The third factor is how well SWC manages the “production” of Green Berets – in other words, whether it is maximizing the number of graduates from the Q Course without dropping standards.

SFAS serves as the “primary filter” for candidates hoping to earn their Green Berets, but the numbers showing up for the course have dropped in recent years, said Strong.

“We were typically doing [SFAS] classes of 300 with a 30 percent select rate,” he said. “Now we’re lucky to get a class of 300 shows.” And until very recently, the select rates for the smaller classes were also down. (However, if they make it through SFAS, those selected almost always become Green Berets. “You’re seeing high-90 percents in the pass rates in the Qualification Course,” Strong told The High Side.)

Even though the number of soldiers who start SFAS is down, if SWC could somehow increase the percentage of candidates who make it through assessment and selection, it wouldn’t need more recruits, according to Strong. “Enough people attempt to come to the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course,” he said during the panel discussion. “Not enough of them are successful at it.”

SFAS is the first stage of the process by which soldiers earn their Green Berets, and historically the phase that accounts for the most failures. (U.S. Army photo)

Recognizing that every soldier who begins SFAS “came with the intent to be successful,” Slider and Strong, who oversee 1^st Special Warfare Training Group, which runs the Q Course, have decided to “meet people where they’re at and help them be successful at this journey,” Strong said. This involves “communicating to them what the actual standards are and [figuring out] how to best prepare them for the challenge that they’re going to face,” he added.

According to Strong, the X-Rays enjoy at least one advantage over the Q Course candidates drawn from the active-duty force: SWC enjoys far more control over the X-Rays when it comes to preparing them for SFAS. “From the second they recruit off the street … we control their diet, their sleep, their exercise program, we determine when they are prepared to go to selection to give them the highest chance of success,” he said. “We have less control over that active-duty enlisted population.”

To help address that imbalance, and to support what Tuttle described as Slider’s “top priority” – getting more active-duty recruits through SFAS and the Q Course – SWC has created what Strong called “a prep guide that we can distribute across the Army” to help active-duty candidates prepare for the course.

SWC has also “refined our 18 X-Ray preparation program [by moving] it out into a more realistic training environment,” Strong said. In addition, SWC has tweaked the staffing arrangements. Cadre NCOs now spend two years running SFAS and then a year running the four-week Special Forces Preparation and Conditioning Course, which is designed to get 18 X-Rays ready for SFAS and focuses on physical preparation and skills like rope climbing and land navigation. SWC leaders decided to have former SFAS cadre run the prep course “because they know … what people struggle with,” Strong said.

CSM Lionel “Lee” Strong, the senior enlisted adviser at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (U.S. Army photo)

So far, the changes appear to be paying off. The most recent class had the highest select rate – almost 40 percent – in over two years.

That extra control over the 18 X-Ray population helps explain why, as SF’s recruiting challenges have grown, the proportion of Q Course graduates from the 18 X-Ray program has grown from the original target of one third to almost 60 percent (and 53 percent over the past eight years), meaning many Special Forces NCOs on A-teams had no prior military experience before they became Green Berets, a sharp departure from the makeup of the A-teams who fought the early years of the Global War on Terror. “I don’t think that’s bad,” Slider told the Green Beret Foundation audience. But, he added, “it’s going to force us to adapt.”

However, Slider said, “the biggest issue is we’re not recruiting enough of either [18 X-Rays or active-duty soldiers], and that’s where our focus is.”

To that end, Slider sought and received from USASOC commander Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga the authority to be in charge of the “recruiting, preparation and production” of Special Forces soldiers, he said. Braga’s decision means that “a two-star commander will own that problem, be made accountable to that problem and will fix that problem,” Slider declared in the panel discussion, referring to himself.

“I think we all are optimistic, and we like to believe we’ll accomplish any task we put our mind to,” Slider told The High Side when asked about his bullish comment. “But inside USASOC what we have decided to do is, instead of viewing recruiting as a separate problem from preparation as a separate problem from production, we’re putting that all underneath a single commander and that’s the [commanding general] at the Special Warfare Center and School.

A-team size might change

Despite the personnel shortages, however, Slider and Ferguson are trying to persuade the Army to add two new military occupational specialties to Special Forces formations, based in part on their analysis of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

One of these new jobs is a position that Ferguson and Slider are envisioning for A-teams in the future: an SF soldier whose primary job will be calling in what the Army calls “fires” – air strikes and artillery fire. That role is currently filled by special tactics personnel from Air Force Special Operations Command, or, if they are not available, by other joint terminal attack controllers – servicemembers who have qualified to call in air strikes.

In Air Force special operations, “it’s an entire job,” Ferguson said. “That’s all you do.” But in Special Forces, “we made it an additional duty.” In other words, certain Green Berets have that task in addition to their regular job of being, for example, a Special Forces weapons or engineer or communications NCO.

Speaking to a crowd filled with many current and former SF soldiers, Ferguson underlined the problems associated with that approach: “Everybody in here knows it’s extremely difficult to maintain the certifications, the capability, the qualifications, let alone the proficiency, right? So we’re actually looking at potentially building a new MOS that is an 18-series guy who’s just focused on fires, who can do everything from the old school terminal air control that we talk about to understanding what it means when submarine-launched cruise missiles are being employed, hypersonic missiles are being employed, etc. etc.”

A natural question that follows any discussion of putting a new MOS on an A-team is whether the size of an A-team, which has been set at 12 Green Berets since 1974, might increase. No decisions have been made on that score, according to Slider, but he acknowledged that the topic is under review.

“Maybe the answer is 12’s right,” he told The High Side. “Maybe it’s a different number. But there’s a lot of folks that only know 12. Well, if you look at the entire history of an SF ODA, it hasn’t always been 12. So, I think the conversation that’s being had is really about what capability do we need, and let’s not be constrained artificial notion that back in 1952 we figured out 12 was the right number, because that wasn’t the number back then.”

MOS not yet def

The second new position that Army special operations leaders are proposing for SF formations is a soldier who is an expert on robotics and unmanned systems.

An analysis of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East underpins those leaders’ conviction that unmanned systems are playing a critical role on today’s battlefield and will only become more important.

Slider cited Ukraine’s incursion into Russia this year as an example.

“They led with long-range deep-strike [unmanned aerial systems],” he said. “They followed up with UAS that had an [electronic warfare] payload that opened up an envelope so they could then follow with UAS for [reconnaissance]. It was then followed with ground-air [first-person-view drones] that were then followed with more traditionally manned formations, using more of a [human-machine interface] approach.”

Ferguson underscored the point.

“No one is going to want to go onto the battlefield of the future if it’s the kind of battlefield that they’re facing in Ukraine, even in what we’re seeing in the Middle East right now, without employing a substantial amount of tech to mitigate risk,” he said.

Since October 2023, Slider’s command has offered a six-week robotics and unmanned systems integration course to Green Berets and other Army special operators. The course qualifies those soldiers to employ and counter “the full range of unmanned aircraft system[s] and counter-unmanned aircraft systems capabilities,” as well as to instruct their teammates and partner forces in how to use those systems in combat, according to Tuttle, the SWC spokesman. New Q Course graduates make up half the Special Forces attendees, while Green Berets from the operational force comprise the other half, he said in an email to The High Side.

But although every Green Beret will need some familiarity with unmanned systems, the primary responsibility for employing drones and other robots has become too big a job for someone who is not a full-time expert, according to Ferguson.

Maj. Gen. Gil Ferguson, head of 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) (U.S. Army photo)

“In the same way that the fires problem is too much to be an additional duty … the robot challenge is probably too much to be an additional duty,” he said. As a result, “that is the other MOS that in the near term we’re thinking hard about how to create.”

“What we envision … is somebody that can plan robotics and autonomous system operations, integrate those operations into larger operations and then manage the programs, the systems, the payloads … and then deliver those capabilities to soldiers at the tactical edge,” Slider said.

However, unlike the new fires MOS, which would fit straight into an A-team, the robotics expert would work a couple of echelons higher up the chain of command. “We think that that is a capability that will reside no lower than battalion level,” Slider told The High Side, adding that the Army special operations leaders are envisioning “something like a robotics technical warrant officer.”

In emails to The High Side, Tuttle said that the new position would be open to all soldiers, not just Special Forces personnel, and would be called a robotics technician, with the MOS code of 390A. Because the new MOS is being created in a “no-growth environment,” however, USASOC plans to convert almost 50 Special Forces warrant officer billets (spaces slotted for Green Berets with MOS 180A) to create the first 390A positions. The robotics technicians will be distributed mostly within the Special Forces groups in new special operations robotics detachments, with others at 1st SF Command, SWC and USASOC, he said.

Ferguson converted each SF group’s unmanned aerial systems platoon into a robotics detachment this summer. Those platoons had been “sort of unemployed” since the Army got rid of their RQ-7 Shadow drones in July, Ferguson said.

The detachment’s personnel are not 18-series Special Forces NCOs, but have 15-series aviation-related military occupational specialties (like aircraft electrician and unmanned aerial vehicle operator), according to Ferguson. “What we did is we alakazamed all those guys into robot experts,” he added. Now “their task is to be the subject matter experts on all things robotics in the group, and then they would attach to the tactical units as necessary.”

SWC has scheduled the first course for prospective 390As to begin in January 2026 (with graduation from the six-week robotics and unmanned systems integration course as a requirement for attending), according to Tuttle.

However, the leaders at Fort Liberty are keenly aware that they are in a zero-sum situation with regard to personnel. “Adding two more MOSs, that briefs really well,” Ferguson said. “But where are the people going to come from?” An additional fires NCO “means that’s one less 18 Bravo [SF weapons sergeant] or 18 Charlie [SF engineer sergeant],” he said. “All those MOSs that exist are all vitally important.”

And just as with the fires position, while U.S. Special Operations Command has been supportive, the Army has yet to approve the creation of a robotics MOS for Special Forces units. “We’re trying to turn the Army in that direction,” Slider said. “Not everybody sees it in that way.”

Not enough robots

Even if Army leaders green light a new robotics MOS in Special Forces, Ferguson faces another problem bringing the vision to reality. “The challenge right now is what robots are we going to give them,” he said. “We just don’t have that many.”

This restricts the ability of A-teams to train with the sort of drones that are playing such a crucial role in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. “We all know there’s a lot of stuff getting expended – not just flown but expended – every day on the battlefield in Ukraine and in the Gaza fight … and we don’t have that right now,” Ferguson said.

“I can’t send an ODA out and have them shoot a whole bunch of one-way attack [drones], because we don’t have them,” Ferguson said.

To compensate, he said, 1^st SF Command is “experimenting with other things at smaller scale to try to build” that capability. “We’ve got some great [industry] partners out there that give us tech to play with and to tinker with, but it’s not at scale.”

In a conflict, the missing technology would likely appear in his soldiers’ hands before too long, according to Ferguson. “We think we would probably get [it] if we did get into a scrape and production ramped up substantially,” he said.

In the meantime, however, the shortage is hindering his troops’ ability to adapt to the evolving role of unmanned systems on the battlefield, when compared with those troops’ Israeli and Ukrainian counterparts. “The scale and speed of adaptation, learning and battlefield application in both of those fights … is awe inspiring,” he said. “And we are not there yet, we are not even close to there yet, just because our folks, frankly, don’t have the stuff to play with.”

Army special operations forces are trying to learn as much as possible from the Israelis and the Ukrainians, said Ferguson, adding that he’s been particularly dazzled by how Israel has taken the fight to its enemies. “You could probably put two or three of the operations that they’ve done in the global top 10 special operations ever,” he said.

“What we’re trying to do is look at those things and think, okay, what units need to be able to do those,” he said. “What are the capabilities that units need to have in order to do those? What units don’t need to focus on those kinds of things … It’s going to take time for us all to figure that out.”

Slider said his command is currently dealing with a $20 million deficit between the planned budget for fiscal 2025 and the cost of identified requirements. Surveying his responsibilities, he identified two areas that he placed in the “must fund” category: the Special Forces recruitment and qualification “pipeline” and professional military education, which he described as “the most important thing we do – develop leaders.” Therefore, the necessary cuts will likely come from budget for the 2^nd Special Warfare Training Group, which conducts advanced skill training for special operations personnel, he said.

Ferguson and Slider are “having a conversation” about how the former envisages his units fighting, based on lessons from recent training exercises, Slider said. Those insights will then inform an analysis of which advanced skills courses to prioritize and which to sacrifice, according to Slider. “There are some hard choices coming … in terms of what we cut, what we hold on to,” he said.

In some cases, that might mean cutting a program of instruction that is no longer relevant to today’s conflicts, according to Slider. In others, it might mean a look across the broader special operations “enterprise” to see whether there are “efficiencies” to be found, he said.

“For example, we’re looking really hard at everybody that shows up to our military freefall course,” Slider told The High Side. “Is each one of those, whether they’re Army, Air Force or Navy, aligned against a documented authorization that requires that skillset? … In some cases, we’re seeing that we’re actually training more people than is specifically required.”

Getting back together with big Army

Even as Army special operations leaders cope with these challenges, they are having to relearn how to integrate their missions with those of the regular Army, according to Slider, who noted that the Army’s field manual on special operations, FM 3-05, is 10 years old. “That piece of doctrine in 2014 says we do special warfare, surgical strike, and we describe SOF formations in a joint context,” he said. “We don’t describe SOF formations in an Army context.”

That omission is now proving costly for USASOC. “You can draw a direct line between that piece of doctrine and how it informs the Total Army Analysis process – the simulations, the modeling that informs Army senior leaders about where they need to address force structure in the Army,” Slider said.

Special Forces has “a lot of support” from the Pentagon, the military’s five geographic combatant commanders and U.S. Special Operations Command for conducting its irregular warfare mission in what the Army calls “competition” with other great powers, which is below “crisis” and “conflict.” However, Army special operations leaders “have trail to break” when it comes to convincing their regular Army counterparts of their usefulness in the sort of large-scale combat operations for which the Army is now refocusing (and to which the Army already refers by an acronym – LSCO – pronounced “lesco”).

Doing so will require Army special operations forces to work inside the regular Army’s bureaucratic systems, which are “critical,” Slider said. “They’re also lethargic and they’re not responsive,” he added, before using a doctrinal term for a guerrilla base behind enemy lines. “We don’t have a good G-base right now inside those Army systems,” he said, adding that he is trying to partner with the service’s Training and Doctrine Command to “document and fight for the requirements” for which Special Forces needs the Army to provide resources.

If USASOC can neither justify nor fill its authorized positions, they become easy pickings for Army budgeteers looking for places to cut. The news earlier this year that the service was cutting 3,000 USASOC slots “kind of puts an exclamation point” on the special operations community’s manpower problems, Slider told the crowd.

Another resource in short supply, but over which special operations leaders have a little more control, is time. There was a recognition throughout the SF community that the current 18-month operational cycle did not leave A-teams and individual Green Berets enough time “to master all the fundamentals … and then layer in the rest of this stuff,” said Ferguson. In conversations with SF team sergeants, “the one thing they said they needed more of was time.”

Therefore, starting in January 2025, 1^st SF Command is changing the length of each group’s operational cycle from 18 months to 24 months, according to Ferguson. “By the fall of ’25 it will be in full effect,” he said. “The only way to give them more time was to give them more time, so that’s one of the things that we’ve done.”

2. 12 Questions for a Writer: Frank Sobchak (author of "Training for Victory: U.S. Special Forces Advisory Missions from El Salvador to Afghanistan")

Lethal Minds Journal

12 Questions for a Writer: Frank Sobchak

Frank Sobchak is a retired Special Forces officer, PhD, and historian. His latest effort is professionally useful, reads like a popular history, and tells the warts and all story of combat advising.

https://lethalmindsjournal.substack.com/p/12-questions-for-a-writer-frank-sobchak

Lethal Minds Journal

Oct 29, 2024

1.    Who are you, what have you written, and why?

I’m Frank Sobchak, a retired Special Forces Colonel with 26 years of service and deployments to Kuwait, Kosovo, and Iraq. After getting out of the Army, I went back to school and completed a PhD, which formed the basis for my book, Training for Victory: U.S. Special Forces Advisory Missions from El Salvador to Afghanistan. I decided to write the book because of a curious puzzle. The U.S. spent billions trying to build capable Iraqi and Afghan security forces, but failed catastrophically, with a few notable exceptions. The Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) fought a classic retrograde across northern Iraq, preventing Baghdad from falling to ISIS and giving time for coalition forces to muster. In Afghanistan, the Afghan Commandos helped hold the perimeter circling the Kabul airport as their country disintegrated around them. What was it that made those efforts at building partners successful, while other efforts were colossal military disasters?  Training for Victory answers that question by looking at those Special Forces advisory efforts as well as in El Salvador, The Philippines, and Colombia. 

2.    What is it that draws you to writing generally?

I started my academic career as a historian, and, while it might sound a bit odd, I really enjoyed doing research. I love discovering things during research and see the process a little bit like what happens on CSI television shows. There is a mystery or a puzzle that begs to be understood and explained, and it is fun to work through different methods to try and figure things out. 

3.    Despite beginning as a doctoral thesis, a product not always known for being compelling reading, this book IS both interesting and fun to read. How hard was it to make it so?

Thank you so much for the kind words! I have some scar tissue on this topic… My dissertation was around 150k words, and I had to cut that down to 100k for publication, so it took considerable effort to translate it from academic jargon and scientific variables into something more enjoyable to read. That said, I used quotes and vignettes from the veterans of the different missions, and they have some amazing stories to tell.

4.     Training for Victory is an exhaustively researched book. Tell us about the process you undertook to write it.

Thank you, I definitely worked hard at it. The first thing I had to do was to figure out how I would evaluate how effective each unit was. There are volumes upon volumes on how military effectiveness is defined (and, spoiler alert, we didn’t do a great job at “measuring” this during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), so determining that was no easy task. Next, I had to determine what factors I would study to assess the different advisory efforts: basically, what did each one do differently? Then I conducted 109 original interviews of participants. I was also able to obtain large amounts of declassified and unclassified primary source documents through archival research and donations from veterans.

5.    What did you learn in the writing process and what surprised you?

At my peak, I was a 2+/2+/3 in Modern Standard Arabic, and 3/3 in Spanish, and was proud of being a strong linguist. In Iraq, I loved doing a “circus act” where in mixed company (American and Iraqi forces), I would talk completely in Arabic. It was fun to see U.S. officers slowly- and incredulously- process “wait-WHAT!? that American dude is speaking in only in Arabic” and then order their interpreters to translate me into English. I give that as context because my finding on language skills was difficult for me to come to terms with at first. It really surprised me that advisors didn’t have to speak the host nation’s language to produce a combat effective SOF partner force at the tactical level.

6.    Who should read this book and why?

This book should be of interest to anyone interested in national security. Working with partner forces and building allied armies is a core function of modern warfare, whether it be in Iraq and Afghanistan or Ukraine and Taiwan.  Training for Victory helps demystify those missions and provide best practices that can help future operations. Likewise, those who are security force assistance professionals or advisors would find great value in the case studies, vignettes, and lessons of the book. And those who simply enjoy reading of the exploits of elite forces such as the U.S. Army’s Special Forces, or “Green Berets,” will also enjoy the book.

7.    Would you write another book?

Absolutely. Finishing a book is like finishing a marathon, with a similar sense of accomplishment once you are done. I have three different options that I’m looking at currently for my next project, and (lol) will likely go with whichever one I can get funded and supported by my publisher!

8.    What do you want people to take away from this book?

Some pundits and academics would have you think that America can’t build foreign militaries and that such efforts are destined to fail. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Our failures during the post-9/11 wars occurred because we did not prioritize force structure or funding for security force assistance before the wars, and instead relied on ad-hoc efforts that had little historical knowledge of what worked or didn’t work.  Training for Victory highlights examples of where the U.S. was able to build capable partners.

9.    What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

Never quit. You will have good days and bad days. On the good days it is like uncovering hidden treasures that you get to reveal to the world. On the bad days, you just have to focus and be disciplined and keep forward progress and momentum. For days like that, it can be like working in a factory where you just have to keep producing words on the production line. Fortunately, I had more good than bad days in this book. I would also say never fall in love with your own writing. Editing is critical and you are probably your own best editor. A rule of thumb that I have come to is that on a first draft, fully one-third of my work is extraneous and should be cut. And your work will always be better when you leave words on the cutting room floor. Succinctness is holiness.

10. What is your favorite book and why?

There are so many that it is extremely difficult to identify just one. That said, I have always been a fan of George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), an intellectual who hated authoritarianism but who could write in ways that everyone could understand and appreciate.  Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are fabulous works that are every bit as relevant today as when they were first published.

11. You’re a Special Forces officer writing about Special Forces and in some cases, operations in which you played a role. How hard was it to remain objective in the effort?

I was fortunate to have a very tough dissertation committee that would not allow me to take any shortcuts. They questioned every assumption and conclusion and examined every piece of evidence to make sure that my writing was solid. Nonetheless, it is a difficult task that requires constant attention and safeguards. Cross-referencing interviews with each other and with documentary evidence was critical, and it helped to talk to participants of all nationalities, ranks, and roles (including those not SF qualified but involved in the missions). I actually went into the effort thinking that the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) would be the most effective partner forces produced out of the five case studies, which showed my initial bias from being in one of the Special Forces Groups involved in their training, but the evidence revealed that the Colombian SOF (AGLAN and BACOA) were far better than they were.

12. What have I not asked that I should have?

“You note that the language skills of the advisors aren’t as important as we think they are towards building combat-effective partners during long missions. Why is that?” This challenges a core orthodoxy within the advisory communities and budget priorities worth millions of dollars and I literally have people who want to fight me over this finding. While the explanation is complex, it is because of the length of the mission, the importance of rapport-building skills and tactical proficiency over language, and the fungibility of communication skills from one language to another.

Order Training for Victory here, here, or here. Read the review in the November volume of Lethal Minds Journal.

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, October 29, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, October 29, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-october-29-2024

The precise nature of the recent Israeli strikes into Iran has partially obscured the serious damage these strikes inflicted on critical Iranian defense and military infrastructure. These strikes could disrupt Iranian ballistic missile production and leave Iran more vulnerable to future strikes, however. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted precise and calculated strikes targeting Iranian military and defense industrial infrastructure to avoid collateral damage and casualties. The result of these precise strikes is that the damage to Iranian military infrastructure appears minimal. The Israeli strikes could disrupt Iran’s ability to manufacture advanced ballistic missiles and leave Iran more vulnerable to future strikes, however. Commercially available satellite imagery published on October 28 shows that the IDF likely struck a Ghadir radar site approximately 15 kilometers north of Ahvaz, Khuzestan Province. The Ghadir radar system, along with the Russian-made S-300, is an important component of the Iranian integrated air defense system. The Ghadir radar system can reportedly detect ballistic missiles from a distance of 1,100 kilometers and aircraft from a distance of 600 kilometers.

Commercially available satellite imagery published on October 29 separately shows damage to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Shahroud Missile Facility in Semnan Province, which is used to build solid-propellant ballistic missiles and launch Space Launch Vehicles (SLV) into orbit. The IRGC previously launched the Soraya and Chamran-1 satellites into orbit from the Shahroud Missile Facility using the Ghaem-100 SLV in January and September 2024, respectively. A missile expert told AP News on October 29 that the IRGC Shahroud Missile Facility is likely involved in “solid propellant mixing and casting operations.” The same missile expert reported on October 28 that the Taksaz Industrial Innovators Engineering Company (TIECO) factory that Israel struck on October 25 in Tehran has designed and developed “mixers for high-viscosity materials” since the early 1990s. The expert noted that the company could use this technology to produce solid-propellant mixers. The fact that Israel targeted mixing equipment used to make solid fuel highlights that Israel sought to degrade Iran’s ability to produce advanced ballistic missiles, such as those that Tehran has used to attack Israel directly. Unspecified Israeli sources previously told Axios that Iran will likely need at least a year to acquire new mixing equipment.

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Mohammed al Ansari claimed on October 29 that ceasefire-hostage negotiations have made progress. CIA Director Bill Burns, Mossad Director David Barnea, and Qatari Prime Minister Qatar Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani reportedly discussed a 28-day pause in fighting in the Gaza Strip during which Hamas will release eight Israeli hostages in exchange for Israel releasing ”dozens” of Palestinian prisoners, according to three unspecified Israeli officials cited by Axios.

Israel and Lebanon are reportedly “in advanced stages” of reaching a ceasefire agreement. Senior Israeli officials speaking to Ynet said on October 29 that the deal would begin with a 60-day “acclimation period” ceasefire during which mediators would consider a “new mechanism” to supervise southern Lebanon and prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding military infrastructure there. The IDF would withdraw most of its forces from southern Lebanon and only remain in certain areas where it still needs to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure. This deal appears to attempt to more successfully implement UNSCR 1701, which prohibits Lebanese Hezbollah military activity in southern Lebanon. To enforce UNSCR 1701 the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) would deploy thousands of additional soldiers to southern Lebanon. UNIFIL forces would be increased and bolstered by additional French, German, and British troops. The plan proposes that Israel retains the right to take “prolonged action” in Lebanon to remove Hezbollah threats that Lebanese and international forces fail to address. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced on October 24 that his government plans to recruit more LAF troops and possibly deploy 8,000 soldiers to southern Lebanon. The agreement would finally include a ban on military imports to Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office has previously insisted that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) be allowed to engage in “active enforcement” near the Israel-Lebanon border and to maintain “freedom of operation” in Lebanese airspace. Israeli media did not include Israeli access to Lebanese airspace in their most recent reporting about the proposal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security meeting with senior military officials on October 29 to discuss the possible ceasefire terms. Hezbollah has not commented on the negotiations and has not indicated if it would accept the deal. Hezbollah had previously made stopping its operations against Israeli forces contingent on halting Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah’s new Secretary General Naim Qassem indicated on October 8 that the group may be open to a ceasefire that is not linked to the Gaza Strip. A successful implementation of the above ceasefire framework that pushes Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure north of the Litani River would reduce the threat of a Hezbollah October 7–7-style offensive into northern Israel. The terms would likely be insufficient to stop rocket fire into Israel due to the range of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal, however.

Key Takeaways:

• Israeli Strike on Iran: The precise nature of the recent Israeli strikes into Iran has partially obscured the serious damage these strikes inflicted on critical Iranian defense and military infrastructure. These strikes could disrupt Iranian ballistic missile production and leave Iran more vulnerable to future strikes, however.

• Israeli Retaliation Against Iran and Hezbollah: Israeli media reported on October 28 that Israel is planning to retaliate separately against Iran for the October 19 Lebanese Hezbollah drone attack that targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

• Hezbollah’s New Leader: Hezbollah’s Shura Council appointed Naim Qassem as the new Hezbollah secretary general, on October 29. Qassem’s October 15 speech offers insights into his strategy and vision of the war. Qassem viewed Hezbollah’s war with Israel as existential and said that he believes the United States and Israel seek to shape Lebanon and “run it as they wish.”

• Israeli Ground Operations in Lebanon: Israeli forces have advanced at least four kilometers into southern Lebanon towards the southeastern outskirts of Khiam. Khiam’s terrain provides an expansive view of northern Israel and would enable Hezbollah artillery observers to support indirect fire attacks into Israel.

• Lebanon Ceasefire: Israel and Lebanon are reportedly “in advanced stages” of reaching a ceasefire agreement. This deal appears to attempt to more successfully implement UNSCR 1701, which prohibits Lebanese Hezbollah military activity in southern Lebanon.

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 29, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 29, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-29-2024

The rate of Russian advances in Ukraine has increased in recent weeks but remains slow and consistent with positional warfare rather than with rapid mechanized maneuver—emphasizing how generally stagnant Russian advances have been after over two and half years of war. Recent Western reporting linking the Russian rate of advance in September 2024 with Russian advances at the start of the war is highly misleading. ISW assesses that Russian forces advanced at an average rate of 1,265 square kilometers per day in March 2022—roughly 90 times the roughly 14 square kilometers that ISW calculates that Russian forces have taken per day in September 2024. Rapid Russian advances deep into Ukrainian territory, including the temporary seizure of large portions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv oblasts characterized the first month of the Russian full-scale invasion, whereas more recent Russian advances have been characterized by small-scale, localized, tactical advances. Russian forces have been making gains in eastern Ukraine recently, but comparing those gains to the initial deep Russian penetration into Ukraine at the start of the war misleadingly frames these most recent advances. For example, Russian forces seized the settlement of Vuhledar as of October 1, 2024, have continued to advance north and northwest of Vuhledar, and have made significant tactical gains in and near Selydove (southeast of Pokrovsk) over the course of the past week. These respective advances are tactically significant but do not represent a general increase in the pace of Russian advances across the frontline, much of which remains relatively stagnant, nor are they within two orders of magnitude of the rate of Russian advance in the first stage of the war. The current rate of Russian advances is consistent, rather, with ISW's recent assessment that the Russian command has likely ordered Russian forces to significantly increase their tempo of mechanized attacks throughout the theater before the full onset of muddy ground conditions in the fall months.

Russian officials and milbloggers are conducting information operations that falsely portray the Georgian opposition's peaceful and legal challenges to the conduct of the October 26 parliamentary election results as a Western- and Ukrainian-sponsored illegal coup d'état. Russian state media claimed on October 29 that the West is supporting the transfer of Ukraine-trained snipers to Georgia in order to organize false flag provocations and trigger a pro-Western coup akin to the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity that started in 2013, which Russian actors have often labeled a Western-instigated illegal coup. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev called on October 28 for the arrest of Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, falsely claiming that she “called for a coup.” Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova baselessly suggested that the West ordered the opposition protests, which they claim are trying to destabilize Georgia. Russian milbloggers also widely claimed that the West and Ukraine are sponsoring a revolution via the Georgian opposition and Zourabicvhili and that Georgian opposition reports of Russian interference in the Georgian elections are false, Western-backed talking points.

The Russian information space continues to closely echo the rhetoric of the ruling Georgian Dream party. Georgian Prime Minister Kobakhidze rejected the claims of election irregularities on October 28, and Georgian Dream member of parliament and Vice-Speaker of Parliament Nino Tsilosani claimed on October 29 that the opposition is attempting to organize a coup. ISW previously assessed that Georgian Dream’s rhetoric has increasingly echoed that of the Kremlin, particularly the Kremlin's narratives that aim to justify Russia's violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of post-Soviet countries that seek greater Western integration, including Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

Key Takeaways:

• The rate of Russian advances in Ukraine has increased in recent weeks but remains slow and consistent with positional warfare rather than with rapid mechanized maneuver—emphasizing how generally stagnant Russian advances have been after over two and half years of war.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin attempted to use an annual Russian nuclear deterrence exercise to further boilerplate nuclear saber-rattling information operations that aim to influence Western decision making.
• Recent Russian polling suggests that Russian domestic support for local government entities has somewhat declined over the past year, most likely in response to increased crypto-mobilization force generation efforts at the regional level.
• Russian officials and milbloggers are conducting information operations that falsely portray the Georgian opposition's peaceful and legal challenges to the conduct of the October 26 parliamentary election results as a Western- and Ukrainian-sponsored illegal coup d'état.
• The Georgian protests have been peaceful and legal - far from the Russian claims of an illegal coup.
• These concerted Russian efforts to baselessly discredit the Georgian pro-Western opposition and civil society are part of a common Kremlin tactic aimed at framing the valid and legal concerns of pro-Western political entities in the post-Soviet space as illegitimate and violent.
• Ukrainian forces recently advanced in Toretsk, and Russian forces made advanced near Kupyansk, Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and southwest of Donetsk City.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) continues to rely on Russia's prison population to replace depleted Russian units on the frontline.

5. Special Forces trains for the next big war in the Mojave Desert

As an aside irregular warfare, to include unconventional warfare and support to political warfare, takes place before, during, and after and within LSCO as well as on the periphery and outside of the major theater of war and will still have an impact on the enemies fighting LSCO.. But LSCO does not take place within IW. And there are many OSS lessons that can apply to today that go well beyond the Jedburghs which was just one important element of OSS operations (and probably the best known).

Excerpts;

During the War on Terror years, the unconventional warfare and counter-insurgency specializations of Special Forces made them the weapon of choice however, in a large-scale conventional war it will be the "big" Army that wins the day with Special Forces playing a supporting role.

This isn't to say it is not an important role though. In World War II, the Jedburgh teams jumped into occupied France and conducted unconventional warfare and paved the way for the Allied invasion on D-Day. The Jedburghs didn't win the war, but they set the conditions for success.

...

The Special Forces team conducted direct action raids and reconnaissance operations, under the watchful eyes of Observer/Controllers who helped provide the team with after-action review pointers to help them improve in the field.

Special Forces trains for the next big war in the Mojave Desert

https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/special-forces-trains-for-next-big-war-in-mojave-desert

Photo credit Staff Sgt. Anthony Bryant

 By Jack Murphy

October 28, 2024

12:59 pm

"We've moved patrol bases six times; done three or four deliberate assaults; and five or six straight-up reconnaissance missions where we find and fix the enemy and coordinate through the advanced operating base for fires," a Special Forces team sergeant explains. He's talking about his team's recent exercise at the National Training Center (NTC) located in the Mojave Desert in California.

The team, from the 10th Special Forces Group, is training for the next large-scale ground conflict, one that may see American soldiers fighting a peer or near-peer adversary for the first time since 1945.

"From an [Operational Detachment Alpha] level, we figure out how our Special Operations Forces skill set and talents nest within conventional forces’ methodology of fighting…where we can best support and enable their operations to set conditions for their success," the team sergeant said in an Army press release.

During the War on Terror years, the unconventional warfare and counter-insurgency specializations of Special Forces made them the weapon of choice however, in a large-scale conventional war it will be the "big" Army that wins the day with Special Forces playing a supporting role.

This isn't to say it is not an important role though. In World War II, the Jedburgh teams jumped into occupied France and conducted unconventional warfare and paved the way for the Allied invasion on D-Day. The Jedburghs didn't win the war, but they set the conditions for success.

With the future battlegrounds in mind, Special Forces are training closely with electronic warfare experts.

"We have [signals intelligence-electronic warfare analyst] and two Tactical Air Control Party Airmen from the U.S. Air Force attached to our team which we learned to employ," the team sergeant said. "The [analyst] has been pretty critical in terms of force protection—he's able to pick out the signals around us, see if there are threats in the area we need to be aware of—and confirm or deny targets."

The Special Forces team conducted direct action raids and reconnaissance operations, under the watchful eyes of Observer/Controllers who helped provide the team with after-action review pointers to help them improve in the field.

• Special Forces
• Green Beret

6. Special mission aircraft for covert insertion

Special mission aircraft for covert insertion

https://euro-sd.com/2024/10/articles/41095/special-mission-aircraft-for-covert-insertion/

Sidney E. Dean

29. October 2024

Special Operations Forces (SOF) worldwide can choose from a wide array of aircraft for covert insertion, exfiltration and resupply, with new technologies being integrated into current and developmental platforms to enhance performance and survivability.

SOF transport aircraft fall into various categories based on type, range, size and performance parameters. The vast majority are specially modified and equipped variants of general air-transport aircraft families.

Large fixed-wing aircraft

Large fixed-wing aircraft make up a significant portion of SOF transport fleets. Their advantages include very long range, high passenger or payload capacity, the ability to operate at both high and low surface ceiling, and sufficient space to integrate advanced avionics and other specialised mission systems, including optional armaments.

MC-130J

The C-130 Hercules has been used for special operations insertion for decades. The current variant operated by the US Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) is the MC-130J Commando II, which entered AFSOC service in 2012; the last of the 57 ordered units will be delivered in 2025.

A 522nd Special Operations Squadron MC-130J Commando II aircraft flies over New Mexico on 4 January 2012.

Credit: USAF/Senior Airman James Bell

The MC-130J Commando II is based on the newest Hercules variant, the C-130J ’Super Hercules’. Compared to the previous MC-130H variant, the MC-130J has a 15% greater airspeed, 21% greater cruising altitude, and 25% longer range, as well as a faster climb rate, thanks in part to more efficient Rolls Royce AE 2100D3 turboprop engines with six-blade composite rotors. It is capable of landing on a 975 m dirt strip while carrying a 19,000 kg load; with a reduced payload the plane can also operate from shorter 615 m dirt strips in high mountain ranges. Onboard systems include an advanced two-pilot flight station with fully integrated digital avionics, colour multifunctional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and head-up displays (HUDs), modern navigation systems including a dual inertial navigation system and GPS, AN/APN-241 Low Power Color Radar (LPCR), digital moving map display, Combat Systems Operator and auxiliary flight deck stations, and integrated defensive systems including the Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures (LAIRCM) missile detection and countermeasures system. The cockpit systems enable nighttime all-weather flight operations under blackout conditions at altitudes as low as 80 m to evade detection over hostile or non-permissive territory. The MC-130J is also equipped with the Universal Air Refueling Receptacle Slipway Installation (UARRSI) which significantly extends the aircraft’s basic 4,828 km (2,607 NM) operating range.

In addition to infiltration/exfiltration and resupply of SOF, the MC-130J also escorts SOF helicopters for long-range missions. For these Helicopter Air-to-Air Refuelling (HAAR) operations, the Hercules is equipped with underwing fuel pods. In September 2024, two MC-130J crews received awards for ’exceptional service during a high-stakes contingency operation’ involving a ten-hour nonstop flight-to-target by multiple helicopters, setting an endurance record for helicopter missions.

The MC-130J is currently being upgraded with new communications, navigation and sensors. The Block 8.X software upgrade improves satellite communications (SATCOM) security including the anti-jam NATO-interoperable SATURN UHF system. In addition, Silent Knight Terrain-Following/ Terrain Avoidance (TF/TA) radar mounted in a second radome beneath the cockpit, Radio Frequency Countermeasure (RFCM), and Airborne Mission Networking (AbMN) are all part of the planned Capability Release 2, which will enhance the aircraft’s ability to operate in high-end-threat environments. This upgraded aircraft will be redesignated ‘Combat Talon III’ to reflect the significance of its new capabilities.

A400M

The Airbus A400M Atlas turboprop is operated by seven nations, with France, Germany and the UK operating the largest fleets, making it the second most popular medium-lift aircraft worldwide after the C-130. The Atlas’ maximum speed of 741 km/h (400 kn), unrefuelled range of 6,390 km (3,450 NM) with a 20-tonne payload, and a 8,700 km (4,698 NM) ferry range, service ceiling of 12,300 m and maximum payload capacity of 37 tonnes all exceed those of the C-130J/MC-130J.

A Bundeswehr A400M takes off from Gao International Airport in Mali.

Credit: Bundeswehr/Jane Schmidt

The multi-mission airframe is well-suited for SOF insertion missions, evacuation operations, and other tasks requiring covert access to contested regions. As a large airframe, the A400M can deploy SOF personnel together with a wide range of vehicles and ancillary equipment including UAVs, or a single H145M helicopter (suitable for SOF missions); alternatively, the plane’s transport bay can be configured for SOF-assisted casualty/medical evacuation (CASEVAC/MEDEVAC). Two underwing fuel pods to support long-range missions of other aircraft are available. Certification for refuelling helicopters in flight, at airspeeds as low as 194 km/h (105 kn), was approved in 2021.

The aircraft can operate from austere landing fields under total blackout conditions and have been used extensively for SOF deployments and evacuation missions in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa, as well as during SOF exercises in the Arctic. The aircraft is capable of very rapid descent to reduce exposure to hostile sensors or weapons. Low-level flight can conducted as far down as 90 m off the ground at airspeeds of 556 km/h (300 kn), while avoiding obstacles. Over water, the aircraft can descend to 50 m above the surface for SOF boat drop missions. Alternatively, it can deploy commandos for high-altitude (HALO/HAHO) parachute drops. French and German SOF, in particular, make extensive use of their nations’ A400Ms, and also deploy the aircraft in support of Allied special operators.

Small fixed-wing aircraft

Smaller aircraft can be preferable for missions requiring a lower profile or involving a small number of personnel, as is often the case with SOF missions. A case in point is the C-146A Wolfhound operated by AFSOC, which entered service in 2011. Measuring approximately 21.3 m in fuselage length and 21 m in wingspan, the Wolfhound is inconspicuous. Moreover, it bears no military designators or colour scheme, but a neutral blue and white which blends in with small commercial operators at major or minor airfields in any region.

The short take-off and landing (STOL) capable aircraft can conduct covert delivery of personnel and cargo, support and liaison for regional partners, and casualty evacuation missions at prepared and semi-prepared airfields. It achieves airspeeds of 500 km/h (270 kn), with an operating range of approximately 2,778 km (1,500 NM) with a payload of 907 kg (2,000 lb). The aircraft requires a three-person crew (two pilots and a loadmaster) and accommodates 27 passengers, four litter patients or 2,700 kg of cargo. The service’s 20 aircraft support overseas intra-theatre contingency operations across four geographic combatant commands. In 2023, a Wolfhound participated in Exercise Arctic Edge in northern Alaska, demonstrating it capability to operate in austere and extreme cold weather conditions.

US SOF personnel prepare to load medical equipment onto a C-146A Wolfhound during an exercise at Camp Rudder, Florida, on 23 April 2015.

Credit: USAF/Senior Airman Cory D. Payne

The C-146A is based on the Dornier 328 regional airliner and modified for the military by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC). Modifications include: a night vision compatible cockpit; navigational aids to support operations in GPS-degraded environments; military communications systems including the ARC-231, PRC-117, and Iridium communications suite; changes to the passenger cabin to better accommodate military missions including CASEVAC; and fuselage enhancements to support STOL and austere facility operations. On 2 September 2024, Dornier and SNC celebrated 200,000 flight hours of the C-146A.

Tiltrotor aircraft

Tiltrotor aircraft combine advantages of fixed wing aircraft – such as higher airspeed, longer range and greater fuel efficiency – with the flexibility of helicopters. This makes them especially attractive to SOF.

The best known SOF-dedicated tiltrotor is the CV-22B Osprey operated by Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). Primary missions include SOF long-range infiltration, exfiltration and resupply. According to the USAF, this enables the CV-22 to perform missions that normally would require both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. Initial operating capability (IOC) of the CV-22B was declared in 2009. Performance parameters include a maximum airspeed of 519 km/h (280 kn), a service ceiling of 7,600 m, and a combat radius of 926 km (500 NM) with one internal auxiliary fuel tank. In addition to the four-person crew (pilot, co-pilot and two flight engineers), the Osprey accommodates up to 24 personnel seated, 32 personnel floor-loaded or 4,500 kg of cargo. A GAU-21 12.7 mm heavy machine gun is mounted on the rear ramp.

The aircraft is equipped with a digital cockpit management system, digital map system, integrated threat countermeasures, Silent Knight TF/TA radar navigation (currently being introduced), gimballed infrared (IR) sight (typically slaved to the flight path vector), secure jam-resistant communications and other avionics optimised for the penetration mission. The planned Airborne Mission Networking (AbMN) upgrade, which is also being applied to the MC-130J, will provide the crew with a common air/ground picture and help to manage complex workloads. Other ongoing and planned upgrades include an infrared searchlight, lightweight ballistic armour, electronic warfare upgrades, and improved situational awareness tools. The engine nacelles are being modified to reduce their infrared signature and dust ingestion, and to remediate mechanical issues with the proprotor gearbox which have been identified as the cause of a deadly CV-22B accident in 2023.

A CV-22B recovers SOF personnel via hoist.

Credit: USAF;Tech Sgt Westin Warburton

To finance the ongoing upgrade programme, the USAF has placed 15 of the 51 operational CV-22B aircraft in ‘flyable storage’ status until at least 2026. Current plans do not call for net retirement of aircraft before 2029. “With respect to the CV-22 at large, it is answering a long-held requirement and that no other capability can answer in the special operations community as we go forward,” said AFSOC Commander Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind in February 2024.

Helicopters

For short-to-medium range SOF insertion, helicopters remain the aircraft of choice for most nations. Their primary benefit is the flexibility to deliver and retrieve operators to and from very small landing zones in urban as well as natural terrains, including through fast-rope insertion and winch recovery.

Heavy Lift

The US Army Special Operations Command’s MH-47G Chinook is the SOF-dedicated variant of Boeing’s multi-mission heavy-lift CH-47F helicopter. Currently the largest operational SOF helicopter, the Chinook has the capacity for 33 combat-equipped soldiers (or a smaller number of personnel with tactical vehicles), plus the three-person crew. Personnel can egress and embark quickly via the stern ramp or via the Fast Rope Insertion Extraction System (FRIES). The MH-47 is armed with M134 7.62 mm gatling and M240 7.62 mm machine guns to provide suppressive fire. The AN/AAQ-24 LAIRCM countermeasure system provides defence against heat-seeking missiles.

The upgraded Block II variant of the MH-47G is currently in production, with first deliveries to the Army in 2020. The new variant has a lighter but more rigid airframe, an upgraded drive system and the Advanced Chinook Rotor Blade, which together improve lift performance and efficiency, especially at high altitude and hot conditions. New, unsegmented fuel tanks increase capacity, improving range over previous iterations. The helicopter has an unrefuelled operational range of 630 km (340 NM) and an extendable refuelling probe to enable longer-range insertions. Maximum airspeed is 315 km/h (170 kn), with a cruise speed of 222 km/h (120 kn).

Army MH-47G helicopters are used to transport US Navy special boat team watercraft and personnel to and from lakes when overland transport is not practical.

Credit: US Army/Sgt Christopher Plows

The Block II’s Common Avionics Architecture System (CAAS) integrates upgraded software and hardware components, including active matrix LCDs and newer processors. FLIR and a multi-mode/terrain following radar system enable pilots to navigate through narrow canyons and gaps, flying with as little as 200 m error space on either flank while using terrain to mask their approach. The 6,100 m service ceiling makes the helicopter suited for mountain operations, with two extendable fuel dump pipes mounted at the rear of the fuselage permitting rapid weight reduction if additional lift is needed in the thin air of high altitudes.

Medium lift

Worldwide, numerous medium-lift multi-mission helicopters have been adapted for SOF operations. These include the Airbus H225M Caracal, which the manufacturer describes as the most advanced member of its Super Puma/Cougar military helicopter family. While the Caracal (previously marketed as the EC725) is used by the armed forces of 11 nations for a variety of missions, including troop transport and CASEVAC, it has been specifically selected for SOF aviation units by France and The Netherlands. This all-weather capable aircraft can operate from both land or ships, offering maximum mission flexibility. The twin Makila 2A1 turboshaft engines and five-blade main rotor provide an exceptionally low vibration level for precision flight, reduced noise level and enhanced comfort. The H225M can be refuelled in flight, extending the 1,259 km (680 NM) range by up to ten hours of flight time, enabling non-stop long-range deployment when no permissive ground refuelling options are available. Top speed rating is 324 km/h (175 kn), with a recommended cruise speed of 259 km/h (140 kn). The aircraft carries 28 combat-equipped commandos, plus the three-person crew for assault missions and insertion. Modular armour and a variety of weapons packages can be applied on a mission-by-mission basis.

French SOF conduct H225M Caracal operations from land and from warships.

Credit: Airbus

Airbus is developing a dedicated special operations variant of another proven medium lift helicopter – the NH90 – under an agreement signed in 2020 with the NATO Helicopter Management Agency. The new NH90 Standard 2 will be based on the NH90 Tactical Troop Helicopter variant, but will have numerous upgraded features developed specifically for special forces. These include a Euroflir 410 gimballed optronic sight from Safran, with displays and controls for the pilots, commandos, gunners, and loadmasters. Planned future upgrades will include the Thales TopOwl helmet featuring an integrated HUD, providing tactical information and sensor data, augmented reality and tactical 3D symbols directly to the flight crew. Future integration of the wide field of view version of Safran’s Eurofl’Eye optronic pilot aid is also planned, which will enhance the pilot’s capability to fly in reduced-visibility conditions such as sand, snow or fog. The passenger cabin will receive additional ceiling-mounted anchor points for quicker fast-rope exfiltration. The helicopter provides crashworthy seating for 20 passengers, plus the three-person crew. Maximum range is 907 km (490 NM) with a fast cruise speed of 296 km/h (160 kn). The new aircraft are destined for the French Army’s SOF, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2025.

Light helicopters

Light utility helicopters (LUH), with their reduced visual and acoustic footprint, can be the best option for insertion of small commando or reconnaissance teams. The Airbus H145M LUH SOF was chosen in 2013 by the German special operations command. The agile aircraft has proven itself on global missions including in high (up to 6,000 m) and hot operating zones. The helicopter has a length of 13.64 m, with a maximum speed of 268 km/h (145 kn), a fast cruise speed of 241 km/h (130 kn) and a maximum range of 663 km (358 NM) with standard fuel tanks.

The H145M LUH SOF features two fast-rope beams, a high-performance camera system for reconnaissance, an electronic warfare (EW) system, and weapon mounts for fire support. The helicopter can be flown by one or two pilots, with seating for up to ten passengers (nine in the Bundeswehr LUH SOF configuration) and a sling capacity of 1,600 kg. Cabin doors can be removed before take-off to facilitate fast egress upon arrival at the target; this will not impede flight performance. The 11 m rotor diameter facilitates hover and landing in urban areas, and the fenestron minimises acoustic signature, again delaying detection while approaching the target.

A H145 LUH SOF helicopters insert German commandos during an urban exercise.

Credit: Bundeswehr/Jana Neumann

Future options

Research on new or improved SOF transport options is ongoing. US SOCOM would like to see high- speed VTOL aircraft that combine the flexibility of rotary aircraft with airspeeds approaching those of jet aircraft. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is conducting the Speed and Runway INdependent Technologies (SPRINT) on behalf of and in partnership with SOCOM. Contractors have been soliciting industry to submit proposals for a proof-of-concept technology demonstrator designed for speeds of 741–833 km/h (400–450 kn) and a range of at least 315 km (170 NM). According to DARPA, two performers – Aurora Flight Sciences and Bell Textron, Inc. – have so far been awarded contracts for Phase 1B. If previous DARPA deadlines are retained, the preliminary design work for these aircraft is to be presented by spring of 2025. If the technology proves viable, it could eventually prove to be the proverbial ‘game changer’ for SOF insertion. Experience would indicate, however, that developing and validating the technology will take considerable time.

Sidney E. Dean

7. X Algorithm Feeds Users Political Content—Whether They Want It or Not

This is modern information and psychological operations designed to influence the decision making and behavior of designated target audiences.

Please go to the link to view the graphics and interactive website.

X Algorithm Feeds Users Political Content—Whether They Want It or Not

A WSJ experiment finds that accounts supporting Trump and Harris dominate feeds of new X users who wanted cooking and crafts

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/x-twitter-political-content-election-2024-28f2dadd?st=HYiX6C&utm

By Jack Gillum

Follow, Alexa Corse

Follow and Adrienne Tong

Follow

Oct. 29, 2024 9:58 am ET

New X users with interests in topics such as crafts, sports and cooking are being blanketed with political content and fed a steady diet of posts that lean toward Donald Trump and that sow doubt about the integrity of the Nov. 5 election, a Wall Street Journal analysis found.

The Journal created accounts on the social-media platform that only signaled an affinity for nonpolitical subjects, but a majority of the posts in their For You feed were partisan or related to the election. Kamala Harris’s campaign topped the list of most-seen accounts, with one post mocking pro-Trump hecklers at her rally in Wisconsin reaching all the Journal’s accounts. Ten of the other top 14 most-seen leaned right, including Trump’s, and overall, pro-Trump content appeared about twice as frequently as pro-Harris material.  

“If that cringe, dingbat, zero-votes, airhead Kamala Harris is able to cheat enough to win the presidency—the USA is over,” wrote catturd2 in a post served to nearly all of the Journal’s newly created accounts. 

X has faced tumult since Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover but remains a place where tens of millions of Americans congregate and take in information. What users see has implications for the platform’s business, which has struggled with many big advertisers nervous about controversial content. X has said that politics accounts for only a small percentage of what users see, but the Journal’s analysis found that, at least for new users, political content is hard to escape.

A spokesman for X declined to respond to a detailed list of questions sent by the Journal.

To gauge X’s role in recommending posts related to politics and the election, the Journal established its accounts with apolitical interests across five states, four of which are battlegrounds. The accounts signed on at regular intervals and scrolled through the platform’s For You timeline, an algorithmic feed. The Journal used a computer program to automatically categorize if and how the posts were political.

Fewer than a third of unique posts seen by the Journal’s accounts were political in nature. But X’s algorithm reupped political posts so often that they accounted for about half of the total posts on the accounts’ For You feeds.

Musk, who has endorsed and financially backed Trump for president, says that the company’s handling of content is separate from his personal views.

“The platform is neutral, but I will voice whatever opinions I have,” he posted in June.

The Journal couldn’t determine why X recommended any particular piece of content. The company has released code that it says powers its recommendation system. “The algorithm is open source and just tries to show people what they’re most likely to find engaging,” Musk posted in August. Yet researchers say X hasn’t shared other information needed to get a complete picture. 

The Journal account interested in crafts, theme parks and running received the most political content, while the account interested in science, music and travel saw the least.

Several factors might be amplifying political content on X, including users’ behavior, according to former X engineers. The platform’s policies under Musk dismayed many liberal users. It reinstated an estimated thousands of accounts that were suspended for violating policies under Twitter’s previous management, and included many right-wing users and Trump’s own account, @realdonaldtrump, which then-Twitter took down following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Republicans are largely the biggest political advertisers on X, according to company data, although the Journal’s analysis excluded posts labeled as ads. All told, the Journal’s accounts saw more than 26,000 unique posts.

While the Journal’s analysis found X served right-leaning content more often, the Harris campaign’s No. 1 spot shows her campaign’s strategy of embracing virality and memes to reach a broader audience could be paying off.

The platform often suggested Musk, who has the most followers of any user on X, should be a new user’s first account to follow. His posts also appeared at the top of the Journal accounts’ For You feeds more than any other user, including a video clip posted Oct. 17 of him campaigning alongside Trump, served first to each of the Journal’s accounts.

By the following Monday, Musk’s rally video was second only to a post from Alex Jones, the once-banned conspiracy theorist, who predicted a landslide for Trump. “But The Desperate Deep State Is Planning Multiple October Surprises & Black Swan Events!” said Jones’s post, viewed more than 30 million times as of Oct. 24. 

Musk oversees six companies, including the electric-vehicle maker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX. He runs engineering at X, and former employees say changes to the platform happen at his whim. When Musk has an idea or a complaint, he has a habit of texting top engineers to have it addressed.

At one point last year, engineers boosted Musk’s posts after he complained they weren’t receiving as much attention as warranted, the Journal previously reported. More recently, Musk complained that a fraction of users saw his livestreams. Engineers then worked on giving livestreams more promotion generally on the site, according to a person familiar with the effort. 

Before Musk acquired Twitter in late 2022, findings from its own research suggested the platform was primed to amplify voices on the political right. Researchers couldn’t determine why, and that research department was dismantled in the midst of sweeping job cuts shortly after Musk’s takeover, former employees said.

Republicans now see X more favorably, with 53% of right-leaning users telling a Pew survey this year that X was mostly good for democracy—up from 17% in 2021. Left-leaning users slightly outnumbered right-leaning ones on the platform last year, Pew found, 26% to 20%. 

METHODOLOGY

The Journal has been operating a group of 14 automated X accounts spread across the country, including in Maryland, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona. The bots, which have been active for more than a week, are programmed to scroll their X accounts’ For You feeds several times a day. 

Each X post, image or meme served to the Journal’s bots was then analyzed with Google’s Gemini large language model to summarize its contents and political leanings, if applicable. To validate those findings, the Journal spot-checked random samples of X content flagged as political in nature. It excluded posts labeled as ads.

The accounts indicated interests in topics unrelated to politics, such as running and cooking. The accounts only followed a single user recommended at the time of the account’s creation; none were related to politics but instead included such accounts as @nba or @spotify. The Journal was unable to compare how X served posts in the past because it didn’t have similar monitoring tools established before this month.

Brian Whitton contributed to this article.

Write to Jack Gillum at jack.gillum@wsj.com, Alexa Corse at alexa.corse@wsj.com and Adrienne Tong at adrienne.tong@wsj.com

8. Why our Presidential Candidates Must Choose Ukraine

Excerpts:

Both candidates should realize that the collapse of Ukraine during their presidency will be a black mark on their legacy forever and the national security risk this introduces to the United States will undermine any achievements they might make in domestic policy. They will be remembered by history for their shortsightedness and naiveté. 

This is a choice between victory and ignominy. Choose the former. It may decide the election, it most certainly will determine how history remembers the next president.

Why our Presidential Candidates Must Choose Ukraine

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/why-our-presidential-candidates-must-choose-ukraine

Posted: October 29th, 2024

By Rob Dannenberg

Rob Dannenberg served as chief of operations for CIA's Counterterrorism Center, chief of the Central Eurasia Division and chief of the Information Operations Center before retiring from the Agency. He served as managing director and head of the Office of Global Security for Goldman Sachs, and as director of International Security Affairs at BP. He is now an independent consultant on geopolitical and security risk.

OPINION — As the days wind down to what will arguably be the most consequential election in the first half of the 21st Century, there is a critical issue which is not being addressed adequately by either candidate: the war in Ukraine. 

There are differences in the approaches of the Republican and Democratic candidates on the issue, with former President Donald Trump saying he will end the war if he is elected and Vice President Harris suggesting her administration would continue to support Ukraine in the manner we have seen under President Biden. Neither candidate has addressed the consequences of Ukrainian defeat for the security of the United States and the West nor has either candidate articulated a strategy for victory.

Ukrainian defeat—either on the battlefield with Russian forces occupying the territory now known as Ukraine – or with Ukraine being compelled to sue for peace and conceding to Russia the parts of Ukraine currently occupied by Russian forces—would have catastrophic and far-reaching consequences for the West as Putin’s decision to invade would have been validated.

Despite the casualties suffered by Russian forces, the abysmal performance of the Russian military in general, the deterioration of Russia’s strategic position with Finland and Sweden joining NATO, President Putin will still be able to present to the Russian people and his allies in the Axis of resistance something he can describe—however Pyrrhic—as victory. That should scare the hell out of all of us. Here’s why.

Thus emboldened, it is reasonable to expect that this Axis, confident in the support from their strategic nuclear power protector, will focus on their “to do list” of conquest, whether that means the destruction of Israel, the assimilation of Taiwan into the Peoples Republic of China, or a North Korean invasion of South Korea or a combination of those. 

This is not some resurrection of the Domino theory – the idea that a political event in one country will spur similar events in other countries. It is happening right in front of us at this very moment in time. We are living in a world where there is war in Europe and the Russian aggressor is slowly gaining the upper hand leaving open the possibility of wider war. The same is true in the Middle East, where the world is monitoring the possibility of a spread of that war with trepidation. 

The consequences of a Russian victory on the risk of nuclear proliferation could be similarly catastrophic.

Iran will certainly finish its sprint for a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia and Turkey may feel compelled to follow. Japan and South Korea—both scientifically and technologically capable of building a nuclear weapons program—may follow as well with confidence in the U.S. nuclear umbrella having been eroded.

The risks associated with Ukrainian defeat should have been a more prominent subject of discussion in the current election campaign. One candidate or the other has the opportunity to present a strategy for victory – but a victory that won’t erode U.S. and western national security in the long run.

For the Republican candidate, there are a few things that should rise to critical status when it comes to U.S. national security.

First, a return to the roots of the party which was so strongly pro-defense and anti-communist through the Cold War would be a good vehicle of strength and would likely appeal to many Republican base voters who recognize the importance of the current conflict. President Trump needs to realize and publicly acknowledge that Putin is his enemy and the arch enemy of the United States. He should refute the idea that he has a special relationship with and can somehow influence Putin. This is not the case. Putin is a committed enemy of the United States and Western values and Putin is certainly confident in his ability to manipulate Trump. Trump needs to understand that it’s critical to turn the tables on Putin. 

Second, Trump should articulate a plan for strategic victory against Putin and the evil axis that the Russian president has created. An important step would be to do something the current administration has been unwilling to do, (apparently for fear of provoking Putin to sue a nuclear weapon) bring together a coalition of western leaders and replicate what Roosevelt and Churchill accomplished in the Casablanca Conference in January 1943. 

At that conference the U.S. and British leaders (Stalin was unable to attend) coordinated strategic plans against the Axis powers and promulgated the policy of “unconditional surrender.” An appropriate 21st century version of that conference would certainly include coordination of strategic planning for addressing the challenges presented by the Axis of Resistance on both the economic and military fronts and strategy for dealing with surrogates.

Third, articulate clear support for Ukraine and define the conditions for victory: complete withdrawal of Russian forces to pre-March 2014 borders, agreement to pay reparations for damages caused by the invasion and the remanding of war criminals to justice in The Hague. A conference with the above messaging would send a powerful and historic message to the people of Ukraine, our allies, the Global South, and most importantly to the Axis powers and their populations. 

And finally, President Trump should announce the removal of restrictions on the use of U.S.-provided weaponry, allowing Ukraine to strike military targets located deeper in the Russian Federation. The same military targets that are actively engaged in the unprovoked war on Ukraine. Trump cannot worry about Putin’s red lines and should boldly announce that Putin should worry about ours. (To this point, the Kremlin has done its level best to hide the consequences of the war from the Russian people. In announcing this change in U.S. policy, the message President Reagan had for Gorbachev should be paraphrased. “Mr. Putin, End this war!”)

Vice President Kamala Harris should realize that Putin is racist and chauvinistic and will judge her through this lens. In his mind, he may be categorizing the Vice President as a weaker version of former President Barack Obama, for whom Putin clearly had a deep personal loathing and lack of respect. Unlike President Trump, Vice President Harris is in a position to take steps before the election to help shape a very different view of her likely approach to national security and foreign policy. The most important immediate step she should take is to convince the current administration to remove restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to use U.S. provided weaponry (and weaponry provided by our allies that contain U.S. component parts) to strike targets in the territory of the Russian Federation as their defense needs require.

Both candidates should realize that the collapse of Ukraine during their presidency will be a black mark on their legacy forever and the national security risk this introduces to the United States will undermine any achievements they might make in domestic policy. They will be remembered by history for their shortsightedness and naiveté. 

This is a choice between victory and ignominy. Choose the former. It may decide the election, it most certainly will determine how history remembers the next president.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief.

9. What Election Integrity Really Means

The irony is that the "election integrity" tactics being employed seem to be drawn from Alinsky's rules for radicals which of course has always been associated with the left side of he political spectrum. But the tactics themselves are apolitical. They can be applied by any side (and they are).

Rules for radicals excerpt:

RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists’ minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

https://sliwainsights.com/saul-alinskys-12-rules-for-radicals/

What Election Integrity Really Means

Election deniers have co-opted the term to undermine trust in the voting process.

By Lora Kelley

The Atlantic · by Lora Kelley · October 29, 2024

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

The phrase election integrity sounds noble on its face. But in recent years, election deniers have used it to lay the groundwork for challenging the results of the 2024 election.

A few months after Donald Trump took office in 2017, he signed an executive order establishing the “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.” The Brennan Center for Justice wrote at the time that “there is strong reason to suspect this Commission is not a legitimate attempt to study elections, but is rather a tool for justifying discredited claims of widespread voter fraud and promoting vote suppression legislation.” That proved prescient. Although there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2016 or 2020 elections—or in any other recent elections, for that matter—Trump and his allies have fomented the narrative that such interference is a real problem in America, employing it in the illegal attempt to overturn the 2020 election and their reported plans to claim that the 2024 race is rigged.

As part of this strategy, right-wing activists and lawyers have organized initiatives under the auspices of election integrity, warping the meaning of those words to sow distrust. Through her Election Integrity Network, the right-wing activist Cleta Mitchell has been recruiting people—including election deniers who will likely continue to promote disinformation and conspiracy theories—to become poll workers and monitors, in an effort that was reportedly coordinated with members of the Republican National Committee. Poll watching in itself is a timeworn American practice, although it has been misused in the past; now, however, election-denial groups are sending participants to polling places under the presumption that fraud is taking place.

More recently, Elon Musk—in addition to his own brazen efforts to get Trump reelected—has invited X users to report activity they see as suspicious through an “Election Integrity Community” feed, an effort almost certain to trigger a flood of misinformation on the platform. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit has gone to great lengths to seek evidence of fraud; in one case, nine armed officers reportedly appeared with a search warrant at the door of a woman who had been working with a Latino civil-rights organization to help veterans and seniors register to vote.

The RNC, especially under the influence of its co-chair Lara Trump, has taken up “election integrity” as an explicit priority: As she said at a GOP event over the summer, “we are pulling out all the stops, and we are so laser-focused on election integrity.” Her team created an election-integrity program earlier this year and hired Christina Bobb, who was later indicted for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Arizona (she has denied wrongdoing), as its lead election-integrity lawyer. As The New Yorker reported earlier this month, the RNC plans to staff a “war room” with attorneys operating an “election-integrity hotline” on Election Day. Such initiatives have helped inject doubt into a legitimate process. Despite the clear lack of evidence to suggest fraud is likely in this election, nearly 60 percent of Americans already say they’re concerned or very concerned about it, according to a recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll; 88 percent of Trump supporters said they were concerned about fraud (compared with about 30 percent of Kamala Harris supporters).

The “consistent, disciplined, repetitive use” of the term election integrity in this new context is “designed to confuse the public,” Alice Clapman, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Program, told me. A sad irony, she added, is that those who use this framing have done so to push for restrictions that actually suppress voting, including strict voter-ID laws and limitations on early ballots, or to threaten the existence of initiatives to ensure fair voting. Many of the same activists promoting “election integrity,” including Cleta Mitchell, organized a misinformation campaign to undermine a bipartisan state-led initiative called the Electronic Registration Information Center, which was created in 2012 to ensure that voter rolls were accurate. Multiple states eventually left the compact.

The term election integrity isn’t entirely new—Google Trends data suggest that its usage has bubbled up around election years in recent decades. But its prominence has exploded since 2020, and the strong associations with election denial in recent years means that other groups have backed away from it. “Like so much charged language in American politics, when one side really seizes on a term and uses it in a loaded way,” it becomes “a partisan term,” Clapman told me. Now groups unaffiliated with the right are turning to more neutral language such as voter protection and voter security to refer to their efforts to ensure free elections.

Election deniers are chipping away at Americans’ shared understanding of reality. And as my colleague Ali Breland wrote yesterday, violent rhetoric and even political violence in connection with the election have already begun. This month so far, a man has punched a poll worker after being asked to remove his MAGA hat, and hundreds of ballots have been destroyed in fires on the West Coast. Election officials are bracing for targeted attacks in the coming days—and some have already received threats. If Trump loses, the right will be poised—under the guise of “election integrity”—to interfere further with the norms of American democracy.

10. ICSPOTS Event: A Pivotal Step Toward Modernizing USSOCOM Resourcing and Readiness

Certainly a new concept to me.

I have spoken with some of the staff (some really brilliant people) who are working on assessments and data analytics and they are working hard to develop innovative and sophisticated processes to enhance the SOF enterprises. This must be some of their fruits of their labor.

The challenge is how do you account for the intangible and hard to measure effects in irregular, unconventional, and political warfare? Things like influence, governance, and support to indigenous forces and populations? This process must do more than just count commando successes.

Excerpts:

This article explores the significance of ICSPOTS in reshaping resourcing practices within USSOCOM, particularly through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and advanced electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. By optimizing technology for strategic military readiness, ICSPOTS highlights a modern approach to defense resourcing that will have a lasting impact on operational agility, decision-making, and readiness for special operations forces (SOF).

...

Conclusion: A Strategic Step Toward Enhanced Military Readiness

The ICSPOTS event is more than an opportunity to showcase new technology; it is a strategic move toward modernizing the way USSOCOM approaches resourcing and readiness. By aligning with the goals of the PPBE Reform, ICSPOTS is setting the stage for a more agile, innovative, and effective defense model.

As the event unfolds, it will serve as a benchmark for future military resourcing events, offering insights into how technology, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making can shape the future of defense. ICSPOTS represents a forward-thinking approach that prioritizes flexibility, efficiency, and strategic alignment, ensuring that USSOCOM—and the U.S. military at large—are prepared for the evolving demands of modern warfare.

ICSPOTS Event: A Pivotal Step Toward Modernizing USSOCOM Resourcing and Readiness

By the Veritas Rei Group

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/icspots-event-a-pivotal-step-toward-modernizing-ussocom-resourcing-and-readiness?postId=

Introduction

The Intelligent Components Software Platforms Open Technology Systems (ICSPOTS) Assessment Event, set for December 10–12, 2024, is more than a tech showcase—it’s a strategic leap forward for the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). Hosted by SOFWERX, this event underscores the military’s commitment to adopting advanced, flexible solutions to strengthen U.S. defense capabilities. ICSPOTS is aligned with recommendations from the recent Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform report, pushing the Department of Defense (DoD) toward a more adaptable and efficient model.

This article explores the significance of ICSPOTS in reshaping resourcing practices within USSOCOM, particularly through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and advanced electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. By optimizing technology for strategic military readiness, ICSPOTS highlights a modern approach to defense resourcing that will have a lasting impact on operational agility, decision-making, and readiness for special operations forces (SOF).

The Need for Modernization in Defense Resourcing

The traditional defense resourcing model has been driven by lengthy budget cycles and limited flexibility. However, the growing complexity of modern threats requires a more responsive approach, as outlined in the PPBE Reform. The reform highlighted three main goals for the DoD:

• Better alignment between budgets and strategic goals: To meet shifting threats, resources must adapt more rapidly to fulfill current and future needs.
• Fostering innovation: Integrating new technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics to keep pace with technological advancements.
• Enhancing decision-making through advanced data analytics: Using data-driven approaches to make faster, more accurate operational decisions.

The ICSPOTS event is a practical manifestation of these reform principles. By integrating cutting-edge technology into USSOCOM’s core operations, it aims to bridge the gap between strategic goals and available resources, optimizing both.

Key Technologies Featured at ICSPOTS

ICSPOTS will explore the latest in AI, data networking, and advanced sensors, particularly focused on electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. These technologies are essential for USSOCOM to maintain an edge in rapidly evolving operational landscapes.

• AI and Machine Learning: ICSPOTS highlights the role of AI in defense. For example, AI algorithms enhance decision-making by processing vast amounts of data in real time, allowing commanders to react swiftly to battlefield developments.
• Advanced Sensors and Data Networking: These sensors collect data from multiple sources to create a comprehensive operational picture. When combined with data networking capabilities, they provide SOF with actionable intelligence, improving situational awareness.
• Electronic Warfare (EW): EW technology remains critical for disrupting and defending against enemy communication networks. By incorporating advanced EW solutions, USSOCOM can detect, monitor, and neutralize threats more effectively.
•  

These technological advancements underscore the broader goal of ICSPOTS: to ensure that USSOCOM’s resources and capabilities are both agile and adaptable, capable of meeting emerging security threats head-on.

Aligning ICSPOTS with PPBE Reform

The PPBE Reform report emphasizes adapting budgetary practices to match the demands of modern warfare. ICSPOTS directly addresses this by:

• Promoting Agile Resource Allocation: By allowing flexible budget alignment, the event reflects a forward-thinking approach that the PPBE Reform advocates. This flexibility ensures resources can be reallocated to address unforeseen challenges without lengthy budgetary adjustments.
• Encouraging Collaborative Innovation: Events like ICSPOTS invite collaboration between USSOCOM, SOFWERX, and industry partners, creating a network for sharing insights and capabilities. This collaboration fosters innovation, helping to overcome budget constraints through joint development initiatives.
• Implementing Data-Driven Decision-Making: A key recommendation from the PPBE Reform is using data analytics for more informed decision-making. The data generated from AI and sensor technology allows USSOCOM to gather real-time insights, enhancing the speed and accuracy of tactical and strategic decisions.

By focusing on these areas, ICSPOTS enables USSOCOM to be better aligned with PPBE goals, creating a blueprint for a more flexible and effective approach to defense resourcing.

Why ICSPOTS Matters to the Future of U.S. Defense

ICSPOTS isn’t just a single event; it’s a part of a larger shift toward an optimized, modern defense approach that includes:

• Enhanced Operational Readiness: With a strong focus on integrating new technology, ICSPOTS enhances the speed and flexibility of USSOCOM’s responses. This ensures that SOF units are always equipped and ready for diverse missions.
• Maximized Resource Efficiency: The focus on smarter resource allocation translates to cost savings, allowing USSOCOM to invest more effectively in new and essential technologies.
• Strategic Resilience: By leveraging technology for better situational awareness, ICSPOTS helps USSOCOM anticipate threats and adapt as needed, thus bolstering overall national security.
•  

USSOCOM’s proactive approach to embracing such initiatives is a testament to its commitment to not only resourcing but also to reshaping the future of U.S. military capabilities. The ICSPOTS event underscores the need to modernize resourcing frameworks to keep pace with fast-evolving threats and technological advancements.

Collaboration with SOFWERX: Bridging the Gap Between Innovation and Implementation

One of the notable aspects of ICSPOTS is its collaboration with SOFWERX, a public-private partnership that fosters innovation within the defense community. This partnership serves as a bridge between the military and industry innovators, bringing together unique perspectives and expertise.

SOFWERX operates with the goal of accelerating the development of practical solutions for USSOCOM. By connecting defense experts with industry partners, SOFWERX helps turn conceptual ideas into functional resources that can be deployed rapidly. This collaboration is especially valuable in a fast-paced, technology-driven environment where the rapid implementation of solutions is essential.

The Broader Implications for Special Operations Forces (SOF)

ICSPOTS aims to ensure that SOF units, who often operate in complex and high-risk environments, have the tools they need to succeed. The event’s focus on flexible and efficient resources means SOF can remain adaptive, informed, and mission-ready in dynamic environments. In particular, the application of AI-driven analytics and real-time data processing provides SOF units with a significant advantage, allowing them to make informed decisions quickly.

This capability not only increases operational efficiency but also enhances the safety of special operations forces, who rely on accurate and timely information to mitigate risks on the ground.

Conclusion: A Strategic Step Toward Enhanced Military Readiness

The ICSPOTS event is more than an opportunity to showcase new technology; it is a strategic move toward modernizing the way USSOCOM approaches resourcing and readiness. By aligning with the goals of the PPBE Reform, ICSPOTS is setting the stage for a more agile, innovative, and effective defense model.

As the event unfolds, it will serve as a benchmark for future military resourcing events, offering insights into how technology, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making can shape the future of defense. ICSPOTS represents a forward-thinking approach that prioritizes flexibility, efficiency, and strategic alignment, ensuring that USSOCOM—and the U.S. military at large—are prepared for the evolving demands of modern warfare.

For more information on the ICSPOTS event, or to register, please follow this link.

11. Russia test-fires missiles to simulate 'massive' response to nuclear first strike

Will the nuclear genie remain in the bottle?

Excerpts:

Putin has said that Russia does not need to resort to the use of nuclear weapons in order to achieve victory in Ukraine.

Russia is the world's largest nuclear power. Together, Russia and the U.S. control 88% of the world's nuclear warheads.

U.S. officials say they have seen no change to Russia's nuclear deployment posture during the war. But the United States in 2022 was so concerned about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia that it warned Putin over the consequences of using such weapons, according to Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns.

Russia test-fires missiles to simulate 'massive' response to nuclear first strike

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20241029-russia-test-fires-missiles-to-simulate-massive-response-to-nuclear-first-strike?utm

Europe

Russia on Tuesday held nuclear drills that involved firing missiles from the ground, sea and air, the defence ministry said. President Putin, who recently approved changes to rules on the use of nuclear weapons, had multiple times alluded to resorting to using such force since the start of Russia's war with Ukraine 2-1/2 years ago. 

Issued on: 29/10/2024 - 17:22

3 min

By:

NEWS WIRES

In this photo taken from video distributed by the Russian defense ministry press service on Tuesday, October 29, 2024, a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is test-fired from the Plesetsk launchpad in northwestern Russia. © AP

Russia test-fired missiles over distances of thousands of miles on Tuesday to simulate a "massive" nuclear response to an enemy first strike.

"Given the growing geopolitical tensions and the emergence of new external threats and risks, it is important to have modern and constantly ready-to-use strategic forces," President Vladimir Putin said as he announced the exercise.

It took place at a critical moment in the Russia-Ukraine war, after weeks of Russian signals to the West that Moscow will respond if the United States and its allies allow Kyiv to fire longer-range missiles deep into Russia.

On Monday NATO said that North Korea has sent troops to western Russia, something Moscow has not denied.

In televised comments, Defence Minister Andrei Belousov told Putin that the purpose of the drill was to practise delivering "a massive nuclear strike by strategic offensive forces in response to a nuclear strike by the enemy".

The exercise involved Russia's full nuclear "triad" of ground-, sea- and air-launched missiles.

A Yars intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwest Russia to Kamchatka, a peninsula in the far east. Sineva and Bulava ballistic missiles were fired from submarines, and cruise missiles were launched from strategic bomber planes, the defence ministry said.

The 2-1/2-year-old war is entering what Russian officials say is its most dangerous phase as the West considers how to shore up Ukraine while Russian forces advance in the east of the country.

Putin said using nuclear weapons would be an "extremely exceptional measure".

"I stress that we are not going to get involved in a new arms race, but we will maintain nuclear forces at the level of necessary sufficiency," he said.

He added that Russia was moving to new "stationary and mobile-based missile systems" which have a reduced launch preparation time and could overcome missile defence systems.

The drill follows an Oct. 18 exercise in the Tver region, northwest of Moscow, involving field movements by a unit equipped with Yars intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of striking U.S. cities.

Nuclear signals

Since the start of the war, Putin has sent a series of pointed signals to the West, including by changing Russia's position on major nuclear treaties and announcing the deployment of tactical nuclear missiles to neighbouring Belarus.

Ukraine has accused him of nuclear blackmail. NATO says it will not be intimidated by Russian threats.

Read more

Putin’s nuclear threats: empty rhetoric or a shift in battlefield strategy?

Last month the Kremlin leader approved changes to the official nuclear doctrine, extending the list of scenarios under which Moscow would consider using such weapons.

Under the changes, Russia would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack - a warning to the United States not to help Ukraine strike deep into Russia with conventional weapons.

Putin has said that Russia does not need to resort to the use of nuclear weapons in order to achieve victory in Ukraine.

Russia is the world's largest nuclear power. Together, Russia and the U.S. control 88% of the world's nuclear warheads.

U.S. officials say they have seen no change to Russia's nuclear deployment posture during the war. But the United States in 2022 was so concerned about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia that it warned Putin over the consequences of using such weapons, according to Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns.

(Reuters)

12. New Vehicles, Face Paint and a 1,200-Foot Fall: The U.S. Army Prepares for War With China

Extensive photos at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/us/politics/us-military-army-china.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WE4.r-WH.YjP8AQ3rmjuV&smid=url-share

A lot of light infantry and airborne emphasis. But the subtitle is spot on: This is an inherently dangerous business regardless of the type of fight (and training for the fight is very dangerous as well).

Excerpts:

Forget the Marines, who can get anywhere quickly, because they travel light. Or the Navy, which practically lives in the Pacific. Those services, which featured heavily in the Pacific during World War II, have the planning for a conflict in Asia baked into their DNA.

But now, as the chances of war with China increase, the big and cumbersome Army is trying to transform itself after two decades of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Unlike the Taliban or other insurgents, China will have satellites that can see troop formations from the sky. The Army must, in essence, learn how to fly under the radar.

To stress-test the Army’s ability to deploy quickly and fight on Pacific island chains, soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division, along with Japanese, Australian, Indonesian and other partner troops, rappelled into jungle ravines and then made the humid climbs up, laden with gear.

Some 28 miles away at Pearl Harbor, Army transport ship crews ironed out various ways to discharge the military equipment and the troops they will need in the event of war in the Pacific.

And not far from the North Shore of Oahu, soldiers worked to disguise a multivehicle command and control unit, complete with big-screen computer stations, so that it was almost indistinguishable from the deep green forest.

New Vehicles, Face Paint and a 1,200-Foot Fall: The U.S. Army Prepares for War With China

The big and cumbersome Army is trying to transform itself to deploy quickly to Asia, if needed. It is an inherently dangerous business.

By Helene CooperPhotographs and Video by Kenny Holston

Reporting from Mauna Loa, Hawaii

• Oct. 29, 2024

Early one morning this month, 864 Army paratroopers bundled into C-17 transport planes at a base in Alaska and took off for a Great Power War exercise between three volcanic mountains on Hawaii’s Big Island.

Only 492 made it. Some of the C-17s had trouble with their doors, while others were forced to land early. A few of the parachutists who did make it sprained ankles or suffered head trauma. And one — a 19-year-old private — began to fall quickly when his chute did not open.

Across the field, shouts of “pull your reserve” could be heard before the young private hit the ground and medics ran to treat him. The horrifying scene and its aftermath encapsulate every jumper’s worst nightmare.

But Pvt. Second Class Erik Partida’s 1,200-foot fall was also a stark reality check as the U.S. Army transforms itself, and its hundreds of thousands of young men and women, for yet another war, this one a potential conflict with China.

The Pentagon calls it a Great Power War, and it would be exponentially more dangerous. It would put the world’s two strongest militaries — both of them nuclear superpowers — in direct conflict, possibly drawing in other nuclear adversaries, including North Korea and Russia. U.S. troops would be killed, in numbers that could possibly go beyond the toll from America’s deadliest conflicts.

Such a war would be fought on the ground, at sea, in the air and in space. So the Army is practicing for exactly that.

Video

CreditCredit...

Forget the Marines, who can get anywhere quickly, because they travel light. Or the Navy, which practically lives in the Pacific. Those services, which featured heavily in the Pacific during World War II, have the planning for a conflict in Asia baked into their DNA.

But now, as the chances of war with China increase, the big and cumbersome Army is trying to transform itself after two decades of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Unlike the Taliban or other insurgents, China will have satellites that can see troop formations from the sky. The Army must, in essence, learn how to fly under the radar.

To stress-test the Army’s ability to deploy quickly and fight on Pacific island chains, soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division, along with Japanese, Australian, Indonesian and other partner troops, rappelled into jungle ravines and then made the humid climbs up, laden with gear.

Some 28 miles away at Pearl Harbor, Army transport ship crews ironed out various ways to discharge the military equipment and the troops they will need in the event of war in the Pacific.

And not far from the North Shore of Oahu, soldiers worked to disguise a multivehicle command and control unit, complete with big-screen computer stations, so that it was almost indistinguishable from the deep green forest.

A so-called Great Power War with China would be fought on the ground, at sea, in the air and in space. So the U.S. Army is practicing for exactly that.

Former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have outlined vastly different approaches to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Their approaches to turmoil in the Middle East are also expected to be at least rhetorically different.

But no matter who wins in November, the United States will continue to prepare for war with China.

Beijing has made clear that it will seek to expand its power in Asia, from militarizing uninhabited rocks in the Pacific to claiming sovereignty over international waters. And all of that starts with Taiwan, which President Xi Jinping has ordered the Chinese military to be ready to invade by 2027.

While Taiwan has its own defenses, military experts say it is difficult to see how the island would repel a Chinese invasion without U.S. help. Such a move would be a decision for whoever is president at the time, but American policymakers worry that staying out of it may not be an option if the United States wants to maintain its dominance.

“My sense is that a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan would send massive ripples throughout the region,” said Seth Jones, a senior vice president with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China would likely emerge as the dominant military power in the region, not the United States, and it would trigger a range of second- and third-order effects.”

Video

CreditCredit...

For instance, America’s Pacific allies could lose faith in U.S. deterrence and try to make security deals with China. Japan and South Korea — both treaty allies of the United States — could join the nuclear club as a way to defend themselves against China.

“Is it quite the fall of the Roman Empire?” Mr. Jones said. “I don’t know, but that’s the right kind of question to ask.”

‘Tyranny of Distance’

The U.S. Army knows how hard it would be to invade Taiwan.

During World War II, when the island was called Formosa and was occupied by Japan, the Joint Chiefs of Staff came up with Operation Causeway, an invasion plan that would give the United States a base closer to Japan from which to attack. Gen. Douglas MacArthur opposed invading Taiwan as too risky; it meant crossing a contested sea to fight on complex terrain against a well-defended army. Military planners said an amphibious assault on the island would have been far harder than the D-Day landings at Normandy.

Few Army planners think the Chinese military is ready to undertake an amphibious assault of Taiwan.

“The first thing you have to do is you have to generate an invasion force, which would be a pretty large force, to go onto an island which has a prepared defense,” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. VanAntwerp, the director of operations for the Army’s Pacific Command, said in an interview. “There’s 100 miles of Taiwan Straits that you have to get across, and you’re doing that in large transport vessels that are very vulnerable during that crossing.”

China would most likely use light amphibious vessels to try to secure a beachhead in Taiwan, military planners say, but those vessels would have to plow through heavily mined waters. And while air assault forces would probably try to target infrastructure, in the end there is no viable way to seize an island as large as Taiwan, with its own defenses and 23 million people, without putting a force on the ground — troops who would have to come by sea.

“You can’t do it without pushing a large landing force across the straits on ships,” General VanAntwerp said. “There’s no other way.”

So China is working on it. Chinese military planners have repurposed civilian ferries to transport troops and equipment across the strait and are working to construct floating piers, American officials say.

Behind the Journalism

Meet the Times journalists covering the election. Get a glimpse of the frenzied life of our politics editor, ride along with our reporters traveling the country with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and find out what our congressional reporter has learned in four decades on the job.

The Pentagon would not go into detail about how American trainers are helping Taiwan build defenses. But making clear to the Chinese that an amphibious assault would be fraught is part of the U.S. military’s deterrence plan.

Image

Soldiers working in a mobile operations center that was disguised to be indistinguishable from the deep green forest.

Image

The Hawaii exercises were devised to replicate the conditions that troops could expect in a war with China.

Image

The Army sent the troops 96 new rainforest-green infantry squad vehicles that can quickly move up to nine soldiers each through jungle terrain.

Army officials also say they hope joint exercises with Pacific partners will show Chinese military officials all the capabilities that the United States has and can bring to bear.

The officials point out that more than a quarter of the service’s 450,000 active-duty troops are already tasked to the Pacific. But they define that region liberally, to encompass troops not only in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines but also in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California. Taiwan is more than 6,000 miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., a separation the Army refers to as “the tyranny of distance.”

Docked in Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army vessel Maj. Gen. Robert Smalls will be critical to getting all the apparatuses of the Army into the Pacific theater. The 300-foot-long ship, which recently arrived from Norfolk, Va., via the Panama Canal for the exercises, can beach itself, discharging 900 tons of vehicles and cargo — and, if necessary, troops — onto islands.

Capt. Ander Thompson, the commander of the Seventh Engineer Dive Detachment out of Pearl Harbor, was part of a detachment that spent several weeks this past summer with Filipino military divers clearing debris from a strategic port in the northern Philippine island of Batan, about 120 miles south of Taiwan.

Video

CreditCredit...

The operation, which also deepened the harbor, will give Army and Navy ships better access to the port should conflict break out. Batan is near the Bashi Channel, a potential transit point for American forces headed to the Taiwan Strait.

The American Air Force cannot establish air superiority over the entire Pacific Ocean, but it can open up corridors, what the Army calls “interior lines” for unfettered movement, between, say, the Philippines and other islands. The United States has some troops already in place — about 54,000 in Japan, 25,000 in South Korea and a far smaller number in the Philippines.

The Hawaii exercises, which ended in mid-October, were devised to replicate the conditions that troops can expect in a war with China. Gone were the desert-sand-colored fatigues that became de rigueur during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The troops in Hawaii wore jungle fatigues and face paint.

Image

Soldiers learned how to rappel through jungle terrain.

Image

The troops simulated transporting a wounded soldier.

Image

Gone were the desert-sand-colored fatigues that became de rigueur during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The troops in Hawaii wore jungle fatigues and face paint.

Troops worked on new maneuvers patched together from watching Ukraine fight Russia. They dismantled and moved large and cumbersome command and control operations in 20 to 30 minutes, and communicated with one another without using Army satellites, so that an adversary would not be able to pick up their conversations.

Learning how to advance in small teams that can attack and then dissipate into thin air was key. The Army sent to the troops 96 new rainforest-green infantry squad vehicles that can quickly move up to nine soldiers each through jungle terrain.

“It is so powerful to be able to send a company’s worth of personnel, which is about 130 people, on those vehicles, along multiple routes, and then at a point bring them together to attack the enemy, and then disappear in different directions,” said Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, the 25th Infantry Division’s commander.

‘Pull Your Reserve’

The first of the 864 Army parachuters who took off from Alaska began appearing in the skies above the three volcanic mountains just after sunrise on Oct. 7.

From the ground, the sight could easily pass for an Army airborne commercial, as waves of jumpers shot out of the side of the C-17s and floated to earth, their chutes billowing. All of the soldiers were supposed to be equipped with two chutes, including a reserve if their primary chute did not deploy within four seconds after they jumped out of the plane.

Image

Soldiers traveled on C-17 planes from Alaska to parachute into the Hawaiian terrain.

Around 7:35 a.m., Lt. Col. Tim Alvarado, the commander of the garrison at the Pohakuloa Training Area, peered into the sun as the next C-17 approached.

“The paratroopers should be standing at this point; they would have gotten the 10-minute warning,” he said, narrating the jump for me. “The jump master is looking out, making sure there are no obstructions as the parachuters are getting ready to jump out.”

The C-17 roared overhead, and the jumpers started appearing like closed umbrellas that whooshed open in the sky as their chutes expanded. “Some of them get twisted up so they have to unwind their ropes so they don’t land awkwardly,” Colonel Alvarado continued.

Then, surveying the scene, he said, “That’s not right.”

Before us, what looked like a cigarette in the sky was falling in the midst of the canopy of ballooned parachutes. Above the jumper, Private Partida, air moved through his chute, creating a wiggly line. But the air did not inflate the chute.

“Pull your reserve,” Colonel Alvarado said quietly.

The reserve never deployed. Private Partida disappeared from view beneath a berm as he hit the ground.

Capt. Kaleigh Mullen, an Army doctor, started running. Medics stationed throughout the drop zone were doing the same.

Image

All of the soldiers were supposed to be equipped with two chutes, including a reserve if their primary chute did not deploy within four seconds after they jumped out of the plane.

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A Black Hawk medical helicopter carrying the soldier who fell to the ground without his parachute.

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A medical Humvee was on site for minor injuries.

Members of the Private Partida’s unit got to him first. He was calm and conscious, but his spine was damaged. Captain Mullen arrived, panting from her seven-minute sprint. She and Maj. Mitch Marks, an Army physician assistant, propped up his neck and spine to make sure he did not suffer any additional damage.

“OK, so he was very talkative, and he was able to say that he didn’t have any pain,” Captain Mullen told me later. She took his first set of vitals at 7:45 a.m., and by 8:20 the Black Hawk medevac helicopter was in flight, on its way to the hospital.

A statement released a day later provided few details. “An 11th Airborne Division soldier was injured in a training incident in Hawaii today,” it said. The release made no mention of the unopened chute or the reserve.

Nor did it mention that doctors later fused Private Partida’s vertebrae in multiple surgeries. Whether he will be able to walk again is not known.

Instead, the statement ended with a description of the purpose of the exercises, which included preparing paratroopers for “decisive action operations in the U.S. Army Pacific area of responsibility.”

Image

American troops would not just get hurt in a Great Power War, they would be killed, in numbers that could possibly go beyond the toll from America’s deadliest conflicts.

Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent. More about Helene Cooper

Kenny Holston is a Times photographer based in Washington, primarily covering Congress, the military and the White House. More about Kenny Holston

See more on: Defense Budget, United States Special Operations Command, Xi Jinping, U.S. Politics

13. How Russia, China and Iran Are Interfering in the Presidential Election

How Russia, China and Iran Are Interfering in the Presidential Election

Eight years after Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, foreign influence with American voters has grown more sophisticated. That could have outsize consequences in the 2024 race.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/technology/election-interference-russia-china-iran.html

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In 2016, Russia’s interference in the presidential election looked very different from the disinformation campaigns that spread today.Credit...Marina Lystseva/Reuters

By Sheera FrenkelTiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers

Oct. 29, 2024

Leer en español阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

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When Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, spreading divisive and inflammatory posts online to stoke outrage, its posts were brash and riddled with spelling errors and strange syntax. They were designed to get attention by any means necessary.

“Hillary is a Satan,” one Russian-made Facebook post read.

Now, eight years later, foreign interference in American elections has become far more sophisticated, and far more difficult to track.

Disinformation from abroad — particularly from Russia, China and Iran — has matured into a consistent and pernicious threat, as the countries test, iterate and deploy increasingly nuanced tactics, according to U.S. intelligence and defense officials, tech companies and academic researchers. The ability to sway even a small pocket of Americans could have outsize consequences for the presidential election, which polls generally consider a neck-and-neck race.

Russia, according to American intelligence assessments, aims to bolster the candidacy of former President Donald J. Trump, while Iran favors his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. China appears to have no preferred outcome.

But the broad goal of these efforts has not changed: to sow discord and chaos in hopes of discrediting American democracy in the eyes of the world. The campaigns, though, have evolved, adapting to a changing media landscape and the proliferation of new tools that make it easy to fool credulous audiences.

Here are the ways that foreign disinformation has evolved:

Now, disinformation is basically everywhere.

Russia was the primary architect of American election-related disinformation in 2016, and its posts ran largely on Facebook.

Now, Iran and China are engaging in similar efforts to influence American politics, and all three are scattering their efforts across dozens of platforms, from small forums where Americans chat about local weather to messaging groups united by shared interests. The countries are taking cues from one another, although there is debate over whether they have directly cooperated on strategies.

There are hordes of Russian accounts on Telegram seeding divisive, sometimes vitriolic videos, memes and articles about the presidential election. There are at least hundreds more from China that mimicked students to inflame the tensions on American campuses this summer over the war in Gaza. Both countries also have accounts on Gab, a less prominent social media platform favored by the far right, where they have worked to promote conspiracy theories.

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Iran, Russia and China are engaging in similar efforts to influence American politics, and all three are scattering their efforts across dozens of platforms.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Russian operatives have also tried to support Mr. Trump on Reddit and forum boards favored by the far right, targeting voters in six swing states along with Hispanic Americans, video gamers and others identified by Russia as potential Trump sympathizers, according to internal documents disclosed in September by the Department of Justice.

One campaign linked to China’s state influence operation, known as Spamouflage, operated accounts using a name, Harlan, to create the impression that the source of the conservative-leaning content was an American, on four platforms: YouTube, X, Instagram and TikTok.

The content is far more targeted.

The new disinformation being peddled by foreign nations aims not just at swing states, but also at specific districts within them, and at particular ethnic and religious groups within those districts. The more targeted the disinformation is, the more likely it is to take hold, according to researchers and academics who have studied the new influence campaigns.

“When disinformation is custom-built for a specific audience by preying on their interests or opinions, it becomes more effective,” said Melanie Smith, the research director for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research organization based in London. “In previous elections, we were trying to determine what the big false narrative was going to be. This time, it is subtle polarized messaging that strokes the tension.”

Iran in particular has spent its resources setting up covert disinformation efforts to draw in niche groups. A website titled “Not Our War,” which aimed to draw in American military veterans, interspersed articles about the lack of support for active-duty soldiers with virulently anti-American views and conspiracy theories.

Other sites included “Afro Majority,” which created content aimed at Black Americans, and “Savannah Time,” which sought to sway conservative voters in the swing state of Georgia. In Michigan, another swing state, Iran created an online outlet called “Westland Sun” to cater to Arab Americans in suburban Detroit.

2024 Election: Live Updates

Updated 

Oct. 29, 2024, 11:14 p.m. ETOct. 29, 2024

• Trump and his allies link Biden’s ‘garbage’ comment to Clinton’s 2016 ‘deplorables’ remark.
• Biden appears to insult Trump supporters as ‘garbage,’ but quickly tries to clarify.
• Rallying young voters near Atlanta, Michelle Obama warns of ‘apathy.’

“That Iran would target Arab and Muslim populations in Michigan shows that Iran has a nuanced understanding of the political situation in America and is deftly maneuvering to appeal to a key demographic to influence the election in a targeted fashion,” said Max Lesser, a senior analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

China and Russia have followed a similar pattern. On X this year, Chinese state media spread false narratives in Spanish about the Supreme Court, which Spanish-speaking users on Facebook and YouTube then circulated further, according to Logically, an organization that monitors disinformation online.

Experts on Chinese disinformation said that inauthentic social media accounts linked to Beijing had become more convincing and engaging and that they now included first-person references to being an American or a military veteran. In recent weeks, according to a report from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, inauthentic accounts linked to China’s Spamouflage targeted House and Senate Republicans seeking re-election in Alabama, Tennessee and Texas.

Artificial intelligence is propelling this evolution.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have boosted disinformation capabilities beyond what was possible in previous elections, allowing state agents to create and distribute their campaigns with more finesse and efficiency.

OpenAI, whose ChatGPT tool popularized the technology, reported this month that it had disrupted more than 20 foreign operations that had used the company’s products between June and September. They included efforts by Russia, China, Iran and other countries to create and fill websites and to spread propaganda or disinformation on social media — and even to analyze and reply to specific posts. (The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft last year for copyright infringement of news content; both companies have denied the claims.)

“A.I. capabilities are being used to exacerbate the threats that we expected and the threats that we’re seeing,” Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in an interview. “They’re essentially lowering the bar for a foreign actor to conduct more sophisticated influence campaigns.”

The utility of commercially available A.I. tools can be seen in the efforts of John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff in Florida who now lives in Russia after fleeing criminal charges in the United States.

Working from an apartment in Moscow, he has created scores of websites posing as American news outlets and used them to publish disinformation, effectively doing by himself the work that, eight years ago, would have involved an army of bots. Mr. Dougan’s sites have circulated several disparaging claims about Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, according to NewsGuard, a company that has tracked them in detail.

Image

According to the Department of Justice, Russian operatives have worked to support former President Donald J. Trump on Reddit and forum boards favored by the far right.Credit...Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

China, too, has deployed an increasingly advanced tool kit that includes A.I.-manipulated audio files, damaging memes and fabricated voter polls in campaigns around the world. This year, a deepfake video of a Republican congressman from Virginia circulated on TikTok, accompanied by a Chinese caption falsely claiming that the politician was soliciting votes for a critic of Beijing who sought (and later won) the Taiwanese presidency.

It’s becoming much harder to identify disinformation.

All three countries are also becoming better at covering their tracks.

Last month, Russia was caught obscuring its attempts to influence Americans by secretly backing a group of conservative American commentators employed through Tenet Media, a digital platform created in Tennessee in 2023.

The company served as a seemingly legitimate facade for publishing scores of videos with pointed political commentary as well as conspiracy theories about election fraud, Covid-19, immigrants and Russia’s war with Ukraine. Even the influencers who were covertly paid for their appearances on Tenet said they did not know the money came from Russia.

In an echo of Russia’s scheme, Chinese operatives have been cultivating a network of foreign influencers to help spread its narratives, creating a group described as “foreign mouths,” “foreign pens” and “foreign brains,” according to a report last fall by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

The new tactics have made it harder for government agencies and tech companies to find and remove the influence campaigns — all while emboldening other hostile states, said Graham Brookie, the senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

“Where there is more malign foreign influence activity, it creates more surface area, more permission for other bad actors to jump into that space,” he said. “If all of them are doing it, then the cost for exposure is not as high.”

Technology companies aren’t doing as much to stop disinformation.

The foreign disinformation has exploded as tech giants have all but given up their efforts to combat disinformation. The largest companies, including Meta, Google, OpenAI and Microsoft, have scaled back their attempts to label and remove disinformation since the last presidential elections. Others have no teams in place at all.

The lack of cohesive policy among the tech companies has made it impossible to form a united front against foreign disinformation, security officials and executives at tech companies said.

“These alternative platforms don’t have the same degree of content moderation and robust trust and safety practices that would potentially mitigate these campaigns,” said Mr. Lesser of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

He added that even larger platforms such as X, Facebook and Instagram were trapped in an eternal game of Whac-a-Mole as foreign state operatives quickly rebuilt influence campaigns that had been removed. Alethea, a company that tracks online threats, recently discovered that an Iranian disinformation campaign that used accounts named after hoopoes, the colorful bird, recently resurfaced on X despite having been banned twice before.

Sheera Frenkel is a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel

Tiffany Hsu reports on misinformation and disinformation and its origins, movement and consequences. She has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about Tiffany Hsu

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul. More about Steven Lee Myers

​14. Pentagon unveils new plan to energize America’s defense sector

Sorely needed. Can we do it?

The 93 page report can be downloaded here:  https://www.businessdefense.gov/docs/ndis/NDIS-Implementation-Plan-FY2025.pdf

We must have the support of industry, Congress, and the American people. 

Given our fiscal challenges (and threats) can we afford to do this? Or can we afford not to?

Pentagon unveils new plan to energize America’s defense sector

defensenews.com · by Noah Robertson

The Pentagon published a second and more detailed plan to invigorate the American defense industry this year, including the weapons it sees as most crucial to deter China.

The implementation plan, released Tuesday, builds on a strategy published this January, which described how the U.S. defense sector has withered and how the Pentagon wants to revitalize it.

“The contraction of the traditional DIB [defense-industrial base] … was a generation-long process and it will require another generation to modernize the DIB,” the strategy reads.

Improving America’s defense sector has become a top priority for the Biden administration. The war in Ukraine — and the Pentagon’s rush to defend it — exposed how brittle the industry’s supply chains and workforce had become. As the U.S. tried to surge its production of key weapons, its suppliers couldn’t keep pace.

The delays worried many inside the Defense Department that it would struggle even more in a conflict with China, which has a far larger manufacturing sector than the United States, including in important areas like shipbuilding.

The plan released Tuesday had been promised and delayed for months. Pentagon officials first said it would come out in the late winter or early spring, then said it would publish by the summer. In a briefing with reporters Tuesday, the officials leading the effort said it’s still not complete.

A classified portion with more specific metrics will likely be released before the end of the year, said Laura Taylor-Kale, head of Pentagon industrial base policy.

As it stands, the plan lists six priority areas, from deterring a conflict with China to firming up fragile supply chains. That first goal — the top one listed in the plan — will rely on America’s ability to build more submarines and munitions, two areas the Pentagon has struggled to expand in recent years.

Both of these priorities have the longest time frame listed in the document, requiring more than five years to accomplish those goals, the plan estimates.

Taylor-Kale said the Pentagon intends to update this plan annually to assess its progress and that the first one will come after the president’s fiscal 2026 budget request is released early next year.

The Pentagon consulted with around 60 defense firms when writing the plan and also spoke with staff members on the relevant congressional committees, Taylor-Kale said. Their support, Taylor-Kale argued, will be necessary to accomplish its goals — especially from lawmakers, who have yet to pass a fiscal 2025 defense budget.

Adding to the uncertainty is next week’s U.S. presidential election, ensuring that the administration will change in January. The Trump White House made restoring the defense industrial base one of its top priorities for the Pentagon, publishing its own assessment of the sector in 2018.

Taylor-Kale argued that the strategy will endure no matter the outcome, having met with members of both parties in Congress.

“The feedback that we’re getting is that this will be a priority regardless of who wins next week,” she said.

About Noah Robertson

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

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15. Conventional Arms Control and Ending the Russo-Ukrainian War

Excerpt:

Conclusion

The extent to which Russia and Ukraine want to limit the other’s military capabilities at the conflict’s termination will be determined by how the conflict ends, and particularly by which side, if either, is the mutually perceived victor. The victor will be able to make demands that the defeated may be compelled to accept. On the other hand, a stalemate will mean neither side will be able to compel the other to accept major military capabilities limitations, laying the conditions for a frozen conflict or a renewal of violence in the future. Thus, post-conflict conventional arms control forms a basis of Moscow and Kyiv’s strategic military goals, and will likely be a substantial component of a post-conflict peace. This means that both sides, their partners, and neutral parties seeking to facilitate negotiations to end the conflict should define conflict-ending conditions in part by conventional arms control goals; and then parties should be prepared to incorporate conventional arms control within any conflict termination agreements, while bearing in mind which demands and approaches are reasonable and which are unlikely to be accepted.

Conventional Arms Control and Ending the Russo-Ukrainian War - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by William Lippert · October 30, 2024

What does conventional arms control mean for how wars end? Even the longest wars terminate, and many conflicts end with some kind of agreement, even if it is unconditional surrender. Yet the term unconditional surrender is, itself, misleading, although what differentiates surrendering from negotiating a surrender’s conditions may be a matter of degrees. Countries that surrender entirely are still surrendering with the understanding that conventional warfare will end: Cities will no longer be bombed, troops will no longer be shot at, and sieges will be lifted. When modern wars end, whether in victory and defeat, or in stalemate, countries often agree to conventional arms control. At the same time, the road to victory for one side and defeat for the other is often guided by notions of conventional arms control. That is, countries will seek to impose controls on their enemies while avoiding controls on themselves. As we think about how the Russo-Ukrainian War may end, and as each interested country thinks about how they would like it to end, conventional arms control should figure prominently in our calculations. This commentary will discuss specific options and possibilities on how conventional arms control may look when the conflict ends.

The war is due in no small part to conventional arms control failures, as I have argued in the past. Based on both the history of how conflicts end, and the root causes of this war, it is likely that conventional arms control will figure significantly in when and how the conflict is ended and what follows. At the risk of oversimplifying, there are three possible end-states to the war: Russia wins, Ukraine wins, or a stalemate. However, a total victory for Russia has different implications than a Ukrainian victory. A Russian victory means that Ukraine surrenders and concedes to Russian demands, while a Ukrainian victory will largely mean that Russia withdraws forces and might accept some controls on its military capabilities to the benefit of Ukraine’s security. Thus, the conventional arms control conditions are not the same, because while Russian forces might parade through Kyiv’s Independence Square, Ukrainian forces are not likely to march through Red Square. This means, as I will elaborate on, Russia can compel nearly unlimited conventional arms controls on Ukraine, but it is unlikely that Ukraine can do the same no matter how decisive its victory. Lastly, this commentary is based on the notion that Ukraine is not annexed in full — which is certainly a possibility in the event of a decisive Russian victory — in which case most any notion of post-conflict agreements between Moscow and Kyiv is irrelevant.

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Conventional Arms Control Basics

In brief, adversarial conventional arms control focuses on rivalries (past, present, or future) or states in conflict. Conventional arms refer to weapons that are not weapons of mass destruction, and arms control refers to agreements that states establish to regulate military capabilities in some cooperative way. Other types of arms control agreements focus on humanitarian issues or nuclear weapons balancing, both of which differ substantially from adversarial conventional arms control. The last primer on conventional arms control is that there are three approaches: national limitations, narrow geographic demilitarization, and discriminatory measures. The first two generally reflect a balance between adversaries, while the third means that a victorious or stronger country compels a defeated or weaker state to remain significantly weaker.

How Wars End

Almost all wars end in some version of victory, defeat, or stalemate. When arms control measures are negotiated at the end of a conflict, mutual perceptions of the status quo define the bargaining space, and the status quo or its trajectory is usually upheld. That is, the stronger state remains stronger, and the weaker one remains weaker. This makes intuitive sense, but it is important to bear this in mind when conceiving its impact on conventional arms control. Kyiv, Moscow, and all interested parties, whether they support one side or the other or genuinely seek a more neutral peace (Saudi Arabia, China, and others), need to understand what victory or defeat might entail, and that the greater the victory, the more one can demand, and the greater the defeat, the more one has to concede. Conversely, the more one wants to demand, the more decisive their victory needs to be. The less they want to give up in some version of defeat, the less decisive they want their defeat to be.

The implications for how the war ends are significant from a conventional arms control perspective. The defeat and any geographic demilitarization of Russia will make it more vulnerable to attacks by NATO, as presumably there will be no limits on NATO forces in Ukraine — and Ukraine would be in a stronger position to assist NATO in any kind of general war (even without NATO troops in Ukraine). A stalemate with a demilitarized zone approximately along the current front line will create a frozen conflict, leaving both armies outside of limitations and compelling difficult strategic decisions. A Russian victory could significantly increase Russia’s capabilities by disarming Ukraine — leaving it as a potential invasion route into NATO states even if Russia were not to have forces in (unoccupied) Ukraine.

Ukrainian Victory

A Ukrainian victory would involve Russia agreeing to end its invasion and withdraw to pre-2014 borders. Ukraine’s goal thereafter would be to reduce the likelihood of Russia resuming the conflict at a later date, invading again when an opportunity arises. Russia’s goal would be to strike an agreement that ends, among other things, Ukrainian attacks within and incursions into Russia. There are several measures that a defeated Moscow and a victorious Kyiv might agree to reduce this likelihood of Russia attacking again. First, a buffer zone could be established within Russia, setting limits on the number of soldiers permitted within it, prohibitions on weapon systems such as tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and removal of fortifications and defenses. Such impositions on defeated states have been common; for example, in 1947, Italy was compelled to remove “fortifications and military installations along the Franco-Italian frontier, and their armaments”; and in 1999 NATO and Belgrade agreed to a 25-kilometer-deep air safety zone and a 5-kilometer land buffer zone along the Kosovo-Yugoslav border.

A buffer zone within Russia might include Ukrainian and/or international observers — even NATO — to prevent a Russian attack against Ukraine. An unoccupied demilitarized buffer zone in Russia might also be formally subject to Ukrainian occupation in the event that Ukraine believes that Russia is in a state of non-compliance. France and Belgium occupied the demilitarized Ruhr in Germany in 1923–25 when they perceived that Germany was behind in reparations payments. One of the benefits to a Ukrainian-occupied buffer zone in Russia would be that, were Russia to attack, they would have to risk damaging their own territory and killing their own citizens before they entered Ukraine. And, occupied or not, such a zone would give Ukraine warning before Russian forces entered its territory.

Russia might accept limits outside of the immediate border, such as on ballistic missiles of a certain range or prohibitions of naval vessels of a certain size or capability within a certain range of Ukraine or in the Black Sea overall. In 1940, for example, the Soviet Union and Finland agreed to a significant limitation of Finland’s Arctic fleet. Lastly, Ukraine could demand that Russia accept that its military would not be permitted to mass in Belarus.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, they are unlikely to be in a position to impose massive disarmament on the scale that the Allies temporarily accomplished with the Central Powers after World War I, and the Allies had intended to accomplish after World War II.

Russian Victory

A Russian victory would likely mean the disarmament of Ukraine, although there are different scales and approaches to this. The World War I peace treaties offer examples of disarmament short of full occupation. At the end of the war, the Allies established a template that they applied to all of the Central Powers that included limitations on the number of troops, the number and types of naval vessels they could have, prohibitions on weapon systems such as combat aircraft, removal of fortifications, and limits on the defense industries. One significant aspect of the World War I disarmament policies was the establishment of Inter Allied Military Control Commissions. These Allied national–staffed international commissions for army and industry, aeronautical, and naval capabilities were empowered with all-access inspections, and staff were based in the countries where they were inspecting.

The situation at the end of World War II saw the Axis states soundly defeated and, to varying degrees, occupied. Ceasefire and armistice agreements gave the Allies broad authority to basically do what they wanted wherever they wanted. In some cases, conventional arms control was very specific, setting limits along the lines of World War I. In others, they were vague but referred to general disarmament to peacetime levels while stating the supreme decision-making authority of the Allied powers. The September 1943 armistice with Italy, for example, stated that they were committed to “disarmament, demobilization and demilitarization as may be prescribed by the Allied Commander-in-Chief,” and for Bulgaria, the October 1944 armistice stated that “the armed forces must be demobilized and put on a peace footing under the supervision of the Allied Control Commission.”

The peace agreements signed in the following decade would be more specific, implementing limitations similar to those of World War I. But with the exceptions of Finland and Austria, the limitations were informally lifted with the Cold War’s onset. Moreover, even during the war itself, disarmament was displaced when defeated Axis states joined the Allies.

Thus, were Russia to successfully overrun most of Ukraine, they might impose a crushing disarmament regime backed up by occupation. They might effectively ban the existence of any Ukrainian military forces, permitting only minimally armed police services. A less complete victory might see Ukraine agree to quantitative limits on weapon systems including naval vessels, combat aircraft, artillery, armored vehicles, and surface-to-air missile systems. Alternatively, an agreement could establish a buffer zone within Ukraine — similar to the one discussed above — only in the case of a Russian victory, the purpose would be to prevent a Ukrainian surprise attack.

Kyiv might also accept a ban on foreign military forces in general (with a possible exception of Russian forces). Indeed, this was a demand made by Russia in Article 4 of its December 2021 proposal to NATO. Similarly, the Kremlin would almost certainly demand Ukraine remain outside of NATO — a repeated demand made even formally shortly before invasion in Article 6 of the December 2021 proposal. Any agreement might see Russia conduct monitoring and verification activities, and they might do so with the support of their partners such as Iran, North Korea, and China.

Stalemate

If the war were to cease today, it would likely be considered a stalemate, because while both sides see a path to victory, they also might be aware that losses and other challenges may preclude victory. A demilitarized buffer zone along the line of contact might be the short-term fix that becomes a banner for a frozen conflict. The most famous, and one of the oldest, post-conflict demilitarized zones is the one sitting between North and South Korea. Other internationally operated buffer zones include ones established in 1974 in Cyprus, in Moldova in 1992, and in Ukraine in 2015.

These types of buffer zones function in a similar fashion. An approximately equal distance from the line of contact is declared demilitarized, prohibiting any military activity within that area other than that conducted or permitted by a neutral international peacekeeping force. The goals are severalfold: ending active combat to give time for diplomacy, separating combatting forces to prevent incidents, and interposing international forces or personnel to deter, usually by diplomatic costs rather than military resistance, attempts to push through the buffer zone and attack the other side.

Moreover, it is possible that there might not be any formal agreement to end the fighting, or an agreement to cease hostilities might be as simple as an agreement to end combat operations, with no commensurate agreement to establish a buffer zone or deploy an international peacekeeping force. Such an approach might decrease the likelihood of a ceasefire enduring, but an agreement may involve minimal commitments if both sides cannot agree on ceasefire-promoting measures.

Broader NATO/E.U.–Russia Implications

The Russo-Ukrainian War clearly involves NATO, and while the impact on any European-wide conventional arms control is uncertain, some points are clear. If Russia wins, it may have demonstrated its willingness to fight until it wins while demonstrating NATO’s weaknesses. In this case, Russia may be positioned to impose limits on NATO — or at least comparatively more limits.

Partly at the heart of the issue is disagreement over relative power and what the status quo implies for conventional arms control. However, if the outcome is clear that one is militarily superior to the other, an imbalanced agreement but one that is not as one-sided as a post-victory/defeat agreement might be the best path to stabilization. Two peacetime agreements that reflected and locked in an unequal balance of power are the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty Five-Power Agreement, which set a ratio of capital ships between the United Kingdom, United States, Japan, France, and Italy at 5:5:3:1:0.75 (respectively), and the 1935 Anglo-German Naval agreement, which fixed the ratio of naval tonnage at 100:35, respectively.

Prior to the war, the Russian proposals to NATO and the United States were favorable to Russia. If Russia prevails, it will be much more likely to have these or similar demands accepted. On the other hand, if Ukraine is victorious, NATO would likely seek to stabilize the relationship with Russia to NATO’s advantage — for example, a treaty with some similarities to the 1990 Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, only instead of a 1:1 ratio of forces between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in five categories of major weapon systems, the ratio might be 2:1. If there is a stalemate, a broader NATO-Russian conventional arms control agreement might seek to simply accept that each side has advantages and disadvantages, but in the interest of stabilizing the relationship, they might accept parity (as in 1990).

Conclusion

The extent to which Russia and Ukraine want to limit the other’s military capabilities at the conflict’s termination will be determined by how the conflict ends, and particularly by which side, if either, is the mutually perceived victor. The victor will be able to make demands that the defeated may be compelled to accept. On the other hand, a stalemate will mean neither side will be able to compel the other to accept major military capabilities limitations, laying the conditions for a frozen conflict or a renewal of violence in the future. Thus, post-conflict conventional arms control forms a basis of Moscow and Kyiv’s strategic military goals, and will likely be a substantial component of a post-conflict peace. This means that both sides, their partners, and neutral parties seeking to facilitate negotiations to end the conflict should define conflict-ending conditions in part by conventional arms control goals; and then parties should be prepared to incorporate conventional arms control within any conflict termination agreements, while bearing in mind which demands and approaches are reasonable and which are unlikely to be accepted.

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William Lippert is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He holds a master’s degree in security studies from Georgetown University, Washington, DC. His primary research focus is conventional arms control in Europe, on which he is finishing his dissertation. He previously worked for INTERPOL as a crime intelligence analyst and the US Department of Defense as an intelligence and strategy analyst.

Image: GoToVan via Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by William Lippert · October 30, 2024

16.  How America Can Succeed in a Multialigned World

Excerpts:

A STRATEGY FOR SURVIVAL

A national security strategy dedicated to building a multipartner world will still leave plenty of room for the United States to lead on the global stage. Moreover, embracing multisector partnerships gives open societies such as that of the United States a leg up in in geopolitical competition, given the autonomy and energy of American civic, corporate, philanthropic, technological, scientific, and educational institutions. Most of these organizations are already embedded in global networks of some kind.

Elements of this strategy will also appeal both to the anti-imperialist left and the “America first” right. A second Trump administration will never lead with partnerships. Still, a core tenet of Trumpism is that the United States has long gotten a raw deal from the rest of the world and gives much more than it gets. Specific partnerships, concluded on a transactional basis, will be seen as a way of allowing Washington to shift burdens.

For Vice President Kamala Harris and her supporters, who believe in U.S. global leadership but also recognize the need for changes in the way responsibilities and resources are distributed, partnerships can mean opportunities for resetting relationships with countries, people, businesses, and organizations worldwide. A Harris administration will likely build on the partnerships that Biden has renewed but also devote more time to meeting global threats such as climate change and infectious disease. Given Harris’s background as a prosecutor, she may also forge partnerships aimed at bringing global criminals to justice, ending what International Rescue Committee President David Miliband has called the “age of impunity.” Harris, however, like Trump, will be no less specific in demanding results.

Analysts of the shifting dynamics of the twenty-first century see the emergence of a multipolar order, but that is too simplistic a framework. The principal “poles” are not necessarily the governments that are leading the fight against climate change, for instance, or infectious disease, nor those preparing for the migration of hundreds of millions of climate and conflict refugees. Nor can the term account for the many other actors of consequence on the international stage.

Substitute partners for poles, and measure power not only in terms of GDP or military strength but also of agency, the ability to get things done. The twenty-first century international order should be understood as a set of platforms for governmental and global actors to collaborate in tackling specific challenges. A multipartner world is not a mushy vision of global harmony. It is a necessary precondition for survival.

How America Can Succeed in a Multialigned World

The Importance of Building Truly Global Partnerships

By Anne-Marie Slaughter

October 30, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Anne-Marie Slaughter · October 30, 2024

In July 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her first major foreign policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations. She argued that the United States still needed to be a global leader, but that it had to lead in a different way than it did during the Cold War. “We will lead,” she said, “by inducing greater cooperation among a greater number of actors and reducing competition, tilting the balance away from a multipolar world and toward a multipartner world.”

Clinton’s vision of a “multipartner” world sought a different balance between the imperatives of competition and cooperation, focused on development issues as much as traditional national security concerns, and extended far beyond states “to create opportunities for nonstate actors and individuals to contribute to solutions.” Fifteen years later, even in a very different global context, that vision offers the United States a way forward.

The Biden administration has been building its own version of a multipartner world. It has reanimated and expanded traditional alliances such as NATO and strengthened and created a host of new diplomatic and security partnerships. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described in Foreign Affairs a network of “partners in peace,” the result of an intensive diplomatic strategy to safeguard U.S. interests abroad while rebuilding competitiveness at home.

These partnerships are important and valuable. Still, the Biden strategy overall has tilted too far in the direction of geopolitical competition over global cooperation, even as it tries to do both at once. To strike the right balance, the next administration must partner with a wider range of global actors, focus those partnerships more on existential global threats, and accept a more decentralized, messier world that welcomes leadership from many different quarters.

That is one version of a multipartner world. A Harris administration would likely pursue it, building on the Biden partnership strategy and moving it in this direction. A Trump administration, by contrast, would likely enter into partnerships only on a specific, transactional basis and would reject cooperation on global threats, such as climate change. But even such an approach could allow the United States to shift burdens and make space for its friends and allies to create partnerships in pursuit of national interests and the broader common good. Washington does not need to lead every initiative to facilitate the change it wants to see in the world.

SEATS AT THE TABLE

Clinton’s vision of a multipartner world extended far beyond states. Any “nation, group, or citizen” could claim “a place at the table” if they were willing to bear “a fair share of the burden.” Under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, by contrast, U.S. diplomacy has remained primarily statist. Washington’s strengthened web of partnerships under Biden, such as the Indo-Pacific security partnerships known as the Quad and AUKUS, are with other governments. The Biden administration is not averse to engaging other actors; it worked with a broad coalition of businesses and civil society groups alongside governments and international organizations to make and distribute COVID-19 vaccines around the world in 2021. But states still come first. To reap the true benefits of a multipartner world, the United States should expand its diplomacy far beyond governments.

The global zeitgeist is moving in this direction, with states welcoming all possible partners to address global challenges. At the 2015 UN General Assembly, UN member states adopted Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, which emphasized 17 sweeping development goals and insisted that “all countries and all stakeholders” must act “in collaborative partnership” to achieve them. The UN Pact for the Future, adopted by consensus by the General Assembly this September, reaffirms this language. The Global Digital Compact, an annex to the pact, spells out categories of stakeholders, committing governments to “work in collaboration and partnership with the private sector, civil society, international organizations, and the technical and academic communities.”

Fine words, of course, but it can be hard work to give them meaning. The concept of “multistakeholder governance” holds that all actors who have a stake in the outcome of a specific decision, whether a state, an international institution, a corporation, or a municipality, find a place at the table at some point in the decision-making process. It has been applied in forums such as the 1992 UN Earth Summit, the Internet Governance Forum, the annual World Economic Forum summit, and the annual Conferences of the Parties held to assess progress within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Washington does not need to lead every initiative to make the change it wants to see in the world.

It is also controversial. Who chooses the stakeholders and decides how they can participate? The UN, for instance, has developed an elaborate process for determining which actors qualify as “nonparty stakeholders” entitled to contribute to implementing the Paris agreement, but that process is not transparent. Governments, for all their flaws, formally represent their people under international law. “Stakeholders” do not. Yet without these stakeholders, the world does not have the resources, reach, expertise, or energy necessary to achieve the agendas it has set for itself.

U.S. officials will need to think hard about how to make global coalitions of various kinds as legitimate as possible. The UN and other legacy international and regional organizations have what scholars call “input legitimacy,” that is, their structures and processes for formal decision-making are broadly understood and accepted. But partnerships with other less established actors will require “output and outcome legitimacy,” or demonstrations that these groups and coalitions can accomplish their stated goals. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for instance, has committed to vaccinate 500 million children in the next five years. Gavi is a public-private partnership that includes governments, international organizations, philanthropies, global businesses, and civil society groups. If it can achieve its mission, then it has at least chosen the right partners.

Building this kind of legitimacy thus requires partnerships that commit to specific positive action, preferably the achievement of a goal that is concrete and measurable. Take, for instance, Sustainable Energy for All, an international organization that works with a network of partners from multiple sectors. It has adopted three goals by 2030: “Ensure universal access to modern energy services; double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix; and double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency.” Thus far, it has mobilized $1.4 trillion in finance for affordable and clean energy, with $201 billion already deployed, and it has improved access to energy for 177 million people.

Compare the results of Sustainable Energy for All with the goals and results of Finance in Common, a global network of public development banks, international organizations, governments, philanthropists, and others who seek to “transform the financial system towards climate and sustainability.” The French government hosts the network, and it plays a valuable role in connecting some 530 public development banks in over 150 countries, a natural role for governments to play. “Transforming” and “aligning” are much vaguer goals that are hard to quantify, but here input legitimacy substitutes for outcome legitimacy. True multi-actor partnerships are more likely to succeed if they can be held accountable for the accomplishment of specific results.

SEED, NOT LEAD

According to the 2022 National Security Strategy, the “strategic challenges” facing the United States fall into two buckets: competition among “major powers” to shape the next world order and meeting the “shared challenges that cross borders,” including “climate change, food insecurity, communicable diseases, terrorism, energy shortages, [and] inflation.” The former can be called geopolitical threats, the latter global threats.

In a historic move, the National Security Strategy insisted that global threats lie “at the very core of national and international security” and thus deserve the same attention as do geopolitical challenges. In practice, however, executing a strategy that tries to focus simultaneously on competing with adversaries and cooperating with countries on global challenges has proved difficult. The world has been in a growing geopolitical crisis since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, one deepened by the spreading war in the Middle East and a horrific civil war in Sudan. The tensions and divisions of geopolitics can get in the way of the collective approach required to deal with global problems. They also present a logistical hurdle: for national security officials, the urgency of war often pushes all other issues aside.

Here is where Washington should look beyond statist diplomacy and think differently about U.S. leadership. Global threats require global partnerships just as geopolitical threats do, but among broader and more effective coalitions of global actors. Critically, the U.S. government does not need to be running these partnerships. Sustainable Energy for All, for instance, was originally launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in 2011; it was then restructured as an independent organization with a CEO and board in 2016. The United States can still influence what the group does; its current funders include USAID and at least six U.S. businesses and philanthropies. Yet other government development agencies, alongside funders and partners such as the IKEA Foundation and the International Copper Association, share the stage.

A new administration could apply this approach to each of the UN’s sustainable development goals. The White House could task the relevant departments to work with governmental and nongovernmental actors to build on existing partnerships to ensure that they have the scale and the resources to make measurable progress toward specific goals. The United States might still need to appoint special diplomatic envoys such as former Secretary of State John Kerry to handle interstate negotiations, but much of the most important work would happen behind the scenes. Washington does not need to lead, only to seed.

OPENING THE WORLD

After he came into the Oval Office in 2021, Biden initially envisaged a global coalition of democracies versus autocracies. He wanted to choose partners based on their domestic ideology. This approach stumbled when faced with the difficulty both of defining exactly which countries qualify as democracies and the need to work with countries that are clearly not democracies, such as Saudi Arabia, in the competition against China.

The result has been a quiet shift from an emphasis on open societies to a push for what strategists and administration officials Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper call an “open world.” An open world may not always be democratic but it is one without great-power spheres of interest, one in which, as Blinken put it, “countries are free to choose their own paths and partners.”

The goal of an open world is consistent with a “multialigned” world, a path that many U.S. partners are choosing. India, for instance, has said it is “multialigned” rather than “nonaligned,” as it was during the Cold War. It works closely with Australia, Japan, and the United States as a member of the Quad, but it also buys large amounts of oil from Russia and maintains relationships with countries strictly based on its own interests. When pressed in 2022 about India “being on the fence” between the West on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar replied: “Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I’m sitting on the fence. I’m sitting on my ground.”

For national security officials, the urgency of war often pushes all other issues aside.

Many countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas feel the same way. They refuse to choose between the United States and China, or between the West and Russia, instead entering relationships and forming partnerships as their national interests dictate. What is true of countries is even truer of other global actors; business leaders and civic groups working to combat climate change, for instance, will forge as many relationships as necessary to achieve their goals, even when their partners may be at odds with one another.

This multialignment can benefit the United States. Influence requires connection: the relationships and channels of communication through which persuasion and pressure can be exercised. Back in 2014, when China launched its initiative to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Obama administration refused to join and tried to convince its allies and friends to stay out, as well. But in 2015, the United Kingdom broke ranks. Soon, many other European and Asian countries closely aligned with the United States also joined the bank. Rather than being a loss for Washington, however, the resulting web of relationships enabled the United States to work with and through its friends to help shape the bank’s rules, norms, and practices.

Jaishankar alluded to this dimension of multialignment with regard to the war in Ukraine, observing that at some point the conflict will have to end and that some group of people or countries “will have to engage the players.” “At that point,” he continued, “people will need us.”

The same countries that insist on multialignment in pursuit of their national interests will likely be more assertive partners, demanding equality in their relationships. In the moment, Washington may find that frustrating. But over the longer term, if U.S. partners set their own agendas and take regional and international initiatives, they will be more independent, more able to resist the coercion of outside powers, and more able to underpin an open world.

A STRATEGY FOR SURVIVAL

A national security strategy dedicated to building a multipartner world will still leave plenty of room for the United States to lead on the global stage. Moreover, embracing multisector partnerships gives open societies such as that of the United States a leg up in in geopolitical competition, given the autonomy and energy of American civic, corporate, philanthropic, technological, scientific, and educational institutions. Most of these organizations are already embedded in global networks of some kind.

Elements of this strategy will also appeal both to the anti-imperialist left and the “America first” right. A second Trump administration will never lead with partnerships. Still, a core tenet of Trumpism is that the United States has long gotten a raw deal from the rest of the world and gives much more than it gets. Specific partnerships, concluded on a transactional basis, will be seen as a way of allowing Washington to shift burdens.

For Vice President Kamala Harris and her supporters, who believe in U.S. global leadership but also recognize the need for changes in the way responsibilities and resources are distributed, partnerships can mean opportunities for resetting relationships with countries, people, businesses, and organizations worldwide. A Harris administration will likely build on the partnerships that Biden has renewed but also devote more time to meeting global threats such as climate change and infectious disease. Given Harris’s background as a prosecutor, she may also forge partnerships aimed at bringing global criminals to justice, ending what International Rescue Committee President David Miliband has called the “age of impunity.” Harris, however, like Trump, will be no less specific in demanding results.

Analysts of the shifting dynamics of the twenty-first century see the emergence of a multipolar order, but that is too simplistic a framework. The principal “poles” are not necessarily the governments that are leading the fight against climate change, for instance, or infectious disease, nor those preparing for the migration of hundreds of millions of climate and conflict refugees. Nor can the term account for the many other actors of consequence on the international stage.

Substitute partners for poles, and measure power not only in terms of GDP or military strength but also of agency, the ability to get things done. The twenty-first century international order should be understood as a set of platforms for governmental and global actors to collaborate in tackling specific challenges. A multipartner world is not a mushy vision of global harmony. It is a necessary precondition for survival.

• ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER is CEO of New America and former Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. State Department.

Foreign Affairs · by Anne-Marie Slaughter · October 30, 2024

17. The Least Bad Option for Lebanon

Excerpts:

The best path forward, at least for now, is the least ambitious one: an informal, jerry-rigged agreement between Hezbollah and Israel that would establish an immediate cease-fire and require a more modest pullback of Hezbollah forces. This would be a fragile, tenuous scheme, but side agreements would help it hold by easing each party’s concerns. Israel, for example, believes that Hezbollah would quickly reintroduce weapons to southern Lebanon, as it did after 2006; to prevent this, the LAF could screen all residents returning to the area. A group of states on which both Hezbollah and Israel agree could establish an independent oversight committee composed of experts to evaluate UNIFIL’s operations. The same body could conduct snap investigations of alleged Hezbollah or Israeli movements and inspections of both sides’ forces when they accuse each other of violating the agreement. States that have aerial surveillance capabilities—for example, some NATO members or India, Japan, or South Korea—could conduct high-altitude surveillance missions over southern Lebanon, which might help adjudicate infractions and provide early warnings of problems. Finally, Western leaders and diplomats could expand the narrow swath of Lebanese officials with whom they currently engage. This practice has led to a passivity among members of Lebanon’s political elite, which has delayed the formation of a new government.

For the plan to work, it would have to sharply limit Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, which all Lebanese deplore. (It would not put an end to Israeli airstrikes on efforts by Iran to resupply Hezbollah’s arsenals.) And a makeshift cease-fire that lacks UN authority would be inherently fragile. But even if it could not stabilize Lebanon as fully as would a properly implemented Resolution 1701, a less formal—and less ambitious—cease-fire now could lay the groundwork for fully implementing the resolution down the road.

U.S. diplomatic efforts are critical to stemming the escalating violence in Lebanon and reducing the risk of armed conflict between the United States and Iran. To get what it wants—and what the region needs—Washington should think smaller, crafting an agreement that makes up for what it lacks in ambition with elements tailored to quell each side’s most pressing anxieties. Israel has the upper hand right now and will want to press its advantage in pursuit of “total victory.” Hezbollah has a weak hand, but to avoid the appearance of defeat, it will hold out for a cease-fire that results in Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and an end to airstrikes. Even for an ad hoc arrangement, these are not the most promising conditions. But a 21-day cease-fire was brokered by France and the United States in September, only for Israel to almost immediately reverse its initial assent. Days later, an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed Nasrallah. At that point, a renewed effort was impossible. It is time for another go.

The Least Bad Option for Lebanon

Modest American Diplomacy Is the Best Way Forward—for Now

By Steven Simon and Jeffrey Feltman

October 30, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Steven Simon and Jeffrey Feltman · October 30, 2024

The Middle East is where clever foreign policy initiatives go to die. This has been the case since at least the Cairo Conference of 1921, at which British Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill—who had to be reminded repeatedly who was Shiite and who was Sunni, and what the difference was between them—devised a plan, in the space of ten days, to ensure long-term British interests in the region. Among other things, he created the state of Iraq, to minimize the cost of occupying the area while protecting British access to India; embraced British mandatory rule over Palestine, to secure the right flank of Egypt and the Suez Canal; and strangled Syrian independence by handing the territory to the French, in exchange for French acquiescence to Britain’s control over Iraq and Palestine. But instead of saving money and preserving British influence, these moves eventually ignited strife across the region and led to the end of British authority in the Middle East.

The truth is that, except for the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt and a 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, through which the United States fostered enduring peace among the three countries, it is not easy to identify a successful Western policy initiative in the Middle East. And the list of failures is long indeed.

Despite this dismal track record, there are crises that still demand a U.S. policy response. The spiraling conflict in Lebanon, which pits the Iranian-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah against Israel, is one of them. As is typically the case, the United States, owing to its self-conceived indispensability, as well as its influence with key belligerents, a willing American electorate, and an immense military capability, is the only actor capable of formulating a response that could prevent further escalation and suffering in Lebanon.

And there has been ample suffering. A civil war between 1976 and 1989 claimed nearly 100,000 Lebanese lives and cemented Hezbollah’s dominance within the state, thereby ensuring Lebanon remained enmeshed in the broader Arab-Israeli conflict. In 2000, after an embattled 18-year presence in southern Lebanon, Israel withdrew its forces to the Blue Line, a temporary boundary the UN drew to divide Lebanon from Israel and the Golan Heights, which Israel occupies. In 2006, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 ended a short war between Israel and Hezbollah, and called for the withdrawal of Hezbollah’s fighters to the north side of the Litani River, which runs east to west about 15 miles north of the Blue Line. A strengthened UN Interim Force in Lebanon, a corps of UN peacekeepers who had been in Lebanon since 1978, was supposed to fill the area in between, along with 20,000 soldiers of the Lebanese Armed Forces. But because of the incapacity of the LAF, Israeli mistrust of UNIFIL, the absence of an enforcement provision, and Hezbollah’s influence over decision-making in Beirut, Resolution 1701 was never fully implemented.

More recently, the French government has tried to broker a cease-fire. But President Emmanuel Macron seemed to tilt toward Hezbollah by accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “sowing barbarism,” which instantly undercut Macron’s already limited influence on one side of the Blue Line. Meanwhile, regional U.S. security partners, especially Saudi Arabia, have made little effort to intervene in the current crisis in Lebanon. Once again, it has fallen to Washington to come up with a plan.

There are downsides to Washington’s involvement. It could draw the United States into direct conflict with Hezbollah or its Iranian backers, a high price for potential gains that are themselves unlikely to serve broader U.S. strategic interests, most of which involve places far from the Middle East. And yet noninvolvement is not a realistic option, in part because Israel and Hezbollah reaching a cease-fire on their own is so improbable, an inertia that will heighten the risk of further escalation. And so the United States is today trying to secure, at a minimum, a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel. The main obstacles have been Hezbollah’s insistence that any cease-fire with Israel in Lebanon depends on an Israeli cease-fire in Gaza, and Israel’s clear lack of interest in a cease-fire on either front. The Biden administration, however, believes that Hezbollah is now prepared to move forward on a cease-fire in the wake of an intense Israeli assault on the group’s infrastructure and leadership, including the assassination of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and many of his top deputies.

In trying to solve the puzzle in Lebanon, the administration could take one of three overlapping approaches, all of them imperfect. The first would be to push Lebanon’s political leadership to ask the UN to fully implement Resolution 1701 by helping the LAF deploy southward, increasing the size of UNIFIL, forcing Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces to withdraw from the south, and blocking the resupply of Hezbollah by Iran. The second would be to push for an expanded version of the resolution that would, among other things, require Hezbollah to pull back farther than Resolution 1701 stipulates and for the Israeli and Lebanese governments to begin peace talks.

But neither of those approaches is likely to work. What stands a better chance is a less ambitious plan: a makeshift agreement, reached directly by Israel and Hezbollah, that would compel both parties to end hostilities but would require Hezbollah to retreat a more modest distance—say, ten miles from the border, out of range of the weapons the group has used to attack military and civilian infrastructure on the Israeli side of the Blue Line. The viability and durability of such an agreement would depend on a number of ad hoc arrangements to meet each party’s concerns. The point would be to end the fighting as soon as possible, but such a deal, if it’s designed thoughtfully, could also set the stage for the eventual implementation of Resolution 1701.

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The United States is led by a lame-duck administration; the upcoming elections could result in a sweeping change in government that might yield a different American approach to the crisis. To say that the conditions for successful diplomatic intervention in Lebanon are grim would be a serious understatement. As the U.S. special envoy to Lebanon, Amos Hochstein, put it, the situation is “out of control.”

One of the main obstacles the United States has faced throughout this conflict is that its closest regional ally, Israel, has (with some notable exceptions) repeatedly rejected its requests to limit civilian casualties, facilitate humanitarian assistance, and push toward a hostage deal. The Biden administration has consistently advised the Israelis to exercise restraint while assuring them that any risks of doing so would be mitigated by U.S. assistance. Under Netanyahu, the Israeli government has taken the assistance but acted without restraint, carrying out a ferocious assault on Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and launching an audacious campaign of assassinations of top Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, not only in Gaza and Lebanon but even in Iran. These steps enjoy the robust support of a significant majority of Israeli citizens, who are still traumatized by the brutal terrorist attack that Hamas launched on October 7, 2023, which was followed the next day by Hezbollah rocket strikes in Israel’s north.

And Israel is only just getting started. It wants to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure between the Litani River and the Blue Line, including tunnels, depots, bases, and missile launch sites, all while pushing Hezbollah fighters north. At the same time, the Israeli air force has struck dozens of targets throughout Lebanon, including banks that handle Hezbollah’s finances. The aim is to cripple Hezbollah and thereby deprive Iran of the ability to pressure Israel or deter an Israeli assault on Iranian nuclear assets or leadership targets. Israel insists that it has no desire to reoccupy southern Lebanon and asserts that the Israel Defense Forces are staging attacks from Israeli territory and returning there after each mission.

The United States has in recent decades deferred to Hezbollah’s powerful position in Lebanon; challenging its prerogatives was judged to be pointless and destabilizing. But many American commentators and, quietly, some Biden administration officials have welcomed the destruction of Hezbollah’s chain of command and the injuries to thousands of its fighters when Israel detonated explosives it had secretly implanted in the group’s pagers and radios. But the United States is now trying to limit the damage and focusing on a cease-fire that could prevent the type of escalation that would further risk direct Iranian intervention. Hezbollah’s aim is to preserve its military capability, especially what’s left of its missile and rocket stockpiles—which Israel claims, somewhat implausibly, to have reduced by half—and its ability to dominate Lebanon’s political system through the threat of force.

MORE WITH LESS

To get buy-in from both Hezbollah and Israel, a successful cease-fire deal would need to account for the parties’ competing interests. For the moment, Washington is contemplating three alternative approaches. The first would be to finally implement Resolution 1701, which calls for the withdrawal of Hezbollah and Israeli forces from southern Lebanon to be replaced by an increased presence of both UNIFIL soldiers and LAF ground troops. The resolution also prohibits outside countries from arming any nonstate group in Lebanon, a clear reference to Iran’s patronage of Hezbollah.

This route has a number of major obstacles. For one, both Hezbollah and Israel have stymied the implementation of Resolution 1701 for 18 years. Hezbollah’s powerful presence within the Lebanese government has limited the resources available to the LAF and blocked a large-scale deployment of its forces to the south. Israel asserts that it will not withdraw from Lebanon until the LAF is capable of replacing Hezbollah in the south and that even then, its forces would reenter Lebanese territory for the opaque purpose of “active enforcement.” It also demands that it retain unfettered access to Lebanese airspace so that it can continue carrying out airstrikes, including in Beirut, to further weaken Hezbollah. Moreover, Israel has never seen UNIFIL, which currently has 10,000 troops in southern Lebanon, as an impartial actor, because it has not prevented Hezbollah’s encroachment in the south and tends to side with Hezbollah in disputes with Israel.

A renewed attempt to implement Resolution 1701 would in essence require action from a Lebanese government that does not exist. The heads of key Lebanese parties would have to mobilize to choose a president, something they’ve been unable to do for two years now; that president would then need to appoint a prime minister who would have to be sufficiently pro-Hezbollah to avoid being blocked by the group and sufficiently independent to win the trust of other Lebanese political parties, as well as the United States and the UN. Little evidence suggests that Lebanese politics is poised for a breakthrough of that kind.

U.S. diplomatic efforts are critical to stemming the escalating violence in Lebanon.

Nevertheless, Hochstein, the U.S. envoy, recently unveiled an even more ambitious plan. In addition to the steps laid out in Resolution 1701, Hochstein’s proposal calls for Hezbollah to withdraw even farther past the Litani River. It also envisions Lebanon and Israel entering into direct peace talks. The plan recalls one brokered by the United States in 1983, known as the May 17 Agreement, which forced a shattered Lebanon, eight years into its civil war and under both Israeli and Syrian occupation, to enter into a treaty with Israel. The agreement called for both Israeli and Syrian withdrawal and an Israeli-Lebanese peace treaty, but it was never carried out; before the agreement was signed, Syria assassinated the leader of Lebanon’s ruling Christian faction, sending a powerful signal that Syria would not countenance an Israeli challenge to its influence in Lebanon. Hochstein’s plan would risk similar results: Syria’s place has been taken by Iran, whose strategic and ideological interest in Lebanon would be comparably imperiled, tempting Tehran to protect it by escalating the conflict. The implementation of Resolution 1701 might be an impossible goal; pursuing an amended version would only heighten the stakes and increase the risk of violence.

The best path forward, at least for now, is the least ambitious one: an informal, jerry-rigged agreement between Hezbollah and Israel that would establish an immediate cease-fire and require a more modest pullback of Hezbollah forces. This would be a fragile, tenuous scheme, but side agreements would help it hold by easing each party’s concerns. Israel, for example, believes that Hezbollah would quickly reintroduce weapons to southern Lebanon, as it did after 2006; to prevent this, the LAF could screen all residents returning to the area. A group of states on which both Hezbollah and Israel agree could establish an independent oversight committee composed of experts to evaluate UNIFIL’s operations. The same body could conduct snap investigations of alleged Hezbollah or Israeli movements and inspections of both sides’ forces when they accuse each other of violating the agreement. States that have aerial surveillance capabilities—for example, some NATO members or India, Japan, or South Korea—could conduct high-altitude surveillance missions over southern Lebanon, which might help adjudicate infractions and provide early warnings of problems. Finally, Western leaders and diplomats could expand the narrow swath of Lebanese officials with whom they currently engage. This practice has led to a passivity among members of Lebanon’s political elite, which has delayed the formation of a new government.

For the plan to work, it would have to sharply limit Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, which all Lebanese deplore. (It would not put an end to Israeli airstrikes on efforts by Iran to resupply Hezbollah’s arsenals.) And a makeshift cease-fire that lacks UN authority would be inherently fragile. But even if it could not stabilize Lebanon as fully as would a properly implemented Resolution 1701, a less formal—and less ambitious—cease-fire now could lay the groundwork for fully implementing the resolution down the road.

U.S. diplomatic efforts are critical to stemming the escalating violence in Lebanon and reducing the risk of armed conflict between the United States and Iran. To get what it wants—and what the region needs—Washington should think smaller, crafting an agreement that makes up for what it lacks in ambition with elements tailored to quell each side’s most pressing anxieties. Israel has the upper hand right now and will want to press its advantage in pursuit of “total victory.” Hezbollah has a weak hand, but to avoid the appearance of defeat, it will hold out for a cease-fire that results in Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and an end to airstrikes. Even for an ad hoc arrangement, these are not the most promising conditions. But a 21-day cease-fire was brokered by France and the United States in September, only for Israel to almost immediately reverse its initial assent. Days later, an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed Nasrallah. At that point, a renewed effort was impossible. It is time for another go.

• STEVEN SIMON is a Distinguished Fellow and a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College. He served on the National Security Council in the Clinton and Obama administrations.
• JEFFREY FELTMAN is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation. He was previously U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon.

Foreign Affairs · by Steven Simon and Jeffrey Feltman · October 30, 2024

18. Harris vs. Trump: If Asia Could Vote in the US Election

(Asia -Pacific - Australia is not in Asia).

An interesting analysis and "scorecard."

Excerpts:

In collaboration with Kieskompas, the Dutch Election Compass research institute, and the University of Pennsylvania, The Diplomat hosted a pre-election tool to see which candidate best matches the personal preferences of readers from around the globe. Among the readers from Asia who participated in the quiz, their expressed preferences were 37 percent matched with Trump, vs. 60 percent matching with Harris; those from Oceania who took the quiz were 35 percent matched with Trump and 63 percent with Harris.

We also asked quiz takers if they thought their own governments had a preference. A slight plurality of users from Asia (41 percent) said they thought their government would prefer Harris, but almost as many (37 percent) said their government likely had no preference. Just 15 percent predicted their government would prefer Trump. Here there was a major break between the continents: a full 77 percent of quiz-takers from Europe thought their government would prefer a Harris presidency.

Asian governments may be paying close attention, but that doesn’t mean there is a clear favorite. Below, The Diplomat’s authors examine a selection of 13 regional countries to tease out what their government’s preferences might be. In other words, if the Asia-Pacific could vote, whom would it choose: Harris or Trump?

Harris vs. Trump: If Asia Could Vote in the US Election

thediplomat.com

For 13 Asia-Pacific countries, we ask: Would the government prefer Kamala Harris or Donald Trump as the next U.S. president?

By The Diplomat

October 26, 2024

Credit: The Diplomat / White House photos

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U.S. voters will pick their next president on November 5. The choice between current Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, and former President Donald Trump of the Republican Party will reverberate around the world, as the two present stark differences in their domestic and foreign policy outlooks.

Governments in the Asia-Pacific are watching closely – and every country has a different stake in the election.

In collaboration with Kieskompas, the Dutch Election Compass research institute, and the University of Pennsylvania, The Diplomat hosted a pre-election tool to see which candidate best matches the personal preferences of readers from around the globe. Among the readers from Asia who participated in the quiz, their expressed preferences were 37 percent matched with Trump, vs. 60 percent matching with Harris; those from Oceania who took the quiz were 35 percent matched with Trump and 63 percent with Harris.

We also asked quiz takers if they thought their own governments had a preference. A slight plurality of users from Asia (41 percent) said they thought their government would prefer Harris, but almost as many (37 percent) said their government likely had no preference. Just 15 percent predicted their government would prefer Trump. Here there was a major break between the continents: a full 77 percent of quiz-takers from Europe thought their government would prefer a Harris presidency.

Asian governments may be paying close attention, but that doesn’t mean there is a clear favorite. Below, The Diplomat’s authors examine a selection of 13 regional countries to tease out what their government’s preferences might be. In other words, if the Asia-Pacific could vote, whom would it choose: Harris or Trump?

Australia

Until the past decade, it has been largely irrelevant to Australia who the president of the United States was. There may have been some policies from different candidates that were preferable in Canberra, but on the broader level of trust and general like-mindedness, Australia was comfortable with either a Democrat or a Republican occupying the White House.

This has changed in dramatic fashion. Although the Australian government knows to hold its tongue on the domestic politics of other states, the private consternation about a return of Trump to the presidency is an open secret.

Australia has taken a massive bet on the future stability and capabilities of the U.S. with the AUKUS agreement. AUKUS relies on not just a willingness of Washington to share technology with Australia, but on a shared worldview and steady commitment to prior agreements. Trump’s worldview and his whims may not guarantee the success of the project. Its failure would not only be a massive embarrassment for Canberra, it would leave it back at square one for replacing its aging submarine fleet, leaving the country with a huge capability deficit.

More broadly, Trump’s worldview has the potential to destabilize the Indo-Pacific in ways Australia would find threatening. His fondness for dictators, suspicion of allies, and lack of understanding of the role the U.S. plays in global stability (however imperfect), presents an enormous opportunity for revisionist actors to alter conditions in the region. Trump’s hostility toward democracy, the rule of law, and constitutionalism also send strong global signals that these institutions are able to be subverted and degraded.

Were Harris to win the election, Australia would be highly relieved. Harris is someone who Australia can easily work with. She will honor U.S. commitments to allies and institutions. She is someone who will surround herself with serious people, and expect quality information to make decisions with. She represents the stability that Australia requires from its primary security partner and third largest trading partner (with Trump’s proposed tariffs also being of great concern to Australian exporters).

Australia fears both the chaos Trump will create if he wins, and the chaos he will create if he loses. The latter, however, will hopefully only be temporary.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s relationship with the Biden administration grew increasingly strained in the final years of Sheikh Hasina’s rule. The Biden White House was closely monitoring human rights in Bangladesh and put pressure on the Hasina government by imposing sanctions on the Rapid Action Battalion in 2021 over allegations of human rights abuses. Many in Bangladesh also believe that the U.S. quietly supported the anti-Hasina protests leading to her ouster. Russia had warned Hasina last year in December about external interference, hinting at possible U.S. involvement in the country’s political upheaval.

Bangladesh is now ruled by an interim administration, led by Muhammad Yunus, which has pledged democratic reforms. At the 2024 United Nations General Assembly, U.S. President Joe Biden embraced Yunus, highlighting the restoration of Bangladesh-U.S. relations that were derailed during the Hasina years, and signaling Washington’s backing of Yunus’ democratic transition efforts. Harris, as Biden’s vice president and the Democratic Party’s nominee, is expected to continue Biden’s focus on human rights and democracy.

Many in Bangladesh retroactively view Trump’s presidency as a period of economic pragmatism in the bilateral relationship. During his tenure, there was a stronger emphasis on trade and economic partnerships, with less criticism of Bangladesh’s internal politics.

For a country whose economy heavily relies on the ready-made garment industry – a sector employing over 4 million people and accounting for a significant portion of trade with the U.S. – economic stability is crucial. The Trump administration’s more transactional approach to foreign policy, prioritizing economic growth over governance concerns, allowed Bangladesh to navigate global markets with fewer complications.

However, a second Trump presidency could encourage a weakened Awami League to lobby its way back into political relevance. The party, which still wields strong influence and has deep connections, money, and might, could find a friendlier environment in Washington under Trump.

Bangladesh’s regional positioning adds another layer to its preferences in the U.S. election. Under Hasina, Bangladesh deepened economic ties with China, particularly through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A Democratic president’s tougher stance on China could complicate Dhaka’s balancing act between its key partners. In contrast, Trump’s silence on China’s activities in Bangladesh could allow Dhaka more flexibility in its foreign relations.

Although the interim government has not indicated a preference between the U.S. presidential candidates, it is clear that a Trump presidency may allow more breathing room economically and be less critical of governance. But with Yunus at the helm and Washington’s current focus on supporting democratic transitions, there is equally strong a case for Bangladesh to lean toward a Democrat presidency.

China

For China, the choice between Harris and Trump is a bedeviled one. As numerous commentators have pointed out, many of the policies that Beijing sees as “containment” began under Trump and expanded under Biden: tariffs on Chinese imports, export controls on semiconductors, the resurrection of the Quad. The biggest difference is in tactics.

The Biden administration has put more emphasis on convincing allies to jointly pursue its China policy goals. Trump, meanwhile, often alienated these same allies, aggressively pressing NATO members as well as Japan and South Korea to pay more for U.S. military support. Trump also targeted not only China but also U.S. partners with tariffs.

It’s also worth nothing that many of the Trump administration’s hawkish China policies were argued for and supported by other figures in the Trump administration, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger. It’s unclear if any of these officials would return. Trump’s own views on China (as on many subjects) are contradictory, veering from admiration for President Xi Jinping to lambasting China for “malfeasance.”

With Harris, there’s reasonable confidence that she will continue the Biden administration’s policies. From China’s perspective, we might call Trump the “high risk, high reward” scenario.

The risks for China are obvious: He has threatened to slap astronomical tariffs on imports from China (and elsewhere) and seems dangerously cavalier about the prospect of nuclear war. The potential downside, then, is worse than under a Harris administration.

Yet the potential upside for China is also higher under Trump. He could shred U.S. relationships with allies and partners, which are crucial to an effective global response to China’s rise. And Trump is unlikely to pay much attention to fostering goodwill in the Global South, given his dismissal of African nations as “shithole countries.” That could cement Beijing’s sway in the developing world, while also forcing U.S. partners in Europe and Asia to drop their harder line on China as Washington itself attacks their interests.

Finally, while Trump has pledged more tariffs, meaning an intensified trade war is likely, he also has a tendency to try to cut deals to “solve” issues once and for all. Witness the ill-fated “Phase One” China-U.S. trade deal, for instance.

So for China, the choice boils down to an uncomfortable status quo – “the devil you know,” so to speak – or a wild card that could potentially improve Beijing’s position in the China-U.S. competition but also could tank both countries’ economies. The real question, then, is whether Chinese leaders are risk-takers, willing to gamble on an unpredictable Trump administration.

Given China’s own domestic difficulties, stability is the preferred path, even if a Harris administration is no friend of Beijing’s.

India

Indians are watching the U.S. presidential elections with more interest than in the past as the Democrat nominee, Harris, is partially of Indian origin. While ordinary Indians would like to see a person with Indian roots make it to the most powerful post in the world, few expect Harris’ origin to determine her policies or benefit India.

As for the Indian government, when asked about India’s preference in the upcoming U.S. presidential election at an event in New Delhi on August 13, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said, “We have every confidence that we will be able to work with the president of the United States, whoever he or she will be.”

Indeed, the Narendra Modi government should be able to work with whoever occupies the White House next. Despite the deep political polarization in the United States, there is a strong bipartisan consensus on the importance of building strong relations with India. As a result, the India-U.S. relationship has deepened over the past two decades under successive U.S. governments, both Democrat and Republican.

This bipartisan consensus has grown largely because of the importance that the U.S. accords India in its efforts to contain a rising China. Consequently, the Indian establishment is confident that whether Harris or the Republican candidate, Trump, becomes the next U.S. president, India’s relations with Washington will not suffer disruption.

However, there are reasons why the Modi government is likely to prefer one over the other.

Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump are social conservatives, who are comfortable dealing with “strong,” or rather autocratic, leaders. They worked together when Trump was previously president and gel well. Trump remains effusive in his praise of Modi.

However, as president, Trump froze H1B visas, which hit India’s IT industry particularly hard. He also terminated India’s preferential access to U.S. markets over its high tariffs on American products. He has promised to impose reciprocal taxes on India if reelected. He is also expected to reimpose the freeze on H1B visas, which Biden lifted. A Trump presidency could therefore spell bad news for India in the fields of trade, technology, and immigration.

Harris is likely to broadly continue Biden’s foreign policy to India. She will therefore continue building resilient supply chains, and deepening trade and advanced technology cooperation with India.

Harris is also likely to continue Biden’s opposition to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Modi had ruffled feathers in the Biden administration over his proximity to Putin on the Ukraine crisis, and differences on this issue are likely to be a “complicating factor” in the bilateral relationship in a Harris presidency.

However, the Indian establishment sees Harris’ progressive-liberal views and her willingness to air these views as the most problematic for bilateral relations. She is expected to be less accommodating than Biden in her approach to the Modi government’s domestic policies and actions, especially toward religious minorities and democratic rights. The Modi government is known to be extremely prickly in response to criticism of its policies, especially to censure from the West. This makes a Harris presidency a less welcome partner of the Modi government than Trump in the White House.

Indonesia

Indonesia, a country of over 270 million, is one of the world’s foremost emerging economies and is projected to rank in the top five by the middle of the century. With that in mind, Indonesia’s relationship with the United States is one to watch, particularly in light of the upcoming U.S. election.

As Americans go to the polls, Indonesia itself is in a state of flux, witnessing a change of administration with the departure of former President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and the advent of President Prabowo Subianto, who was sworn in on October 20.

Prabowo has mostly enjoyed a conducive relationship with the United States in recent years, although he was banned from entering the country in 1998, following allegations of gross human rights violations including the abductions of student activists during the reign of former president Suharto, when he served in the Indonesian military.

Prabowo has always denied any allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses, and the U.S. travel ban was lifted in 2020 when he was appointed minister of defense by Jokowi. His new role necessitated a thawing of relations with the United States, which is likely to continue following the U.S. election.

Prabowo traveled to the United States in 2023 and signed defense agreements that included joint military exercises and enhanced maritime security. The Indonesian government and the U.S. aircraft maker Boeing also agreed on a sale of some 24 F-15EX fighter jets to be sent to Jakarta following the visit.

In June 2024, Prabowo again met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the pair discussed a possible lasting ceasefire in Gaza, including the potential for Indonesia to assist other countries looking to mediate between Israel and Palestine.

As the largest Muslim nation in the world, Indonesia has long supported the Palestinian cause, and in recent years has looked to foster a role mediating in other international disputes, including the Russia-Ukraine war, with Jokowi traveling to the two countries during his presidency with a view to brokering a peace deal.

That said, while Indonesia continues to be involved in developments on the world stage, the new Indonesian administration likely does not have strong views on whether Harris or Trump should win the U.S. election. This is largely due to Indonesia’s “bebas-aktif” or “independent and active” position on foreign affairs.

Indonesia was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1960s, against the backdrop of the Cold War, and has endeavored to stay neutral on wider foreign policy, refusing to align itself with any major power bloc.

In this context, the new administration will likely continue this position with the new U.S. president, with a focus on working with the United States on wider issues of trade, military sales and training, and other strategic partnerships.

Japan

Japanese government officials avoid commenting on the U.S. presidential election because they respect the United States’ domestic politics and don’t want to be seen as meddling in it. But in their heart of hearts they would most likely prefer a Harris administration to a second Trump administration.

The biggest reason is that Harris will basically take over the Biden administration’s foreign, security, and economic policies. The bilateral relationship between Japan and the United States is now extremely smooth sailing, and the Japanese government would prefer to maintain the status quo under a Harris administration.

As stated in the April 2024 Japan-U.S. Joint Leaders’ Statement, the alliance “reached unprecedented heights” under Biden and former Prime Minister Kishida Fumio.

With strategic competition with a rising China in mind, the Biden administration has been working hard to strengthen not only individual cooperation with its allies but also ties among allies themselves. With the United States and Japan at the core, it has enhanced cooperation with Australia, the Philippines, and South Korea, as well as the Quad, a four-nation cooperation framework with Australia and India.

On the other hand, Trump’s foreign and security policies often get discussed as isolationist for his skepticism of allies, or as realist for his singular focus on national self-interest. Trump also has a strong mercantilist streak, with a preference for cold cost-cutting and an obsession with trade deficits.

“Trump’s notion is that U.S. security interests are divisible from that of other states and regions, meaning the U.S. peace and prosperity can exist separately from the rest of the world,” Mori Satoru, a professor at Keio University, pointed out at Foreign Press Center Japan on October 11.

Japan is surrounded by three nuclear-armed nations: China, North Korea, and Russia. As a worst-case scenario, it must prepare for simultaneous emergencies on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait. In such an increasingly dire security environment, Tokyo needs Washington as a reliable and stable ally.

But many in Tokyo believe Trump’s basic notion is that if you want to get more protection from the United States, you must pay us or buy more from us.

Tokyo still remembers news reports in 2019 that the Trump administration requested about a five-fold increase in the cost of stationing U.S. troops in Japan, which Tokyo flatly rejected. The Japanese government may be afraid of this sort of a one-sided and unreasonable request by a second Trump administration.

But there are still some optimistic views that even if Trump wins, new Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru will be able to build a good relationship with him.

“Ishiba and Trump use the same [mental] operating system. I think they are surprisingly on the same wavelength because they think alike,” Sato Masaru, an ex-chief intelligence analyst at the Foreign Ministry of Japan said in a speech in Tokyo on October 2.

Could an Ishiba-Trump era be the same as the golden days of Abe-Trump?

Kazakhstan

The beating heart of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy has long been the rather clunky term “multi-vector.” This perspective – in which all relations are balanced on the fulcrum in Astana – arguably would influence Kazakhstan’s opinion on the U.S. election, if Astana were to have one. Regardless of who occupies the White House, U.S. policy with regard to Central Asia writ large, and Kazakhstan, in particular, is unlikely to change markedly.

The present U.S. strategy on Central Asia, for 2019-2025, was released in February 2020 under the Trump administration and broadly welcomed in the region as it sought to bolster trade relations with a strong emphasis on the region’s independence. But it was Biden who convened the first meeting of the C5+1 at the presidential level on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in 2023 – a remarkable meeting given the steady drum-beat of democracy promotion from the White House under Biden and the arguably undemocratic nature of the region’s regimes, including Kazakhstan’s.

Where changes are possible with the inauguration of a new U.S. president are on the margins and in regard to tone and perception.

And here Kazakhstan’s political elites may, indeed, have a preference. No matter how many failed business ventures can be attributed to Trump, he is still widely viewed as a “successful businessman” and that carries a certain cachet that Harris – unknown in Central Asia, decidedly not a involved in business, and a woman to boot – cannot match.

Since assuming the presidency in 2019, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has made three working visits to the United States – all of them to New York in conjunction with the annual U.N. General Assembly in 2019, 2022, and 2023. If Tokayev has any hope of making an “official” visit to Washington – the kind Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev got to make in 2018, replete with a presidential meeting at the White House – it would most likely happen under Trump. To date, no Central Asian president has been invited to make a state visit to the United States, and no U.S. president has visited Central Asia while in office.

Trump infamously lionizes strongmen and autocrats. He’s called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “genius” and Chinese leader Xi Jinping “brilliant.” He’s unlikely to carry on Biden’s pro-democracy push, whereas Harris’ official platform pledges she would “stand up to dictators.” This tonal difference has had little impact on actual U.S. policy toward Central Asia, but it does influence how those policies are received in Central Asia.

Kazakhstan is far from a top priority in Washington, and that won’t change anytime soon. But the Central Asian region is adjacent to some of the United States’ most critical foreign policy challenges, in the forms of China and Russia. Adjustments in U.S. relations with China and Russia would necessarily alter conditions for Kazakhstan too and, if given a vote, this would likely factor into the choice as well. While there has been continuity in policy with regard to China between Trump and Biden, it is with regard to Russia that a change in president could yield a change in policy that would release some of the pressure Astana has felt given its close relations with Moscow.

Pakistan

With the U.S. election just weeks away, Pakistan’s government is closely monitoring the two presidential candidates, especially Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party. The prospect of her victory holds significant implications for Islamabad, as it could foster a continuation of the current state of relations between Pakistan and the United States.

Under the current U.S. administration led by Biden and Harris, the relationship between Islamabad and Washington has evolved into a relatively stable partnership. Key military stakeholders and government officials in Pakistan are satisfied that the current Democratic Party government in the United States has shown support for the newly elected government in Pakistan. This support seemingly includes a tacit understanding that Washington will refrain from openly criticizing the Pakistani military’s stringent measures against political opposition, notably concerning former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf.

There remains uncertainty about what concessions or assurances Pakistan may have provided to the U.S. to gain the existing support for its current governing setup.

The Biden-Harris administration has allowed space for an atmosphere where both nations seem to be committed to expanding security and financial cooperation. They are aligning efforts to combat terrorism threats within the region, including from groups such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Islamic State Khorasan Province, al-Qaida, and other militant organizations. This collaborative approach marks a significant shift toward a more comfortable state of affairs between Pakistan and the U.S.

Moreover, during the Biden-Harris administration, Pakistan successfully secured Washington’s backing for its recently approved International Monetary Fund deal. Notably, this support came without active pressure from the U.S. regarding Pakistan’s expansion of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or its ties with Beijing – a sensitive issue for many stakeholders in Washington.

While Pakistan’s relationship with the United States has not undergone a significant transformation under the Biden administration, it also hasn’t deteriorated.

Equally, there are concerns in Islamabad regarding a potential return of Trump to office. The civil-military leadership in Pakistan fears that such an outcome could push bilateral relations back into an era of unpredictability – one marked by a return to the severe cuts to military financial aid and training programs seen during Trump’s previous tenure. The apprehension surrounding Trump’s possible re-election highlights how crucial it is for Pakistani officials to navigate their diplomatic strategy carefully amidst shifting political landscapes in Washington.

Trump’s return to the White House could complicate the already delicate bilateral relationship, necessitating a recalibration of Islamabad’s approach toward Washington. The previous administration under Trump was marked by fluctuating policies and rhetoric that often strained ties, making the prospect of his return concerning for Pakistani officials.

In contrast, Harris’s candidacy is viewed in Pakistan as an opportunity to build on existing frameworks and engagements that have been established in recent years. Her platform promises a more stable diplomatic environment that may prioritize collaboration over confrontation. As Pakistan navigates its foreign policy objectives, Harris’ candidacy seems to align with its interests in maintaining constructive dialogue and cooperation with one of its key allies.

The Philippines

Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has not endorsed any candidate in the U.S. presidential election, but it is noteworthy to mention that he developed closer relations with the Biden administration. It may be assumed that his Cabinet is hoping that this working relationship will continue under a Harris presidency.

Consider what Marcos and Biden achieved after the former became president in June 2022: The U.S. now has access to nine military facilities in the Philippines after Marcos granted four new locations under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement; the two governments signed the Bilateral Defense Guidelines in May 2023, which affirmed their security partnership; and they joined Japan in a trilateral summit in April 2024, which led to the unveiling of the Luzon Economic Corridor.

Marcos has repeatedly stated that he shares Biden’s vision for a stable Indo-Pacific region. For his part, Biden reiterated the U.S. government’s “ironclad commitment” to defend the Philippines from external threats. This mutual assurance translated into regular and bigger joint military exercises, the deployment of inter-range missiles by the U.S. in the northern Philippines, and the stronger pressure exerted by U.S. allies in calling out China’s incursions in the maritime territories of the Philippines.

Harris has been an active enabler of closer relations between the two governments, having visited the Philippines twice as vice president and met Marcos on multiple occasions.

Will a Trump presidency lead to the reversal of the security deals initiated and reinvigorated by the Biden administration? Not necessarily, but Trump’s unpredictable policy actions could hold back the Marcos government in implementing these agreements. There might also be a brief period of uncertainty about Trump’s foreign policy direction, which could slightly affect the status of U.S. forces stationed in the Philippines.

The previous Trump administration didn’t weaken the relationship of the two countries even if the Philippine president at that time, Rodrigo Duterte, openly announced that his government would pivot toward China. But the supposedly pro-Beijing stance of Duterte didn’t invalidate the various defense-related pacts of the two countries. Duterte briefly suspended the Visiting Forces Agreement but his term ended with all the major military deals with the U.S. remaining intact. Proof of Duterte’s cordial relationship with Trump was his public endorsement of the latter’s candidacy, although this was announced when Biden was still the Democratic nominee.

Either a Trump or Harris presidency is expected to endorse the security framework rolled out by the Biden administration when it comes to strengthening the Philippines-U.S. security partnership, which is anchored on the principle of maintaining influence across the Indo-Pacific while countering the rise of China and its belligerent actions towards its neighbors in the region.

Between the two candidates, Harris represents continuity, which could be more favorable for the Marcos government whose term will end in 2028. The Dutertes, who are now publicly feuding with the Marcoses and are aiming to reclaim power, have already endorsed Trump.

As for opposition forces in the Philippines, mainstream parties have echoed the government’s narrative about securing U.S. support to reject China’s wholesale claim of ownership over the South China Sea. But nationalist forces that led the successful campaign for the expulsion of U.S. bases in 1991 are wary of the increasing U.S. military presence in the Philippines, and these groups have been asserting that instead of siding with either Harris or Trump, the government should instead pursue an independent foreign policy.

South Korea

In the past, a presidential election in the United States was not a big issue for South Korea. No matter whether Republicans or Democrats won the election, Seoul had no choice but to actively work with the new U.S. governments, as its security has been highly dependent on the U.S. military assets and the U.S. forces stationed on the South’s soil since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Also, as North Korea has consistently developed its nuclear program over the past 20 years, especially during the Kim Jong Un era, every South Korean president vowed to strengthen ties with the U.S. to deal with security threats posed by North Korea.

For Washington, it has also been crucial to maintain strong alliance with South Korea and Japan, its like-minded allies in the East Asia region, to cope with China’s rising leverage not only in the region but also in worldwide. Under both Democratic and Republican presidents, South Korea has been a key partner for the U.S. in achieving its strategic goals in the region.

However, there might be a preference in Seoul at this time.

Since South Korea experienced Trump’s “America First” approach during his first term as president, it would be no surprise if Seoul prefers working with a prospective Harris administration. There is a possibility of Trump making gestures that could weaken the alliance again if he is reelected. In particular, he may attempt to make South Korea pay more in defense sharing costs.

Although South Korea agreed to raise its share of the cost to support the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea by 8.3 percent year-on-year in 2026, Trump signaled that he would order his team to renegotiate this defense cost sharing with South Korea. In his mind, South Korea is a “money machine” and would have paid $10 billion every year if he had been president for the last four years (Seoul currently pays around $1.1 billion per year). Trump also said that he tried to make South Korea pay $2 billion a year after then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in opposed his initial demands for South Korea to pay $5 billion.

Considering current South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s policy on North Korea and his attempts to increase Seoul’s leverage in the international diplomatic stage, he would prefer working with a U.S. counterpart who supports his initiatives. Also, in light of his chemistry with U.S. President Biden, the Yoon administration would not have to conduct a policy review on the United States if Harris wins the election, as her policy on the two Koreas is expected to be similar to the one the Biden administration initiated.

Thus, Seoul would want to work with Harris as a reliable partner who can smoothly work with the Yoon administration.

Taiwan

As with other countries, Taiwan has sought to hedge its bets regardless of either a Trump or Harris victory, to ensure ties with either possible administration. Nevertheless, it is also clear that Taiwan has severe anxieties regarding the possibility of a Trump win.

Trump was originally seen in a positive light in Taiwan, especially as he was willing to take an unprecedented phone call from then-President Tsai Ing-wen after his 2016 victory. In the early years of the Trump administration, with the start of the China-U.S. trade war, Trump was perceived in the mold of traditional Republicans tough on China due to anti-communism.

Yet in the years since, Trump has acquired a reputation for unpredictability in Taiwan. Trump’s comments comparing Taiwan to the size of a pen and China to the size of the Resolute desk used in the Oval Office were widely reported on. Suggestions by Trump that he might trade away Taiwan in order to secure more favorable terms in negotiations with China angered the public.

International reactions notwithstanding, the August 2022 visit to Taiwan by then-U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did much to improve perceptions of Democrats in Taiwan. Historically, Taiwan has favored Republicans because of the perception that they were tougher on China, while Democrats were viewed as more interested in establishing trade ties with China. This was the case even as support for Taiwan became increasingly bipartisan.

At present, Harris is generally viewed as a safer bet than Trump, simply because Trump is viewed as dangerously unpredictable. This is the case even though relatively little is known about Harris, and even as DPP governments have continued to cultivate ties with former Trump administration officials such as Nikki Haley, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Kelly Craft.

Some voices influential on policy take the view that a second Trump administration would probably continue to take a strong stance on China, pointing to the fact that the first Trump administration did not break from precedent as much as anticipated. Trump also continues to have adherents who continue to perceive him as a consistent critic of China, downplaying times when he has suggested close ties of friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But Harris is probably preferred by default in light of Trump’s unreliability.

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan, like other Central Asian nations, does not feature prominently on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. The region remains relatively stable, with no active wars, escalating conflicts, or crises such as widespread famine or disease that would demand urgent international intervention. Given this relative calm, it’s unlikely that U.S. foreign policy toward Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, will shift dramatically between administrations. So, whether it is the Democratic or Republican government, Uzbekistan leans toward neutrality, preferring to maintain a steady relationship.

But Tashkent might slightly favor a Trump victory for a few reasons. For one, under Trump’s administration, the United States is likely to place less emphasis on furthering the country’s human rights records and democratization process, leaving the internal governance to Tashkent’s own terms and prioritizing direct bilateral relations. In contrast, Harris is expected to continue the Biden administration’s focus on human rights, democracy, and multilateral engagement, likely leading to increased scrutiny of Uzbekistan’s internal affairs.

However, the C5+1 format has gained greater prominence under Biden, and a Harris presidency could bring a more focused approach to regional cooperation and long-term development in Central Asia.

During Trump’s presidency, in 2018, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev made an official visit to Washington, marking the first such trip by an Uzbek leader in 16 years. However, this milestone more reflected Uzbekistan’s attempts to showcase reforms in its internal and external politics following the government change in 2016 rather than a change in Washington’s position toward Uzbekistan. While other Western leaders, like French President Emmanuel Macron (in 2023) and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (in 2024), have made official visits to Uzbekistan, neither Trump nor Biden (nor any other U.S. sitting president) has ever done so.

Prior to Mirziyoyev’s visit, the White House had welcomed Uzbek President Islam Karimov twice, with his last visit taking place during George W. Bush’s presidency in 2002. At that time, the Bush administration appreciated Karimov’s cooperation in the context of broader U.S. engagement in Central Asia, particularly due to the U.S. military presence at Uzbekistan’s Karshi-Khanabad air base, which was used to support military operations in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2005. The strategic importance of Central Asia for the U.S. has been renewed in light of the Russia-Ukraine war, China’s aggressive economic expansion into the region, as well as the region’s close proximity to Afghanistan and Iran.

Another factor is the region’s relationship with Russia, a key strategic ally for Uzbekistan in both security and economic matters. If Trump were to foster more amicable Russia-U.S. relations directly, there will be less significance attached to Central Asia in U.S. policy, but also less pressure. For Tashkent, it could be a chance to strengthen its position without navigating the strained Russia-U.S. tensions, especially in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war.

In either scenario, the United States’ policy toward Uzbekistan or toward the region will not drastically change and for Tashkent, neutrality remains the best choice.

Vietnam

As in much of the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. presidential election will be watched closely in Vietnam, a nation that has seen considerable forward progress in its relations with the United States over the past four years.

While Vietnam’s diplomatic discretion has prevented the country’s leaders from expressing any views on the U.S. election, it is unlikely that they have much of a preference for either Trump or Harris. The structural factors underpinning the relationship suggest that relations with the U.S. will continue along their current trajectory no matter who wins the White House on November 5.

Relations between Vietnam and the U.S. have improved steadily under both the Trump and Biden administrations. Increasing U.S. tensions with China have highlighted Vietnam’s strategic importance, and increased its prominence in the minds of U.S. policymakers. At the same time, Vietnamese leaders, eager to reduce their nation’s dependence on China, have made decisions to widen and deepen the relationship with Washington, a process that culminated in the establishment of a U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership last year. They have also leapt at the opportunity to attract U.S. and Western businesses that, sensing a shift in the strategic winds, have begun to diversify their manufacturing operations away from China.

There have been points of friction and misalignment under both administrations. Under Trump, the U.S. Treasury Department and U.S. Trade Representative’s office officially labeled Vietnam a currency manipulator, accusing it of improperly intervening in foreign exchange markets to advantage its own exports, and imposed tariffs on a limited number of Vietnamese imports.

Vietnam has also attracted the scrutiny of the Biden administration for acting as a manufacturing for Chinese-made goods hoping to avoid U.S. tariffs. The U.S. Commerce Department this year also refused to recategorize Vietnam as a “market economy,” a decision that was met with disappointment in Hanoi.

The fact that relations have continued to trend upward under two very different presidents suggests that they are premised on structural rather than personal factors. As a result, Vietnamese leaders recognize that relations with the U.S. will remain strong, despite occasional disagreements, whoever occupies the White House.

The one thing to which Vietnam is particularly sensitive is any sudden lurch in U.S. relations with China. The country’s multilateralized and diversified foreign policy is designed in large part to strike a steady balance between China, the United States, and other major powers – and under the past two U.S. administrations it has managed the balancing act with considerable aplomb.

Last year’s diplomatic upgrade with the U.S. was accompanied by considerable efforts to reassure Beijing that the move was not directed at China. It was also carefully nested within a broader deepening of Vietnam’s diplomatic relationships with other important countries, including Australia, Japan, and, most recently, France. A turn toward more intense confrontation or accommodation by a future U.S. administration could complicate Vietnam’s ability to maintain this diplomatic balance.

However, neither Trump nor Harris has done much to suggest that they differ much on how to approach China. Trump’s adversarial, hawkish stance has become the subject of a broad bipartisan consensus, and intensifying strategic competition – even a new “cold war” – seems likely to be a feature of the international system over the long term regardless of who wins the election. Indeed, this is something that Vietnamese strategists and policymakers have already factored into their predictions. From their perspective, the difference between Trump and Harris is therefore likely to be one of degree rather than kind.

19. Post-Truth and National Security: Background and Options for a New Administration

Excerpts:

“Post-truth” describes an information environment characterized in particular by “truth decay,”

...

This paper builds on earlier work by this author.[3]  It provides an update on post-truth conditions and their impact on national security, isolates the most pressing challenges for the United States, and offers responses that could be effective and practical for an incoming administration.

...

Calls to Action

Our post-truth information environment and its growing impact on national security raise three urgent considerations for policymakers. First, America’s elected officials must prioritize this challenge. Second, responses to post-truth must transcend rather than reinforce partisan and tribal divides if they are to have a chance of success. Third, the United States should elevate the goals of transparency and individual human agency in responding to post-truth—to remain true to our American values in a world of powerful adversaries.

Gary L. Geipel, Post-Truth and National Security: Background and Options for a New Administration, No. 604, October 28, 2024

Post-Truth and National Security: Background and Options for a New Administration

https://nipp.org/information_series/gary-l-geipel-post-truth-and-national-security-background-and-options-for-a-new-administration-no-604-october-28-2024/

Dr. Gary L. Geipel

Dr. Gary L. Geipel is a Senior Associate at the National Institute for Public Policy, a professor of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, and a communications consultant to industry and public affairs clients. Previously, he held diverse analysis and communications roles in government, industry, and the nonprofit sector in the U.S. and abroad.

Why This Matters

“Post-truth” describes an information environment characterized in particular by “truth decay,” to use a term coined by RAND scholars, in which verifiable facts are widely ignored or distrusted—replaced by opinion if not outright invention.[1] In this author’s larger analysis, the major components of our post-truth environment are (1) the embrace of “narratives” over fact-based accounts of the world, (2) increasing “tribalism,” and (3) a breakdown of corrective institutions, leading to the “entrenchment” of these conditions on a massive scale.[2] See Figure 1 for a summary graphic useful throughout this paper.

Based on the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign—as thoroughly tribal and narrative-based as any in recent history—readers may find the notion that a new administration will care about “post-truth and national security” humorous at best. As president, however, neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump will be able to bask in the forgiving waters of their post-truth campaigns. Faced with actual decisions, a Harris or Trump administration will need to sort fact from torrents of fiction—or face potentially immense consequences. Where U.S. national security is concerned, the challenges and risks of post-truth continue to grow apace. Impressionistic, social-media-borne understandings of conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, for example, already have as much influence on U.S. policy as verifiable information and longstanding national or alliance interests. The next administration will face constant decisions about whether to ignore, manage, or try to shape a digital information environment full of alternative realities.

If guided only by the entrenched attitudes of their respective parties—with Democrats focused on “fighting disinformation” and Republicans on “protecting free speech”—neither potential president will find an effective roadmap for navigating post-truth. Robust national security policies amid a digital cacophony remain possible but require commitments to transparency, consensus-building between parties and tribes, and political leadership—all of which have been sorely lacking in broader U.S. policymaking for a generation.

This paper builds on earlier work by this author.[3]  It provides an update on post-truth conditions and their impact on national security, isolates the most pressing challenges for the United States, and offers responses that could be effective and practical for an incoming administration.

Background and Recent Examples

Figure 1: National Security, Post-Truth – Definition

Definition

General ThreatsNational Security ScenariosNarratives

Information Accuracy

Designed Crises / Ignorance

Tribalism

Decision Quality

Epistemic Coups

EntrenchmentNational ResilienceFatal Distractions

The large-scale narratives that power online information exchange consist of individual assertions that cohere into a larger notion of how some aspect of the world works. Narratives are not collections of evidence put forward for questioning and eventual reassessment, however, in the manner of scientific paradigms. Today’s dominant narratives usually emerge from dramatic events and fragments of information but evolve quickly into rigid dogmas—rigged elections, systemic racism, the power of the Deep State, catastrophic climate change, the Great Replacement, and Settler Colonialism are examples—to which any verifiable evidence must conform if it is considered at all.

The notion of what constitutes “news” itself has been upended in this environment, as the assembly of narrative-conforming storylines by “influencers” replaces anything resembling objective journalism. As political scientist Jon Askonas aptly describes it: “Today, journalists sell compelling narratives that mold the chaotic torrent of events, Internet chatter, and information into readily understandable plotlines, characters, and scenes. … Like Scheherazade, if they can keep subscribers coming back for more of the story, they will stay alive.”[4]

Tribalism, meanwhile, describes the sorting of more and more individuals into antagonistic groups based on cultural, ethnic, and religious affinity, partisan alignment, and/or geographic proximity. Social media platforms encourage—indeed compel, via powerful algorithms—the clustering of these tribes into silos where the only available information confirms the particular narratives to which they have subscribed or succumbed.  In this environment, many institutions that once offered correctives—such as traditional news organizations, universities, and even scientific organizations[5]—have taken the path of least resistance and greatest profit to protect and further entrench narratives and tribalism rather than to challenge them.[6]

As described in previous work, [7] the general threats to national security arising from the current information environment center on (1) the accuracy of information in widespread circulation; (2) the quality of decision-making amid epistemic chaos; and (3) the ultimate resilience of a nation operating without a shared fact base. Examples of these growing threats include “designed crises,” “epistemic coups,” and “fatal distractions,” respectively.

Examples continue to multiply. Consider the relationship between major narratives and official U.S. policy on today’s two most serious military conflicts.

Designed Ignorance 1: The Middle East

• On October 7, 2023, Iran-backed Hamas forces executed a surprise attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, and took an additional 200 hostages. The bolt-from-the-blue terror attack was the largest in the history of Israel, a U.S. ally—the proportional equivalent of an assault killing 45,000 Americans in a day (15 times the 9-11-2001 death toll).
• Within hours, a narrative thread emerged in a letter from student groups at Harvard University—describing Israel as “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”[8] The statement faced significant criticism on and off the Harvard campus but established the outlines of a larger narrative that spread quickly. By October 14, an “open letter” had appeared in the New York Review of Books, signed by dozens of progressive writers and artists, already labeling Israel’s limited actions at that point a “crime” in which “governments of the USA, UK, France and others are participating.”[9]
• Fueled by disinformation on social media platforms such as Instagram, Telegram, TikTok, and X, ignorance of Hamas’ actions and criticisms of Israel’s military response rapidly dominated progressive information silos.[10] Within months, anti-Israel protest encampments appeared at dozens of universities across the United States and strident criticisms of Israel spread to numerous other settings.
• According to recent polling by the Pew Research Center, four in 10 American adults under 30 believe that “the way Hamas carried out its attack on Israel” (note: this included the targeted killing of civilians, including children, and sexual assaults[11]) was “acceptable” (9%) or describe themselves as “not sure” (32%).[12] In another large poll only weeks after Israel’s initial response, fully 55% of American adults in the under-30 age group said that they believe that Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza constitutes “genocide.”[13]
• An Anti-Defamation League poll in early 2024 found that more than 50% of Gen Z Americans “somewhat” or “strongly” agree that they would “be comfortable being friends with someone who supports Hamas” while 40% of Americans across all age groups strongly or somewhat agree that Israelis “intend to cause as much suffering to Palestinians as possible.”[14]
• These and other widespread beliefs are at odds with easily accessible and verifiable information on the details of the October 7 attacks, the actions and positions of Hamas, Israeli efforts to minimize civilian casualties during its recent Gaza incursions, the liberal and multi-cultural nature of Israeli society, and the very definition of the word “genocide.”
• Polls show that overall U.S. support for Israel remains relatively strong. In this information environment, however, the U.S. Government—while initially clear and forceful—has wavered increasingly in its backing of Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas’ capacity for further terror attacks or even to negotiate with Hamas from a position of strength.
• Recently, as Israel retaliated with precision against the Iran-backed leadership of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon (with which the U.S. itself has been at odds since the 1980s), U.S. officials interspersed demands for a ceasefire[15] with a statement calling the result of these actions “a measure of justice.”[16] America’s regional adversaries and allies must struggle to make sense of Washington’s actual position.
• Likely concerned about the extent of anti-Israel sentiment in her party, Vice President Harris has offered only vague notions of how her administration would apply U.S. leverage or support in the conflict,[17] even as she labels Iran as America’s “greatest adversary.”[18]

Designed Ignorance 2: Ukraine

• Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine—unprovoked except in the fevered propaganda of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government—has led to more than one million casualties and constitutes the largest European land war since World War Two. Playing out on the borders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the war naturally raised European security concerns. It spurred U.S. financial and material support for Ukraine (though no direct U.S. military intervention).
• Soon after the invasion, former President Donald Trump described Putin’s initial moves as “genius,” explained Russia’s intention as wanting “to rebuild the Soviet Union … where there was a lot of love,”[19] and claimed that the attack would not have happened had he remained president. Combined with vitriol about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky[20] and a recurring image of Putin as a bulwark against Western decadence,[21] a persistent narrative emerged among ardent supporters of the former president in which Russia’s actions are justifiable and regardless can be shut down quickly by a new Trump administration. As Trump told the September 2024 debate audience: “I will get it settled before I even become president.”[22]
• More recently in the presidential campaign, Trump praised Russia’s historical military record, said the United States must “get out” of Ukraine (though it is not involved directly), and claimed erroneously that “every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion.”[23]
• According to polling by the Pew Research Center, fully 10% of Americans say they have at least “some confidence” that Putin “will do the right thing regarding world affairs.” About a third of all Americans and half of those who “lean Republican” believe that the U.S. is providing “too much” support for Ukraine.[24]
• Polls show that overall U.S. public opinion still favors Ukraine. However, Congressional support for aid appropriations and military deliveries to Ukraine has wavered in this information environment. Passage of the most recent (April 2024) foreign aid package, for example—which ultimately bundled U.S. aid for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine—required complex procedural maneuvers. More than half of all House Republicans voted against the Ukraine portion of the package—including the body’s only Ukrainian immigrant member, Rep. Victoria Spartz, in apparent deference to the narrative that prevails among her Indiana constituents.[25]
• Similarly aware of how his core supporters now view the situation, former President Trump offers only a vague notion of how his administration would manage U.S. engagement in the Ukraine war. Trump refused in the September 2024 debate to affirm support for a Ukrainian victory.[26]

U.S. Foreign Aid: Dodging an Epistemic Coup

Post-truth narratives on the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts afflict American perceptions across party lines. These perceptions, in turn, influence national security decision-making in profound ways—mirror-imaged along the partisan spectrum. Figure 2, for example, summarizes U.S. House votes by party faction on the April 2024 aid package. Almost 20% of Democrats (on aid to Israel) and more than 50% of Republicans (on aid to Ukraine) voted in line with prevailing narratives that emerged on the fringes of their respective parties as just described—leaving the diminished ranks of “other Democrats” and “other Republicans” to take a broader view of the available facts and corresponding U.S. interests.

Figure 2: U.S. House of Representatives – Vote Tallies on

U.S. Aid to Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine (April 19-20, 2024)

Source: Catie Edmondson et al., “How the House Voted on Foreign Aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan,” The New York Times (April 20, 2024).

Occasional grassroots opposition to some aspects of U.S. national security policy is not new. In previous decades, however, it was limited mainly to situations in which the U.S. had sustained military casualties and large-scale expenditures over many years (as in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars). Opposition arose due to verifiable “facts on the ground.” In contrast, today’s post-truth information environment inflames poorly founded opinions of overseas conflicts with little direct U.S. involvement—inventing “facts” (see Israeli “genocide” and Ukrainian “decadence”) that do not exist on the ground. American officials may experience considerable personal dissonance when making decisions in this environment but have not pushed back consistently against post-truth cascades. The resulting U.S. policy tends toward vagueness and indecision. Hamas and Hezbollah, their Iranian backers, and the Putin regime—some of America’s most potent adversaries—have been the beneficiaries.

Calls to Action

Our post-truth information environment and its growing impact on national security raise three urgent considerations for policymakers. First, America’s elected officials must prioritize this challenge. Second, responses to post-truth must transcend rather than reinforce partisan and tribal divides if they are to have a chance of success. Third, the United States should elevate the goals of transparency and individual human agency in responding to post-truth—to remain true to our American values in a world of powerful adversaries.

Prioritize This

Rarely have challenges with a clear impact on the security and well-being of the nation been relegated to such policy-political backwaters as those associated with the post-truth information environment. As a result: far from questioning the epidemics of deception, hostility, and smugness in our recent public life, more and more Americans regard this state of affairs as normal. The effects of post-truth are not fevers that will pass with time. The choice to live entirely outside the digital realm is a choice that most Americans can no longer make. Much of our citizenship and our professional and social lives take place in the online cacophony. We must make the best of it—yet we have not really tried.

Though ubiquitous, the effects of post-truth are not impervious to leadership and human engagement. Like other serious challenges, however, addressing them begins with acknowledging them.

Transcend the Policy Divide

The harmful manifestations of the post-truth information environment afflict all Americans and can only be addressed in a framework of reasonable consensus.

One of the most harmful impressions about post-truth—reinforced constantly in most academic and media coverage of disinformation—is that it is a problem primarily or solely of the American Right. This author’s previous work presented numerous examples to show that no education level, professional class, or geography—let alone ideological orientation—inoculates one against mindsets and behaviors hard-wired into all of humanity.[27] The ideologically blinkered way post-truth has been discussed contributes significantly to the standoff around potential responses.

On the one side—associated with the Democratic Party and the progressive Left—responses focus on identifying and reducing the online flow of “disinformation,” understood as false information capable of causing harm. On the other side—associated with the Republican Party and the populist Right—responses focus on assuring “free speech” as an antidote to groupthink. Not unreasonably, some conservatives believe that it is their free speech that is most at risk from restrictions on disinformation, which too many on the left define as information contrary to progressive dogma.

Ironically, effective responses to the post-truth information environment can be found precisely in the synthesis of these two views—but not in either of them alone. Disinformation is the often-dangerous manifestation of post-truth while free speech sets the guardrails within which disinformation should be confronted.

Seen this way, an effective synthesis begins with acknowledging that disinformation cannot simply be purged. As Renée DiResta describes it in a recent book, “[I]f we boot off the bad actors, filter nasty speech, or kill off the algorithms that help wild conspiracy theories trend, will we return to a less polarized, more harmonious way of relating to each other? No. That’s because the content itself reflects real opinions. Real demand.”[28] That is a breakthrough insight worth emulating—from someone closely associated with the anti-disinformation side.

The free-speech imperative raises another serious question about the anti-disinformation approach: who will decide what is disinformation and what to fight? One of the most bizarre and frightening ideas in response to post-truth is to appoint a federal government “reality czar”—as discussed in a typically one-sided New York Times assessment in 2021.[29]  Though the progressive Left in particular struggles to accept this, one person’s “reality” can be another’s coerced dystopia—as America’s experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic should have made clear. No “czar” can sort these views into right and wrong in a free society.

At the same time, digital free speech without an understanding of risks and the possibility of error correction also is a path to bad outcomes. Enjoying the freedom to speak does not equal the freedom to speak without challenge or rebuttal. The government cannot supply that pushback, however. Not even the digital platform companies can. It will take an army of citizen-users of information platforms—better enlightened about what they are dealing with.

Encourage Transparency and Individual Control

Beyond preserving free speech, the other key considerations in a response to post-truth should be to maximize transparency and to expand the choices and tools available to individual citizens.

Transparency should take at least three forms. First, the United States should greatly increase transparency about the post-truth problem itself. This begins with elected officials willing to acknowledge that we are struggling to trust information and that the problem afflicts all of us—not just the usual suspects in the other party.

Second, transparency about the federal government’s response to post-truth is essential—especially where national security is concerned. Any new commissions, laws, and offices created to deal with the problem should be rolled out with maximum detail and visibility—unlike the Biden Administration’s ill-conceived roll-out of a Department of Homeland Security “Disinformation Governance Board” in 2022.[30] As citizens, Americans should know not only what their government is doing but who is involved, how the work is conducted, and how to access the assistance and tools that exist.

Finally, transparency is vital where the U.S. Government’s own “fact base” is concerned. In an information environment where versions of reality can vary so widely as to prompt completely different responses, knowing in real time what its leaders believe and consider important is healthy for an open society. This is not as simple as pointing to long-standing “Freedom of Information” options. Nor is it as complicated (indeed impossible) as trying to capture every data point in the federal government’s decision process on myriad issues. But especially when national security is involved—when alternative realities multiply and collide—knowing what presidents and their teams know, to the extent practicable, can be clarifying for all concerned.

Presidential addresses to the nation during a crisis served this purpose in the recent past and still could help. Today, however, something akin to the Ukrainian government’s “pre-bunking” efforts before the February 2022 Russian invasion is needed as well. As assessed by RAND, Ukraine’s efforts to share with domestic and international audiences what it knew about Russia’s intentions—and to debunk Russian disinformation in advance—contributed significantly to understanding and support for Kyiv.[31]  Except in rare instances—in which delicate “sources or methods” actually would be at risk—classification should not be a barrier to similar transparency in the United States. The topic of U.S. Government information security exceeds this brief. This author shares the view of political scientist Jon Askonas, however, that “reforms to the government secrecy system that serious critics from both political parties have demanded for fifty years, and a true recommitment to openness, can restore Americans’ faith in their institutions.”[32]

For similar reasons, the U.S. Government and its citizens would benefit from information tracking efforts that do not rely on classified sources at all. New private-sector tools, for example, promise an ability to track the content, origins, and reach of digital narratives—giving decision-makers time to assess and respond to such information flow and citizens a better sense of what is being discussed outside their siloes.[33]  Recently, for example, a tool created by the firm Edge Theory compared “narrative slants on nuclear doctrine”—and other live topics— originating with Western media and “foreign malign sources.”[34]

In addition to transparency, post-truth responses that play to the historical strengths of American society should encourage individual control over online engagement. One such effort—largely funded by investor Frank H. McCourt, Jr.—seeks to establish a new, open-source “Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP)” that “enables users to reclaim and control their data and can support a healthier digital ecosystem, where apps are interoperable, data is portable, and platforms must adhere to [individual users’] terms.”[35] To demonstrate the viability of this new protocol and user-centric platform policies on a large scale, a McCourt-affiliated non-profit entity called Project Liberty is organizing a “People’s Bid” to acquire the TikTok social media platform.[36]

Somewhat more modestly, a growing group of academics focuses on the promise of so-called “middleware” to enhance the power of platform users. Barak Richman and Francis Fukuyama elaborated on this approach in a 2021 essay: “A spate of third-party companies would create and operate software to curate and order the content that users see on their digital platforms, according to the users’ preferences. Users could insert their preferred middleware as plug-ins to the platforms and thus choose their own trusted intermediary to sort their news, rank their searches, and order their feed.”[37] Middleware has been criticized as little more than an additional siloing mechanism that could increase self-segregation. Its advocates push back that—if combined with greater transparency about the harms of deception on digital platforms—middleware tuned to accuracy could become attractive to more and more users in the manner of proven career or investment advice. The argument for middleware hinges on the possibly optimistic notion that truth will be recognized as more valuable than its alluring alternatives.

These and other means of equipping Americans to identify and resist disinformation may help them as individuals navigating a digitized society and as citizens concerned with national security.

Staying Free, Secure, and United in a Digital Public Square: A Practical Agenda

Earlier work identified three broad types of policy responses to the post-truth information environment—encompassing norm-setting, technology-based responses, and education efforts. This five-part agenda for consideration by incoming federal officials builds on that framework.

One—Above all: elected officials beginning with the President of the United States should acknowledge the heightened challenges of opinion formation, decision-making, and national resilience created by the digital information environment—making clear the implications for national security. This should be done in a spirit of humility, emphasizing the susceptibility of Americans across ideological and party lines and committing the new administration to bipartisan problem-solving efforts. The issue warrants initial elevation to a State of the Union-type setting or even a stand-alone address but must be reinforced regularly by the President; the Secretaries of Defense, Education, HHS, and State; and Congressional leaders.

Two—Linked to the national security risks of post-truth: the dangers of “always-online” socialization should be elevated to a public health emergency, recognizing their close connection to mental health (especially among young people), economic productivity, and other aspects of general well-being. The U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic left many Americans with a dim view of such drills but also provided essential lessons on transparency, citizen engagement, and course correction to improve large-scale efforts in the future. Virginia and other states have begun to test restrictions on smartphone use in public schools that should be given a chance.[38]  Large-scale awareness and education efforts are as important as restrictions and will be taken more seriously in a widely recognized emergency.

Three—Education should be the centerpiece of America’s response to post-truth. In their online silos and embrace of alternative realities, Americans place not only their nation but also themselves and their families at serious risk—yet they remain largely in the dark about the nature of the problem or what to do about it. A new administration should lead efforts to develop and promulgate curricula that equip Americans from a young age (a) to understand the difference between information and truth, facts and opinions, and evidence and impressions; (b) to approach information critically; (c) to recognize deception and propaganda; (d) to identify reliable authorities and seek them out; and (5) to challenge and revise their conclusions. In a pervasively digital society, these skills are as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. To be effective, they must be imparted objectively—a daunting challenge for an education establishment notoriously one-sided in its ideological orientation.

Four—A new administration should encourage and invest in the rapid development of technology-based measures (a) to increase Americans’ control over their digital lives and (b) to track and understand virulent narratives likely to influence national security. Fact-based middleware and new social networking protocols are examples of tools that could enhance control, but additional approaches should be encouraged simultaneously. Where tracking tools are concerned, a new administration should make clear that its purpose is not to attack or outlaw competing views but to equip decision-makers (and ordinary citizens) to recognize and respond to information before millions have embraced it uncritically. Such technologies should not become shadowy additions to the government’s intelligence suite but public resources to help all Americans establish a shared fact base.

Five—The United States has allies in its response to the post-truth information environment—as in other military-security realms—and should work closely with them to deal with our common challenges. We can develop norms of digital truth-seeking together, and share ideas and best practices for education and technology-based responses. The United States has essential values of free speech and societal openness in common with other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and our allies in Asia, Oceania, and elsewhere. In contrast, the governments of China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia deliberately control information inside their own countries—and will spread these models of control if given a chance.

This agenda is an outline requiring additional detail. It is exemplary rather than definitive. It is intended above all to call for action. America’s post-truth information environment and its impact on national security demand much higher-level, more even-handed, and more widespread attention than these problems have received from the handful of academics and activists who engage with them today. Mastering the post-truth information environment without succumbing to authoritarianism or chaos will be an essential test of liberal societies in the 21st Century. It is time for the United States to meet that test.

[1] See Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, “Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Rose of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life,” RAND Corporate Research Report RR-2314-RC (2018).

[2] Gary L. Geipel, Reality Matters: National Security in a Post-Truth World, Occasional Paper, Vol. 3, No. 6 (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, June 2023), available at https://nipp.org/papers/reality-matters-national-security-in-a-post-truth-world/.

[3] Ibid.

[4v] Jon Askonas, “How Stewart Made Tucker,” The New Atlantis (Summer 2022), available at https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/how-stewart-made-tucker.

[5] Geipel, op. cit., pp. 16-18, 43-44.

[6] See, for example, Martin Gurri, “Journalism Betrayed,” City Journal (Winter 2021), pp. 12-19.

[7] Geipel, op. cit., pp. 34-51.

[8] The Harvard Crimson (October 10, 2023), available at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/10/psc-statement-backlash/.

[9] “An Open Letter from Participants in the Palestine Festival of Literature,” New York Review of Books (October 14, 2023), available at https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/10/14/an-open-letter-from-participants-in-the-palestine-festival-of-literature/.

[x10] Brian Fung and Claire Duffy, “The Israel-Hamas war reveals how social media sells you the illusion of reality,” CNN (October 16, 2023), available at https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/14/tech/social-media-misinformation-israel-hamas/index.html.

[11] “I Can’t Erase All the Blood from My Mind,” Human Rights Watch (July 17, 2024), available at https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/07/17/i-cant-erase-all-blood-my-mind/palestinian-armed-groups-october-7-assault-israel.

[12] Laura Silver, et al., “Views of the Israel-Hamas War,” Pew Research Center (March 21, 2024), available at https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/.

[13] Jamie Ballard, “Has genocide been happening in either Israel or Gaza?” YouGov.com (January 19, 2024), available at https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48442-has-genocide-been-happening-israel-gaza-americans-split-holocaust-native-americans-ukraine-poll.

[14] Center for Antisemitism Research, “Antisemitic Attitudes in America 2024,” ADL (February 29, 2024), available at https://extremismterms.adl.org/resources/report/antisemitic-attitudes-america-2024.

[15] “US and allies call for an immediate 21-day cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah,” Associated Press (September 25, 2024), and “Biden calls for ‘a cease-fire now’ amid Israel’s strikes in Lebanon,” Associated Press (September 30, 2024).

[16] Aamer Madhani antd Matthew Lee, “Biden and Harris call the Israeli strike killing Hezbollah’s Nasrallah a ‘measure of justice’,” The Washington Post (September 28, 2024), available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/28/biden-hezbollah-nasrallah-israel-lebanon/3237d14c-7db9-11ef-980d-341a84fdff8f_story.html.

[17] Maria Ramirez Uribe, “How Kamala Harris and Donald Trump compare on Israel-Hamas war, two-state solution,” PolitiFact (September 11, 2024).

[18] “Kamala Harris makes the case in 60 Minutes interview for why she should be president,” CBS News 60 Minutes Overtime (October 7, 2024), available at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kamala-harris-2024-election-interview-60-minutes-transcript/.

[19] Alexandra Hutzler, “What Trump Has Said About Putin Since Russian Invasion of Ukraine Began,” Newsweek (March 14, 2022), available at https://www.newsweek.com/what-trump-has-said-about-putin-since-russian-invasion-ukraine-began-1687730.

[20] David French, “The Oddly Intense Anger Against Zelensky, Explained,” The Atlantic (December 23, 2022), https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/ukraine-aid-right-wing-republican-anger/676541/.

[21] Lionel Barber et al., “Vladimir Putin says liberalism has ‘become obsolete,’” Financial Times (June 27, 2019), available at https://www.ft.com/content/670039ec-98f3-11e9-9573-ee5cbb98ed36.

[22] “Trump promises to ‘settle’ war in Ukraine if elected,” PBS.com (September 11, 2024), available at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-promises-to-settle-war-in-ukraine-if-elected.

[23] “Trump praises Russia’s military record in argument to stop funding Ukraine’s fight,” Associated Press (September 24, 2024.

[24] Richard Wike, et al., “Views of Russia and Putin,” Pew Research Center (May 8, 2024), available at https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/08/views-of-russia-and-putin/.

[25] Catie Edmondson et al., “How the House Voted on Foreign Aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan,” The New York Times (April 20, 2024).

[26] Nancy Youssef, “Trump Won’t Say if He Wants Ukraine to Win War With Russia,” wsj.com (September 11, 2024), available at https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/harris-trump-presidential-debate-election-2024/card/trump-won-t-say-if-he-wants-ukraine-to-win-war-with-russia-EJTMqfVZZFLB4kjn9fCJ?msockid=13fdbd3f53fc6d9b110fb2a352826c19.

[27] For example, Geipel, op. cit., pp. 21-27.

[28] Renée DiResta, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality (PublicAffairs, 2024), p. 317.

[29] Kevin Roose, “How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis,” The New York Times (February 2, 2021).

[30] “Disinformation head Nina Jankowicz resigns after DHS board is paused,” NBC News (May 19, 2022), available at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/dhs-disinformation-head-resigns-board-paused-rcna29578.

[31] Todd C. Helmus and Khrystyna Holynska, “Ukrainian Resistance to Russian Disinformation – Lessons for Future Conflict,” RAND Research Report (September 3, 2024), available at https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2771-1.html.

[32] Jon Askonas, “An America of Secrets,” The New Atlantis (Summer 2023), available at https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/an-america-of-secrets.

[33] See for example, “What is Narrative Intelligence,” EdgeTheory.com, available at https://edgetheory.com/narrative-intelligence.

[34] Available on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7233983714278391808-CmCY.

[35] See “5 Insights From Our Biggest Fight,” available at https://ourbiggestfight.com/key-insights/, and Frank H. McCourt, Jr., Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age (Crown, 2024).

[36] “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” www.projectliberty.io, available at https://www.projectliberty.io/campaign/.

[37] Barak Richman and Francis Fukuyama, “How to Quiet the Megaphones of Facebook, Google, and Twitter,” Wall Street Journal (February 12, 2021).

[38] See, for example, Suzanne S. Youngkin, “Protect Kids From Social Media,” The Wall Street Journal (September 25, 2024).

The National Institute for Public Policy’s Information Series is a periodic publication focusing on contemporary strategic issues affecting U.S. foreign and defense policy. It is a forum for promoting critical thinking on the evolving international security environment and how the dynamic geostrategic landscape affects U.S. national security. Contributors are recognized experts in the field of national security. National Institute for Public Policy would like to thank the Sarah Scaife Foundation for the generous support that made this Information Series possible.

The views in this Information Series are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as official U.S. Government policy, the official policy of the National Institute for Public Policy, or any of its sponsors. For additional information about this publication or other publications by the National Institute Press, contact: Editor, National Institute Press, 9302 Lee Highway, Suite 750, Fairfax, VA 22031, (703) 293- 9181, www.nipp.org. For access to previous issues of the National Institute Press Information Series, please visit http://www.nipp.org/national-institutepress/informationseries/.

© National Institute Press, 2024

20.Air Force Chief: Small Drones Are Both 'Threat and Opportunity'

​Glad to see the CSAF inject some positive thinking. So much of our national security dialogue is only about the negative threats and we do not talk enough about the opportunities.

Air Force Chief: Small Drones Are Both 'Threat and Opportunity'

airandspaceforces.com · by Chris Gordon · October 29, 2024

Oct. 29, 2024 | By Chris Gordon

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The proliferation of drones in the war in Ukraine has changed how many experts see the future of warfare. But the Air Force’s top general is cautioning against overstating those lessons as the U.S. seeks to deter China and Russia and prepare for other major threats.

“I think the appearance of drones and the appearance of rapidly replicable, low-cost, mass airborne platforms offers both a threat and an opportunity,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said Oct. 25 at the Military Reporters and Editors Conference in Washington, D.C.

There is no question that drones provide the military with a way to strike targets with precision in a cost-effective way. That offers the opportunity, Allvin said, “to deliver combat airpower, sensing, communications in a different way.”

But what works well in Ukraine, he added, may have less utility in the western Pacific as the U.S. seeks to counter China’s growing military.

“The question that we need to address as we look at how it might impact and find its way into our Air Force writ large is the utility across the geography,” Allvin added. “I would not want us to take what’s going on in Ukraine and … transport that immediately to the Indo-Pacific because of the nature of the tyranny of distance.”

Pentagon officials have noted the utility of drones for both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Russia has used Iranian-made drones to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Russian forces have also employed small quadcopter-style and first-person view drones for reconnaissance and aerial strikes.

Ukraine, in turn, has developed long-range drones that can strike targets in Russia from over 400 kilometers away, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said last week.

DOD recently gave Ukraine’s drone industry $800 million to keep working on long-range aircraft. And drone technology has utility for the U.S. as well, as the Air Force pursues its future force design.

“Those three words don’t often belong in the same text: inexpensive, precise, and long-range,” said Allvin. “But we’re looking at it from both that opportunity and threat perspective on how we might integrate those into the force.”

Still, many of the cutting-edge systems the Air Force is pursuing for great power competition are more sophisticated and costly than the UAVs that have proliferated in Ukraine’s airspace.

The Air Force is betting big on Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), envisioned as wingman drones that cost $25 million each and fly alongside the service’s manned fighters and bombers. The first series of designs has been unveiled, and Allvin said 150 CCAs will be in service within the next five years. The capability and mass that could be provided by those platforms have led the service to reevaluate its future manned fighter needs.

“Collaborative Combat Aircraft, I don’t want people to think of those as a quadcopter-style drone,” said Allvin. “They are certainly of a different class, and the idea is for them to be autonomous and collaborative with current systems.”

Yet another challenge is figuring out how to counter cheap drones that are used by adversaries. In the past year, U.S. troops in the Middle East have been targeted by Iranian-backed groups armed with one-way drone attack drones, including one drone strike that killed three Soldiers in Jordan in February.

Iran has also deployed one-way attack drones against Israel, which Air Force F-15E and F-16 fighters helped shoot down in April, and Iranian-backed Houthis have attacked shipping in the Red Sea, Gulf Aden, and Bab el-Mandeb strait in part with one-way attack drones by air and sea.

“The counter small-UAS threat is something that is certainly growing at a concerning pace,” Allvin said. “The barrier entry to that is low, the ability to attribute [the attack] is low. … We plan on really working on that and developing the counter small UAS to be able to counter the threats, not only here, but also the ones that we are facing overseas.”

Air

Russia-Ukraine

airandspaceforces.com · by Chris Gordon · October 29, 2024

21. Political leaders need to stop standing in the way of defense innovation

Political leaders need to stop standing in the way of defense innovation - Breaking Defense

"Standing in the way [of innovation] are three roadblocks, none of which are technological, and all of which the next President and Congress should consider challenging," writes John Ferrari of AEI.

breakingdefense.com · by John Ferrari · October 29, 2024

The US Capitol. (Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)

Earlier this month, the global leaders of the defense industrial base converged in Washington DC for the annual Association of the United States Army conference. The entire convention hall overflowed with weapons, munitions, and any type of military gear that one could imagine.

Touring the show floor, it became clear that while defense giants like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon still rule the roost, the startups and tech firms moving into the defense sphere are no longer happy to just get a small piece of the pie, but instead are looking to tip over the applecart of how weapons are provided to the military.

Wall Street appears to be bullish on these new startups, and Palantir, arguably the first of this new wave, recently entered the S&P 500 with a larger market cap (as of Oct. 15) than Northrop, which is a phenomenal accomplishment. And the desire of the warfighters to access the products and services offered by these startups appears to be bottomless; having uniformed leaders actively encouraging innovation is a rare sight in the military, but Army officials made it clear at AUSA that they want to engage

Which is to say, everything should be lined up for new entrants to succeed — except that standing in the way are three roadblocks, none of which are technological, and all of which the next President and Congress should consider challenging.

First are the incessant battles within the legislative branch, in particular from those who sit in the Appropriation Committees supporting national defense. The entire Congress approved a PPBE commission to address the appropriation process challenges, and while the report came back with many recommendations, the Appropriation Committees essentially responded in writing that the problem is not them, it is everyone else.

Appropriators manage defense spending down to the thousands of dollars, enjoying the power given to them by being able to decide, line item by line item, what programs get quantity changes or are allowed to be bought. Unfortunately, this creates a constipated system. To try to survive, many of these tech startups then pay lobbying firms stocked with former appropriators to help them navigate the process for the crumbs of funding that they need. This can change fairly quickly if those elected to Congress want it to change.

One small step forward would be to approve the Army’s request in the FY26 budget to provide flexible funding for unmanned aircraft systems, capabilities to counter them and electronic warfare tools.

The second roadblock resides at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), where the rules are written for how the Pentagon procures weapons. The rules, set up in the 1960s, often force companies to set up special pentagon-approved accounting systems. These rules have antiquated ideas of how labor should be tracked and compensated, sometimes forcing software engineers to account for their time in fifteen-minute blocks as if they were lawyers and allowing them to be compensated based upon educational attainment rather than productivity.

As Bill Greenwalt testified before Congress in March 2024, “progress in creating alternative acquisition pathways around the acquisition system have been marginal at best.” One fix would be for OSD to deem all software purchases as commercial, giving the services the ability to just buy the majority of software directly while still requiring the services to get approval for any software that is procured on a cost-plus basis. Doing this will further drive the military services to using the multitude of software vendors that do not have compliant DoD-specific back office systems.

The third roadblock resides in the service secretary offices and staff. The political leadership of the services control the acquisition powers and comptroller budget powers within the bureaucracy. They could, if they wanted to, devolve those powers down to warfighting leaders, with political leaders providing oversight but not day-to-day decision making. To do this, both money and acquisition authority would be sent to the major warfighting commands where they could procure items directly from defense firms.

This bottoms up approach is similar to how the American economy works, rather than the top-down centralized execution model created by the political leadership. Having different warfighting commanders procure different items will create a true marketplace of capabilities, allow winning and losing products to sort naturally. In effect, the era of contracting-to-monopoly would be over.

It is hard to tell if the optimism in the air at AUSA will sustain itself once the war in Ukraine and the Isreal come to an end. Should budgets contract, tolerance for risk will be reduced and it is entirely possible that these startups will evaporate. This should not be tolerated, as it is these startups that are going to help secure our nation both militarily and economically.

As we approach the upcoming election, it is crucial for new political leaders to prioritize defense innovation by devolving power and reforming the system. We should ask all candidates for federal office where they stand on this issue. No matter which side wins, the new administration should step up, devolve power, and change the system.

Retired US Army Maj. Gen. John G. Ferrari is a senior nonresident fellow at AEI. Ferrari previously served as a director of program analysis and evaluation for the service.

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