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Quotes of the Day:
“Knowing how something originated often is the best clue to how it works."
Terrence Deacon
“Self control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.”
- James Allen
“If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.”
- Plato
1. Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack
2. U.S. Seeks to Resume Military Dialogue with Beijing
3. How a Decaying Warship Beached on a Tiny Shoal Provoked China’s Ire
4. Army Ammunition Plant Is Tied to Mass Shootings Across the U.S.
5. Top US military official thinks Xi will not seize Taiwan by force
6. What It Took to Get Biden and Xi to the Table
7. Japan urged to ‘signal early’ it would be part of Taiwan’s defence in a war with Beijing
8. Facing Demographic Crisis, China Pushes Women Back Into the Home
9. Feminist consumers in China push back against the ‘pink tax’
10. The West Must Defeat Russia
11. Patriot Games: Mideast Turmoil Prompts Shuffle of Prized Defense Systems
12. The Clock Is Always Ticking: Israel, Ukraine and the Temporal Dimension of War By MIck Ryan
13. Ukraine War Slips Toward Violent Stalemate
14. Analysis | The punishing military doctrine that Israel may be following in Gaza
15. With America’s Ukraine aid, accountability comes with a price
16. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 11, 2023
17. Iran Update, November 11, 2023
18. It's Not Easy to Be Jewish on American Campuses Today
19. Opinion | Another casualty of war: Free speech on campus
1. Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack
Excerpts:
The Russian leader had demonstrated that he was willing to use energy as a tool of retaliation. Nearly a month before the explosions, Gazprom stopped flows on Nord Stream 1, hours after the Group of Seven industrialized nations announced a forthcoming price cap on Russian oil, a move intended to put a dent in the Kremlin’s treasury.
The German government withheld final authorization of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline days before Russia invaded Ukraine, following months of pressure by Washington. Before the war, Germany got half its natural gas from Russia and had long championed the Nord Stream project in the face of opposition from other European allies.
Chervinsky’s supporters have shown up in court to defend him; a few have sported a T-shirt emblazoned with his face and a #FREECHERVINSKY hashtag. For some, he is a symbol of the Ukrainian military’s willingness to make hard choices in a fight for the country’s survival.
In his statement, Chervinsky said, “I have devoted my entire life to the defense of Ukraine.” He called the charges against him related to the Russian airplane operation “groundless and far-fetched, which I will definitely prove in court.”
Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack
Roman Chervinsky, a colonel in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was integral to the brazen sabotage operation, say people familiar with planning
By Shane Harris and Isabelle Khurshudyan
November 11, 2023 at 1:00 p.m. EST
The Washington Post · by Shane Harris · November 11, 2023
A senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last year, according to officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, as well as other people knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation.
The officer’s role provides the most direct evidence to date tying Ukraine’s military and security leadership to a controversial act of sabotage that has spawned multiple criminal investigations and that U.S. and Western officials have called a dangerous attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure.
Roman Chervinsky, a decorated 48-year-old colonel who served in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was the “coordinator” of the Nord Stream operation, people familiar with his role said, managing logistics and support for a six-person team that rented a sailboat under false identities and used deep-sea diving equipment to place explosive charges on the gas pipelines. On Sept. 26, 2022, three explosions caused massive leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. The attack left only one of the four gas links in the network intact as winter approached.
Chervinsky did not act alone, and he did not plan the operation, according to the people familiar with his role, which has not been previously reported. The officer took orders from more senior Ukrainian officials, who ultimately reported to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, said people familiar with how the operation was carried out. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details about the bombing, which has strained diplomatic relations with Ukraine and drawn objections from U.S. officials.
Ukraine has launched many daring and secretive operations against Russian forces. But the Nord Stream attack targeted civilian infrastructure built to provide energy to millions of people in Europe. While Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas conglomerate, owns 51 percent of Nord Stream, Western energy companies, including from Germany, France and the Netherlands, are partners and invested billions in the project. Ukraine had long complained that Nord Stream would allow Russia to bypass Ukrainian pipes, depriving Kyiv of huge transit revenue.
Through his attorney, Chervinsky denied any role in the sabotage of the pipelines. “All speculations about my involvement in the attack on Nord Stream are being spread by Russian propaganda without any basis,” Chervinsky said in a written statement to The Washington Post and Der Spiegel, which conducted a joint investigation of his role.
Spokesmen for the Ukrainian government did not respond to a list of questions about Chervinsky’s participation.
Chervinsky’s role illustrates the complex dynamics and internal rivalries of the wartime government in Kyiv, where Ukraine’s intelligence and military establishment is often in tension with its political leadership.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Chervinsky had been serving in a unit of Ukraine’s special operations forces and was focused on resistance activity in areas of the country occupied by Russia, people familiar with his assignments said. He reported to Maj. Gen. Viktor Hanushchak, a seasoned and respected officer, who communicated directly with Zaluzhny.
Chervinsky was well suited to help carry out a covert mission meant to obscure Ukraine’s responsibility. He has served in senior positions in the country’s military intelligence agency as well as the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, and he is professionally and personally close to key military and security leaders.
He has also helped carry out other secretive operations.
In 2020, Chervinsky oversaw a complex plan to lure fighters for Russia’s Wagner mercenary group into Belarus, with the goal of capturing them and bringing them to Ukraine to face charges. In his statement to The Post and Der Spiegel, Chervinsky said he also “planned and implemented” operations to kill pro-Russian separatist leaders in Ukraine and to “abduct a witness” who could corroborate Russia’s role in shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the eastern Donbas region in 2014, which killed all 298 passengers and crew on board. Last year, a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian of murder in the downing, which was caused by a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile.
Chervinsky is being held in a Kyiv jail on charges that he abused his power stemming from a plot to lure a Russian pilot to defect to Ukraine in July 2022. Authorities allege that Chervinsky, who was arrested in April, acted without permission and that the operation gave away the coordinates of a Ukrainian airfield, prompting a Russian rocket attack that killed a soldier and injured 17 others.
Hanushchak, who is no longer serving in the special operations forces, has said publicly that the operation was approved by the armed forces, and he declined to comment for this article.
Chervinsky has said he was not responsible for the Russian attack and that in trying to persuade the pilot to fly to Ukraine and hand over his aircraft, he was acting under orders. He calls his arrest and prosecution political retribution for his criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration. Chervinsky has said publicly that he suspects Andriy Yermak, one of Zelensky’s closest advisers, of spying for Russia. He has also accused the Zelensky administration of failing to sufficiently prepare the country for Russia’s invasion.
“The operation to recruit the Russian pilot involved units of the SBU, the Air Force, and the Special Operations Forces,” Chervinsky said in his written statement to The Post and Der Spiegel. “The operation was approved by the commander in chief Valery Zaluzhny.”
Chervinsky’s participation in the Nord Stream bombing contradicts Zelensky’s public denials that his country was involved. “I am president, and I give orders accordingly,” Zelensky said in press interview in June, responding to a report by The Post that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had learned of Ukraine’s plans before the attack.
“Nothing of the sort has been done by Ukraine. I would never act that way,” Zelensky said.
But the Nord Stream operation was designed to keep Zelensky out of the loop, people familiar with the operation said.
“All of those involved in planning and execution reported directly to [chief of defense] Zaluzhnyy, so Zelensky wouldn’t have known about it,” according to intelligence reporting obtained by the CIA that was allegedly shared by Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, on the Discord chat platform. Officials in multiple countries have said privately they were confident that Zelensky didn’t personally approve the Nord Stream attack.
Other secret Ukrainian operations targeting Russian forces, including the one involving the Russian airplane, also were designed to bypass the Ukrainian president, people familiar with their planning said.
Chervinsky has blamed Yermak and several other Zelensky advisers for botching the plan in 2020 to ensnare Wagner fighters after they traveled to Belarus. That sting operation failed, Chervinsky said in a 2021 press interview, because of a leak from Zelensky’s inner circle.
“It is not just one ‘mole’ [in Zelensky’s administration], it is a bunch of people,” Chervinsky said, naming Yermak as well as two other Zelensky advisers. He accused administration officials of being “afraid of challenging Russia.”
U.S. officials have at times privately chastised Ukrainian intelligence and military officials for launching attacks that risked provoking Russia to escalate its war on Ukraine. But Washington’s unease has not always dissuaded Kyiv.
In June 2022, the Dutch military intelligence agency, the MIVD, obtained information that Ukraine might be planning to attack Nord Stream. Officials at the CIA relayed to Zaluzhny through an intermediary that the United States opposed such an operation, according to people familiar with those conversations.
U.S. officials believed the attack had been called off. But it turned out only to have been postponed to three months later, using a different point of departure than originally planned. Key elements of the plan, including the number of people on the bombing team, as well as the use of a rented boat, diving equipment and fake identities, remained the same.
In an interview with The Post in June, Zaluzhny said the CIA had never asked him directly about any attack on Nord Stream. He said that after the explosions, in September 2022, he received a phone call from Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He asked me, ‘Did you have anything to do with it?’ I said, ‘No.’ A lot of operations are planned, a lot of operations are going on, but we have nothing to do with it, nothing at all.”
Zaluzhny suggested in the interview that Russian propagandists had tried to tie him and the Ukrainian military to the operation.
The Dutch military intelligence service also reported to the Americans that the Ukrainians planned an attack on another pipeline in the Black Sea, called TurkStream. It’s not clear why that operation was never carried out. In October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country’s security services had prevented a Ukrainian attack on TurkStream. But Russian authorities have provided few details and are not known to have charged anyone in the alleged plot.
The Russian news agency Tass reported, “It is known that the attack was planned by an agent of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on orders from the Ukrainian special services.”
Some of those who described Chervinsky’s participation in the Nord Stream attack defended the veteran intelligence officer as acting in Ukraine’s best interests. They argued that bombing the pipelines helped to keep Russia from filling its coffers from natural gas sales and deprived Putin of a means to use the flow of natural gas for political leverage.
The Russian leader had demonstrated that he was willing to use energy as a tool of retaliation. Nearly a month before the explosions, Gazprom stopped flows on Nord Stream 1, hours after the Group of Seven industrialized nations announced a forthcoming price cap on Russian oil, a move intended to put a dent in the Kremlin’s treasury.
The German government withheld final authorization of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline days before Russia invaded Ukraine, following months of pressure by Washington. Before the war, Germany got half its natural gas from Russia and had long championed the Nord Stream project in the face of opposition from other European allies.
Chervinsky’s supporters have shown up in court to defend him; a few have sported a T-shirt emblazoned with his face and a #FREECHERVINSKY hashtag. For some, he is a symbol of the Ukrainian military’s willingness to make hard choices in a fight for the country’s survival.
In his statement, Chervinsky said, “I have devoted my entire life to the defense of Ukraine.” He called the charges against him related to the Russian airplane operation “groundless and far-fetched, which I will definitely prove in court.”
Khurshudyan reported from Kyiv. Souad Mekhennet in Washington and Samuel Oakford in New York contributed to this report.
The Post and Der Spiegel collaborated on reporting and wrote separate stories that the news organizations agreed to publish at the same time.
The Washington Post · by Shane Harris · November 11, 2023
2. U.S. Seeks to Resume Military Dialogue with Beijing
Do we telegraph tha we want dialogue more than the PLA? Is that the right position to put ourselves in in terms of negotiation?
U.S. Seeks to Resume Military Dialogue with Beijing
By Helene Cooper
Reporting from Tokyo
Nov. 10, 2023
The New York Times · by Helene Cooper · November 10, 2023
The Joint Chiefs chairman said in a letter to his Chinese counterpart that restoring communications is crucial to avoiding misunderstandings.
Nov. 10, 2023, 6:27 a.m. ET
TOKYO — President Biden’s top military adviser has told China that the United States is open to resuming military-to-military communication that Beijing suspended last year to protest then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., told reporters on Friday that re-establishing the military dialogue between two of the world’s most powerful militaries was a goal of the Biden administration, and that he had sent a letter to his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Liu Zhenli, “to say that I would like to do that.”
“We’ll see how it comes together,” General Brown said. “I’m hopeful.”
The letter comes ahead of a likely meeting between President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next week. U.S. officials are hoping the two leaders will announce a resumption of military dialogue there.
General Brown, who is traveling in the region this week, said that the reopening of the communications channel was important to prevent misunderstandings that could cascade into crises. “Just to ensure that there’s no miscalculation in that dialogue, to me, is hugely important,” he said during a briefing with reporters.
A Pentagon report last month said that China was continuing to build up its strategic nuclear arsenal and has most likely amassed 500 nuclear warheads as of May, an increase of about 100 over last year’s estimate.
The report accused China’s military of taking increasingly dangerous actions to deter U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region, including what the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command called “coercive and risky” maneuvers in the skies above the South China Sea meant to intimidate American military aircraft.
The Chinese military is in the midst of a political shake-up: The defense minister, Gen. Li Shangfu, was dismissed last month in the latest purge in Beijing’s national security ranks. There has been speculation among military analysts that General Brown’s counterpart, General Liu, could become the country’s next defense minister.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent. More about Helene Cooper
The New York Times · by Helene Cooper · November 10, 2023
3. How a Decaying Warship Beached on a Tiny Shoal Provoked China’s Ire
Excerpts:
The episode was part of a broader pattern that has been playing out in the South China Sea for years. China has repeatedly harassed the Philippines’ vessels as they sought to resupply the navy troops who guard the Sierra Madre. Each mission runs the risk of escalating into a broader conflict.
Since the start of the year, the Chinese Coast Guard has deployed a water cannon, shined a military-grade laser and collided with Philippine vessels. The United States has condemned the actions and vowed to aid the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in the Indo-Pacific, in the event of an armed attack.
China says Manila previously agreed to tow away the Sierra Madre, a claim that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines disputes. The Philippines maintains that it is well within its right to repair the ship, a commissioned navy vessel in its own territory.
In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that the Second Thomas Shoal — called Ayungin Shoal in the Philippines — is less than 200 nautical miles from Palawan and therefore part of the country’s exclusive economic zone. China, which claims 90 percent of the South China Sea, has rejected the ruling.
How a Decaying Warship Beached on a Tiny Shoal Provoked China’s Ire
By Camille Elemia
Reporting from the waters of the South China Sea
Nov. 11, 2023
The New York Times · by Camille Elemia · November 11, 2023
After multiple maritime clashes, the Philippines invited journalists on a mission to resupply the Sierra Madre. A reporter for The Times was given rare access.
A cat-and-mouse game began at sunrise on Friday, with Chinese ships approaching Philippine Coast Guard vessels en route to resupply a dilapidated warship known as the Sierra Madre.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times
By
Reporting from the waters of the South China Sea
Nov. 11, 2023Updated 11:39 a.m. ET
For more than two decades, it has been an unlikely flashpoint in the South China Sea: a rusty, World War II-era ship beached on a tiny reef that has become a symbol of Philippine resistance against Beijing.
The Philippine government ran the vessel aground in 1999 on the Second Thomas Shoal, a contested reef 120 miles off the coast of the western province of Palawan.
The dilapidated warship, known as the Sierra Madre, will never sail again. But it has remained there ever since, a marker of the Philippines’ claim to the shoal and an effort to prevent China from seizing more of the disputed waters.
On Friday, a reporter for The New York Times was among a group given rare access to a Philippine resupply mission, first boarding a Coast Guard ship — the BRP Cabra — and then an inflatable dinghy to get within 1,000 yards of the Sierra Madre.
The Philippines has portrayed its struggle against China as one of David and Goliath. After multiple clashes in recent years, the Philippine Coast Guard has started inviting journalists on its missions to resupply the handful of people remaining on the Sierra Madre. It is part of a public relations strategy to show the world how Beijing is asserting its might in the South China Sea.
The Sierra Madre seen from an inflatable dinghy during the Philippine resupply mission. Decades of exposure to the elements have weathered the ship.Credit...Camille Elemia for The New York Times
This mission was the closest that any civilian has gotten to the ship in over a year, since China intensified its blockade of the shoal.
Around midnight, the Cabra was 16 nautical miles from the Sierra Madre when four Chinese ships began shadowing it.
When the sun rose around 6 a.m., the cat-and-mouse game immediately began. The Chinese ships boxed in the Cabra, forcing the vessel to maneuver its way out. This occurred at least two more times.
The ships repeatedly challenged each other over the radio. At one point, at least 15 Chinese vessels had gathered — triple the number of Philippine ships.
“You are a state party to UNCLOS,” a Filipino officer on the Cabra told a Chinese ship over the radio, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the international agreement governing marine and maritime activities. “Your actions are illegal. Stop your activity, or face the consequence of your action.”
“Stop the operation and leave the sea area immediately,” the Chinese radioed in response.
Members of the Philippine Coast Guard aboard the Cabra as a Chinese vessel approaches.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times
The Cabra’s captain, Emmanuel Dangate, was on his eighth resupply mission. He had been instructed that day to get within three nautical miles of the shoal.
A few times, Captain Dangate ordered his crew to move the ship full speed ahead. They did so, shouting out to him the updated speeds of the Cabra and of the Chinese ships nearby.
A Chinese Coast Guard vessel crossed the Cabra’s bow at least twice. When the vessel was only yards away, the radar system turned red, warning of collision danger.
After about two hours, the Cabra finally inched closer to the mouth of the shoal, still surrounded by Chinese ships. Captain Dangate said it was the closest he had ever been to the military outpost. Throughout the journey, a U.S. Navy Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft hovered overhead.
Later in the day, the Philippines lodged a protest with China for what it described as “unprovoked acts of coercion.” A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, said the Philippine ships had “trespassed” into the waters, “violating China’s sovereignty.” He added that Beijing had protested the moves and that the Chinese Coast Guard had taken “necessary law enforcement measures.”
Chinese Coast Guard personnel aboard their ship on Friday. A spokesman for the China’s foreign ministry said the Philippine vessels had trespassed into the waters, “violating China’s sovereignty.”Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times
The episode was part of a broader pattern that has been playing out in the South China Sea for years. China has repeatedly harassed the Philippines’ vessels as they sought to resupply the navy troops who guard the Sierra Madre. Each mission runs the risk of escalating into a broader conflict.
Since the start of the year, the Chinese Coast Guard has deployed a water cannon, shined a military-grade laser and collided with Philippine vessels. The United States has condemned the actions and vowed to aid the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in the Indo-Pacific, in the event of an armed attack.
China says Manila previously agreed to tow away the Sierra Madre, a claim that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines disputes. The Philippines maintains that it is well within its right to repair the ship, a commissioned navy vessel in its own territory.
In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that the Second Thomas Shoal — called Ayungin Shoal in the Philippines — is less than 200 nautical miles from Palawan and therefore part of the country’s exclusive economic zone. China, which claims 90 percent of the South China Sea, has rejected the ruling.
Source: ESRI, Flanders Marine Institute
By Agnes Chang
“It’s like a game of basketball,” said Rommel Jude G. Ong, a professor at the Ateneo School of Government in Manila and a retired rear admiral in the Philippine Navy. “You put up your guard so that they won’t be able to move forward. So that’s our guard post there, to check the advance.”
But decades of leaving the Sierra Madre exposed to the elements has worn down the ship. In 2018, the Philippine government commissioned a study to examine its viability and concluded that it had only two years left intact, according to Mr. Ong.
“Our projection was wrong, it’s still standing,” he said. “But you cannot fight physics, and you cannot fight Mother Nature. At some point, it is going to be decrepit enough that it is not able to sustain itself.”
Huge holes were visible at the bottom of the Sierra Madre; tires were used as weights against the wind. Boards and aluminum sheets served as makeshift doors and windows. On Friday morning, some crew members were bathing outside on the deck, scooping water kept in blue drum containers.
Philippine officials fear that when the ship falls apart, China will swoop in to claim the shoal, a submerged reef that is rich with fish and serves as a gateway to an area believed to contain vast reserves of oil and natural gas. That could also mean a potential Chinese advance on Palawan, the site of a new military base where the United States recently gained access.
China has repeatedly harassed the Philippines vessels that resupply the Sierra Madre, which is guarded by a small group of navy troops.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times
Gen. Romeo J. Brawner, the armed forces chief of the Philippines, has proposed conducting joint patrols to the Second Thomas Shoal with other countries, a move that could further inflame tensions. He said in August that the government was mulling refurbishment of the Sierra Madre, though he did not provide specifics.
Manila has few good options. Building an entirely new military outpost could take months and would require transporting large amounts of construction materials that could be prevented by a Chinese blockade. The government even considered building a structure inside the Sierra Madre, said Mr. Ong, who likened it to the outer shell of an egg breaking up “with a chick inside.”
Ethel Olid, a municipal councilor from the town of Quezon, filed a resolution to urge all the towns in Palawan to give roughly $10,000 each for the rehabilitation of the Sierra Madre. That measure was approved in August.
“It’s a sad state for one of the remaining military outposts in the West Philippine Sea,” Mr. Olid said. “If we let it go or we let it collapse, we will lose Ayungin Shoal and our layer of defense.”
The Philippines maintains that it is well within its rights to repair the Sierra Madre, a commissioned navy vessel in its own territory.Credit...Jes Aznar for The New York Times
On Friday morning, as the Philippine supply boats approached the shoal, the Chinese boats gave up the chase. The Philippine military was able to board the Sierra Madre with food and fuel.
A tall concrete structure loomed at one end of the ship, with rooms that appeared to be unfinished. Atop of it was a steel post connected with wires, cameras and a satellite dish. On the far side, the Philippine flag billowed in the wind.
Sui-Lee Wee contributed reporting.
The New York Times · by Camille Elemia · November 11, 2023
4. Army Ammunition Plant Is Tied to Mass Shootings Across the U.S.
Images and photos at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/army-ammunition-factory-shootings.html
Army Ammunition Plant Is Tied to Mass Shootings Across the U.S.
By Ben DooleyVideos by Emily Rhyne
Ben Dooley reported from the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Mo., and from Washington. He compiled more than one million pages of law enforcement records to document the use of rounds from the plant.
The New York Times · by Ben Dooley · November 11, 2023
Bullet
Casing
Manufacturer's stamp
A round from the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri may look like any other at first.
But on the bottom of the casing are the factory’s initials — a popular marking with gun enthusiasts.
Lake City is an Army site that has supplied the U.S. military since World War II.
But as military demand has slowed, billions of rounds have been sold commercially.
We traced Lake City rounds to crime scenes.
For instance, 84 Lake City rounds (of 147 total) were fired in the Parkland school shooting.
The site was built for the military, but commercial sales are booming with little public accountability. Rounds have been bought by murderers, antigovernment groups and others.
Videos by Emily Rhyne
Ben Dooley reported from the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Mo., and from Washington. He compiled more than one million pages of law enforcement records to document the use of rounds from the plant.
Nov. 11, 2023, 8:53 p.m. ET
Christopher Hixon, a 27-year veteran of the Navy who served in the Persian Gulf, trained with government ammunition that typically had a distinctive “LC” marking on its brass casings.
In 2018, Mr. Hixon, then the athletic director at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., confronted a former student firing an AR-15-style gun. The semiautomatic rifle, modeled on a military weapon, was loaded with ammunition carrying the same “LC” stamp.
Mr. Hixon took a bullet in a thigh. Two more hit him in the chest. In the bloodstained hallway where he died, investigators found a brass casing. And another. By the end of their search, they had collected 84 from across the school — each marked “LC.”
The initials stand for the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant. Built during World War II, the federal site, in Independence, Mo., has made nearly all the rifle cartridges used by the U.S. military since it pulled out of Vietnam.
In recent years, the factory has also pumped billions of rounds of military-grade ammunition into the commercial market, an investigation by The New York Times found, leaving the “LC” signature scattered across crime scenes, including the sites of some of the nation’s most heinous mass shootings.
The plant, operated by a private contractor with Army oversight, is now one of the country’s biggest manufacturers of commercial rounds for the popular AR-15, and it remains so even as the United States supplies ammunition to Ukraine.
Workers at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Mo., packed 7.62-millimeter rounds.Credit...
The vast majority of Lake City rounds sold by retailers have gone to law-abiding citizens, from hunters and farmers to target shooters. Some are drawn to them because they are made with the same materials and often to the same specifications as the military’s, while others see them as an authentic accessory for their tactical weapons and gear.
But more than one million pages of search warrants, police evidence logs, ballistic reports, forfeiture records and court proceedings compiled by The Times provide a sweeping accounting of how Lake City ammunition, once intended for war, has also cut a criminal path across towns and cities in nearly all 50 states.
A former Marine used Lake City rounds in the murder of two police officers and a deputy sheriff in Louisiana. The police recovered spent Lake City casings after a former justice of the peace killed a Texas district attorney and his wife. In Washington, a barrage of gang-related gunfire left the courtyard of an apartment complex littered with more than 40 “LC” casings and a 10-year-old girl dead.
In May, a high school student armed with ammunition from the plant rampaged through a residential neighborhood in Farmington, N.M., killing three and injuring six.
Lake City rounds have been seized from drug dealers, violent felons, antigovernment groups, rioters at the U.S. Capitol and smugglers for Mexican cartels. They were confiscated from a man in Massachusetts who threatened to assassinate President Barack Obama and from a man at Los Angeles International Airport after he fired at a civilian and three T.S.A. agents, killing one.
A media tour of Lake City focused on military operations and economic gains, but reporters were denied access to where most commercial rounds are made.Credit...Emily Rhyne/The New York Times
Starting in 2012 with the massacre of 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., the rounds have been tied to at least a dozen mass shootings involving AR-15-style guns, including at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis — and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The authorities in Lewiston, Maine, declined to release ballistic information about the mass shooting there last month that resulted in 18 deaths. [Read a full list of the 12 shootings in this article’s takeaways.]
Payton Gendron, who was sentenced to life in prison for killing 10 and injuring three at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, had mentioned Lake City in his manifesto and online diary. He planned to fire at a security guard through a window, he wrote, and the rounds made at Lake City were “the best barrier penetration ammo I can get.” The guard, a retired police officer named Aaron Salter Jr., was killed as he tried to stop the assault.
The availability to consumers of rifle cartridges made at an Army site is the fruit of a symbiotic relationship between the Defense Department and the ammunition industry. A legacy of the war on terror, the federal contract to operate Lake City’s sprawling manufacturing campus is intended to save taxpayers money while keeping it ready to ramp up at a moment’s notice.
When the military needs ammunition, the contractor is required to make it, but it is otherwise free to keep production lines humming with commercial operations.
Over the last two decades, the government has invested more than $860 million to improve and repair the plant and expand its capacity, according to Justine Barati, an Army spokeswoman. The Army has also required Lake City contractors to pick up some costs. Under the current arrangement, the contractor has covered at least $10 million a year in improvements — an amount that can grow depending on production levels. The payments are earmarked for projects ranging from office renovations to equipment upgrades.
Spent rifle casings made at Lake City. They were recovered after the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.Credit...U.S. District Court Western District of Pennsylvania
The Defense Department argues that the public-private partnership is necessary for national security.
“We don’t maintain and/or improve our ammo plants because it’s ‘economical’ to do so,” Doug Bush, an assistant secretary of the Army in charge of acquisitions, said in a statement. “We do it to ensure we have government-owned production capacity for military-specific items that we can surge in case of a conflict.”
A Defense Department official, in a statement, said “commercial utilization brings lower costs to the Army and taxpayer, and keeps a skilled work force better positioned to respond to surge requirements.” The official said a 2021 study found that the government received a 10 to 15 percent discount on ammunition by allowing commercial sales.
The trade-off for ordinary Americans is that commercial ammunition for the AR-15 is being manufactured in large quantities on government property with little or no public accountability as to how it is marketed and sold.
Secrecy around the arrangement has helped to hide its scale, and the Army has played down the plant’s role in manufacturing ammunition for civilians. A recent media tour of Lake City focused on its military operations and economic benefits to the region, but did not include access to the building where most commercial rounds are made.
Behind closed doors, the possibility of Lake City ammunition’s appearing in high-profile crimes was a source of continuing concern for the plant’s contractors, according to four former employees who were not authorized to speak publicly. After mass shootings, in particular, managers were “terrified” that journalists might discover a connection to the site, one of the former employees said.
Debbie Hixon held a photograph of her husband, Christopher, after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla. The gunman used Lake City rounds.Credit...Pool photo by Amy Beth Bennett
The current contractor, Olin Winchester, which began running Lake City in October 2020, is required to regularly file reports to the Army on commercial production and sales. While the information is not classified, it is closely guarded. Military officials described it as proprietary and recommended requesting details from Olin Winchester, which did not respond to emails or phone calls from The Times.
By reviewing annual reports, earnings-call transcripts and government documents, and interviewing more than 40 former employees and others with knowledge of Lake City’s operations, The Times was able to determine that the site had manufactured hundreds of millions of rounds for the commercial market every year since at least 2011.
For most of that period, its commercial operations outstripped its military business. By 2021, commercial output — which includes retail sales as well as purchases by law enforcement agencies and foreign governments — had outpaced military production by more than two times, according to a historical overview the Army provided in a graphic during the media tour. Later, the Army declined to share the underlying data and at one point denied the graphic existed.
The .223-caliber and 5.56-millimeter cartridges — the most common rounds for the AR-15 — have been sold under a variety of brands at stores and through websites. Even spent Lake City casings have a robust market because of their quality. A federal investigation after the 2017 shooting that killed 60 and wounded hundreds more at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip found that the gunman had bought Lake City casings that had been reloaded with new primers, powder and bullets.
In a 2021 earnings call for Olin Winchester’s parent company, analysts said that ammunition profits far exceeded projections. Executives credited the Lake City contract.
“Not only has it become part of our military business,” said Scott Sutton, the top executive at the company, Olin Corporation, “but also part of our commercial business.”
The scope of Lake City’s commercial business came as a surprise to Tom Hixon, the son of the slain Marjory Stoneman Douglas athletic director and a member of an advisory board for the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
A former Marine, Mr. Hixon trained with Lake City ammunition. But he did not know it had played a role in the Parkland attack, which killed 16 people in addition to his father.
Mr. Hixon did not blame the government or the Army for his father’s death, he said in an interview. If the gunman hadn’t bought Lake City rounds, he would have bought ammunition made elsewhere.
Nevertheless, he expressed concern that the government could be “essentially subsidizing the production of this ammunition that’s going on the civilian market.”
That, he said, could make it “more accessible to people” who want it for “nefarious” ends.
In a statement to The Times, Federal Cartridge, a distributor of Lake City’s ammunition at the time of the Parkland shooting, condemned the “criminal misuse” of its products. In its response to questions, the Defense Department did not address the use of Lake City ammunition in mass killings and other crimes but said “there is currently no plan” to end commercial sales.
A machine at the Lake City plant produced .50-caliber ammunition.Credit...
The Pace of War
Located on nearly 4,000 acres of grassland, the Lake City operation, as its name suggests, has the trappings of a small city — a fire department, water-treatment plants and miles of roads. There are also warehouses, explosives-handling facilities and ranges for testing ammunition.
The operation’s thrumming heart beats in Building One, where machines, rotating at high speeds, spit out as many as 1,200 rifle cartridges per minute. Each typically bears a stamp denoting its year and place of manufacture.
The machines make the two most popular rounds for AR-15-style guns. The 5.56, commonly used in standard-issue service rifles like the M16, is built to military specifications and bears a small symbol of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The .223 has no military markings and is made to different specifications. Both are sold to law enforcement agencies and the general public.
The high manufacturing standard is a point of pride for employees.
“Whether they have served in uniform or not, the folks at Lake City have forged a bond and a mutual respect for the product they make and the person who pulls the trigger,” a narrator said in a 2009 promotional video featuring employees at the plant.
Since the late 2000s, the companies running the site — under the auspices of the Army’s Joint Munitions Command — have been required to keep production capacity at around 1.6 billion rounds a year. That condition is satisfied when the equipment is “being operated for this contract or approved commercial and 3rd party/facility use production,” according to Olin Winchester’s contract.
Alternately, the agreement allows the machines to stay idle but “adequately protected from physical degradation.”
Repeated Lake City operators have chosen the first option. In doing so, they have preserved the plant’s capacity to churn out rounds. They have also achieved economies of scale that allow them to reap handsome profits with commercial sales.
Each year, the Lake City plant is required to keep production capacity at around 1.6 billion rounds.Credit...
‘Flawlessly Reliable’
The story of how a government-owned ammunition plant became one of the world’s largest producers of commercial rounds for semiautomatic rifles begins with World War II.
The need for wartime ammunition far exceeded American industry’s ability to make it, so the federal government built dozens of factories and paid companies to run them. Construction began in Lake City in the winter of 1940 with a shovel full of dirt from Harry S. Truman, then a senator from Missouri.
At the end of the war, Lake City temporarily closed its doors, and for decades, production followed a similar pattern: When American troops fought in Korea and Vietnam, billions of rounds flowed from the plant, while in peacetime, manufacturing ebbed. After the Cold War, production dropped to a few hundred million rounds a year.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, jolted Lake City back into action. Mothballed equipment was pulled out of crates, and the Army paid nearly $50 million to expand production. Other American manufacturers had the capacity to make just 300 million rounds of the ammunition it required, the Army found, compelling it to look abroad for more.
An Army general, called before Congress, pledged not to repeat the mistake of “building capacity during wartime only to dismantle the capacity in peacetime.”
One possible fix, described in a government report, was to keep the equipment at the ready but adjust the number of work shifts to the rhythms of war.
The contractor at the time, ATK, or Alliant Techsystems, favored a different solution, according to people familiar with the discussions: When military demand fell, the company would fill the shortfall with rounds to be sold commercially.
In the early 1990s, a law aimed at cutting defense budgets had made it legal to conduct commercial business at certain government-owned defense installations. A previous Lake City contractor had sold some ammunition to the public, and ATK continued the practice, using packaging from Federal Cartridge, a respected ammunition maker it acquired in 2001.
The rounds quickly found a cult following among fans of military-style weapons. A guide to ammunition on AR15.com praised them as “outstanding” and “flawlessly reliable.” In chat rooms on the site, gun gurus recommended stocking up because they were in short supply.
That would change. In a 2006 earnings call, Daniel Murphy Jr., a retired admiral who was ATK’s chief executive, explained that softening military demand would leave Lake City with excess capacity for the company to fill. “We are looking hard right now at the international market and, frankly, other markets, including the domestic sporting and law enforcement,” he said.
The shift came at an inflection point for the firearms industry. A nationwide assault weapons ban had expired in 2004, bringing a fresh customer base into view: the rapidly growing ranks of gun owners enamored with military-style weapons.
Robotics at Lake City assisted in the final steps of the packaging process, which includes labelling ammunition boxes.Credit...
‘Record Backlogs’
With the election of Mr. Obama as president in 2008, fears of new gun control measures fueled a boom in semiautomatic rifle purchases, and ammunition makers could not keep up.
In a call with analysts that year, Mr. Murphy cited “record backlogs” at ATK’s other plants and said Lake City had an opportunity to pick up sales. But, he cautioned, “we are going to have a hard time in explaining it to the general public.”
There were concerns that some might “view ATK production of commercial ammunition on a U.S. Army facility as a form of government subsidy,” he said in a recent email interview.
In 2009, Army officials added a clause to the Lake City contract requiring a capacity of 1.6 billion rounds. Keeping the plant hot with commercial sales was the most obvious solution because its machinery, once stopped, could take weeks or longer to come back online and continuous production would also keep workers at the ready, according to interviews.
As the plant’s commercial operations took off, some of its products had already found their way into the criminal underworld. In 2009, F.B.I. agents disrupted a plot by homegrown jihadists in North Carolina to attack the Quantico Marine Corps Base. A search of one of their homes uncovered an empty Lake City ammunition box.
By the time ATK’s contract came up for bidding again in 2011, the company was selling hundreds of millions of Lake City rounds a year to retailers and other commercial customers, according to earnings reports and government documents. When the online bulk ammo store Lucky Gunner listed its best sellers the following year, Lake City products ranked second and seventh.
Even so, ATK rarely mentioned Lake City in relation to its commercial ammunition. It didn’t have to. “LC” devotees made the connection for the company in AR-15 forums, advising online ammunition buyers to look for the plant’s distinctive mark. And sporting-goods stores like Cabela’s exhorted shoppers as early as 2004 to “shoot the same ammunition that our troops abroad trust their lives to.”
Awakened to the booming demand for the plant’s products, the Army directed contractors to include proposals for selling its excess capacity in their new bids. The decision would “incentivize commercial use in the plant, creating a win-win for the contractor and the government,” an article in an internal Army magazine said, predicting the new requirement would save taxpayers as much as $900 million on ammunition over 10 years by driving down costs for the Pentagon.
ATK won the competition as its new chief executive, Mark DeYoung, moved the company further into the market for popular tactical weapons and gear, aiming to become a “one stop shop” for shooting-sports enthusiasts. ATK was acquiring a series of firms that manufactured optics, holsters, combat vests and other accessories that appealed to owners of AR-15s, many of whom wanted to emulate American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In a 2015 interview with Outdoor Life, Mr. DeYoung traced the strategy to Lake City.
“I recognized that if we could build a business around shoulder-fired ammunition for the military,” he said, “we could do the same thing for the consumer market.”
That consumer market included a neuroscience graduate student at the University of Colorado who would set off a new era of mass shootings — those carried out with AR-15-style rifles.
Trash and popcorn from fleeing moviegoers littered a parking lot after the 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colo. The gunman used Lake City rounds.Credit...Bob Pearson/European Pressphoto Agency
Mass Shootings, Mass Sales
In June 2012, James E. Holmes, the Colorado graduate student, ordered 1,500 rounds of Lake City ammunition from the website BulkAmmo.com, which had been offering discounts on boxes of the 5.56. He had them delivered to a FedEx shipping center near his home.
The next month, Mr. Holmes stormed into a Century 16 cinema theater in Aurora, wielding an AR-15-style rifle loaded with the ammunition and dressed in an “urban assault vest” sold by an ATK subsidiary. He killed 12 people and wounded 70 in what was the deadliest mass shooting to date with an AR-15-style gun, according to a database maintained by the Violence Project. The tally includes shootings in a public place in which four or more people, not including the attacker, were killed.
Later that year, another gunman armed with an AR-15-style rifle killed 26 pupils, teachers and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. He did not use rounds from Lake City, but the tragedy drove a new push for gun reform — and a reflexive spike in ammunition sales.
In 2014, Lake City’s production reached a record high of nearly two billion rounds. Less than half went to the military, Army data shows. Many of the rest poured onto shelves at big-box retailers, helping drive a $300 million annual increase in sales for ATK, according to earnings statements. Black Friday at Walmart and other stores made preparations for the Thanksgiving holiday one of the busiest and most stressful times at the plant, according to two people familiar with its operations.
When ATK merged with the aerospace company Orbital the following year, ATK’s sporting division was spun off as Vista Outdoor. Led by Mr. DeYoung, Vista received a three-year exclusive contract to sell Lake City’s commercial products.
Firearms were a good business, Mr. DeYoung told investors, but as new customers were drawn to the market by first-person-shooter video games, like Call of Duty, ammunition was where the real money was.
“You go to the shooting range and watch people shoot,” he said, “and they are shooting boxes and boxes and boxes and cases and cases and cases of shells in the ranges.”
Lake City played an important role in those new sales, as demand for its products, once determined by the needs of war, increasingly followed the events driving the nation’s rancorous debate on guns.
Mr. DeYoung did not respond to requests for comment. Vista Outdoor issued a statement attributed to Federal Cartridge, one of its many brands, saying it was proud of its ammunition production. “We are committed to complying with all applicable laws, and strongly condemn any criminal misuse of our products,” the statement said.
In early 2015, the national gun debate brushed against Lake City for the first time as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives moved to restrict civilian availability of one of the plant’s products, a variety of 5.56 rounds known as “green tips.”
The rounds had been adopted by U.S. forces for their ability to punch through steel helmets and light body armor at long distances, but in 2010 the Army had begun replacing them with a more lethal round that was not available to the general public.
The A.T.F. announced that it was considering limiting the availability of green tips under a law intended to protect law enforcement officers. It sparked a firestorm. The agency received over 80,000 public comments opposing the idea as well as harsh criticism from the gun industry and members of Congress who said it violated the Second Amendment.
The A.T.F. backed down, and, within a year, Lake City green tips were tied to the shooting of five police officers and a deputy sheriff.
A bullet hole from a shooting in Baton Rouge, La., that left multiple police officers and a deputy sheriff dead.
‘The Totality of the Damage’
On a sweltering summer morning in Baton Rouge, La., a former Marine armed with a semiautomatic rifle ambushed and killed two police officers and the deputy in a parking lot. In the ensuing shootout, he injured three more officers, one of whom later died.
A former Army Ranger who responded to the scene was stunned by “the totality of the damage he caused with that rifle,” according to an investigation into the police response. It attributed the speed and devastation of the 2016 attack to the gunman’s combat training and his use of green-tip ammunition.
A firearms analysis during the investigation revealed that the cartridges had been made at Lake City.
The connection between Lake City and the Louisiana shooting went unnoticed among the public. But the killings came as senior managers at Lake City were bracing for the possibility that news reports would link the plant to such crimes.
They worried publicity might create a political furor and jeopardize commercial production, according to four people who worked for the plant’s various contractors.
Records show that Lake City ammunition had turned up in criminal trials as early as the 1970s. But as the ammunition became plentiful at retailers, it began appearing in more and higher-profile shootings. Starting around four years ago, the Army made an ammunition expert at Lake City available to assist in criminal investigations, Ms. Barati, the spokeswoman, said.
A memorial to victims of the shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017. Casings manufactured at the plant were found at the scene.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
After the 2017 shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, cartridges found in the gunman’s hotel room and stamped “LC” became evidence in a criminal case against an ammunition dealer.
Just a month after Las Vegas, a gunman killed 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, during the congregation's Sunday services. Casings made at the plant were found at the scene.
In the months leading up to the back-to-back shootings, sales at Lake City had slumped amid troop drawdowns and the election of President Donald J. Trump, which soothed fears of new gun restrictions. Retailers canceled orders and trucks of .223 and 5.56 ammunition sat unsold.
Orbital ATK responded by pushing to expand Lake City’s market, announcing new manufacturing agreements and, for the first time, loading .223 and 5.56 cartridges with so-called hollow-point bullets. The bullets are popular for self-defense because they expand on impact, making them more lethal, but they are banned under The Hague Convention and are not used in American military rifles. They are no longer among Lake City’s offerings.
The company also filed seven trademark applications for additional products with Lake City branding, but they were withdrawn after the Army objected, three people with knowledge of the applications said.
All the while, shootings with AR-15-style guns — and social pressure on the companies that made them and their accessories — continued to mount.
After the Parkland shooting in 2018, retailers like REI announced they would suspend orders of Vista’s camping and sports products because of the company’s firearms business. Dick’s Sporting Goods said it would stop selling assault-style rifles and destroy those on its shelves rather than return them to manufacturers. And in 2019, Walmart, which sold Lake City ammunition for years, said it would no longer carry .223 and 5.56 cartridges.
Shootings with semiautomatic rifles at Walmart stores in El Paso, Texas, and Southaven, Miss., had left 24 dead and many more injured. “It’s clear to us that the status quo is unacceptable,” Doug McMillon, Walmart’s chief executive, wrote in a letter to employees. In a statement, a Walmart spokesman said the company had taken additional measures related to guns and ammunition, including ending sales of handguns and military-style rifles and videotaping the point of sale for firearms.
Lake City, overseen by the U.S. Army, is an enormous complex on nearly 4,000 acres of grassland.Credit...Emily Rhyne/The New York Times
‘Unexpected Profits’
With problems mounting, Lake City’s management changed again in 2018 as the defense contracting giant Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK and its soon-to-expire contract to run the plant.
Northrop Grumman failed in its bid for a new contract, and the Army instead handed Lake City to Olin Winchester, which had promised to invest at least $70 million in the site, according to the Army. Northrop Grumman declined to comment beyond acknowledging its role in operating the plant.
Olin Winchester took over the plant in October 2020 amid a dramatically changed sales environment. Demand for its ammunition was soaring, driven by the pandemic and nationwide protests after the killing of George Floyd. One online ammunition retailer, Ammo.com, said that its sales of the AR-15’s most popular rounds had grown over 1,000 percent in some states during the first 18 months of the pandemic.
By 2020, the facility’s production lines had for years been directed toward commercial sales, leading some to question whether Lake City and other private contractor arrangements were a good deal for the government.
“I want industry to want to work with us, but what I don’t want to do is have a blind eye toward the potential areas where they can make unexpected profits,” Bruce Jette, an assistant secretary of the Army, said at a congressional hearing.
Last year, as the Senate hammered out a gun control bill in response to the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for the firearms industry, warned the Army might stop commercial production at Lake City.
That would “potentially choke off over 30 percent of the ammunition used on AR-15 style rifles by law-abiding citizens,” Larry Keane, an executive from the organization, wrote on its website.
In response to the concerns, Representative Sam Graves, whose district includes the Lake City area, led dozens of lawmakers in demanding that the Biden administration leave the production untouched.
“This blatantly infringes on the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution by limiting law-abiding gun owners’ ability to legally purchase or use lawful semiautomatic rifles,” they wrote in a letter.
A White House spokesman, responding on social media, denied such a plan, and later, so did the Defense Department.
The funeral of Mr. Hixon, a veteran who served in the Persian Gulf.
Full Military Honors
Prosecutors never determined where the Parkland gunman, Nikolas Cruz, bought his Lake City rounds. But nearly anyone who wants the ammunition can buy it with the click of a mouse. Through the end of September, Olin Winchester even offered a mail-in rebate.
A week after the attack, Mr. Hixon, the athletic director, was buried with full military honors that included three volleys of blank rounds.
The Marines, who arranged the rifle salute, declined to identify where the blanks were made, but Lake City produces those typically used at funerals like Mr. Hixon’s. The rounds are provided free of charge but are highly restricted. They can only be fired in ceremonial rifles approved by the Army, and to get them, applicants must fill out a form and await sign-off from the Illinois-based unit that manages the plant.
“With all of the checks and balances of this program,” an Army representative advised in an online post, “I tell organization officers that it’s best to start the application process very early.”
John Ismay and Alex Lemonides contributed reporting. Seamus Hughes contributed research. Graphic by Jeremy White. Produced by Rumsey Taylor. Top photograph by Max Whittaker.
Ben Dooley reports on Japan’s business and economy, with a special interest in social issues and the intersections between business and politics. More about Ben Dooley
Emily Rhyne is a journalist on the video team, where she shoots, edits and produces stories across multiple mediums. More about Emily Rhyne
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Army Plant’s Ammunition Is Tied to Mass Shootings
The New York Times · by Ben Dooley · November 11, 2023
5. Top US military official thinks Xi will not seize Taiwan by force
Top US military official thinks Xi will not seize Taiwan by force
US Joint Chiefs of Staff says Xi may pursue alternate strategy to annex Taiwan
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/5038143
1392
By Kelvin Chen, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2023/11/11 16:59
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown. (Military.com photo)
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) may not necessarily want to take Taiwan by force, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown said on Friday (Nov. 10).
Xi will try to achieve his goals through other means, Brown said. Nevertheless, he said the U.S. must maintain a strong deterrent force against any potential actions by the Chinese military.
He urged the U.S. and its partners to closely monitor Xi’s military, diplomatic, and economic coercion towards Taiwan, according to Bloomberg. Brown also mentioned that after the conflict between Hamas and Israel in October, the U.S. did not redeploy its military assets stationed in East Asia.
Brown’s comments come ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco next week. Biden and Xi are expected to hold talks in a sideline meeting and Taiwan is likely to be a major topic of discussion. This would be their first face-to-face communication in a year.
Both the U.S. and China have reasons to improve bilateral relations, per Bloomberg. Xi may want to focus on reversing domestic economic trends, while President Joe Biden is running for re-election in 2024.
6. What It Took to Get Biden and Xi to the Table
Excerpts:
U.S. officials said that as much as the administration wants a summit, Chinese leaders need to see such moves as part of the two powers’ competition. “We can talk and compete,” said one official. “Talking is in their interest too.”
When Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, finally traveled to Washington at the end of October, concerns about more-punitive U.S. actions—an arms sale to Taiwan or sanctions on a marquee Chinese company—kept Beijing from giving unreserved approval for a summit.
“We’ve told the Americans we need a period of peace,” said a Chinese official. “The Americans say, ‘How long? One week, two weeks, a month?’ ”
What It Took to Get Biden and Xi to the Table
Path to U.S.-China summit was strewn with gamesmanship
By Charles HutzlerFollow
and Lingling WeiFollow
Nov. 12, 2023 7:00 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/what-it-took-to-get-biden-and-xi-to-the-table-b7a899c9?mod=hp_lead_pos3
With only weeks to go to prepare for a possible summit with President Biden, Chinese officials floated a plan: If Xi Jinping agrees to meet, he first wants to sit down for a banquet with American business leaders.
The White House said no. With a lengthy agenda of friction points to go over, Xi should see Biden first before the CEOs, American officials told their Chinese counterparts last month, according to people briefed on the plans. Beijing backed down and rescheduled the dinner for after the summit.
Biden and Xi are set to hold their first face-to-face meeting in a year in the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday, with both saying they want to mend a divisive, rivalrous U.S.-China relationship. To get to the table, both sides have resorted to maneuvers that appear aimed at putting the other side off balance.
The path to the summit has been strewn with diplomatic slights and gamesmanship, according to interviews with current and former officials on both sides, foreign-affairs specialists and others briefed on summit discussions. There have been snubs, skipped meetings and the withholding of goodwill gestures.
“Every time we have a summit with China, both sides discuss who’s in a stronger position,” said Bonnie Glaser, who runs the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It’s going on on both sides.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken conferring in June with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. PHOTO: LI XUEREN/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
Xi, for example, declined for weeks to take a phone call from Biden, who said publicly that he wanted to talk to the Chinese leader after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon, a move that shocked Beijing.
The two leaders haven’t spoken since the balloon incident, which derailed a planned visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
By the time Blinken traveled to Beijing for a reset in June, he managed to win an audience with Xi. But he was made to look like a supplicant in Chinese state media, seated off to the side of a long table in the Great Hall of the People, rather than being placed next to Xi, as Blinken’s predecessor was.
Around the time of Blinken’s trip, Chinese hackers breached the unclassified email accounts of top Blinken aides and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, U.S. officials said.
The petty brush-offs and hardball tactics on display ahead of the high-stakes summit strain the goodwill needed to resolve global troubles and seed the U.S.-China relationship with distrust.
Wednesday’s meeting isn’t expected to resolve the adversarial trajectory Washington and Beijing are on as they vie to reshape the global order.
Domestic politics complicate any detente. The Biden administration has engaged with Beijing while looking over its shoulder to avoid criticism from Republicans and other China skeptics in Congress, officials said. For Xi, who has made it clear that he sees China as an equal to the U.S., being regarded as too eager for engagement would hurt the strongman image he has systematically cultivated at home.
Both Biden and Xi have an interest in keeping the rivalry from careering into conflict. U.S. allies from Europe to Australia, which are central to the Biden administration’s strategy to hold China in check, also want Washington to manage tensions with Beijing.
The administration appears likely to achieve some substantive wins at the meeting. Both governments are moving closer to resuming contacts between their militaries, which Beijing suspended last year in anger over displays of U.S. support for Taiwan, according to U.S. officials. They have discussed cooperating on ending fentanyl trafficking, with China being the source for chemicals that Mexican drug cartels use to produce the opioid.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met last month with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington. PHOTO: SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Xi is looking for reassurances on Taiwan, with China urging the U.S. to rein in political leaders on the democratic island who are resisting Beijing’s goal of unification. A smooth summit might help Xi stave off, at least temporarily, more U.S. restrictions on technology transfers and shore up flagging foreign investor confidence in a struggling Chinese economy weighed down by debt and by his preference for state control.
More broadly, Xi is looking to buy time to build up China’s economic and military resilience to ultimately prevail in the great-power competition. The Chinese leader was taken aback by the West’s backlash to his alignment with Russia in the midst of its war on Ukraine and was surprised at how quickly the U.S. has strengthened alliances against Beijing. Now a tactical pause serves China’s interest.
In recent commentary, the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily struck an unusually conciliatory tone about the U.S., calling for the bilateral relationship to “stabilize and improve instead of sliding into conflict and confrontation.”
“It’s OK to be nice to the Americans now,” said Evan Medeiros, a professor at Georgetown University and a former senior national security official in the Obama administration. “But it’s a cyclical warming-up amid structural deterioration in the relationship.”
Both sides recognized early this year that an annual gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders in November to be hosted by the U.S. provided a convenient opportunity for a Biden-Xi summit. Their meeting is likely to be their last ahead of the U.S. presidential election next year, meaning the chance to prevent a downward spiral in relations is quickly narrowing.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 100 years old, visited China’s Wang Yi in Beijing in July. PHOTO: ZHAI JIANLAN/XINHUA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Still, Beijing played hard to get and resorted to a preferred method for dealing with Americans: through elder businessmen or politicians with longstanding ties to China and perceived influence in Washington.
Beijing turned to a person it has called an old friend of China: Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the insurance magnate who has done business in China for decades. The 98-year-old Greenberg had been expected to travel to Beijing in June to meet with Xi, according to people familiar with the planning. The Chinese side lined up ambulances, doctors and nurses to be ready for his arrival.
When Greenberg had to postpone the trip for scheduling reasons, the preparations came in handy instead for a visit by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 100 years old, who met with Xi in Beijing in July.
A senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official finally traveled to Washington over the summer to open the way for a summit. Then, his boss, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, didn’t come for a planned September follow-up meeting.
A reason, said one U.S. official involved: “Leverage.”
A Huawei phone includes a chip that had been considered beyond China’s capabilities under U.S. export rules. PHOTO: ANDY WONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Aside from Blinken, Biden sent a succession of other high-level administration officials to Beijing to show that the U.S. is interested in talking. But none of them came bearing concessions on economic sanctions, technology controls or other matters—a deliberate move, officials said, which frustrated China.
When Raimondo landed in Beijing in August, the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies, blacklisted by the U.S. since 2019, showed off a new, $900-plus smartphone. Inside was a domestically made semiconductor that China hadn’t been expected to be able to create under U.S. export restrictions.
The new phone was widely seen in China as a technological triumph that demonstrated the country’s ability to overcome U.S. sanctions. Its launch, in the same week that Raimondo visited, came just a few days after Chinese Premier Li Qiang, a Xi lieutenant, met with Huawei’s founder.
Myron Brilliant, a business consultant with decades of China experience, got open-door treatment when he visited in September and came away from meetings with senior economic and foreign-policy officials with a message about a potential summit.
“The No. 1 issue is that they don’t want Biden to embarrass Xi,” said Brilliant, who oversaw international affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and is now a senior counselor at Dentons Global Advisors. “I left Beijing feeling that the high-level U.S. visits had reduced tensions but hadn’t really moved the needle much substantively.”
The administration was continuing to fire off actions Beijing disliked, issuing an order to stanch American investment in leading technologies in China and tightening controls on semiconductors. Such actions are a worry for Chinese summit planners because of the potential loss of face for Beijing if announced around Xi’s visit.
U.S. officials said that as much as the administration wants a summit, Chinese leaders need to see such moves as part of the two powers’ competition. “We can talk and compete,” said one official. “Talking is in their interest too.”
When Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, finally traveled to Washington at the end of October, concerns about more-punitive U.S. actions—an arms sale to Taiwan or sanctions on a marquee Chinese company—kept Beijing from giving unreserved approval for a summit.
“We’ve told the Americans we need a period of peace,” said a Chinese official. “The Americans say, ‘How long? One week, two weeks, a month?’ ”
Write to Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com and Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com
7. Japan urged to ‘signal early’ it would be part of Taiwan’s defence in a war with Beijing
Japan urged to ‘signal early’ it would be part of Taiwan’s defence in a war with Beijing
- Former US official tells security forum in Taipei that Japan and other allies should engage in ‘collective deterrence’ against Beijing
- But Japanese academic says there is ‘no law justifying the defence of Taiwan’ and the possibility of direct involvement is ‘zero’
Lawrence Chung
in Taipei
+ FOLLOWPublished: 5:00pm, 11 Nov, 2023
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3241077/japan-urged-signal-early-it-would-be-part-taiwans-defence-war-beijing
Former US deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, noting that “deterrence is cheaper than war”, told the forum on Wednesday that Japan and other American allies should engage in “collective deterrence” against any aggression from Beijing.
“It’s important for Japan to signal early that it would be in this fight – as I think it would inevitably be,” Pottinger said via video link during the 2023 Taipei Security Dialogue, organised by the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a government think tank.
Matt Pottinger
Japan, a security ally of the US, maintains close ties with Taiwan – which was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945 – though it recognises Beijing diplomatically.
The idea that “a Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency” – meaning Japan would likely get involved if the island is attacked by the People’s Liberation Army – has gained more attention in recent years. But officially, Japan has not explicitly stated that it would help defend Taiwan if a conflict does break out, to avoid provoking Beijing.
Pottinger said Japan should make its stand clear as a way to deter Beijing from attacking the self-ruled island, and given that Tokyo is a security ally of Washington.
“So rather than to lose the deterrent value of Japan’s participation in the war by keeping hidden its intentions, I think Japan should do more to state its intentions now – that it would be there to counter and defeat Chinese aggression,” he said.
Describing Japan as a “major swing state in this situation”, the former adviser to Donald Trump lauded Tokyo for taking steps to improve its military capabilities.
He said Japan was like another US Navy Seventh Fleet – which is headquartered in Yokosuka in the Japanese prefecture of Kanagawa – or another major US Air Force equivalent.
“In fact, Japan has the largest air force of F-35 [fighters] outside of the United States. They have a very formidable submarine force and all kinds of other capabilities that they’re bringing,” Pottinger said, suggesting that Japan would be able to carry out “deterrence by denial” against Beijing.
He said pledges made by President Joe Biden to defend Taiwan in a potential cross-strait conflict were in line with the strategy of “deterrence by denial”.
Biden has made such remarks four times since he took office in 2021, though each time his pledges have been walked back by the White House.
Pottinger said Taiwan must also “build a more formidable military deterrence” against Beijing.
“This deterrence strategy in capability must be built with close coordination, of course, with other regional democracies, including the United States, Japan, Australia and also the Philippines and South Korea.”
Beijing, which regards Taiwan as its territory, has vowed to bring the island under mainland Chinese control, by force if necessary. Japan and the United States, like most countries, do not recognise the island as an independent state but are opposed to any unilateral change of the cross-strait status quo.
Yasuhiro Matsuda, an international politics professor at the University of Tokyo, told the security forum that the “possibility of Japan directly defending Taiwan is zero”.
“Japan has no law justifying the defence of Taiwan,” he said at the gathering, which was attended by dozens of prominent academics and former US officials including Michele Flournoy, who was undersecretary of defence for policy, and John Whitley, former acting secretary of the army.
Matsuda said that while many Japanese saw a Taiwan contingency as a Japan contingency, the country “is legally, politically and physically unable to supply arms and ammunition to Taiwan”.
Under the Japanese constitution, establishing a military or solving external conflicts through violence is prohibited. It can have a self-defence force that is permitted to use only the minimum necessary force to defend the territory and population of Japan.
Matsuda said deploying Japan’s Self-Defence Forces was more of a legal issue than a strategic one.
He said that in a Taiwan contingency, there were three situations that could allow the Self-Defence Forces to get involved: if there was “a significant impact on the peace and security of Japan and its surrounding areas”; if the country’s “existence” was affected when Japan-based American forces were under attack; and if there was a direct “armed attack” on Japan.
But he said if Beijing attacked Taiwan, the US would be expected to support the island “in some way”, and Japan’s Self-Defence Forces would in turn provide support for its security ally, the US.
Matsuda said Japan’s Self-Defence Forces were “extremely vulnerable to ballistic missile attacks and lack the ability to counter-attack” and the country needed to “significantly strengthen” its defence capabilities.
He said that could be an important part of deterring a possible attack by Beijing.
“That’s why Japan has decided to double the defence budget in five years. Likewise, it is important that Taiwan do the same regardless of which political party comes to power,” Matsuda said.
The island will head to the polls in January for a presidential election, with policy on managing relations with Beijing among the key issues for voters.
8. Facing Demographic Crisis, China Pushes Women Back Into the Home
Facing Demographic Crisis, China Pushes Women Back Into the Home
November 10, 2023 8:14 PM
voanews.com · November 10, 2023
TAIPEI. TAIWAN/WASHINGTON —
Zhang Nanfeng works for a Japanese company in Beijing. Married 12 years, she and her husband don't want children.
"When others talk about the quarrels caused by raising children and the distress caused by tutoring children with homework, I feel very lucky that I don't have children," Zhang, 44, told VOA Mandarin.
The couple is focused on making money and enjoying themselves. They're planning to visit Japan sometime soon. "My husband and I are very happy that we can leave any time without too many worries," she said. "We enjoy this freedom!"
Zhang's lifestyle contrasts with what Chinese leader Xi Jinping has in mind for women as the country faces the economic consequences of a rapidly declining birth rate.
According to statistics from China's National Health Commission, China had 9.56 million live births in 2022, a 10% drop from 10.62 million in 2021, setting a record low and ushering in China's first decline in population growth in 61 years.
FILE - Women wearing face masks walk by fans on display inside a shopping mall in Beijing, May 30, 2023.
In 2022, about 6.8 million couples registered for marriage, half of the number in 2013 and the lowest level since official registries began in 1986.
Speaking at the 13th National Congress of Chinese Women on October 30, Xi said China must actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing.
He said it is also necessary to strengthen guidance on young people's views on marriage, childbirth and family; promote the improvement and implementation of fertility support policies; improve the quality of population development; and actively respond to the aging of the population, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
FILE - Women carrying umbrellas walk by frames displaying portraits of workers in a Chinese liquor industry on display at a shopping street in Beijing, July 25, 2023.
Analysts say Xi talked about "preventing and resolving risks in the women's field," which they say means women's rights and gender issues have been officially defined by the CCP as a political risk that needs to be addressed. Beijing believes feminism is linked to foreign forces, so authorities must be on guard against it.
Lu Pin, a Chinese feminist activist living in the U.S. and working on her doctorate in women and politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told VOA Mandarin that in China, the family is considered a building block for national stability and that the government now sees women as the stabilizing center of each family.
Lu said it is almost impossible for feminists to engage in public advocacy, although a few have called for better treatment in online discussion platforms regarding marriage and childbirth.
One netizen commenting under the name of Lin posted, "Only by creating a more equal employment environment for women and ensuring women's independence can marriage and families in the social structure have a stable foundation."
Another netizen argued that to increase the fertility rate, compulsory parental leave must be introduced for men. “Otherwise, if the maternity leave is extended now, women will be forced to lose their jobs, let alone have children."
Lu said many women have responded to the constraints on feminism through a kind of passive resistance that has contributed to the demographic crisis. “They do not get married or have children, or at least they do not marry and have children according to the patriarchal expectations."
FILE - Women are reflected on a magic mirror as they shop at a fashion boutique in Beijing, Oct. 22, 2023.
The apparent drive to push women into a role as homemakers is a stark departure from the Communist Party’s early principles.
Wu Weiting, director of the Institute of Gender Research at Taiwan Shih Hsin University, told VOA Mandarin that when the Communist Party of China was founded in 1921, it encouraged women to be independent as part of its revolt against the prevailing feudal ethics.
Founding Chairman Mao Zedong encouraged women to join the workforce, saying, "Whatever men comrades can accomplish, women comrades can too." He famously proclaimed, "Women hold up half the sky."
"However, the situation has changed a lot," said Wu.
In a reversal of its long-held one-child policy, the government in recent years began encouraging couples to have two and now three children. But authorities failed to help women balance child care and career development, Wu said. She said the party's push for multiple children drove women out of the workplace and the public sphere and back home.
Statistics support that perception. According to the 2022 Global Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum last year, China ranked 120 out of 146 countries in women's political empowerment, slipping from 118th in 2021.
Wu sees the CCP's move to return women to more traditional roles as a continuation of its crackdown on gender rights defenders, especially on women's rights organizations, which began after Xi came to power in 2014 and began strengthening the party’s social control.
She said gender equality rights protection is now a censored phrase on the Chinese Internet.
She believes Xi wants the family traditions restored because he sees human rights of LGBTQ as a Western construct. Wu sees this year's prohibition on items with rainbow imagery, a symbol of gender diversity, as "a Chinese confrontation with the United States or the Western world."
voanews.com · November 10, 2023
9. Feminist consumers in China push back against the ‘pink tax’
Feminist consumers in China push back against the ‘pink tax’
Women in the world’s second-largest economy are sharing their experiences of rejecting higher prices for products that are aimed at them.
NBC News · by Murphy Zhao and Larissa Gao
BEIJING — Li Yi prefers to buy products in pink when possible — she just likes the color.
But she held back recently when she went to buy a pair of dumbbells in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, as the pink ones were 90 yuan ($12.50) compared with 40 yuan ($5.60) for the regular black ones.
Li is not the only woman in China, the world’s second-largest economy, who has noticed that goods and services marketed to women often come with higher prices. The country’s feminists refer to the phenomenon as the “pink tax,” a term that originated in the United States and is becoming increasingly well known in China.
The hashtag #PinkTax has attracted millions of views on Chinese social platforms, where women share their experiences of rejecting higher prices. The issue has come up again amid a major annual online shopping event in China known as Singles Day, or Double 11, which ends Nov. 11.
“I feel that buying pink means voluntarily being treated differently by gender,” said Li, a 22-year-old college student. “I can’t give up my preference, while I don’t want to pay more for the premium.”
Not just about pink
The pink tax is about more than just color. It can be used to describe a broad range of discrimination against female consumers.
A particular focus of women’s ire in China and elsewhere is the cost of menstruation. An online campaign this fall encouraged the Chinese government to drop a 13% tax on menstrual products as it considers a new law on value-added taxes, arguing they should be considered basic necessities.
The 13% rate is the same as for tobacco, and it’s several percentage points higher than items deemed essential such as grain and water.
For women on tight budgets, the added cost can mean going without menstrual products at all, said Nancy Qian, an economics professor at the Kellogg School of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at Northwestern University.
“Instead of being able to use sanitary pads that are sold in modern stores, a large number of females have to resort to things that women used historically and that lead to health issues,” she said.
“What it means is that it costs women more to be healthy than men,” she added. “That’s very unfair.”
Previous appeals to the government for menstrual tax relief have been rejected.
In the United States, menstrual products are exempt from taxation in about two dozen states, including New York, California and Texas, according to Alliance for Period Supplies, a nonprofit group that aims to end what’s known as “period poverty.”
Awakening feminist consciousness
Opponents of unequal pricing in China discuss potential strategies in a group called “Pink Tax Resisters Alliance” on Douban, the country’s equivalent of Reddit and IMDb. Established in 2020, the group has grown to almost 30,000 members.
“Women define feminine,” one group member wrote. “Not feminine defines women.”
China’s feminist movement has grown stronger as more women enter the workforce — the number of women employed in urban China has increased almost 40% in the last 10 years.
The “pink tax” pushback coincides with the slower-than-expected recovery of China’s economy after the pandemic.Bloomberg via Getty Images
But even as feminism ascends, the Chinese government is embracing a more traditional stance, driven in part by concerns about the country’s record-low birthrate. Last month, President Xi Jinping told the All-China Women’s Federation that women played a crucial role in society and must start a “new trend of family.”
The “pink tax” pushback coincides with the slower-than-expected recovery of China’s economy since Covid-19 restrictions were lifted late last year, which has made consumers “more considerate about expenditures than ever,” Qian said.
The urban unemployment rate for people ages 16 to 24 hit a record 21.3% in June before Chinese officials said they would stop publishing the data.
Some women say they already bear additional costs stemming from deeply rooted gender biases in China, where, as in so many societies, “females are more likely to be judged by appearance,” said Sun Xin, a senior lecturer in Chinese and East Asian business at King’s College London.
As a result, products like cosmetics can become “almost necessities” for women, leading them to have less price sensitivity and feel compelled to spend more on them, he said.
“I have to wear makeup when I go out for formal dinners, especially when there are older men present. Otherwise they will think I don’t respect them,” said Chen Haiyu, a supermarket supplier in her 40s from the coastal city of Qingdao. “Makeup is a necessity for me, even though I think it is expensive and damages my skin.”
‘Every dollar spent is a vote’
Some consumers are pushing back, calling for boycotts against retailers that charge women more for essentially the same products men buy.
Two of China’s largest e-commerce platforms, JD.com and Taobao, drew backlash this year over annual shopping events dubbed “Goddess Day” and “Queen’s Day” that are held on March 8, International Women’s Day. Critics accused the companies of using the terminology to manipulate women into spending money, and pointed out there is no equivalent shopping event for men.
Though the two events were still estimated to have earned billions of dollars — JD.com and Taobao did not release the exact figures this year — some merchants said that sales had grown more slowly, including sales of products aimed at women.
“This year’s sales data has increased gradually. But compared to the doubling growth of previous years, it is too slight,” the owner of an online women’s clothing store wrote on social media.
Most Chinese consumers also plan to limit their spending on this year’s Singles Day event, CNBC reported, citing a survey by Bain and Company.
“Every dollar spent is a vote for the world,” college student Lancc Lan, 21, said. “I won’t contribute another cent to brands that blatantly deceive women or are unfriendly to them. I believe that the efforts of women groups may bring about changes.”
NBC News · by Murphy Zhao and Larissa Gao
10. The West Must Defeat Russia
Beware of wars of exhaustion and the Vietnamese strategy of Dau Tranh which in one of its struggles or "vans" calls for creating the conditions among the enemy population that create demands for an end to the war or withdrawing support for the war.
Excerpts:
But the path to end this war does not only lead through the battlefield. We need to start thinking not just about helping Ukraine, but about defeating Russia—or, if you prefer different language, persuading Russia to leave by any means possible. If Russia is already fighting America and America’s allies on multiple fronts, through political funding, influence campaigns, and its links to other autocracies and terrorist organizations, then the U.S. and Europe need to fight back on multiple fronts too. We should outcompete Russia for the scarce commodities needed to build weapons, block the software updates that they need to run their defense factories, look for ways to sabotage their production facilities. Russia used fewer weapons and less ammunition this year than it did last year. Our task should be to ensure that next year is worse.
The West has already sanctioned Russia and put export controls on electronics and many other components necessary for the Russian defense ministry. Paradoxically, there may now be too many of these sanctions, which are difficult to keep track of and enforce, especially when materials go through third or fourth countries. Instead, we should target the most important supply chains, depriving the Russians of the specific machine tools and raw materials that they need to make the most sophisticated weapons. At the start of the war, the U.S. and its allies froze Russia’s foreign-currency deposits. The assets of many Russian oligarchs were frozen too, in the hope that this would make them more inclined to resist the war. With some exceptions, it did not. Now it’s time to take those assets and give them to Ukraine. We need to demonstrate that our commitment to the principle of Russian reparations for Ukraine is real.
But some of our money is needed too. Spending it now will produce savings down the line, and not just because we can prevent a catastrophe in Ukraine. By learning how to fight Russia, a sophisticated autocracy with global ambitions, we will be better prepared for later, larger conflicts, if there is ever a broader struggle with China or Iran. More important, by defeating Russia we might be able to stop those larger conflicts before they begin. The goal in Ukraine should be to end Russia’s brutish invasion—and to deter others from launching another one somewhere else.
The West Must Defeat Russia
Putin hasn’t given up his plans. He thinks Ukraine’s allies will lose interest.
By Anne Applebaum
The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · November 10, 2023
They planned to take Kyiv in three days, the rest of Ukraine in six weeks.
More than 21 months later, Russian forces have withdrawn from half the territory they occupied in February of last year. At least 88,000 Russian soldiers are likely dead—a conservative estimate—and at least twice as many have been wounded. Billions of dollars worth of equipment, Russian tanks, planes, artillery, helicopters, armored vehicles, and warships have been destroyed. If you had predicted this outcome before the war—and nobody did—it would have seemed fanciful. No one would have believed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a professional comedian, could lead a country at war, that the democratic world would be united enough to help him, or that Russian President Vladimir Putin would endure such a humiliation.
Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union have achieved something remarkable: Working together, they have not only preserved the Ukrainian state, but stood up to a bully whose nihilism harms the entire world. Putin backs far-right and extremist movements in Europe, provides thugs to support African dictatorships, and colludes with China, Iran, Venezuela, and other autocracies. From the beginning, Putin hoped the war would demonstrate that American power and American alliances can be defeated, not only in Ukraine but everywhere else. He still does, and for this purpose the war remains useful to him.
The fighting creates food shortages in Africa, thereby generating more unrest and more demand for Russian mercenaries. The war stokes discontent in Europe as well, giving pro-Russian parties a boost. Americans and Europeans view turmoil in country after country as a series of isolated conflicts, but Putin doesn’t think that Ukraine and the Middle East belong to different, competing spheres. On the contrary, since the conflict in Gaza erupted, he has intensified his relationship with Iran, invited leaders of Hamas to Moscow, and attacked Israel because of its links with the U.S., hoping that the spread of violence will decrease Western support for Ukraine. Iranian drones have terrorized Ukrainian cities; Iran, in turn, distributes Russian weapons to its proxies. Hezbollah is thought to have Russian anti-ship missiles that it could use against U.S. warships in the Mediterranean at any minute.
The allied fight against Russia in Ukraine has damaged Russia’s ability to project negative power in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But despite his extraordinary losses, Putin still believes that time is on his side. If he can’t win on the battlefield, he will win using political intrigue and economic pressure. He will wait for the democratic world to splinter, and he will encourage that splintering. He will wait for the Ukrainians to grow tired, and he will try to make that happen too. He will wait for Donald Trump to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and he will do anything he can to help that happen too.
Right now, Putin’s bets are on the Republicans who repeat Russian propaganda—Senator J. D. Vance, for example, echoes Russian language about the Ukraine war leading to “global disorder” and “escalation”; Representative Matt Gaetz cited a Chinese state-media source as evidence while asking about alleged Ukrainian neo-Nazis at a congressional hearing; Vivek Ramaswamy, a GOP presidential candidate, has also called Zelensky, who is Jewish, a Nazi. Putin will have been cheered by the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, who is knowingly delaying the military and financial aid that Ukraine needs to keep fighting. The supplemental bill that he refuses to pass includes money that will keep Ukrainians supplied with the air-defense systems they need to protect their cities, as well as the fiscal support they need to sustain their economy and crucial infrastructure in the coming months.
The U.S. is supplying about a third of Ukraine’s financial needs—the rest comes from the European Union, global institutions, and the taxes paid and bonds purchased by the Ukrainians themselves—but without that help Ukraine will have trouble surviving the winter.
Part of the Republican resistance to helping Ukraine fight an American adversary is simply the perverse desire to see President Joe Biden fail. Another part comes from the fear that Ukraine is not able to win. The Ukrainian summer counteroffensive did have some success, especially in the Black Sea, where a combination of drones and missiles has badly weakened Russia’s navy and forced some of its ships to leave the Crimean port of Sebastopol. But the progress on land was slow. Ukraine’s ability to inflict huge casualties on Russia was not enough to create a backlash, or a reconsideration, in Moscow. General Valery Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian commander in chief, has recently spoken of the war as a “stalemate.”
Although Zaluzhny has also described, in detail, the technology he needs to move his army forward and break that stalemate, his statement has renewed talk in the West of a truce or a cease-fire. Some are calling for a cease-fire in bad faith. In fact, they want a Russian victory, or at least a defeat for Biden. Others, however, advocate a truce with the best of intentions. They believe that because Putin will never give up, the damage to Ukraine must be limited. Lately, I’ve heard several well-meaning people, all supporters of Ukraine, argue that this conflict could end the way the Korean War once ended, with the borders frozen on the current front line and the rest of Ukraine, like South Korea, protected by an American security guarantee and even U.S. bases.
All of these suggestions, well-meaning or otherwise, have the same flaw: A cease-fire, temporary or otherwise, means that both sides have to stop fighting. Right now, even if Zelensky agrees to negotiate, there is no evidence that Putin wants to negotiate, that he wants to stop fighting, or that he has ever wanted to stop fighting. And yes, according to Western officials who have periodic conversations with their Russian counterparts, attempts have been made to find out.
Nor is there any evidence that Putin wants to partition Ukraine, keeping only the territories he currently occupies and allowing the rest to prosper like South Korea. His goal remains the destruction of Ukraine—all of Ukraine—and his allies and propagandists are still talking about how, once they achieve this goal, they will expand their empire further. Just last week, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, published an 8,000-word article calling Poland Russia’s “historical enemy” and threatening Poles with the loss of their state too. The message was perfectly clear: We invaded Poland before, and we can do it again.
In this sense, the challenge that Putin presents to Europe and the rest of the world is unchanged from February 2022. If we abandon what we have achieved so far and we give up support for Ukraine, the result could still be the military or political conquest of Ukraine. The conquest of Ukraine could still empower Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and the rest of Putin’s allies. It could still encourage China to invade Taiwan. It could still lead to a new kind of Europe, one in which Poland, the Baltic states, and even Germany are under constant physical threat, with all of the attendant consequences for trade and prosperity. A Europe permanently at war, an idea that seems impossible to most people in the West, still seems eminently plausible to the Russian president. Putin spent a memorable part of his life as a KGB officer, representing the interests of the Soviet empire in Dresden. He remembers when eastern Germany was ruled by Moscow. If it could be so once, then why not again?
The stark truth is that this war will only end for good when Russia’s neo-imperial dream finally dies. Just as the French decided in 1962 that Algeria could become independent of France, just as the British accepted in 1921 that Ireland was no longer part of the United Kingdom, the Russians must conclude that Ukraine is not Russia. I can’t tell you which political changes in Moscow are necessary to achieve that goal. I can’t say whether a different Russian leader is required—maybe or maybe not. But we will recognize this change when it happens. After it does, the conflict is over and negotiating a final settlement will be possible.
To reach that endgame, we need to adjust our thinking. First, we need to understand, more deeply than we have done so far, that we have entered a new era of great-power conflict. The Russians already know this and have already made the transition to a full-scale war economy. Forty percent of the Russian state budget—another conservative estimate—is now spent annually on military production, about 10 percent of GDP, a level not seen for decades. Neither the U.S. nor its European allies have made anything like this shift, and we started from a low base. Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute told me that, at the beginning of the war, the ammunition that the United Kingdom produced in a year was enough to supply the Ukrainian army for 20 hours. Although the situation has improved, as production has slowly cranked up all over the democratic world, we are not moving fast enough.
Secondly, we need to start helping the Ukrainians fight this war as if we were fighting it, altering our slow decision-making process to match the urgency of the moment. Ukraine received the weapons for its summer fighting very late, giving the Russians time to build minefields and tank traps—why? Training by NATO forces for Ukrainian soldiers has in some cases been rushed and incomplete—why? There is still time to reverse these mistakes: Zaluzhny’s list of breakthrough technologies, which includes tools to gain air superiority and better wage electronic warfare, should be taken seriously now, and not next year.
Read: Zelensky has an answer for DeSantis
But the path to end this war does not only lead through the battlefield. We need to start thinking not just about helping Ukraine, but about defeating Russia—or, if you prefer different language, persuading Russia to leave by any means possible. If Russia is already fighting America and America’s allies on multiple fronts, through political funding, influence campaigns, and its links to other autocracies and terrorist organizations, then the U.S. and Europe need to fight back on multiple fronts too. We should outcompete Russia for the scarce commodities needed to build weapons, block the software updates that they need to run their defense factories, look for ways to sabotage their production facilities. Russia used fewer weapons and less ammunition this year than it did last year. Our task should be to ensure that next year is worse.
The West has already sanctioned Russia and put export controls on electronics and many other components necessary for the Russian defense ministry. Paradoxically, there may now be too many of these sanctions, which are difficult to keep track of and enforce, especially when materials go through third or fourth countries. Instead, we should target the most important supply chains, depriving the Russians of the specific machine tools and raw materials that they need to make the most sophisticated weapons. At the start of the war, the U.S. and its allies froze Russia’s foreign-currency deposits. The assets of many Russian oligarchs were frozen too, in the hope that this would make them more inclined to resist the war. With some exceptions, it did not. Now it’s time to take those assets and give them to Ukraine. We need to demonstrate that our commitment to the principle of Russian reparations for Ukraine is real.
But some of our money is needed too. Spending it now will produce savings down the line, and not just because we can prevent a catastrophe in Ukraine. By learning how to fight Russia, a sophisticated autocracy with global ambitions, we will be better prepared for later, larger conflicts, if there is ever a broader struggle with China or Iran. More important, by defeating Russia we might be able to stop those larger conflicts before they begin. The goal in Ukraine should be to end Russia’s brutish invasion—and to deter others from launching another one somewhere else.
The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum · November 10, 2023
11. Patriot Games: Mideast Turmoil Prompts Shuffle of Prized Defense Systems
Another high demand low density system that is needed in multiple theaters. If I were an advisor acting as an invisible hand to the axis of authoritarians (e.g, perhaps the PLA/CCP) I would focus on these types of systems and create threats/demands requiring them in other theaters to create seams, gaps, and weaknesses in other theaters where I might advise the use of ballistic missile barrages. Just saying and wondering if someone is orchestrating a global campaign against t the like minded democracies throughout the world (and creating dilemmas for the US).
Patriot system schematics and photos at the tlink.
Patriot Games: Mideast Turmoil Prompts Shuffle of Prized Defense Systems
Threat from Iran-backed militia groups prompts Pentagon to pivot back to the region
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/patriot-games-mideast-turmoil-prompts-shuffle-of-prized-defense-systems-753fff92?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1
By Doug Cameron
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Nov. 12, 2023 8:00 am E
Patriot missile launchers sit in a stand-by position during recent readiness training in South Korea. PHOTO: U.S. ARMY
The U.S. military was set to display one of its prized Patriot missile-defense systems at the Dubai Airshow this week, part of the American showcase at one of the world’s biggest arms fairs.
Then war broke out in the Middle East, and the $1 billion battery, mounted on three trucks, was needed to defend U.S. troops based in the region from attack by Iran-backed militia groups—and the Pentagon dropped the plans for the show.
Army leaders have warned for years they lacked enough of the systems, which fire interceptors to shoot down aircraft, missiles and drones, to meet the myriad U.S. national security challenges posed by strategic competition with China, war in Ukraine and fighting in the Middle East.
Some lawmakers have echoed the concerns. “I am concerned about our ability to provide air defense in other areas,” said Rep. Doug Lamborn (R, Colo.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee that handles missile defense. Lamborn said the threats to U.S. forces in the Middle East justified the deployments, but he has been pushing for the funding of more Patriots.
How a Patriot Battery Tracks and Intercepts Targets
ENGAGEMENT CONTROL STATION
RADAR
Radar detects and tracks missiles and other targets.
Radar sends data to remote Engagement Control Station.
2
1
Engagement Control Station (ECS) receives the data and sends it to the Patriot Launching Station.
Interceptor missile canister
Antenna
LAUNCHING STATION
Launching Station houses remote operating module, launcher and up to 16 interceptor missiles.
Launching Station receives targets’ location from ECS through the station’s antenna.
3
INTERCEPTOR
Interceptors are fired either manually or remotely from the ECS.
4
Note: Diagram is not to scale
Source: Army Recognition
Jemal R. Brinson and Peter Champelli/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Pentagon shipped one to Ukraine last spring, to help Kyiv’s forces fend off Russian cruise missiles. Now, following a series of drone and missile attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq that the Pentagon blames on militias backed by Iran, it has doubled the number of Patriot batteries in the region to at least 12, according to people familiar with the deployment.
The shift of the U.S. Patriots over the past two weeks was a reversal from the trend in recent years in which the U.S. had been reallocating military hardware and personnel from the Middle East to the Pacific to deter any potential challenge from China. It threatens to leave other regions of the world more exposed to cruise and ballistic missiles and other threats, especially in the Pacific.
The Patriot was introduced in 1980 to defend against aircraft and then cruise missiles from the former Soviet Union. After early testing problems and cost overruns that almost saw it canceled, Patriot has evolved into a key part of defenses against a rapidly evolving global missile threat.
The Patriot’s success in defending U.S. forces in the Middle East over the past 20 years has helped fuel demand from buyers including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Poland, Sweden and most recently Switzerland are among European buyers drawn by perceptions of an increased threat from Russia.
RTX, formerly known as
Raytheon Technologies, is estimated by analysts to generate $3.5 billion in annual sales from building the Patriot. The biennial Dubai Airshow, which starts Monday, features displays of military aircraft and equipment and attracts big defense companies such as RTX,
Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as well as government buyers from around the world. Planes, missiles, drones and other equipment will line the tarmac and pavilions at the Al Maktoum International Airport, which features weapons made by Russia and China as well as the U.S. and its allies, and fast-growing exporters including South Korea and Turkey.
Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system intercepting rockets launched from the Gaza Strip. PHOTO: REUTERS
The Pentagon was to display a battery, which includes the launcher, radar truck and command station. On Oct. 25, it announced plans to send more air-defense resources to the Middle East.
In the days that followed, the U.S. Army flew six Patriot batteries from the U.S. to the region, joining six that were already in theater, according to people briefed on the transfers. Army recruitment posters for highly skilled Patriot technicians suggest the launchers are based in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, where the U.S. maintains a presence at about a dozen installations.
Patriot batteries are also cycled through Europe, including deployment in Germany, and one is slated to be based in Guam and another in Hawaii, according to Pentagon plans before the latest escalation in the Middle East.
The Army declined to comment on how many were already in the region and where the new ones are located but said its “plans and commitment to the defense of the homeland have not changed.”
The U.S. has 60 Patriot batteries, while 17 other countries have bought it or placed orders. RTX doesn’t disclose production rates except to say they are being increased. The company has said it would take more than two years to deliver on new orders. Industry executives estimate the company is producing around a dozen Patriot systems a year, little changed from rates 30 years ago.
One battery remains in South Korea and several others are held for training, repair and upgrade in the U.S., according to Pentagon and industry officials. The Ukraine and expanded Middle East deployments leave under half of the U.S. inventory available to guard its forces in the rest of the world.
The Pentagon also has six batteries of the upgraded LTAMDS system, also made by RTX after it beat out competition from Lockheed Martin and
Northrop Grumman to develop a new radar. These are in testing and won’t be operational before 2025, said the company, with the biggest difference being a radar that can scan 360 degrees, versus the point-and-shoot of the current model.
“If you think back to Patriot when it was developed back in the 1980s, we knew where the threat was coming from,” said Wes Kremer, head of RTX’s defense business, at an investor day. “But now, we don’t know where the threat is coming from.”
Michael R. Gordon contributed to this article.
Write to Doug Cameron at Doug.Cameron@wsj.com
12. The Clock Is Always Ticking: Israel, Ukraine and the Temporal Dimension of War By MIck Ryan
As always, thought provoking analysis from MG Ryan.
Excerpts:
The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the strategic competition with China in the western Pacific, offer good case studies in the clever exploitation of time.
A key idea for contemporary Western governments and military institutions is their ability to conceptualise and implement the ability to fight fast and slow. As Pascal Vennesson writes in War Time, “Western warfighting has been characterized by a variety of uneven and challenging efforts to adapt to a slower pace of operations and wars of much longer duration than were initially expected and wished for. In short, Western war planners may prefer to fight fast and win short wars but they end up having to fight fast and slow, which proves harder and more unsettling than expected.”
This demands a different approach to utilising time by governments and military institutions. Governments and military institutions must ensure that their people and institutions at every level are able to deal with the environment intellectually and physically through better use of time for improved decision-making. Further, politicians, military and civilian personnel must be able to exploit this use of time to improve their capacity to understand and accept risk, and to adapt through re-organization, re-equipping, re-thinking and re-skilling.
But this will require a fundamental shift in the ability of contemporary politicians to communicate the immediacy of the threat of predatory authoritarians, and the capacity of the citizenry to believe them and force governments to address it as a priority.
As I wrote in War Transformed, democracies in the 21st century need to develop a new appreciation of time.
The Clock Is Always Ticking
Israel, Ukraine and the Temporal Dimension of War
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-clock-is-always-ticking?r=7i07&utm
MICK RYAN
NOV 12, 2023
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Source: Author via Bing Image Generator
Perceptions of time directly shape the ways in which states generate military power. This has important consequences for the West’s ability to balance military power and liberal principles, notably pacing itself in the conduct of war.
Sten Rynning, Oliver Schmitt and Amelie Theussen, War Time (2021).
Time is an important factor in the current Israeli operation in Gaza.
There will come a point when diplomatic pressure from America and Europe may force a pause – or even cessation - in Israeli military operations in Gaza. In the 2021 Israel-Gaza crisis, after nine days of war, President Biden apparently informed the Israeli Prime Minister that: “Hey, man, we are out of runway here.” After Netanyahu insisted on continuing the war, Biden then informed him, “It’s over.” A ceasefire followed two days later.
Israel may have ‘more runway’ in this situation because of the horrendous attacks it suffered on 7 October, but that runway is not infinite. It will need to achieve its military objectives and set the foundations for longer term political goals before the strategic clock runs out. Time is a critical tactical and political resource for the Israelis.
As the growing ‘fatigue’ among Western citizenry with the war in Ukraine, and the increasing demands for a truce in Gaza demonstrate, in war and competition, the clock is always ticking. Beyond the Israeli operation in Gaza, the ability to exploit time is one of the most important considerations in the planning and execution of military and other national security activities.
After the Cold War ended, Western nations wanted to ensure that conflicts were more limited in duration. This need for shorter wars was driven by the level of interests involved as well as the need to sustain political and public support for military actions in an era where the ‘big bad’ - the USSR - had seemingly been vanquished. The desire for short wars, however, was confounded by the long-term commitments required in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. However, despite their duration, these were low intensity missions and did not necessitate the imposition of new taxes or the wholesale mobilization of populations and industry in the nations that committed forces.
While western democracies were involved in these long duration but low intensity conflicts, emerging competitors such as China and Russia became richer developed new modes of competing with the West. These new approaches broadened the conception of national security and embraced all elements of national power in strategic competition. Their new strategies were designed to play out over longer periods of time than Western nations and governments might otherwise prefer. They developed forms of competition that exploited western predilections for short war, through political warfare, lawfare and unrestricted warfare.
Western nations had begun the slow process of strategic adaptation required to address these Russian and Chinese strategies in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan when the war in Ukraine forced a reappraisal of modern war. It saw the return of high intensity and large-scale war, as well as long duration conflicts. This was a strategic surprise for Western politicians whose approach to strategic risk management over the previous decades had assumed away the need for the capacity for large scale mobilization of people and industrial capacity.
Countries like China and Russia were now exploiting time – especially Western impatience - in the development of their strategic concepts for competing against the United States and other democracies.
Exploiting Time – More Than Just Speed
Time is a strategic commodity in this competition and is also a vital resource at every level of military endeavour.
In Fighting by Minutes, Robert Leonhard’s superb examination of time and warfare, he proposes that four elements of time – duration, frequency, sequence, and opportunity – demarcate the limits of political and military power. Each of these elements has consequences in the preparation for, and conduct of, military activities. While all four are important, the two more crucial elements in this strategic examination of time and its relationship with future conflict and competition are duration and frequency.
Leonhard examines duration through the lens of events that have a start and a finish, even though these may not always be well defined. As Clausewitz wrote, “even the final decision of a whole war is not always to be regarded as absolute. The conquered state often sees in it only a passing evil.” There are a range of variables which might influence the duration of a conflict, including the size of respective forces, the importance of the goals sought, geography and the level of training and technological sophistication of the involved combatants.
Exploiting western fears of extended duration wars is now one of the core elements of authoritarian competition with the west.
Confronting such methods will demand Western nations adopt longer term approaches to national security policy and strategy. This is essential if we are to defeat theories of victory conceived by actors such as Vladimir Putin, whose strategy for Ukraine is now based on ‘waiting out’ Ukrainian supporters. We must reconceive what democracies will accept in terms of risk over time in competition and conflict. In facing adversaries who might prefer longer duration confrontations, democratic societies will need to develop greater levels of strategic patience, risk tolerance and national resilience.
Fortunately, this is not the first time that democracies have faced the challenge of long duration conflicts. The Second World War was a six-year conflict (although my American friends think it was only a four-year conflict). There are also lessons from the Cold War which will be useful, as well as the twenty-year commitment to Afghanistan. Democracies have demonstrated the will for long duration conflicts and confrontations against threats in the modern era. But it will take time, resources and political will to redefine how longer periods of time might be exploited to achieve strategic outcomes by various elements of national power in Western nations.
The second important element in the strategic use time is frequency. Frequency is the pace at which different actions take place. Throughout military history, revolutionary change has generally occurred when one nation has changed the pace at which it can innovate and adapt, or when combatants are able to change the frequency at which they operate and thus interfere with its adversary’s frequency (and ability to respond). Examples of exploiting a different frequency include Sherman’s march on Atlanta, the German Army’s invasion of France in 1940, the American conduct of the later stages of the Cold War and the 1991 US Army’s offensive operations in Kuwait to eject the Iraqi Army.
Our conception of time and military activity, now and in the immediate future, must incorporate a better appreciation of frequency. An understanding of frequency must include how quickly events might occur, or how many activities can occur concurrently or sequentially than we might be traditionally used to. Frequency can be used to gain the initiative, to reduce an adversary’s reaction options and impose paralysing shock. A good example of frequency is the later part of 2022 in the Ukraine War. Had western support arrived with greater speed in mid 2022, Ukraine may have possessed the wherewithal for one final offensive after Kherson (an increase in operational frequency), which may have disrupted the construction of the Surovikin Line. It is now another great counter-factual of history.
The application of AI in all forms of information collection, analysis, dissemination, and decision-making is another influence on how frequency in war might increase. The US has a vision of what it calls Mosaic Warfare, which seeks to more seamlessly stitch together the various kinetic and non-kinetic elements of military operations, and better leverage information with a manned and unmanned system of capabilities. These will be capable of generating rapid speed and simultaneous operations that break down an adversary’s facility for timely and effective decision-making. As one analysis of this method concludes, “mosaic warfare places a premium on seeing battle as a complex system, using low-cost unmanned swarming formations alongside other electronic and cyber effects to overwhelm adversaries. The central idea is to be cheap, fast, lethal, flexible, and scalable.”
Similarly, Chinese documents and journal articles describe the informationisation and intelligentisation of warfare in the 21st century. The various ideas of Chinese scholars and military officers is associated with leveraging information to better connect various forces and generate a tempo across multiple military endeavours to paralyse an adversary and ‘break down their system’. Often referred to as System Destruction Warfare, this as the ability to paralyse the functions of an enemy’s operational system, forcing an adversary to lose the will and ability to resist once their operational system cannot function. Paralysis can be generated through kinetic and non-kinetic attacks, as either type of attack may be able to destroy or degrade key aspects of the enemy’s operational system.
But Systems Destruction Warfare has much broader applications. It can integrate all elements of Chinese national power against Western systems to cause their disintegration over time.
Back to the Concept of Speed
While many of these approaches are not new, the Chinese seek to apply intelligentisation to also speed up the tempo of all military and national security activities.
Intelligentisation has become a central element of Chinese operations as they seek to exploit advanced technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, information warfare, cyber and space capabilities proliferate. The use of these technologies will drive development of new warfighting concepts to cope with the speed of operations, and the use of a combination of crewed and autonomous systems in the physical, cyber and cognitive domains. The Chinese PLA for example has explored concepts such as autonomous dormant assault warfare, swarm attrition warfare, and autonomous cognitive control warfare.
But a Western version of this intelligentisation has also emerged in the last few years. The integration of civil and military sensors and analytical capacity, which has been accelerated by the war in Ukraine, has also seen an increase in potential operational and tactical velocity.
The knowledge developed through the meshed civil-military intelligence system (explored in this article) is shared across digitised command and control systems to the lowest levels to inform military decisions. This democratisation of relevant information has permitted an intensified interaction between domains and allowed for a faster tempo of operations. In battle, this informed and democratised command and control system helps leaders direct rapid manoeuvre and focus diverse fires on the adversaries’ critical vulnerabilities.
An important outcome of increased speed (real and potential) of military activities is that it compresses the strategic-operational-tactical hierarchical framework. The consequence of this compression is that the potential rapidity of military activities also denies strategic military leaders, and national political leaders, the time to thoughtfully consider their options. The speed of certain weapon systems, particularly those that threaten strategic assets or whose payload is uncertain, will force the more rapid involvement of operational and strategic commanders in decision making. It will drive better linkages between all sensors both in and outside the battlespace, as well as a demand for better decision support tools based on big data and artificial intelligence.
This also has significant consequences for decision making by political leaders. They may not always have the luxury of time or quality information to make decisions. As technologies evolve rapidly, weapon systems and equipment may become obsolescent faster than ever. At the same time, the rapid pace of tactical operations on the ground can see strategic decisions made irrelevant or result in a level of paralysis on political decision makers.
During the war in Ukraine, the pace of decision making has been slower than required. As Royal United Service Institute analyst, Jack Watling, has written of slow political decision making about the war: “While the provision of Western support to Ukraine has seen some notable successes, the slow pace of decision-making has made it more difficult to capitalize on Russian weaknesses.”
With fears of ‘escalation’ that could cross Russian redlines, the debate over providing main battle tanks took months to resolve, and this delay ensured that the Ukrainians lacked these decisive armoured vehicles when the Russians were at their most vulnerable at the end of 2022. The decision to finally allow F-16 fighter aircraft for Ukraine in 2023 was likewise too slow to help the Ukrainians achieve some measure of control of the air for their 2023 offensives.
Another time-related complication has been pace of delivery. Once a decision has been made to provide assistance, it is often slow in arriving. While quantity of support is vital, getting that assistance to the right people at the right place and time is crucial for the future execution of western nations that are supporting in supporting Ukraine, as well as in deterring Chinese aggression in the Pacific. As President Zelensky noted during his 2023 Munich Security Conference address, “We need speed. Speed of our agreements. Speed of delivery to strengthen our sling. Speed of decisions to limit Russian potential. There is no alternative to speed. Because it is the speed that life depends on. Delay has always been and still is a mistake.”
Western nations are still largely trapped in the slow political decision-making paradigm of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. This needs to change. While some of this challenge can be mitigated through new organisational design or operational concepts, eventually decisions must be made. And the long-term, multidecade focus of many Western defence procurement agencies that currently exists must change to be more agile and more time conscious.
Late British academic Colin Gray once wrote that “every military plan at every level of war is ruled by the clock. Geographical distance, and terrain, translate inexorably into time that must elapse if they are to be crossed. On the virtual battlefield of cyberspace, electronic warfare is apt to mock geography and therefore time.” The pace of planning, decision making, action and adaptation is increasing due to hypersonic weapons, faster media cycles impacting political decisions, and the potential for AI to speed up decision-making at many levels.
Tempo Matters Too
Notwithstanding the foregoing discussion, speed in strategic and military affairs is a relative construct. It is important only if it means operating at greater speed – or frequency – than an adversary and that this generates an advantage where and when it is needed. Additionally, high speed operations are not possible or even required for every endeavour. Achieving greater speed comes with trade-offs – faster platforms are more expensive and may also trade off performance in other areas such as sensor performance.
This returns us to the wise exploitation of time being more vital than speed. Acting at the right time will always be more important than acting at speed. While some have imagined future conflict consisting of Hyperwar, this will neither be achievable nor desirable in many circumstances. No military institution can operate at its theoretical maximum speed and capacity for long durations of time. Rest, resupply, the need to constant strategic realignment with allies, synchronisation with other units and national assets, balancing kinetic and non-kinetic actions and the pace of political decision-making all have an impact on the tempo of military operations. As the operations in Ukraine have demonstrated, there has been a continuum of pulses and pauses in Russian and Ukrainian military operations since February 2022.
Slowing down operational frequency over a longer duration may be preferred in some scenarios. This may necessitate a transition from warfare which is focused on maneuver to more positional approaches. This was a topic recently examined by Ukrainian General Zaluzhnyy and is worthy of more study. Positional warfare, as part of a mix of attrition, maneuver and positional war, will at times be preferred as a way to rebuild and regenerate forces that have been engaged in offensive operations – or to rethink operations and develop new military concepts to overcome tactical, operational and strategic adaptations by one’s adversary.
This is explained in a 1990 RUSI Journal article, that explores the concept of Positional Warfare and the likely forms of war available to European armies in the wake of the Cold War:
Positional war seeks to maintain cohesion by exploiting ground and fortifications to increase fighting power, whilst limiting the opportunities open to the enemy. It strives to use time to permit the mobilisation of resources and increase attrition of the enemy. Positional war is not intrinsically weaker than the other forms as some exponents of manoeuvre may suggest…positional war may be the only practical option in certain conditions and circumstances.
Being able to govern strategic and operational tempo may be more important than acting quickly when confronting long-term strategic threats such as China. Our strategies may include the consideration of speed, but speed is designed to be employed precisely when and where it is needed to generate advantage. And, if we intend to confront the long-term threat posed by the loose alignment of Russia, Iran, China and North Korea, governing our tempo over the long-term should ensure that democracies have the endurance and resilience over the decades that are likely to be required to prevail.
Tempo also incorporates the appropriate sequencing of operations as well as non-military strategic endeavours, and the capacity to transition between different activities in different geographical locations at the right pace. Finally, consideration of tempo at all levels must include the ability to learn and adapt at a speed relatively faster than an adversary.
Retired US Army officer and military theorist, Robert Scales, has written that “the one factor that will control the shape and character of a prospective conflict is time.” The global security environment sees time having an impact as new technologies appear at a brisk pace, new weapon systems and AI will allow much more rapid tactical activities, and the impact of the alignment of several predatory authoritarians spreads. This creates an environment where our wise use of time, from the tactical to the political levels, is vital.
Beijing's military parade on the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China (Source: Nikkei Asia)
China: Using Time Wisely
China used the time after 9/11 wisely. Exploiting western distraction with the threat posed by violent extremists, the Chinese Communist Party not only built a massive economy and conducted a large-scale program of economic espionage, it undertook a global influence campaign to solicit influence among western political elites and convince the west more broadly that China posed no threat. Concurrently it undertook the largest military peacetime build up in history.
This was a ‘strategic happy time’ for the Chinese communist party. And once the attention of western strategists returned to China a few years ago, it was a very different challenge to that it posed before 9/11.
The exploitation of time, based on the war in Ukraine, is an area where the Chinese Communist Party will also have learned lessons. While the degree of Western support for the war will have initially surprised the Russian and Chinese presidents, this aid often took time to be decided on by governments and to arrive in Ukraine. Therefore, President Xi and the Chinese Central Military Commission will be refining their contingency plans for Taiwan, and ways to distract the United States and Europe, to delay their intervention for as long as possible.
Time becomes an even more important consideration when the geography of the Western pacific is examined. Ukraine is close to western Europe and aid can be delivered relatively quickly. On the other hand, Taiwan is distant from the nearest country that might be able to support it. The PLA will be sure to exploit this.
Time and 21st Century Competition and Conflict
The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the strategic competition with China in the western Pacific, offer good case studies in the clever exploitation of time.
A key idea for contemporary Western governments and military institutions is their ability to conceptualise and implement the ability to fight fast and slow. As Pascal Vennesson writes in War Time, “Western warfighting has been characterized by a variety of uneven and challenging efforts to adapt to a slower pace of operations and wars of much longer duration than were initially expected and wished for. In short, Western war planners may prefer to fight fast and win short wars but they end up having to fight fast and slow, which proves harder and more unsettling than expected.”
This demands a different approach to utilising time by governments and military institutions. Governments and military institutions must ensure that their people and institutions at every level are able to deal with the environment intellectually and physically through better use of time for improved decision-making. Further, politicians, military and civilian personnel must be able to exploit this use of time to improve their capacity to understand and accept risk, and to adapt through re-organization, re-equipping, re-thinking and re-skilling.
But this will require a fundamental shift in the ability of contemporary politicians to communicate the immediacy of the threat of predatory authoritarians, and the capacity of the citizenry to believe them and force governments to address it as a priority.
As I wrote in War Transformed, democracies in the 21st century need to develop a new appreciation of time.
13. Ukraine War Slips Toward Violent Stalemate
Ukraine War Slips Toward Violent Stalemate
Ukrainian and Russian offensives are struggling for a major breakthrough against strong defensive lines
By James MarsonFollow
and Daniel MichaelsFollow
Nov. 12, 2023 5:30 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraine-war-slips-toward-violent-stalemate-59a6f8e5?mod=hp_lead_pos5
Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade was equipped with Western armored vehicles and trained for a lightning summer counteroffensive that was supposed to tip the war firmly in Kyiv’s favor.
These days, after advancing only a few miles over several months in the south, the brigade is fighting to fend off a Russian attack on a small industrial city in eastern Ukraine.
“It’s tough. Their advantage is in the quantity of people,” said one soldier in the brigade. “They are coming nonstop.”
The brigade’s shift from offense to defense reflects a move to a new phase in the conflict as Ukraine’s top commanders acknowledge that the counteroffensive didn’t achieve the desired progress. Ukraine’s top military officer, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy, described the war as a stalemate in an interview with The Economist, saying there would most likely be no significant breakthrough.
Russian officials have characterized the shift as a sign Moscow is gaining the upper hand and that its bet on the long game is paying off. Russian President Vladimir Putin has geared his country’s economy to war and has more than 400,000 men deployed in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, while Kyiv depends on Western military and financial support, which is facing an uncertain future.
Fighting continued last week in eastern Ukraine, near the city of Bakhmut. PHOTO: KOSTYRA LIBEROV/LIBKOS/GETTY IMAGES
A growing number of Ukraine’s backers in Europe and the U.S. say Kyiv likely would be in a stronger position today if the Biden administration had more quickly delivered valuable equipment such as tanks, long-range rockets and jet fighters. Protracted debates about the armaments, which have been provided or are being prepared for delivery to Ukraine, meant Kyiv lost valuable time early this year when it could have pressed gains achieved against Russia late last year.
“There is no silver bullet that will change the stalemate in the short run,” said Douglas Lute, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “Our incremental approach to providing military assistance has assured that,” he said of the impasse.
Ukraine’s front line
Front line Jan. 1
Russian-controlled area Nov. 8
RUSSIA
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Bakhmut
Dnipro
Orikhiv
Mariupol
Kherson
Sea of Azov
50 miles
50 km
Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
Andrew Barnett/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Administration officials say they are giving Ukraine weapons at an appropriate pace and in line with what can be offered.
Russia now controls around one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory and is seeking to advance in the northeast and east. Ukraine is still pressing in the south, where it had hoped to reach the Sea of Azov coast and split the Russian occupying forces in two. But exhaustion on both sides and the strength of defenses make large changes unlikely this winter.
“It’s a trench deadlock,” said a senior Ukrainian security official. “A general offensive is impossible for either side. Neither side can break through.”
For now, Russia is concentrating on smaller cities such as Kupyansk in the northeast and Avdiivka in the east. The offensive on Avdiivka, a small industrial city near the occupied regional capital of Donetsk, has cost the Russians more than 100 armored vehicles and thousands of casualties since it was launched last month, according to the Ukrainian military. Russian forces have made small gains in their efforts to surround the city, including seizing a railway line on the northwestern outskirts.
PHOTO: SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russia has concentrated its offensive efforts on smaller cities, such as besieged Kupyansk in northeastern Ukraine. PHOTO: SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Ukrainians are struggling, too. The soldier in the 47th said they were low on ammunition and manpower, meaning that the crews of armored vehicles and drone pilots were sometimes deployed to front-line positions.
A senior NATO official said Russia likely lacks resources to mount a significant offensive this year and Ukrainian troops may hold an advantage fighting in winter snow because they have shown greater mobility.
“The Russians have shown limited ability to fight off-road and on foot,” the NATO official said.
The next phase of the war looks increasingly fraught for Ukraine. After fending off Russia’s assault on Kyiv early last year, Ukrainian forces rolled back Russian troops in the northeast and south of the country, retaking half of the territory that Moscow had occupied in the early weeks of its invasion.
But despite the West having trained and equipped tens of thousands of troops for the counteroffensive, they were unable this year to achieve Ukraine’s goal of breaking through Russian lines and reaching the Azov coast.
Medics helped evacuate Ukrainian soldiers wounded in fighting around Kupyansk earlier this month. PHOTO: VLADA LIBEROVA/LIBKOS/GETTY IMAGES
While both sides say they want peace, talks are unlikely while Russia retains its initial goal of controlling Ukraine, and Ukraine wants to retake the rest of its territory. Ukrainian officials acknowledge that a long war likely favors Russia, which has shifted its economy to a war footing and can call on a population more than three times the size of its neighbor’s.
Russia has built a drone factory that can produce 1,000 long-range exploding drones a month, according to the senior Ukrainian security official. It is fielding tanks of types first built in the 1950s and 1960s, of which it retains enormous stocks. “It’s not modern but it can move, it can shell, it can cause problems,” the official said.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is dependent on support from the West, led by the U.S., where the Biden administration is struggling to get a new support package through Congress. As well as needing a steady supply of ammunition, particularly for artillery guns, Ukrainian officials say they will need a huge step-up in the type and quantity of equipment to break through Russian defenses, including aerial drones and electronic-warfare systems. Ukraine’s counteroffensive failed largely owing to the strength of Russian defenses, including deep minefields and trench systems along with air superiority and drones to spot and strike targets.
A Ukrainian service member with a drone in the Donetsk region. PHOTO: KOSTYA LIBEROV/LIBKOS/GETTY IMAGES
Given the constraints on Ukraine’s ability to seize the battlefield initiative against Russian forces, some outside observers say Kyiv’s safest course of action is to shift to a defensive posture and force Russia to expend its troops and equipment seeking gains. Ukraine has, to an extent, taken this approach in Avdiivka.
“It’s like Pickett’s Charge every day,” the NATO official said of Russia’s apparently futile deployment of forces, likening it to the failed Confederate assault during the Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point in the American Civil War.
Ukraine is using long-range missiles provided by the U.S., the U.K. and France to wear down Russian logistics infrastructure including railways, ports and airfields.
“Defending is much easier than attacking,” said Dmitry Gorenburg, an expert on security issues in the former Soviet Union at defense-research organization CNA in Arlington, Va.
The approach could result in small territorial losses for Ukraine, which might lead some people to think Ukraine is on the retreat but could be a safer stance while it rebuilds forces and supplies, he said.
“The optics of Ukraine defending may not be ideal, but as a military strategy in a long war, it may make sense to force the Russians to expend their resources, recapitalize, and then return to the offensive later,” Gorenburg said.
Ukrainian forces were unable this year to achieve a goal of breaking through Russian lines and reaching the Azov coast. PHOTO: SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com
14. Analysis | The punishing military doctrine that Israel may be following in Gaza
Excerpts:
The so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” took shape in the wake of the bruising 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya refers to the southern Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah maintained its strongholds and which were pummeled by Israeli jets after hostilities began when Hezbollah fighters abducted two Israeli soldiers. The onslaught then took Hezbollah by surprise, whose senior leadership had not expected to see their headquarters turned into rubble nor had planned for such a relentless bombardment. “I said that we shouldn’t exaggerate, that Israel will just retaliate a bit, bomb a couple of targets and that would be the end of it,” a Hezbollah operative told former Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid in 2006.
The doctrine that emerged out of the conflict was most famously articulated by IDF commander Gadi Eisenkot. “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,” he told an Israeli newspaper in 2008. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”
Analysis | The punishing military doctrine that Israel may be following in Gaza
Columnist
November 10, 2023 at 12:00 a.m. EST
The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · November 10, 2023
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A few days after Hamas’s horrific Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel, a top Israeli military official was blunt about his nation’s military response. Israeli security officials repeatedly stress the steps they take to minimize civilian harm and claim they are only striking legitimate military targets. In recent days, Daniel Hagari, spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces, accused Hamas of “cynically” deploying its assets in civilian areas and near critical infrastructure, like hospitals. But when speaking in the offensive’s early stage, Hagari revealed that the “emphasis” of the IDF’s reprisal was “on damage and not on accuracy.”
At that time, Israeli warplanes had already dumped hundreds of tons of bombs on targets in the Gaza Strip. The ongoing campaign in the month since has claimed more than 10,000 lives in the besieged territory, including those of more than 4,000 children. It’s triggered a humanitarian crisis, displacing the bulk of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and driving tens of thousands into a desperate search for food, safety and water. Hunger and disease stalk Gaza’s blasted neighborhoods. Aid agencies place little hope in Israel’s latest decision to offer four-hour “pauses” in its operations so that residents in north Gaza can trek southward.
There are reams of commentary on what Israel’s strategy and endgame may be as it seeks to nullify the long-standing threat posed by Hamas and purge the Islamist militant faction from its Gaza redoubts. But looming behind it — and implicit in Hagari’s “emphasis” on damage over accuracy — is a long-standing Israeli military doctrine that appears to be in play now.
The so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” took shape in the wake of the bruising 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya refers to the southern Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah maintained its strongholds and which were pummeled by Israeli jets after hostilities began when Hezbollah fighters abducted two Israeli soldiers. The onslaught then took Hezbollah by surprise, whose senior leadership had not expected to see their headquarters turned into rubble nor had planned for such a relentless bombardment. “I said that we shouldn’t exaggerate, that Israel will just retaliate a bit, bomb a couple of targets and that would be the end of it,” a Hezbollah operative told former Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid in 2006.
The doctrine that emerged out of the conflict was most famously articulated by IDF commander Gadi Eisenkot. “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,” he told an Israeli newspaper in 2008. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”
Around the same time, former Israeli colonel Gabriel Siboni wrote a report under the aegis of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies that argued the necessary response to militant provocations from Lebanon, Syria or Gaza were “disproportionate” strikes that aim only secondarily to hit the enemy’s capacity to launch rockets or other attacks. Rather, the goal should be to inflict lasting damage, no matter the civilian consequences, as a future deterrent.
“With an outbreak of hostilities, the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses,” he wrote. “Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.”
The doctrine appeared to be in operation during a round of hostilities between Hamas in Gaza and Israel at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009. A U.N.-commissioned report regarding that conflict, which saw the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians and Israelis, determined that Israel’s campaign was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”
The doctrine endured in the years since. “Israeli military correspondents and security analysts repeatedly reported that the Dahiya doctrine was Israel’s strategy throughout the war in Gaza this past summer,” observed Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi in the fall of 2014, after another Israeli campaign left more than 1,460 civilians dead, including almost 500 children. “Let us be frank: this is actually less of a strategic doctrine than it is an explicit outline of collective punishment and probable war crimes.”
He added: “Not surprisingly, one found little mention of the Dahiya doctrine whether in statements by U.S. politicians, or in the reporting of the war by most of the mainstream American media, which dwelt on the description of Israel’s actions as ‘self-defense.’”
In the present environment, Israel’s right to self-defense has indeed been championed by lawmakers and commentators across the West. Given the unprecedented scale and horror of the Oct. 7 attack, there appears to be a hardened consensus in Israel that its military should do whatever it takes to neutralize Hamas. To that end, a host of Israeli politicians have called for the wholesale destruction of Gaza, the depopulation of the territory and even its resettlement by Israel.
Eisenkot is now a member of Israel’s unity “war cabinet.” No Israeli politician or security official has explicitly invoked the “Dahiya doctrine” as a template for the destruction unleashed in Gaza.
“I don’t think this doctrine applies today,” Siboni, now of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told French newspaper Le Monde last month, arguing that everything Israel is targeting are explicitly military targets.
Siboni added that Israel’s efforts to coax Palestinians in northern Gaza to flee to the south was a sign of its humanitarian approach. “As for those who remain, too bad,” he told Le Monde. “They choose to put their lives on the line.”
The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · November 10, 2023
15. With America’s Ukraine aid, accountability comes with a price
I guess the author is unfamiliar with the work of SOCEUR and 10th SFG. But I suppose that is a good thing that their work went unnoticed.
Excerpts:
To be sure, there will also be squishy members of Congress and television talking heads who will decry such a proposal, saying it puts Americans in harm’s way, while ignoring the global threats to U.S. security from the New Axis.
They would do well to learn from President Biden’s catastrophic failure in Ukraine. The president’s lack of deterrence of Russia caused this war. Had he had the stomach to keep the 100 or so U.S. military trainers in Ukraine before the war, it just might have had an impact. Instead, he raised the specter of World War III, pulled our troops out, closed the embassy, and told Americans to leave the country because we wouldn’t attempt to extract them later.
The Ukrainians deserve aid from the U.S. and NATO. Diminishing Russia’s imperial designs and military capacity is an important strategic goal for the West as the New Axis attempts to advance the power and influence of its authoritarian bloc.
More aid should not be a tough choice given the new global paradigm that now includes a war in Israel fuel by Iran. The real choice is how best to assume greater control over the money.
Authorities like the one suggested here have been done before in challenging environments. They are far from perfect, but they are far superior to throwing good money after bad. It’s time to put our own people in charge of our money and equipment.
With America’s Ukraine aid, accountability comes with a price
U.S. needs a limited set of advisers to monitor use of assets there
washingtontimes.com · by Tom Basile
American aid military Ukraine aid illustration by Greg Groesch / The Washington Times American aid military Ukraine aid illustration … more >
By - - Saturday, November 11, 2023
OPINION:
Republicans are wringing their hands over how to provide the support the vast majority of them acknowledge is necessary for Ukraine, while ensuring appropriate accountability for billions in U.S. assets being sent to the besieged nation. They are right to be concerned, as are Americans who are demanding we secure the southern border, now a present national security threat created by the Biden administration, with equal or greater resource allocations.
Providing military and financial assistance to another country at arm’s length is always a dicey proposition, especially a country with a history of corruption.
We can’t have it both ways. We can’t desire accountability and transparency but lack the will to establish a small U.S. operation in Ukraine to scrutinize the allocation of billions in resources a world away in the middle of a military conflict.
Congressional Republicans should publicly support the deployment of a limited set of military and civilian advisers to Ukraine to monitor the use of American assets. A monitoring regime that includes U.S. personnel must be a condition of further support.
According to the Center for Strategic and Military Studies, U.S. aid to Ukraine generally falls into three categories: military aid, humanitarian assistance, and economic support to the Ukrainian government. This last category is perhaps the most problematic, because the resources go directly to their government to allow continuing operations because its own revenue generation mechanisms have been disrupted by the war.
Advisers from the departments of Defense and State and the U.S. Agency for International Development should be employed to create an asset monitoring authority working with Ukrainian officials immediately. While this would fold U.S. personnel in some fashion into the operations of the Ukrainian military and government, it is perhaps the best way to monitor the effective use of American aid.
The White House’s expressions of hope about continued anti-corruption efforts are clearly insufficient to assuage the concerns of taxpayers, who understand the importance of forcefully countering an imperial Russia but nevertheless deserve a full accounting of how their money is being spent.
This is likely an idea that the Biden administration will reject out of fear it will be viewed as provocative or a bridge too far. But isn’t it time to dispense with the nonsensical contention that we are not directly involved in this war?
Russia invaded a country without provocation and has proceeded to kill tens of thousands of civilians, commit atrocities, and disregard international law. It cannot be allowed to succeed in taking over all or part of one of the largest countries in Europe. It must also be acknowledged that China, Russia and Iran are actively working to destabilize and attack the West through a series of direct and irregular warfare tactics.
To be sure, there will also be squishy members of Congress and television talking heads who will decry such a proposal, saying it puts Americans in harm’s way, while ignoring the global threats to U.S. security from the New Axis.
They would do well to learn from President Biden’s catastrophic failure in Ukraine. The president’s lack of deterrence of Russia caused this war. Had he had the stomach to keep the 100 or so U.S. military trainers in Ukraine before the war, it just might have had an impact. Instead, he raised the specter of World War III, pulled our troops out, closed the embassy, and told Americans to leave the country because we wouldn’t attempt to extract them later.
The Ukrainians deserve aid from the U.S. and NATO. Diminishing Russia’s imperial designs and military capacity is an important strategic goal for the West as the New Axis attempts to advance the power and influence of its authoritarian bloc.
More aid should not be a tough choice given the new global paradigm that now includes a war in Israel fuel by Iran. The real choice is how best to assume greater control over the money.
Authorities like the one suggested here have been done before in challenging environments. They are far from perfect, but they are far superior to throwing good money after bad. It’s time to put our own people in charge of our money and equipment.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax and the author of “Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq.”
Copyright © 2023 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
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16. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 11, 2023
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-11-2023
Key Takeaways:
- Russian forces launched a large-scale missile and drone strike series against Ukraine on the night of November 10 to 11, targeting Kyiv Oblast for the first time in 52 days.
- Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) was reportedly involved in at least one of three strikes on Russian territory on November 10-11.
- Continued Russian milblogger discussion of widespread Russian infantry-led frontal assaults highlights the challenges Russia will face in using massed infantry assaults to offset the problems contributing to the current positional warfare identified by Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
- Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov appears to be increasingly sidelining his eldest son, 18-year-old Akhmat Kadyrov, in favor of his younger son Adam Kadyrov.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced near Avdiivka.
- Russian authorities have reportedly launched another large-scale crypto-mobilization wave.
- Russian authorities continue efforts to fill out the workforce and artificially alter the demographics of occupied Ukraine.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 11, 2023
Nov 11, 2023 - ISW Press
Download the PDF
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 11, 2023
Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, and Frederick W. Kagan
November 11, 2023, 6:15pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.
Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:00pm ET on November 11. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the November 12 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.
Russian forces launched a large-scale missile and drone strike series against Ukraine on the night of November 10 to 11, targeting Kyiv Oblast for the first time in 52 days. Ukrainian military sources reported on November 11 that Russian forces launched 31 Shahed 131/136 drones, two Kh-59 missiles, one Kh-31 missile, one P-800 Onyx anti-ship missile, and an S-300 missile against various targets in Ukraine, and specifically targeted Kyiv Oblast with either an Iskander-M or an S-400 missile.[1] Ukrainian air defenses downed 19 Shaheds (primarily targeting front line areas), one Kh-59 missile, and used a Patriot air defense system to destroy the ballistic missile targeting Kyiv Oblast.[2] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces were targeting an air defense system at the Boryspil Airport near Kyiv City.[3] The Kyiv City Administration stated that it has been 52 days since Russian forces last launched a missile strike against Kyiv Oblast.[4]
Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) was reportedly involved in at least one of three strikes on Russian territory on November 10-11. Ukrainian outlet Suspilne Crimea reported that sources in the GUR stated that the GUR orchestrated an explosion of railway tracks in Ryazan Oblast that caused 19 railroad cars of a freight train to derail on the morning of November 11.[5] The GUR source stated that the explosion will complicate Russian military logistics for the near future. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that the train was carrying mineral fertilizer.[6] Moscow Railways stated that the situation did not affect passenger and commuter trains and that Russian Railways created a headquarters to coordinate any disruptions caused by the derailment.[7] Russian state news outlet RIA Novosti stated that the derailment was due to an “intervention of unauthorized persons.”[8] The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for Tambov Oblast also stated that a fire covering 300 square meters broke out in a gunpowder factory near Kotovsk on the night of November 11.[9] Eyewitnesses reportedly heard explosions before the fire ignited.[10] BBC Russia stated that this is the second such incident at this gunpowder factory after a fire there killed five people in June 2023.[11] GUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov stated on November 11 that he cannot officially confirm or deny information about events in Russia, such as the explosion at the gunpowder plant near Tambov or the train derailment but that such strikes will continue.[12] Geolocated footage published on November 10 also shows smoke coming from a building in Kolomna, Moscow Oblast.[13] Russian sources claimed that locals heard explosions near the Machine-Building Design Bureau, a Rostec state corporation in Kolomna that specializes in missile systems.[14] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces downed one or more drones over the Machine-Building Design Bureau, and a Russian insider source claimed that a drone crashed into the building.[15] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian air defenses shot down two Ukrainian drones over Smolensk and Moscow oblasts on the night of November 10, and a prominent Russian milblogger similarly claimed that Russian air defenses intercepted several air targets over Smolensk Oblast and Kolomna, Moscow Oblast in the night.[16] Ukrainian officials have not commented on the Kolomna strike as of the time of this publication. Ukrainian Minister of Energy Herman Halushchenko notably stated in an interview published on November 11 that Ukraine would answer Russian strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure in the winter with reciprocal strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, including oil and gas infrastructure.[17]
Continued Russian milblogger discussion of widespread Russian infantry-led frontal assaults highlights the challenges Russia will face in using massed infantry assaults to offset the problems contributing to the current positional warfare identified by Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi. One milblogger emphasized on November 11 that the Russian practice of conducting tactical assaults intended to storm Ukrainian fortified positions in forest areas of Donbas will not translate into a wider operational breakthrough anywhere on the front.[18] The milblogger noted that there is no way to train enough Russian personnel for the intensive frontal assaults required for significant advances in Ukraine.[19] Another milblogger claimed that the Russian military is about to experience a "real renaissance of infantry combat" because there are fewer tanks, infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), and armored personnel carriers (APCs) close to the frontline.[20] A critical milblogger responded to the "infantry renaissance" comment and remarked that the comment is a negative reflection of Russian equipment losses and poor frontline coordination that has created a reliance on assault tactics.[21] A Russian Spetsnaz-affiliated Telegram channel additionally complained that the reliance on infantry-led frontal assaults is heavily attriting all Spetsnaz elements that have deployed to Ukraine because the Russian command has reportedly been using Spetsnaz forces for frontal assaults since the beginning of the war.[22] Spetsnaz forces are not meant to conduct such infantry-led assaults like standard Russian motorized rifle infantry, and some Russian sources are clearly frustrated with the ramifications of the misapplication of such Spetsnaz elements.
ISW has previously observed that Russian forces are increasingly relying on such infantry-led frontal assaults, likely to compensate for a lack of adequately trained personnel and due to widespread equipment losses.[23] The Russian General Staff appears to be relying heavily on frontal assaults as the predominant tactic in Ukraine as an important part of the Russian solution to the problems of "military parity" laid out by Zaluzhnyi's essay on the issue of "positional warfare."[24]
Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov appears to be increasingly sidelining his eldest son, 18-year-old Akhmat Kadyrov, in favor of his younger son Adam Kadyrov. Ramzan Kadyrov quietly indicated on November 9 that he appointed Akhmat Deputy First Minister of the Chechen Republic for Physical Culture, Sports, and Youth Policy.[25] This appointment follows Akhmat’s 18th birthday on November 8, when Ramzan Kadyrov praised Akhmat for success in his “chosen business“ as head of the Chechen “Movement of the First“ youth movement.[26] Ramzan Kadyrov’s quiet acknowledgment of Akhmat’s new position stands in contrast to the recent praise and appointments of his other children, including his appointment of his younger son, Adam, to the Chechen security service position that Ramzan Kadyrov held prior to succeeding his own father.[27] The reason for Ramzan Kadyrov’s apparent snubbing of his eldest son is unclear. Akhmat Kadyrov notably met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in early March 2023 while rumors about Ramzan Kadyrov’s declining health circulated, fueling speculation that Ramzan Kadyrov, Akhmat, and Putin may have been preparing for Akhmat to succeed his father.[28]
Key Takeaways:
- Russian forces launched a large-scale missile and drone strike series against Ukraine on the night of November 10 to 11, targeting Kyiv Oblast for the first time in 52 days.
- Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) was reportedly involved in at least one of three strikes on Russian territory on November 10-11.
- Continued Russian milblogger discussion of widespread Russian infantry-led frontal assaults highlights the challenges Russia will face in using massed infantry assaults to offset the problems contributing to the current positional warfare identified by Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
- Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov appears to be increasingly sidelining his eldest son, 18-year-old Akhmat Kadyrov, in favor of his younger son Adam Kadyrov.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced near Avdiivka.
- Russian authorities have reportedly launched another large-scale crypto-mobilization wave.
- Russian authorities continue efforts to fill out the workforce and artificially alter the demographics of occupied Ukraine.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
- Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
- Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied areas
- Russian Information Operations and Narratives
Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)
Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 11 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked in the Kupyansk direction northeast of Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) and near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk), and Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove), and in the Lyman direction near Nadiya (15km southwest of Svatove), Novoyehorivka (16km southwest of Svatove), Nevske (18km northwest of Kreminna), and the Serebryanske forest area.[29] Ukrainian Ground Forces Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Fityo stated that Russia’s main goal in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction is to capture Kupyansk City.[30]
The Russian MoD claimed on November 11 that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Synkivka and Zahoruykivka (15km east of Kupyansk) in Kharkiv Oblast and Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna) and Hrekivka (20km southwest of Kreminna) in Luhansk Oblast.[31]
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued assaults near Bakhmut on November 11 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[32] A Ukrainian company commander fighting in the Bakhmut area stated that Russian forces are unsuccessfully attempting to recapture positions near the railway near Klishchiivka, and Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces aim to capture dominant tactical heights near Klishchiivka.[33] The Ukrainian company commander stated that Russian forces are using different types of manpower, including mobilized, private military, and contract personnel, to attack near Bakhmut.[34] Russian sources claimed that the Russian 137th Airborne (VDV) Regiment (106th VDV Division) and the 331st VDV Regiment (98th VDV Division) are operating near Bakhmut.[35]
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued assault actions south of Bakhmut on November 11.[36]
Russian forces have recently made confirmed advances near Avdiivka and temporarily intensified offensive operations between November 10-11, likely to consolidate recent gains in the area. Geolocated footage posted on November 7 and 10 shows that Russian forces advanced into eastern Stepove (3km northwest of Avdiivka), across the rail line southeast of Stepove, and into a tree line north of Stepove.[37] Russian sources largely claimed that Russian forces consolidated positions on the eastern outskirts of Stepove and advanced south of Avdiivka near the “Tsarska Okhota” restaurant.[38] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed on November 10 that Russian forces entered Stepove, conducted reconnaissance-in-force, and then retreated, however.[39] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks east of Novokalynove (11km northwest of Avdiivka); near Stepove, Avdiivka, Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka); and south of Tonenke (5km west of Avdiivka).[40] The Ukrainian General Staff and Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun indicated that Russian forces increased the number of ground attacks committed near Avdiivka in the past day, but the Ukrainian General Staff reported in its November 11 evening situation report that Russian forces only conducted 14 attacks during the day.[41] This tempo is more consistent with the number of Russian assaults reported in the Avdiivka direction in the past week, indicating that the increase in Russian attacks between November 10-11 was likely to consolidate gains near Stepove.[42]
Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted limited counterattacks near Avdiivka on November 10. Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked from Novokalynove towards Krasnohorivka (5km north of Avdiivka) and northeast of Vodyane (7km southwest of Avdiivka) on November 10.[43] Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed counterattacks near Avdiivka on November 11.
Russian forces continued ground attacks west and southwest of Donetsk City and in western Donetsk Oblast on November 11 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted ground attacks with aviation support near Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City), Novomykhailivka (12km southwest of Donetsk City), and Vuhledar.[44]
Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed ground attacks west or southwest of Donetsk City or in western Donetsk Oblast on November 11. Geolocated footage posted on November 11 shows Ukrainian forces conducting a HIMARS strike against a Russian R-934 radio-electronic warfare station northeast of Puteprovod (17km northeast of Donetsk City).[45]
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on November 11.
Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on November 11 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported unsuccessful Russian assaults near Zolota Nyva (10km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and Staromayorske (10km south of Velyka Novosilka).[46] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked near Staromayorske and Novodonetske (11km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) but did not advance.[47]
Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 11 and reportedly advanced. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked northwest of Verbove (10km east of Robotyne) and near Novopokrovka (13km northeast of Robotyne) and forced Russian troops to withdraw from tactical heights in Verbove and along the Novopokrovka-Polohy road.[48] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Robotyne and Kopani (5km northwest of Robotyne).[49] ISW has not observed visual evidence of Russian retreats from this area, however. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction.[50]
Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 11 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Robotyne.[51] One Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked west of Robotyne but did not advance.[52] Another milblogger claimed that Russian forces marginally advanced northwest of Verbove and captured Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) in the area.[53]
Russian sources continued to discuss Ukrainian operations on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on November 11. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked near Poyma (10km southeast of Kherson City and 4km from the Dnipro River) and Pishchanivka (13km southeast of Kherson City and 3km from the Dnipro River) and had partial success in forest areas south of Krynky (30km northeast of Kherson City and 2km from the Dnipro River), where fighting continues.[54] Several milbloggers claimed that Russian forces captured a group of Ukrainian POWs near Krynky.[55] A prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger complained that shortcomings in Russian electronic warfare (EW), air defense systems, and drone use are complicating Russia's ability to destroy the Ukrainian grouping on the east bank.[56]
Ukrainian forces advanced on an island in the Dnipro River delta southwest of Kherson City on November 11. Geolocated footage posted on November 9 shows Russian forces striking Ukrainian troops on the northeastern part of Bilohrudny Island, about 10km southwest of Kherson City.[57]
Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces targeted Russian rear areas in Zaporizhia Oblast on November 11. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian air defense shot down two Storm Shadow missiles near Berdyansk.[58] Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported that residents of Melitopol and Berdyansk reported loud explosions, potentially from air defenses activating.[59]
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian authorities have reportedly launched another large-scale crypto-mobilization wave. Russian opposition group “Skrepach” claimed on November 10 that locals in St. Petersburg and Moscow reported receiving letters and military summonses from military registration and enlistment offices.[60] Ukrainian Mariupol City Advisor Petro Andryushchenko stated that the Russian authorities are also sending text messages and emails to conscripts asking them to come into military enlistment offices to “clarify” their personal information and including threats of punishment if conscripts do not appear at the offices.[61] Andryushchenko warned that Russian military officials will likely force conscripts to sign military service contracts if they show up at the offices.
Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)
The Murmansk Oblast government reported on November 10 that Russia’s Northern Fleet formed a drone operator training center with the oblast’s support.[62] Russian drone operators will learn how to fly, assemble, and repair drones at the facility before deploying to the front in Ukraine. Murmansk Oblast Governor Andrei Chibis stated that his administration purchased over one thousand units of equipment for the facility and expressed hope that the facility with increase the effectiveness of Russian drone operators. Russian Northern Fleet Commander Admiral Alexander Moiseev also visited the training center.
Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)
Russian authorities continue efforts to fill out the workforce and artificially alter the demographics of occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported on November 11 that Russian authorities are bringing people from Russia and Central Asia to occupied Zaporizhia Oblast as part of the “Zaporizhia Virgin Lands” program in order to destroy Ukrainian identity and compensate for shortages in the workforce.[63] Russian state news outlet RIA Novosti stated on October 20 that Zaporizhia occupation governor Yevgeny Balitsky developed the “Zaporizhia Virgin Lands” program as part of a ten-year development plan and that the program will provide those who move to occupied Ukraine with Russian citizenship and government benefits.[64] The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated on November 10 that the Russian authorities are bringing Central Asia migrants en masse to occupied Donetsk Oblast to largely work in construction companies with inhuman working conditions.[65]
Russian officials and federal subjects continue to establish connections and patronage networks with occupied Ukraine. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin visited occupied Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast, to inspect preparations for winter on November 10.[66] Kherson occupation senator Andrei Alekseenko claimed on November 11 that the Russian Republic of Mordovia is overseeing 27 social and educational infrastructure projects in occupied Kalanchak Raion, Kherson Oblast, and is investing almost 27 million rubles (about $292,900) in winter preparations.[67]
Russian Information Operations and Narratives
Russian opposition outlet Meduza discredited the Kremlin narrative that falsely accuses Ukrainian authorities of trafficking organs from military personnel on the black market.[68] Kremlin-affiliated actors, such as Adviser to the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Ovchinsky, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova, and Russian State Duma Deputy Speaker Anna Kuznetsova, have recently promoted this narrative.[69] Meduza explained that Russian narratives that Ukraine transports organs to NATO countries, such as Turkey, via ground transportation is improbable as the route from Odesa City to Istanbul alone is 17 hours – much longer than most organs can survive outside of the body.[70] Meduza also noted that Ukraine’s healthcare system lacks doctors who can perform mass organ removals and that Ukrainian law dictates that military personnel and civilians who die in hostilities cannot be organ donors.
The Kremlin continues to appease Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov’s promotion of Chechen nationalism. Russian Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov met with Kadyrov on November 11 in Chechnya and presented him with updated textbooks for grade 10 that include revised language about how the Soviet government under Stalin forcibly relocated “innocent people loyal to the Soviet regime” who were “indiscriminately accused of treason.”[71] The textbooks previously stated that the government deported various groups during World War II “on the basis of facts of cooperation with the occupiers” – language which Chechen Duma Chairperson Magomed Daudov previously criticized as insulting.[72]
Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)
Nothing significant to report.
Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.
17. Iran Update, November 11, 2023
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-11-2023
Key Takeaways:
- Israeli forces advanced further toward al Shifa Hospital and the surrounding area and clashed with nearby Palestinian militia fighters.
- Hamas and other Palestinian militia fighters are continuing their attacks against the IDF behind the Israeli forward line of advance, which is consistent with the nature of clearing operations.
- Palestinian militants claimed three indirect fire attacks into Israel. Palestinian militias have reduced their rates of indirect fire attacks into Israel in recent days compared to the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.
- CTP-ISW recorded six clashes and three demonstrations in the West Bank, primarily in Jenin.
- Lebanese Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed fighters conducted 15 cross-border attacks into northern Israel.
- Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah gave his second public speech on the Israel-Hamas war. Nasrallah highlighted Iran’s support for members of the Axis of Resistance and warned that Iranian-backed militias will continue attack US forces in Iraq and Syria unless the United States intervenes to stop Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
- The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an umbrella group for Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed one attack targeting US forces stationed in Rmelan, Hasakah Province, in northeastern Syria.
- Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi traveled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to attend a joint Arab League-OIC meeting. Raisi’s visit to Riyadh marked the first official visit by an Iranian president to Saudi Arabia in 11 years and was part of Iran’s ongoing effort to rally Arab and Muslim countries against Israel.
- Iranian Intelligence and Security Minister Esmail Khatib warned of the long-term consequences of Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip for US forces in the Middle East.
IRAN UPDATE, NOVEMBER 11, 2023
Nov 11, 2023 - ISW Press
Download the PDF
Iran Update, November 11, 2023
Ashka Jhaveri, Johanna Moore, Annika Ganzeveld, and Nicholas Carl
Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST
The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.
Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Key Takeaways:
- Israeli forces advanced further toward al Shifa Hospital and the surrounding area and clashed with nearby Palestinian militia fighters.
- Hamas and other Palestinian militia fighters are continuing their attacks against the IDF behind the Israeli forward line of advance, which is consistent with the nature of clearing operations.
- Palestinian militants claimed three indirect fire attacks into Israel. Palestinian militias have reduced their rates of indirect fire attacks into Israel in recent days compared to the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.
- CTP-ISW recorded six clashes and three demonstrations in the West Bank, primarily in Jenin.
- Lebanese Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed fighters conducted 15 cross-border attacks into northern Israel.
- Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah gave his second public speech on the Israel-Hamas war. Nasrallah highlighted Iran’s support for members of the Axis of Resistance and warned that Iranian-backed militias will continue attack US forces in Iraq and Syria unless the United States intervenes to stop Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
- The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an umbrella group for Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed one attack targeting US forces stationed in Rmelan, Hasakah Province, in northeastern Syria.
- Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi traveled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to attend a joint Arab League-OIC meeting. Raisi’s visit to Riyadh marked the first official visit by an Iranian president to Saudi Arabia in 11 years and was part of Iran’s ongoing effort to rally Arab and Muslim countries against Israel.
- Iranian Intelligence and Security Minister Esmail Khatib warned of the long-term consequences of Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip for US forces in the Middle East.
Gaza Strip
Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:
- Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
- Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip
Israeli forces advanced further toward al Shifa Hospital and the surrounding area and clashed with nearby Palestinian militia fighters. The Hamas-led Gaza Strip Health Ministry director general said that there are Israeli tanks in the streets and snipers on nearby roofs.[1] An independent analyst on X (Twitter) geolocated footage taken from a building on the corner of the medical complex with audible small arms fire.[2] The al Quds Brigades—the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—claimed on November 11 that its fighters fought the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the vicinity of al Shifa hospital and the nearby Nasr neighborhood and al Shati refugee camp.[3] The al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—said its militia fighters are engaged in clashes at ”all the pivots and points” of Israeli progress in the Gaza Strip.[4] Local media said that al Qassem Brigades fighters previously clashed with advancing Israeli forces on the al Nasr Street northeast of al Shifa hospital on November 10.[5] Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that the IDF would help evacuate the infants from al Shifa hospital.[6] Head of the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration said that the IDF is not shooting at the hospital or besieging the area and has left the east side of the hospital open.[7]
The IDF Givati Brigade Combat Team advanced on the Lababidi Street east of al Shati refugee camp and killed the Hamas company commander who held hostage 1,000 Gaza Strip residents at the Rantisis Specialist Clinic, according to the IDF.[8] The IDF has repeatedly said that Hamas uses civilian and humanitarian infrastructure to mask its military activities.[9]
Hamas and other Palestinian militia fighters are continuing their attacks against the IDF behind the Israeli forward line of advance, which is consistent with the nature of clearing operations. The al Qassem Brigades published footage on November 11 of its fighters conducting hit-an-run attacks with rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) to harass Israeli forces in Beit Hanoun.[10] The IDF continued clearing operations in Beit Hanoun as the 551st Brigade fought in Beit Hanoun and destroyed Hamas infrastructure.[11] The al Qassem Brigades separately launched mortars at Israeli vehicles west of the Erez military checkpoint, which is consistent with CTP-ISW's assessment that Palestinian militias are attempting to harass and disrupt Israeli ground lines of communication.[12] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades—the self-claimed militant wing of Fatah—mortared IDF soldiers in al Nasr neighborhood on November 11.[13]
Israel is conducting joint attacks on Palestinian militia infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. IDF infantry forces identified military targets inside buildings of the al Shati refugee camp, where CTP-ISW has observed clashes for several days before Israeli naval forces attacked the buildings from the Mediterranean Sea.[14]
Palestinian militants claimed three indirect fire attacks into Israel on November 11. The al Qassem Brigades claimed two mortar attacks into southern Israel.[15] The al Quds Brigades claimed one rocket attacks targeting Kissufim in southern Israel.[16] The IDF intercepted a ”suspicious” target that crossed from the Gaza Strip into Sderot.[17] Palestinian militias have reduced their rates of indirect fire attacks into Israel in recent days compared to the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. CTP-ISW previously reported that Hamas and PIJ began reducing its rate of attacks from the Gaza Strip in mid-October 2023 to conserve munitions.[18]
Al Qassem Brigades Military spokesperson Abu Ubaida claimed that Palestinian militia fighters are effectively attacking Israeli forces. Ubaida said that the militia fighters have destroyed or damaged over 160 Israeli military vehicles since the start of the Israeli ground operations and over 25 vehicles in the last 48 hours.[19] CTP-ISW has not observed any evidence of this assertion. The al Qassem Brigades primarily uses the Yassin-105 anti-tank RPG to conduct hit-and-run attacks on Israeli tanks.[20] Ubaida claimed that the militia fighters are targeting Israeli ground forces with rockets, car bombs, mortars, and anti-personnel bombs, likely refering to dropping bombs using a quadcopter drone.[21]
Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.
Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.
West Bank
Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:
- Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there
CTP-ISW recorded six clashes and three demonstrations in the West Bank, primarily in Jenin, on November 11.[22] Unidentified Palestinian fighters threw fireworks and Molotov cocktails at IDF personnel in Silat al Dhahr, Jenin, according to a video circulated by Palestinian media.[23] Unidentified Palestinian fighters separately clashed with Israeli forces at Arraba, Jenin.[24] Palestinian media circulated a call for youth demonstrations in Jenin in support of the Gaza Strip on November 10.[25] CTP-ISW recorded two youth demonstrations in Bethlehem and Tulkarm on November 11.[26]
This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.
Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights
Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:
- Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
- Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel
Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and other Iranian-backed fighters conducted 15 cross-border attacks into northern Israel on November 11. LH claimed responsibility for nine cross-border attacks using rockets, mortars, and anti-tank munitions along the Israel-Lebanon border and in the disputed Sheba Farms.[27] LH fighters targeted two IDF outposts in the Shebaa Farms as part of an ongoing attack campaign targeting IDF radar and sensor sites and military targets.[28] The IDF said unspecified fighters in Lebanese territory launched mortars and rockets that landed into open areas in Israel.[29] The IDF separately said unspecified fighters fired at an Israeli drone operating near the border and that Israeli air defense forces shot down or intercepted three aerial targets.[30] The Lebanese Amal Regiments carried out several military operations on November 11, including attacking the Israeli Ramim barracks.[31] This attack is the first time the Amal Regiments have claimed attacks since the Israel-Hamas war began. LH separately claimed to fire rockets at the Ramim barracks on November 11.[32]
LH Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah gave on November 11 his second public speech on the Israel-Hamas war. Nasrallah stated that LH will continue to use southern Lebanon to pressure Israel, implying that it will conduct further attacks on Israeli targets. Nasrallah also claimed that the Lebanese diplomatic and political establishment supports the LH attacks against Israel.[33] He lastly asserted that LH has expanded the quantity of its attacks into northern Israel and begun useing new military capabilities, such as the Burkan missile and various surveillance drones.[34]
Iran and Axis of Resistance
Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:
- Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
- Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an umbrella group for Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed one attack targeting US forces stationed in Rmelan, Hasakah Province, in northeastern Syria on November 11.[35] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that it launched two one-way drones in the attack and that both successfully hit their targets. CENTCOM has not commented on the attack at the time of publication. CTP-ISW cannot independently verify the claim from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. This attack is the first targeting US forces in Rmelan since the Israel-Hamas war began.
LH Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah highlighted Iran’s support for members of the Axis of Resistance in a speech on November 11.[36] Nasrallah claimed that Iran has not wavered in its support for its Axis of Resistance and has continued to arm, finance, and train “Lebanon, Palestine, and the region.” Nasrallah may be responding the possible frustrations within the Axis of Resistance toward Iran given that Iran has had a relatively restrained response to the Israeli ground operation into the Gaza Strip.
Nasrallah also warned that Iranian-backed militias will continue attack US forces in Iraq and Syria unless the United States intervenes to stop Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. Nasrallah praised the Islamic Resistance in Iraq for fighting to remove US forces and the Houthis for conducting drone and missile attacks targeting Israel.[37] Nasrallah’s warning of additional attacks is noteworthy given that he has reportedly played a prominent role in leading joint operations room overseeing Axis of Resistance activity cross the region.[38]
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi traveled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on November 11 to attend a joint Arab League-OIC meeting.[39] Raisi’s visit to Riyadh marked the first official visit by an Iranian president to Saudi Arabia in 11 years and was part of Iran’s ongoing effort to rally Arab and Muslim countries against Israel.[40] Raisi called on Arab and Muslim governments to cut all economic and political ties with Israel and to label the IDF a terrorist organization. Iranian state media specifically called on Azerbaijan and Turkey to stop exporting oil to Israel in their coverage of the joint meeting.[41] The emphasis from Iranian state media on Turkey is consistent with CTP-ISW’s previous observation that the Iranian regime is seizing on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s pro-Hamas, anti-Israel stance on the Israel-Hamas war to try to undermine Israeli-Turkish rapprochement.[42] Raisi additionally called for the IDF to immediately withdraw from the Gaza Strip and stated that Arab and Muslim countries should arm Palestinians if Israeli “war crimes” and US “management” of the war persist.
Raisi met with the leaders of Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria on the sidelines of the joint Arab League-OIC meeting.[43] Raisi warned that people in the region may lose patience with their governments and take up the Palestinian cause themselves if the OIC fails to take effective actions to help Palestinians and stop Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip.[44] Iran has historically—and especially since the start of the war on October 7—sought to rally Muslim countries against Israel and has used the OIC as a platform to do so, hoping to isolate Israel internationally.[45] Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian recently attended an emergency OIC ministerial meeting in Jeddah on October 18 to this end.[46]
Iranian Intelligence and Security Minister Esmail Khatib warned on November 11 of the long-term consequences of Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip for US forces in the Middle East. Khatib stated that the US forces sent to the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war may stay in the region after the war ends because Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip have failed to "establish deterrence.”[47]
18. It's Not Easy to Be Jewish on American Campuses Today
From my old boss, Burce Hoffman.
Excerpts:
Finally, we thought that the fears and concerns of our parents and grandparents had been rendered anachronistic by “inclusivity,” the mantra of 21st-century American universities. Today, however, like the parents of school-age children, who are afraid to send their kids to Hebrew school, the parents of Jewish undergraduates and graduates worry about the febrile atmosphere on campuses and how their children are coping. In despair, a Jewish student told me of their bitter experience of “unprecedented loneliness on campus.”
Just as the October 7th terrorist attacks forever changed Israel, they will have a similarly profound impact on Jews at campuses throughout the country. Already some Jewish parents are steering their high school juniors and seniors away from attending or applying to more prestigious universities based on how their administrators have handled the frictions that have been continuously sharpened and the attitudes and behavior of faculty and students alike. And, many Jewish students already on campus are being encouraged by their parents, family, and friends to skip those classes where they feel that they somehow have to explain or justify Israeli policy and military operations or somehow apologize or atone for them. It is an unenviable situation that may never re-set. And, one that harkens back to a darker time when Jews felt and indeed were far less welcome at many universities throughout the U.S.
America’s universities have long been envied the world over as exemplars of the highest standards of learning and scholarship. Will they now become better known, and perhaps even emulated, for failing to adequately protect their Jewish communities? Jews know better than most how easily ostracism and intolerance spreads from us to others. And, then to books and ideas as well.
It's Not Easy to Be Jewish on American Campuses Today
IDEAS
BY BRUCE HOFFMANNOVEMBER 10, 2023 7:00 AM EST
Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University and the former director of its Center for Jewish Civilization
TIME
It’s not easy to be a Jew at an American university today. As one student tearfully explained to me, “We’re exhausted and we’re beleaguered and no one seems to understand.” University administrators have indeed mostly failed their Jewish students, staff, and faculty. Fears of imposing censorship and citing of First Amendment rights have allowed to circulate freely on campus Holocaust denial, the invocation of white privilege to dismiss antisemitism, and the rejection of the Jewish people’s inalienable right to self-determination.
How did it come to this?
There is first the obvious fact that, if Jews comprise only 2.4 percent of the United States population, Jewish students will invariably almost always be a minority on all but a few campuses. Even at universities where Jewish students comprise larger minorities, such as at Cornell, Columbia, and Tulane, they have often experienced the same opprobrium that has been seen on campuses across the country.
The relative paucity of Jewish students makes them a constituency that often receives only limited attention. At the university I teach at, Georgetown, for instance, the campus rabbi fought for years to get Kosher food in the dining hall. The consistent rebuff was that there were insufficient observant Jews on campus. Eventually, however, these entreaties succeeded and Kosher food became available. But the amount of effort and time it took underscores how challenging it can be at even the most inclusive and worldly campuses for such requests from Jewish students to be granted.
Second, like the reportedly liberal residents of the collective agricultural communities bordering Gaza, we Jewish-American academicians deluded ourselves into believing that our respect for Palestinian self-determination was mutual and that our rational arguments for a two-state solution, our opposition to Jewish settlement on the West Bank and East Jerusalem neighborhoods, and our criticism of Israel’s current extreme right government would eventually persuade our more progressive colleagues on the other side to accept and recognize Israel as a bona fide nation-state.
More revealing should have been the continued frequency of these colleagues’ denunciations of Israel and signing of protest letters decrying Israeli transgressions contrasted with the more pervasive silence over China’s treatment of the Uighurs, Turkey of the Kurds, Assad’s serial massacring of his own citizens, Hezbollah’s assassination campaign against independent Lebanese journalists and of a serving prime minister, etc. Accordingly, this historic imbalance of protests over the loss of Muslim life or repression on religious grounds when inflicted by countries other than Israel should come as no surprise, especially given the dominant anti-colonialist/anti-Western scholarly and didactic approaches so prevalent at many American universities today.
Third, how can we teach students scholarship’s guiding principles of objectivity, analysis based on empirical evidence, and logic when most of them get their news from TikTok or Instagram or YouTube and not traditional news media whether on television, radio, or print? According to a recent Reuters Institute report, this shift is the product of a demand for “more accessible, informal, and entertaining news formats, often delivered by influencers rather than journalists.” The desire therefore has become for news “that feels more relevant,”at the expense of accuracy, vetting, and objectivity. With so complex and complicated issues as war and peace with Palestine and Israel, the fact these social media sites have become the main news sources for student means that they are getting emotionally resonant and rewardingly cathartic memes and infographics that may be clever and entertaining but are glib and unenlightening.
Fourth, is the default cry of university administrators for more education and more dialogue. The belief is that talking is cathartic and can bridge or at least ameliorate disagreement and incivility over even the most divisive and polarizing issues. In reality, however, these campus forums often provide vehicles for Jewish students to feel even more marginalized, more isolated, and more victimized. As one of my students, who is not Jewish, complained to me, “There is a ‘both sides’ argument that quickly moves into a disturbingly pro-genocide narrative calling for the total annihilation of Israel.”
These “dialogues” and extra-curricular education opportunities are rarely balanced. A colleague at a small, liberal arts college wrote the other day about a planned seven-week special lecture series featuring speakers universally hostile to Israel and disdainful of the two-state solution once heralded by the landmark Oslo Accords and more recently envisioned by the Abraham Accords.
Finally, we thought that the fears and concerns of our parents and grandparents had been rendered anachronistic by “inclusivity,” the mantra of 21st-century American universities. Today, however, like the parents of school-age children, who are afraid to send their kids to Hebrew school, the parents of Jewish undergraduates and graduates worry about the febrile atmosphere on campuses and how their children are coping. In despair, a Jewish student told me of their bitter experience of “unprecedented loneliness on campus.”
Just as the October 7th terrorist attacks forever changed Israel, they will have a similarly profound impact on Jews at campuses throughout the country. Already some Jewish parents are steering their high school juniors and seniors away from attending or applying to more prestigious universities based on how their administrators have handled the frictions that have been continuously sharpened and the attitudes and behavior of faculty and students alike. And, many Jewish students already on campus are being encouraged by their parents, family, and friends to skip those classes where they feel that they somehow have to explain or justify Israeli policy and military operations or somehow apologize or atone for them. It is an unenviable situation that may never re-set. And, one that harkens back to a darker time when Jews felt and indeed were far less welcome at many universities throughout the U.S.
America’s universities have long been envied the world over as exemplars of the highest standards of learning and scholarship. Will they now become better known, and perhaps even emulated, for failing to adequately protect their Jewish communities? Jews know better than most how easily ostracism and intolerance spreads from us to others. And, then to books and ideas as well.
TIME
19. Opinion | Another casualty of war: Free speech on campus
Conclusion:
I’m not sure what it signifies that many of us find the embrace of free speech outlined in the Kalven report to be too cold in its neutrality. We want our institutions to endorse our own passions and points of view. But can they do that in a diverse society in which people disagree strongly on so much? I fear that far from bringing us together, the path we are on will further drive us apart.
Opinion | Another casualty of war: Free speech on campus
The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · November 10, 2023
Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israel and Israel’s military actions in Gaza have unleashed a firestorm of controversy in the United States and Europe. Watching it all, I wonder: Does anyone believe in free speech anymore?
I have strongly condemned the attacks of Oct. 7. I think that those who praise Hamas in any way are blind to the reality that it has been the principal opponent of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question. But the question to grapple with is how to handle views that either side finds deeply offensive. And of course, speech and assembly are not the same as physical intimidation and harassment, which prevent civil discourse.
Until very recently, most concerns about free speech on college campuses were related to conservative speakers — from Ben Shapiro to Condoleezza Rice — being protested or disinvited. Conservative state legislators introduced dozens of laws to protect campus free speech. In 2021, House Republicans started a Campus Free Speech Caucus to protect free expression and free association. In January 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said the “most important legislative issue” to get right in the next couple of years was the protection of controversial speech.
Not anymore. Late last month, DeSantis reversed course, directing Florida State University’s chancellor to close down campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine. DeSantis accused the group of giving “material support to terrorism” — though, as far as I can tell, these groups have only organized protests and rallies. As GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has pointed out, courts have made clear that verbal support for extremist groups is very different — and constitutionally protected — from sending money, materiel or arms.
Other conservatives have tried to publicly identify and shame students belonging to groups that voiced support for Hamas. A hedge fund manager proposed circulating lists of these students to ensure that they don’t get jobs. Many donors have demanded that universities issue statements either condemning Hamas or supporting Israel, some even insisting that certain rallies and speakers be banned. Many college presidents issued follow-up statements when their original responses were not seen as sufficiently strong in their support of Israel or denunciation of Hamas.
This is a far cry from where universities used to be. In 1967, in the midst of the passions of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, a report by a University of Chicago committee chaired by the eminent legal scholar Harry Kalven eloquently argued that the mission of the university could not be fulfilled if the institution formally took positions on controversial political issues of the day:
“A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby,” it stated. “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”
The basic argument for free speech, espoused by the Kalven report, is that it is better to hear those you violently disagree with than to ban or silence them. That way, debate happens out in the open and points are matched with counterpoints. The alternative is to drive discourse into the shadows and gutters of political life where it festers, turns into conspiracy theories, and often erupts into violence.
Growing up in India, I read with wonder about the United States’ commitment to freedom of speech, which was so strong that in 1977 a court ruled that a group of Nazis should be allowed to march in Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb. In the 1970s, the Harvard Crimson ran editorials praising Pol Pot’s takeover in Cambodia. I went to college in the early 1980s, an era in which it was not unusual to hear incendiary views on campus, from communist revolutionaries to the Nobel Prize-winning scientist William Shockley, who made crude arguments about the racial inferiority of Black people. In this century, I recall very few colleges making official statements about the Iraq War or even the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
We are now in a different world. In recent years, the pressure on universities to take political positions has grown. A turning point might have been the murder of George Floyd, when many institutions decided to demonstrate their sensitivity and issue statements. Once they took a stand on one political issue, it is perfectly understandable that they have been asked to also condemn Hamas’s attack last month. But where will it end? A Pandora’s box has been opened. With every major political event, university administrators will have to decide whether to condemn or support it. Will they find some standard by which they can explain why they denounced one terrorist attack or human rights abuse but not another?
I’m not sure what it signifies that many of us find the embrace of free speech outlined in the Kalven report to be too cold in its neutrality. We want our institutions to endorse our own passions and points of view. But can they do that in a diverse society in which people disagree strongly on so much? I fear that far from bringing us together, the path we are on will further drive us apart.
The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · November 10, 2023
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
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