​Quotes of the Day:

“Worry is like praying against yourself.” 

–James Spencer

“The most noble fate a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation.”

– Robert A. Heinlein – Starship Troopers

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” 

– John Fitzgerald Kennedy

1. Beyond Communication: The Strategic and Cognitive Value of SOF Language Training in an AI World

2. A Critical Analysis of the US Army's Security Force Assistance Mission During the War on Terror

3. Iran Told U.S. It Wouldn’t Try to Kill Trump

4. China Coped With Trump’s First Trade War. A Second One Will Be Tougher.

5. Proxy is Not a Pejorative

6. U.S. Must Be Prepared to Expand Nuclear Weapons Force, Biden Officials Say

7. Military suicides rose in 2023, continuing a troubling trend

8. APEC leaders to open Lima summit as Trump prepares to return to office

9. Trump picks former Georgia congressman for VA secretary

10. U.S. commandos retool for China war

11. The Maritime Convoys of 2027: Supporting Taiwan in Contested Seas

12. A task for Trump: stop China in the South China Sea

13. How America Lost the Arctic

14. Fifteen killed in Israeli strikes on Damascus, Syrian state media say

15. Elon Musk Met With Iran’s U.N. Ambassador, Iranian Officials Say

16. Exclusive: Houthi arsenal shocks the Pentagon's top weapons buyer

17. American fighter pilots explain how they fought an overwhelming Iranian drone swarm in total darkness

18. Austin Builds Upon 'New Convergence' of Indo-Pacific Partnerships With 12th Visit to Region

19. SOCOM looking for 'multidomain’ micro drones that can operate in the air and underwater

20. Biden’s escalation paralysis has devastated Ukraine

21. Will the Department of Government Efficiency Tackle the Pentagon?

22. Trump’s Way Could Win the Contest With China Once and for All

23. With Friends Like These: World War II Advisory Efforts and the Origins of Sino-U.S. Competition

24. America’s Last Chance With the Global South

25. Ukraine’s Trump Tightrope

26. Peter Thiel and the Triumph of the Counter-Elites

1. Beyond Communication: The Strategic and Cognitive Value of SOF Language Training in an AI World

​An important article. We must not forget that while Ai and technology can enhance so much there are some things that it just cannot do and we must remain focused on the human element and especially the communications aspects of the human domain.

That said, I have found AI to be very helpful in collaborating with a member of the north Korean diaspora. We have collaborated on co-authoring some articles and we use ChatGPT to go back and forth between Korean and English to shape our articles. It has been very helpful.

I am glad to see Duc mention honorifics in the Korean language. I am so thankful for the English use of "Sir" and "Ma'am" and not having to figure out the correct honorifics to use in the Korean language based on the relationship with the person with whom you are speaking. I thought there were some 26 honorifics but I checked with ChatGpt :-)  and this is what it told me:

Korean honorifics are a rich and integral part of the language, deeply rooted in its culture and hierarchical structure. They are used to show respect based on the age, status, or relationship between speakers. While it's difficult to provide an exact number of "honorifics," they can be categorized into several key areas:

### **Types of Honorifics**

1. **Honorific Speech Levels (Speech Styles):**

  Korean has several speech levels, each with its own level of politeness. The most common ones are:

  - **하소서체 (Hasoseoche):** Extremely formal, used in prayers or addressing royalty.

  - **하십시오체 (Hashipsheoche):** Formal and polite, often used in official settings.

  - **해요체 (Haeyoche):** Polite but casual, common in daily conversation.

  - **하게체 (Hageche):** Semi-formal, often used among colleagues or juniors.

  - **해라체 (Haerache):** Informal, used in written language or by superiors to juniors.

  - **해체 (Haeche):** Plain and casual, often used between close friends or to children.

  These levels are achieved by conjugating verbs and adjectives differently.

2. **Honorific Nouns and Verbs:**

  Korean has specific nouns and verbs that are used to show respect:

  - **Honorific nouns:** Words like "댁 (daek)" for "house" instead of "집 (jip)."

  - **Honorific verbs:** Words like "주무시다 (jumusida)" for "to sleep" instead of "자다 (jada)."

3. **Honorific Particles:**

  - Particles like **께서 (kkeseo)** are used for subjects in honorific contexts instead of **이/가 (i/ga).**

4. **Titles and Terms of Address:**

  - Titles like **선생님 (seonsaengnim)** for teachers or **사장님 (sajangnim)** for company presidents include the honorific suffix **-님 (nim)** to show respect.

5. **Honorific Pronouns:**

  - Different pronouns are used depending on the level of respect, e.g., "당신 (dangsin)" (formal "you") or "선생님 (seonsaengnim)" for addressing teachers.

6. **Honorific Adverbs and Expressions:**

  - Adverbs like **잘 (jal)** or expressions like **모시다 (mosida)** for "to bring (someone)" replace non-honorific terms.

### **Key Notes:**

- In terms of "how many," the number is not fixed, as honorific usage extends across various parts of speech, and new expressions may emerge.

- Mastery of honorifics involves understanding their context, appropriateness, and nuances.

Beyond Communication: The Strategic and Cognitive Value of SOF Language Training in an AI World

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/beyond-communication-the-strategic-and-cognitive-value-of-sof-language-training-in-an-ai-world?postId=2b4ed50e-de78-4a9b-8e50-5b4d6a8fdf32&utm

By Duc DuClos

Introduction

In an era where artificial intelligence can translate languages almost instantly, the question inevitably arises: Is there still value in human language training? AI-driven language tools like real-time translators have indeed streamlined basic communication, leading some to question the substantial investment in human language acquisition. As machine translation capabilities grow more sophisticated, military planners and policymakers face increasing pressure to justify the time, resources, and effort devoted to human language training. However, this technological focus obscures a crucial reality: language learning develops capabilities that transcend mere translation, creating cognitive and strategic advantages that AI cannot replicate.

This reality is particularly significant in special operations, where success often depends on more than just the ability to communicate words. The complexity of modern operational environments demands operators who can think flexibly, adapt quickly, and build genuine human connections—capabilities that emerge from more than just knowing a language but also the transformative process that happens in the process of learning it. Language training cultivates neural pathways, promotes innovative thinking, and fosters cultural understanding in ways that no AI system can match.

In an increasingly complex operational environment, where competition below the level of armed conflict demands sophisticated human interaction, language acquisition becomes more crucial, not less, despite technological advances. Understanding this value requires looking beyond simple communication to grasp how language learning shapes the minds and capabilities of those who undertake it.

Beyond Translation: Historical Parallels

The debate over AI translation's impact on language training mirrors previous technological transitions in military operations. Consider land navigation: The advent of GPS technology initially prompted similar questions about the value of traditional map and compass skills. The experience proved that while GPS enhanced capabilities, it did not replace the fundamental cognitive benefits of traditional navigation training. Operators who understand traditional navigation develop spatial awareness, terrain analysis skills, and decision-making abilities that serve them even when using GPS—and prove crucial when technology fails or is compromised.

Similarly, the widespread adoption of motorized transport did not eliminate the value of the ruck march overland movement in military training. The cognitive and physical benefits of road marching—including endurance, tactical awareness, and unit cohesion—remain irreplaceable. These capabilities prove crucial in environments where vehicles cannot operate or when mechanical failure occurs.

These historical parallels reveal a consistent pattern: technological advancement serves as a force multiplier rather than a replacement for fundamental human capabilities. Just as GPS and vehicles enhance rather than replace core military skills, AI translation tools should augment rather than substitute for human language capabilities.

Language: A Core Special Operations Capability

Language training stands as a cornerstone of U.S. SOF, fundamentally shaping the capabilities of three of SOFs distinct components: U.S. Army Special Forces, Psychological Operations, and Civil Affairs. Each of these organizations employs language proficiency as a communication tool and a foundational capability enabling their unique missions.

Special Forces operators build rapport with indigenous forces and local communities through nuanced communication that transcends simple translation. Their effectiveness in training, advising, and conducting partnered operations depends on understanding both linguistic and cultural landscapes. When an SF team member speaks the local language, it demonstrates commitment and respect, enabling deeper partnerships and more effective operations. Current operations in all operational theaters globally demonstrate how this linguistic capability creates operational advantages that mere translation cannot provide.

Psychological Operations forces craft and deliver messages that resonate deeply with target audiences, requiring cultural authenticity and psychological insight that only comes from true language mastery. PSYOP operators must grasp what words mean and how they feel to their target audience—a capability beyond current AI systems. Their success in influencing operations depends on understanding subtle cultural contexts and crafting persuasive messages that reflect genuine cultural understanding.

Civil Affairs teams operate at the critical intersection of military and civilian spheres, where language proficiency enables them to assess community needs, coordinate humanitarian assistance, and build lasting relationships with local leaders. Their effectiveness in promoting stability depends on meaningful engagement with civilian populations and understanding their words, perspectives, and cultural frameworks. This understanding allows CA teams to navigate complex social and political environments, identify potential sources of instability, and develop solutions that resonate with local communities.

Cognitive and Strategic Benefits

Recent neuroscience research has revolutionized our understanding of how language learning transforms the brain. Studies using advanced neuroimaging techniques reveal that bilingual individuals develop increased density in the brain's gray matter, particularly in areas associated with executive function, memory, and cognitive control. This physical restructuring creates what neuroscientists term "cognitive reserve," enhancing mental flexibility and problem-solving capabilities that persist throughout an operator's career.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis provides a theoretical framework for understanding how language shapes thought and perception. While early interpretations suggested language completely determined thought patterns, modern research supports a more nuanced view: language significantly influences how we perceive and process information about the world. This influence becomes particularly relevant in military operations, where different linguistic frameworks provide diverse problem-solving and situational assessment approaches. For instance, languages with grammaticalized evidentiality markers (indicating the source and reliability of information) enhance operators' ability to assess intelligence credibility naturally.

This cognitive enhancement manifests in several operational capabilities:

Enhanced Pattern Recognition: When operators learn a language, they develop recognition capabilities specific to that culture's way of thinking and behaving. This skill extends beyond language to encompass cultural frameworks, social hierarchies, and implicit rules of behavior that often defy direct translation. Neuroimaging studies show that language learning enhances activity in brain regions associated with social cognition and emotional intelligence, supporting operators' ability to read social situations and understand cultural nuances intuitively.

Strategic Cognitive Advantages: Language learning fundamentally alters how the brain processes information and solves problems. Bilingual operators demonstrate superior executive function, including enhanced ability to switch between tasks, inhibit irrelevant information, and maintain focus under pressure. These advantages translate directly to operational capabilities, enabling operators to process complex information more effectively and adapt more quickly to changing situations.

Cultural Integration Benefits: Languages that emphasize different aspects of reality—such as Korean's complex honorific systems or Arabic's contextual nuances—create new mental frameworks for understanding social relationships and power dynamics. These frameworks become invaluable tools in operational environments, allowing personnel to navigate complex social and cultural landscapes with greater sophistication than any AI translation system could provide.

Team and Operational Impact: The cognitive benefits extend beyond individual operators to enhance team effectiveness. Operators with language training excel at processing multiple streams of information while maintaining operational awareness. Their ability to adapt communication styles to different audiences enhances team cohesion and mission effectiveness. This capability proves particularly valuable in multinational operations, where understanding cultural perspectives becomes crucial for mission success.

Current State and Challenges

While the value of language training is clear, achieving desired proficiency levels remains a significant challenge across Special Operations Forces. Recent data from the Government Accountability Office reveals that most SOF units struggle to meet foreign language proficiency targets. This shortfall becomes particularly noteworthy given that these requirements are considered mission-critical for special operations forces.

Training implementation and resource allocation present systemic challenges. Less than half of U.S. Army SOF personnel complete their required annual language training, with participants logging between 15 and 21 hours annually—far below the required 80 to 120 hours. This significant gap between required and actual training time stems primarily from competing operational demands and training priorities, creating a persistent challenge in maintaining language capabilities.

Language relevance presents another critical challenge. Analysis of recent European deployments revealed that assigned languages were of moderate or high relevance only about half the time. This misalignment between training investments and operational requirements suggests a need for more strategic approaches to language assignment and training prioritization. However, these challenges point not to a flaw in language training's concept but to the need for more efficient and effective training methodologies that can compete for limited time and resources in an increasingly demanding operational environment.

AI Translation Limitations

While artificial intelligence has made remarkable progress in language translation, current technologies reveal fundamental limitations that underscore the continued importance of human language capabilities. Modern AI systems excel at converting words and phrases but struggle with the deeper aspects of human communication essential for special operations. These limitations become particularly apparent in the nuanced environments where Special Operations Forces typically operate.

Three critical limitations define the current state of AI translation:

Context Integration: AI systems process language as discrete information units, missing subtle contextual clues that human operators naturally interpret. Changes in tone, facial expressions, body language, and environmental factors—crucial elements of human communication—remain beyond current AI systems' grasp. This limitation becomes critical in operational environments where missing such cues can jeopardize mission success.

Relationship Building: Regardless of technical accuracy, machine translation cannot build genuine trust or develop true rapport. These tools lack the cultural empathy and emotional intelligence necessary for meaningful human connections. This limitation is decisive in special operations environments, where trust and genuine relationships often determine mission success.

Strategic Understanding: AI translation tools demonstrate significant limitations in recognizing subtle cultural patterns or predicting cultural reactions. The nuanced understanding that comes from true language proficiency—sensing tension, understanding unspoken objections, recognizing opportunities in casual conversation—remains beyond AI's capabilities. Furthermore, AI tools cannot adapt communication styles based on social context and power dynamics, a crucial skill in special operations contexts.

Addressing Common Counter-Arguments

The case for continued investment in human language training faces several counter-arguments that, while seemingly practical, fail to grasp language learning's deeper value. As resource constraints and technological advances create pressure to reduce traditional language training, these challenges merit careful examination.

The "AI is good enough" argument suggests that machine translation has reached a sufficient level for basic operational needs. However, this perspective misunderstands the fundamental purpose of language training. Just as GPS technology enhances but does not replace the cognitive benefits of map reading, AI translation should augment rather than replace human language capabilities. The cognitive development and cultural understanding gained through language learning remain valuable even when using AI translation tools and become crucial when technology fails or proves inadequate for complex human interactions.

Resource prioritization presents another significant challenge, highlighted by GAO data showing U.S. Army SOF operators average only 15-21 hours of annual language training against a requirement of 80-120 hours. However, this shortfall reflects a resource allocation issue rather than diminished need. The cognitive benefits—enhanced decision-making, improved pattern recognition, and greater mental flexibility—create capabilities that serve operators across all aspects of their mission, justifying the investment even in a constrained training environment.

Questions about language relevance arise from GAO analysis showing assigned languages had low or no relevance in 48% of European deployments. However, this perspective overlooks two crucial points: the cognitive benefits of language learning transfer across operational contexts regardless of the specific language used, and the process of learning any language develops mental flexibility and cultural adaptation skills crucial for special operations forces.

Solutions and Recommendations

Addressing the challenges of language training in SOF requires innovative approaches that balance operational demands with training effectiveness. Modern language acquisition programs must adapt to the complex scheduling realities faced by operators while maintaining rigorous standards. The implementation of flexible, on-demand training approaches directly addresses the time constraint challenges identified in recent GAO findings, where operators averaged only 15-21 hours of annual training against requirements of 80-120 hours.

Individual Language Training Plans represent a significant advancement in military language training methodology. These customized approaches account for learning style, operational requirements, and scheduling constraints—creating a personalized path that maximizes limited training time. Integration of modern learning technologies, including multimedia classrooms supporting personal device connectivity and comprehensive learning management systems, ensures consistent training despite geographical dispersion and operational demands. This technological infrastructure, combined with continuous technical support, enables operators to maintain language proficiency even during high-tempo operational periods. The Training On Request (TUTOR) program, offered by The Unconventional, demonstrates one approach to implementing these principles, providing flexible, technology-enabled language training that adapts to operational schedules.

For personnel facing particular challenges with traditional language acquisition, constructed languages offer promising solutions. These languages serve as cognitive "training wheels," developing the neural pathways and learning strategies that facilitate subsequent natural language acquisition. Learning artificial or constructed languages offers an innovative approach to enhancing language learning capabilities and cognitive enhancement with a lower time investment cost. Two examples are the constructed languages: Esperanto and Toki Pona.

Esperanto, created in the 1890s as the world's universal second language, offers a systematic approach to language learning and was the first and only constructed language officially used by the U.S. Army. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Army adopted Esperanto as the official language for its OPFOR, Opposing Forces then called "Aggressor" units. Recognizing its value in creating realistic foreign languages training scenarios. The Army chose Esperanto for its systematic structure, regular grammar patterns, and ease of learning, enabling troops to quickly develop functional language capabilities for training exercises in weeks instead of months or years. This historical success of the adoption of Esperanto demonstrates how constructed languages can serve as effective tools for developing language learning capabilities in military contexts. Modern research indicates that time invested in such structured approaches often accelerates subsequent language acquisition by 25-50%, potentially offering a more efficient path to multilingual proficiency.

Another option, Toki Pona, a minimalist constructed language with only 127 root words, develops crucial cognitive skills while limiting initial learning investment. In trial workshops students have learned Toki Pona to a conversational level in just two days, allowing them to interact and use a second language in the minimal time possible. Additionally, the practice of constructing complex ideas from limited vocabulary develops mental agility and linguistic flexibility crucial for special operations personnel. These foundational skills—pattern recognition, linguistic adaptability, and creative communication—transfer directly to operational environments where operators must communicate effectively with limited language resources.

A comprehensive approach to language training should combine flexible scheduling, personalized instruction, and innovative learning methods. By integrating these elements thoughtfully, SOF can develop and maintain crucial language capabilities while acknowledging the real-world constraints of high-operational tempo environments. This balanced approach supports both immediate operational needs and the longer-term development of cognitive capabilities that enhance overall effectiveness.

Future Implications

Language training's future must focus on maximizing cognitive and strategic benefits while leveraging available technology. This evolution requires an emphasis on three key areas:

First, training programs must explicitly develop cognitive capabilities alongside language skills, recognizing that language learning serves multiple purposes beyond communication. Second, as operational environments grow more complex, training must emphasize cognitive adaptability and cultural understanding alongside traditional proficiency metrics. Finally, technology should enhance rather than replace human language learning, with AI translation tools serving as aids for routine tasks while operators focus on deeper aspects of language and culture.

Conclusion

As SOF advances into an AI-driven world, the temptation to rely solely on technology for communication grows stronger. However, language learning's value extends far beyond basic translation. The cognitive enhancement, strategic advantages, and cultural understanding developed through language training create capabilities that AI cannot replicate—capabilities that become more crucial as operational environments grow more complex.

Success in future operations will depend not on choosing between human and machine translation but on maximizing each one's unique advantages. The cognitive and strategic benefits of language learning and its role in developing authentic human connections ensure its continued relevance in an increasingly technological world. For SOF language training remains a communication tool and a fundamental capability that shapes the operator's mind, enhances unit effectiveness, and enables mission success in complex human environments.

References

U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2023). Special Operations Forces: Enhanced Training, Analysis, and Monitoring Could Improve Foreign Language Proficiency. GAO-24-105849. Washington, D.C.

Ball, T. (2021). "Talking the Talk: Language Capabilities for U.S. Army Special Forces." War on the Rocks, May 26, 2021.

Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., & Luk, G. (2012). “Bilingualism: Consequences for Mind and Brain.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(4), 240-250.

The Unconventional. (2024). "The Unconventional Training On Request (TUTOR)." Retrieved from https://www.theunconventional.com/tutor/

Department of Defense. (2023). 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Li, P., Legault, J., & Litcofsky, K. A. (2020). "Neuroplasticity as a function of second language learning: Anatomical changes in the human brain." Cortex, 58, 301-324.

Athanasopoulos, P., & Bylund, E. (2013). “Does Grammatical Aspect Affect Motion Event Cognition? A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of English and Swedish Speakers.” Cognitive Science, 37(2), 286-309.

Costa, A., Hernández, M., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2008). “Bilingualism Aids Conflict Resolution: Evidence from the ANT Task.” Cognition, 106(1), 59-86.

U.S. Department of Defense. (2020). Defense Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture Program Guidance. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.

United States Department of the Army. (1959). Aggressor: The Maneuver Enemy—Esperanto Language. Field Manual FM 30-101A. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army.

Halloran, J. A. (1952). "The Army's Universal Language." Military Review, 32(7), 58-62.

Sanders, Nathan. “Constructed Languages in the Classroom.” In Language Invention in Linguistics Pedagogy, edited by Jeffrey Punske, Nathan Sanders, and Amy V. Fountain, 6–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Additional Credits

The author wishes to thank MSG (R) Mark Saichampoo of The Unconventional for his significant contributions to this article's development, particularly regarding LREC and TUTOR program details. His extensive experience and insights on SOF language training requirements and implementation greatly informed the concepts and recommendations presented. Additionally, our numerous discussions about the importance and future of language training in SOF helped shape the article's practical applications and solutions.

About the Author

CW5 Maurice "Duc" DuClos currently serves as a Guest Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. His professional background includes various positions at the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS), 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) and 2/75th Ranger Battalion.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations University, or the Naval Postgraduate School.

2. A Critical Analysis of the US Army's Security Force Assistance Mission During the War on Terror

​The Army has come a long way from John Nagl's proposed Advisory Corps. (I first met John in 2008 at Fort Leavenworth when he briefed the Advisory Corps concept). John was an Army change agent.

The 27 page report can be downloaded here: www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/final-advise-assist-enable-report-.pdf

A Critical Analysis of the US Army's Security Force Assistance Mission During the War on Terror - Foreign Policy Research Institute

 John Nagl

Marshall Cooperman 

Key Findings

• The U.S. Army struggled to build capable host-nation security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan because it did not give those security force assistance (SFA) missions the priority and support they deserved. 
• Both the selection and training of U.S. advisors were highly flawed. The Army also struggled to ensure the selection of high-quality personnel into the host-nation forces. Much of the SFA effort was conducted in an ad hoc manner, without sufficient funding or strategic prioritization. 
• Today, the Army has corrected many of the issues that plagued its SFA formations during the War on Terror by creating a permanent Security Force Assistance Command and six Security Force Assistance Brigades. It is essential for the Army to maintain and support these formations to ensure that the bitter lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan are not forgotten. 

Introduction

In 2014, the Iraqi army, into which tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars had been invested, collapsed in the face of an offensive by the terror group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Only a major coalition intervention prevented the fall of Baghdad. In 2021, within just a few months of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Afghan National Army (ANA) collapsed in the face of an offensive by the Taliban. Between 2002 and 2021, some $88 billion had been invested in the ANA. In both cases, the U.S. military had devoted vast amounts of time and money to the training of the host-nation’s security forces. Yet, with a few notable exceptions (the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Force and some units of Afghan commandos), both armies severely underperformed once they could no longer rely on extensive American air, ground, and logistical support. Why did the U.S. effort to train and advise these forces fail so spectacularly? 

The disorganization and lack of priority given to the training of host-nation forces by the military are major factors. The U.S. Army failed to prioritize the creation of permanent security force assistance (SFA) formations because, as an institution, its focus has always been on the conduct of large-scale conventional warfare. Even when it turned toward counter-insurgency missions during the War on Terror, the U.S. Army concentrated on its own fighting role rather than preparing host-nation troops to take charge. At lower levels, capable U.S. officers preferred and sought combat assignments leading U.S. forces rather than serving in advisory posts. Leaders also had incentives to place poorly performing personnel into advisor teams, effectively removing them from their units. All these factors combined to make the creation of a capable force to train and advise the Iraqi and Afghan security forces more difficult.

Security force assistance is not a new mission for the Army. From training the Philippine Constabulary, to advising the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, to assisting Salvadoran armed forces, the U.S. Army has substantial experience in building up foreign armies. 

Still, the Army’s task during the War on Terror was significantly more ambitious than its previous attempts to bolster host-nation forces. Since the Vietnam War, the Special Forces have had the primary responsibility to train and advise host-nation forces. However, the size of the effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a change in the mission of the Special Forces to include more direct-action operations, made this previous arrangement impossible. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the train, advise, and assist mission fell to the Regular Army for the first time in decades. 

Read the full report

Image Credit: Natalia Kopytnik/FPRI 

This report was initially presented as a paper at the Post-9/11 Irregular Warfare Lessons Learned Conference in Annapolis, Maryland from September 17-18, 2024. The conference was sponsored by FPRI’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare and the Department of Defense’s Irregular Warfare Center.

3. Iran Told U.S. It Wouldn’t Try to Kill Trump

​Excerpts:

Western officials have grown increasingly concerned in recent months that Iran could decide to move toward building a nuclear weapon, an issue likely to be among the top challenges facing the incoming Trump administration. 

Since Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal during his first term, Iran’s nuclear program has advanced swiftly, giving it enough nuclear material to fuel around four atomic bombs. U.S. officials have said it could field a nuclear weapon in several months.

After meeting Grossi in Tehran, Pezeshkian said Iran was ready to work with the U.N. atomic agency to remove any doubts about its nuclear work.

“We have not and we will not seek to produce nuclear weapons in any way,” he said.

Iran has been weakened through Israel’s recent attacks on pro-Iranian regional militias and military strikes against central Iranian facilities. But the regime is believed to have a sprawling network of agents around the world. It has faced allegations of being behind assassinations and attempted killings of Iranian exiles abroad and against Israeli and U.S. interests.

Iran Told U.S. It Wouldn’t Try to Kill Trump

Written communication last month came after Biden administration warned Tehran against attempts on Trump’s life

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-told-u-s-it-wasnt-trying-to-kill-trump-c2d8267d?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Laurence Norman

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 and Alexander Ward

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Nov. 15, 2024 4:11 am ET

A mural depicting a broken Statue of Liberty on the outer wall of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Photo: atta kenare/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Iran offered written assurances to the Biden administration last month that it wouldn’t seek to kill Donald Trump, U.S. officials said, a secret exchange meant to cool tensions between Tehran and Washington—as the Republican prepares for his White House return.

The Iranian message, delivered on Oct. 14 and not previously reported, came in response to a private written American warning sent to Tehran in September. U.S. officials said it reflected the administration’s public message that it considered the threats against Trump a top-tier national security issue and that any attempt on his life would be treated as an act of war.

The Justice Department last week outlined allegations that Iranian agents plotted to assassinate Trump before he was re-elected as president, in what officials have described as ongoing attempts by Iran to target the once-and-future president.  

Federal prosecutors in August charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran with plotting to kill Trump, prompting officials to bolster his security while on the campaign trail. 

Iran has long vowed revenge against Trump for his decision to order the January 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force, the group responsible for Iran’s covert military operations abroad. U.S. officials say Iran has also sought to harm other Trump administration officials involved in the Soleimani operation and the broader maximum-pressure policy on Iran.

The Tehran message came after an Oct. 1 Iranian missile attack against Israel and before Israel retaliated with airstrikes against Iranian air-defense sites and missile-production facilities on Oct. 26. The Pentagon said it played no role in the Israeli attack, but the Biden administration had increased forces in the region ahead of the Israeli airstrikes.

Three officials involved in Iran policy in Trump’s first term—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Iran envoy Brian Hook and national security adviser John Bolton—still have Secret Service protection since leaving those roles due to threats on their lives from Tehran. The Biden administration increased Trump’s Secret Service protection in July after obtaining intelligence about the alleged Iranian assassination plot.

Iranian demonstrators in Tehran hold posters of Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone attack in 2020. Photo: Maryam Rahmanian for WSJ

Iran has dismissed claims in recent days that it was trying to assassinate the former president. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the allegations a “third-rate comedy.”

U.S. officials say their September message to Iran echoed repeated previous warnings against harming Trump but was sent in light of the new information. 

The Iranian reply, which wasn’t signed by a specific official, repeated Tehran’s accusation that Trump had committed a crime by ordering the killing of Soleimani, the officials said.

U.S. officials say they are confident Washington’s message reached Iran’s leadership. They didn’t say whether the messages were sent via Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Iran.

Neither U.S. officials nor the Trump team commented on whether Iran’s reply was conveyed to the president-elect.

The Iranian mission in New York declined to comment.

The Iranian assurances came at a critical time in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election. In the final days of the campaign, Trump addressed his planned approach to Iran in a second term several times, sending a conciliatory message. He said that while Iran must not develop a nuclear weapon, he wasn’t seeking regime change in Tehran or conflict with Iran.

People close to Iranian officials say Tehran is seeking to avoid confrontation with the Trump administration. Some Trump officials have promised a return to the maximum pressure approach of the first term that caused a deep economic crisis in Iran. 

“Iran can’t seriously float trial balloons for engagement while plotting to eliminate its would-be negotiating partners. It’s like reaching out with one hand to make a deal while holding a blade in the other,” said Ali Vaez, senior adviser in Washington at Crisis Group, a conflict resolution organization.

Iran is currently taking other steps to signal potential outreach to the West, a central plank of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s pledge to improve the country’s economy by winning the lifting of sanctions on Tehran. Iran is currently hosting U.N. atomic agency chief Rafael Grossi for a visit, which both sides say is aimed at improving cooperation with the agency, which is responsible for overseeing Tehran’s nuclear work.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, meets with U.N. atomic agency chief Rafael Grossi in Tehran. Photo: iranian presidential office hand/Shutterstock

Western officials have grown increasingly concerned in recent months that Iran could decide to move toward building a nuclear weapon, an issue likely to be among the top challenges facing the incoming Trump administration. 

Since Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal during his first term, Iran’s nuclear program has advanced swiftly, giving it enough nuclear material to fuel around four atomic bombs. U.S. officials have said it could field a nuclear weapon in several months.

After meeting Grossi in Tehran, Pezeshkian said Iran was ready to work with the U.N. atomic agency to remove any doubts about its nuclear work.

“We have not and we will not seek to produce nuclear weapons in any way,” he said.

Iran has been weakened through Israel’s recent attacks on pro-Iranian regional militias and military strikes against central Iranian facilities. But the regime is believed to have a sprawling network of agents around the world. It has faced allegations of being behind assassinations and attempted killings of Iranian exiles abroad and against Israeli and U.S. interests.

Richard Nephew, a former senior member on the Biden administration team that sought to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, said Tehran’s assurances won’t change how difficult it would be to revive meaningful talks between the Trump administration and Tehran.

Removing the assassination issue might help diplomacy between Washington and Tehran, “but no one should be kidding themselves on how hard a deal would be to achieve on even just the nuclear issue given where Iran’s program is and the history of the” nuclear deal, Nephew said.

Michael R. Gordon contributed to this article.

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

4. China Coped With Trump’s First Trade War. A Second One Will Be Tougher.

​Are we flipping the Unrestricted Warfare script on China and are we going to use economic warfare to our advantage?

Excerpts:

Although China could probably offset some lost U.S. exports by shipping goods to other destinations, it can’t expect the rest of the world to embrace cheap Chinese goods. Trade barriers to Chinese imports have been rising across the world, as big economies including India and Brazil seek ways to shield domestic industries from a tide of cheap Chinese competition.

“If other countries respond by also putting up trade barriers, that’s when it starts to become a lot more challenging for China,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics at Capital Economics, a consulting firm.

Beijing does have an array of tools it can deploy to lessen the hit from higher tariffs. Policymakers could cut interest rates, weaken China’s currency to support sales overseas, and extend tax rebates and other perks to exporters. 

They could try to force the U.S. to reconsider by retaliating, perhaps by raising tariffs on U.S. products, or by withholding supplies of critical minerals needed in high-tech industries such as chipmaking. 

China is taking some early steps to get ahead of increased tariffs by showering U.S. allies with visa exemptions, cuts to Chinese import levies and other incentives to encourage trade and friendlier relations, the Journal reported.

But a broad trade conflict would spell trouble for an economy that in recent years has grown more reliant on exports and manufacturing for growth, as other parts of the economy falter. Burned by the property meltdown and lingering trauma from the pandemic years, Chinese consumers are keeping a tight grip on their wallets. 

Real estate, which at its peak contributed as much as 25% of China’s annual economic growth, according to some estimates, is unlikely to power China’s economy to the same extent again. And public investment in infrastructure doesn’t offer as big a boost to growth as it once did, as China is already comfortably supplied with high-speed railroads, roads, airports and power plants. 

That leaves consumption as the one big lever left to pull to keep the economy healthy. Currently, it only accounts for about 40% of China’s economy, versus close to 70% in the U.S. 

If China took more steps to promote consumption, such as by investing more in health and education to reduce household savings, it could potentially absorb more of what it produces. That would reduce its bulging trade surplus with the U.S. and result in a more balanced global economy. 

“The main option is domestic demand. It’s as simple as that,” said Bert Hofman, a former World Bank country director for China who now teaches at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.

China Coped With Trump’s First Trade War. A Second One Will Be Tougher.

Beijing might have little choice but to reconfigure its economy should it become embroiled in a broader trade conflict

https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/china-coped-with-trumps-first-trade-war-a-second-one-will-be-tougher-8e9e3e21?mod=hp_lead_pos9

By Jason Douglas

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Updated Nov. 15, 2024 12:23 am ET

Real estate, at its peak, contributed to China’s annual economic growth. Photo: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

SINGAPORE—The last thing Xi Jinping needs right now is another showdown with Donald Trump over trade.

China is grappling with an epic property collapse, and local governments are wobbling under trillions of dollars of debt. Chinese leader Xi has responded by hitting the gas on manufacturing, pushing Chinese companies to pump out a surfeit of goods that are pouring into foreign markets and propping up the economy at home.

Now, a fresh trade war could pull the rug from under what has become a critical source of growth. In a sign of how serious he is about raising tariffs to combat what he sees as unfair trade, President-elect Trump has told allies he wants Robert Lighthizer, who served as U.S. trade representative during his first term and is especially critical of Chinese trade practices, to be his administration’s trade czar, The Wall Street Journal reported.

If the U.S. cuts back on some of the $430 billion in goods it imports from China each year, Chinese companies could try sending them to other countries, a strategy Beijing followed successfully after Trump first hit Chinese goods with tariffs in 2018. But other countries are already up in arms over an avalanche of cheap Chinese exports hurting their own companies.

Rising tariffs and mushrooming antidumping probes in Europe, Asia and Latin America are sending a strong signal that China can’t rely on other countries to mop up its ballooning industrial output, never mind extra goods shut out of the U.S. by towering new levies on imports.

Some economists believe that Trump’s policies and a darkening global backdrop for trade might nudge Xi toward something he has long resisted: Embracing a much bigger role in China’s economy for household consumption to propel economic growth.

Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a 2019 summit in Osaka, Japan. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP

Challenges ahead

Trump on the campaign trail pledged to raise tariffs on all Chinese imports to 60%. If enacted, that would mark a major escalation of a trade war that began during his first term and has been simmering ever since. 

Trump in 2018 hit Chinese-made washing machines, solar panels, steel and aluminum with tariffs of up to 25%. China retaliated with tariffs of its own on U.S. imports, while under President Biden tariffs were raised on Chinese electric vehicles, clean-energy equipment and semiconductors. 

China has managed this first phase of the conflict well. It has been able to redirect its exports to other markets, such as Russia and neighboring countries in Southeast Asia. It has also staked out a commanding global position in valuable new industries, including EVs. 

The result is that China’s shares in global manufacturing and global goods exports have increased since 2018, even as its share of U.S. imports has declined. 

Economists say the next phase of the trade war could be much tougher if it plays out along the lines Trump floated during his campaign. 

A 60% tariff on Chinese imports would reduce trade with the U.S. by as much as 70%, according to Oxford Economics, cutting China’s share of U.S. imports to as little as 4%, from around 14% in 2023. 

Chinese electric vehicles waiting to be exported. President Biden raised tariffs on Chinese EVs, clean-energy equipment and semiconductors.  Photo: AFP/Getty Images

An electric-vehicle launch event in Hong Kong. China has made itself into a global leader in new industries such as EVs. Photo: Lam Yik/Bloomberg News

UBS estimates tariffs of 60% would reduce economic growth in China by around 1.5 percentage points in the year after they are enacted. 

“The impact on trade would likely be much larger than the trade war 1.0,” said Daniel Yi Xu, an economics professor at Duke University. 

Many economists say they doubt Trump will succeed in imposing the full 60%. Many U.S. companies oppose such high levies and Trump could back down, especially if he is able to use threats of higher tariffs to secure concessions from China. 

Still, Duke’s Xu and other economists believe the odds of some significant increase in tariffs are high. U.S. policymakers on both sides of the aisle appear more united around a tough-on-China posture, which should offer Trump’s administration more runway to pursue his campaign promises. 

China’s options

Although China could probably offset some lost U.S. exports by shipping goods to other destinations, it can’t expect the rest of the world to embrace cheap Chinese goods. Trade barriers to Chinese imports have been rising across the world, as big economies including India and Brazil seek ways to shield domestic industries from a tide of cheap Chinese competition.

“If other countries respond by also putting up trade barriers, that’s when it starts to become a lot more challenging for China,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics at Capital Economics, a consulting firm.

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Tariffs are at the center of President-elect Donald Trump’s economic plan. They would be a dramatic shift in trade policy, but how would they work? Photo illustration: Madeline Marshall

Beijing does have an array of tools it can deploy to lessen the hit from higher tariffs. Policymakers could cut interest rates, weaken China’s currency to support sales overseas, and extend tax rebates and other perks to exporters. 

They could try to force the U.S. to reconsider by retaliating, perhaps by raising tariffs on U.S. products, or by withholding supplies of critical minerals needed in high-tech industries such as chipmaking. 

China is taking some early steps to get ahead of increased tariffs by showering U.S. allies with visa exemptions, cuts to Chinese import levies and other incentives to encourage trade and friendlier relations, the Journal reported.

But a broad trade conflict would spell trouble for an economy that in recent years has grown more reliant on exports and manufacturing for growth, as other parts of the economy falter. Burned by the property meltdown and lingering trauma from the pandemic years, Chinese consumers are keeping a tight grip on their wallets. 

Local government finances are under severe strain and private-sector confidence is in the doldrums. 

Chinese firms are also in worse shape to handle rising tariffs than they were half a decade ago. Weak spending at home has contributed to two years of falling prices for manufactured goods, crushing corporate profit margins and pushing many firms into the red.

Resisting ‘welfarism’

Beijing on Friday unveiled a $1.4 trillion package to help local governments get out from under swelling off-balance sheet debts. Officials have also cut borrowing costs and taken steps to boost the stock market in the hope of sparking a revival in consumer and business confidence.

But many economists say what China needs are bolder moves to increase consumption to escape deflation and achieve more sustainable growth. 

Xi has often signaled his opposition to U.S.-style consumption and the kind of reforms that would enable it, such as improving China’s threadbare social safety net to encourage households to spend more and save less. Too much support, he has said, could lead to “welfarism.” 

His overriding economic goal is transforming China into a technological powerhouse that can unseat the U.S. as the world’s top economy, not a consumer-led society. 

While China’s economy has struggled, Beijing has held off from taking steps aimed at boosting consumer spending. Photo: Andres Martinez Casares/EPA/Shutterstock

Yet over time, the kind of trade war that a second Trump presidency might unleash could leave Xi with little choice but to beef up domestic spending, as China runs out of other options for driving growth. 

Real estate, which at its peak contributed as much as 25% of China’s annual economic growth, according to some estimates, is unlikely to power China’s economy to the same extent again. And public investment in infrastructure doesn’t offer as big a boost to growth as it once did, as China is already comfortably supplied with high-speed railroads, roads, airports and power plants. 

That leaves consumption as the one big lever left to pull to keep the economy healthy. Currently, it only accounts for about 40% of China’s economy, versus close to 70% in the U.S. 

If China took more steps to promote consumption, such as by investing more in health and education to reduce household savings, it could potentially absorb more of what it produces. That would reduce its bulging trade surplus with the U.S. and result in a more balanced global economy. 

“The main option is domestic demand. It’s as simple as that,” said Bert Hofman, a former World Bank country director for China who now teaches at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.

Hannah Miao contributed to this article.

Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com

Appeared in the November 15, 2024, print edition as 'Facing a Trade War With U.S., China’s Options Have Narrowed'.

5. Proxy is Not a Pejorative

​Excerpts:

Graphics at the link: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/11/15/proxy-is-not-a-pejorative/

Conclusion

The concept of proxy, proxies, and proxy strategy is not a pejorative. Nor is it time to retire the term proxy and the phrase proxy war. If anything, it is time to retire emotive interpretations of international affairs. Flourished interpretations of international affairs and armed conflict offer little in the way of beneficial contribution to the study of proxy strategy and must be cast aside because strategic competition doesn’t operate on kindly deference to other actors’ strategic interests. Strategic competition, instead, is the product of states and other actors, vigorously striving to maintain their own survival, extend their influence, and advance their respective foreign policy goals in a competitive global order. Though this occurs within the limits of their resources, and those they can obtain through proxy strategies (among many other strategies), the pursuit and maintenance of a state’s strategic interest comes at the cost of others.

Lastly, scholars and others dedicated to the study and ontological improvement of proxy war studies must use simple theories and definitions to explain proxy strategy and its place within foreign policy and armed conflict. Proxy strategic theory can be reduced to a basic theory: P=AB→C. Yet within that general theory of proxy strategy, several supporting theories of proxy strategy provide ballast to our theory. The deniability strategy – the basic post-Cold war methodology – and today’s minimalist strategy are the two primary strategic approaches in post-Cold War proxy application. Strategic relationships – outlined earlier in this article – provide the structure to explain how AB dyads operate in minimalist strategies on contemporary battlefields. Moreover, those strategic relationships illustrate that many of the cries of whimsical idealists about proxies losing agency as a result of the language interwoven throughout proxy war literature prove to be little more than strawmen. As a result, we must collectively embrace the sentiment that proxy is not a pejorative, but rather the mot juste.

Proxy is Not a Pejorative | Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University

by Amos Fox

11.15.2024 at 06:01am

Small Wars Journal · by Amos Fox · November 15, 2024

Let’s begin by stating in the affirmative that the word proxy is not a pejorative. This includes the ideas of proxy war, proxies (i.e., the actors), proxy strategy, and principal-proxy relationships. Now having cleared the collective air, let’s explore why this is the case.

The highly contested and emotionally charged nature of proxy wars, which is also known as “conflict delegation,” is an emotionally charged concept in war, has led to two dominant perspectives in how it is studied and discussed by scholars, institutions, and other researchers.

Some scholars approach the subject from an impassive position of causal identification and realistic assessments of the proxy dynamics. Scholar Tony Pfaff offers another way of thinking about this approach. He states that researchers can approach the subject from a morally neutral position, and just focus on structural causality. Others, however, take an emotional position. These scholars, institutions, and other researchers focus on idealizing the proxy and ignoring how the structural of principal-proxy dyads impacts the character of the relationship between the dyad’s two actors, and advocate for fanciful language that lightens the ostensible negativity associated with the term proxy.

Casual realists work to align practice and empirical evidence to enhance existing theories of proxy and create new theories where extant concepts don’t exist or are no longer useful. Scholars approaching the subject from an idealized mindset do not operate in empirical causality, but instead use whimsical idealizations about personal and group connections to discuss the subject.

Whimsical idealization is not inherently bad, especially when it attempts to improve the concept, but many of today’s idealists, like Professor Barbara Elias take an iconoclastic position. Elias and others attempt to destroy the concept of proxy war outright and replace it with superfluous terminology that does not accurately reflect the long-documented way principal-proxy relationships work. Whimsical idealization resonates in the iconoclast’s suggestions that the existing literature on proxy war: (1) minimizes local agency, (2) over-emphasizes US influence, (3) provides misleading hierarchical implications, (4) inaccurately describes local interests, (5) over-simplifies complex relationships, and (6) misrepresents compliance and control. Moreover, the iconoclasts push for replacing proxy war language with more “accurate” language, such as “strategic local partners” and “foreign military intervention,” both of which are oxymorons and more gibberish than refined language, will help soften the coarseness of proxy war scholarship.

The problem with these idealizations is twofold. First, these assertions do not align with most scholarship on the subject.

Second, whimsical and idealistic thought provides no benefit for practitioners – whether government strategists and policymakers, senior military leaders, or military commanders on the ground in any of the vast number of ongoing proxy wars. As scholar Stephen Walt reminds us, “Bad international relations theories can lead policymakers astray.” Considering Walt’s advice, proxy war scholars must focus on the practitioner – the policymakers, strategists, leaders, and forces on the ground – and not on obstructive ontologies or arcane research programs tangentially pertinent with the subject. Furthermore, modern proxy war scholarship is extensive. Following Andrew Mumford’s publication of Proxy Warfare: War and Conflict in the Modern World in 2013 and Geraint Hughes’ My Enemy’s Enemy: Proxy Warfare in International Politics in 2014, the study of modern proxy wars – i.e., post-Cold War proxy wars – exploded. Today, and arguably for the past decade, the field of proxy war studies is thoroughly rigorous, diverse, and addresses the subject from nearly every conceivable angle. Thus, many of the arguments against proxy war are either ignorant to the rich tapestry of proxy war scholarship found in academic journals, professional articles, and think tank reports, or they are cherry-picking from the literature to craft seductive strawmen to attack the concept for self-interested purposes.

Moreover, proxy war presents an interesting – and likely related – paradox. Western militaries shun owning the irrefutable fact that they operate as principals in proxy wars all across the globe. To be sure, the US relationship with the Syrian Democratic Forces in eastern Syria is a classic principal-proxy relationship, just as is the US-Iraq relationship during the 2014-2018 fight against the Islamic State, or the US-Ukraine relationship in the on-going Russo-Ukrainian War. Yet, when you examine US joint and Army doctrine, and the National Defense Strategy, however, you only find proxy wars mentioned when attempting to discredit strategic competitors such as Russia, China, and Iran. According to the US government and the US Army, proxy wars, despite the irrefutable empirical evidence, are something someone else does – despite irrefutable empirical evidence to the contrary – whereas the US (and its allies) partner with local security forces in a symbiotic and mutually beneficial way. As comical as this statement appears, this irony of this position is not lost on everyone. A recent report by the Congressional Research Service makes mention of this inconsistency in a 2024 report on irregular warfare.

Nevertheless, proxy war scholarships exist to support policymakers and military practitioners. Policymakers and practitioners need clear, crisp, and correct language and causally correct information in the literature that supports their practical experience implementing, guiding, supporting, and fighting in proxy wars. Academic gibberish, built on speaking in niceties, multisyllable words, and idiomatic expressions, while eschewing causal reality helps none of the individuals and organizations who require an understanding proxy war, principal-proxy dyad relationship dynamics, the range of options a specific dyad might execute as part of a general war strategy. Thus, we must embrace the term proxy, because it is not a pejorative. Rather, the term proxy is the mot juste; it is a clear, crip, and precisely correct term for explaining how actors operate through other actors when not joined into a formal alliance or task-oriented coalition.

The Conceptual Utility of the Term “Proxy”

Conceptually, proxy war is a very helpful concept. Like any concept, it helps allow policymakers and practitioners to develop strategies and plans for how to successfully compete against adversaries, while leveraging other actors, in the competitive arena of international affairs. Of secondary importance, the concept, like any other military concept, provides scholars and analysts with a framework to examine armed conflict.

The problem, however, is the phrase “proxy war” is a misnomer. When we say, “proxy war,” we are almost always referring to a conflict in which states, and lesser political units, use proxy strategies to support their general military strategy. Put differently, there are no proxy wars, only wars with proxy strategies as a supporting, or subordinate, strategy to a general strategy.

Interwoven, or subordinate, strategies are not a new idea. To be sure, Colin Gray writes “Strategy, singular, refers to a specific universal challenge and behavior, whereas strategies mean the actual, specific operational plans at every level of analysis. The latter is context dependent; the former is not.” Furthermore, Gray asserts “Military strategies must be nested in a more inclusive framework, if only in order to lighten the burden of support for policy they are required to bear.” Considering Gray’s argument, most so-called proxy wars are actually overgeneralizations of conflicts in which one or more combatants is using a proxy strategy as a subordinate element of a general strategy.

What’s more, a conflict wears many hats. A war might simultaneously be a war of attrition, a proxy war, and a civil war. At the same time, a war might be a war of movement, a proxy war, and a war of independence, such as we see with the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989). Yet, the adjectives used to describe a war are not universal, but as Gray notes, they must be considered in context. In the Soviet-Afghan War for instance, you can easily identify three lenses through which to ascribe adjectives – Soviet, Afghan, and American. Each one of those lenses can, and do, have different adjectives to describe the war. For the Soviets, the war was a counterinsurgency against groups using irregular warfare. For the Afghans, the war was a civil war, and they used irregular warfare, and perhaps even Fabian tactics, to evade the Soviets, outlast their commitment, and to survive to take political control of the state. For the US, the war was wholly proxy, with the US using the Afghans as the primary lever to defeat the Soviets on the battlefield. Thus, the characterization and classification of a conflict is a matter of perspective and not always universal.

In rare instances, such as the US’s intervention in the Soviet-Afghan War, or the US’s intervention in the Russo-Ukrainian War, does a war stand alone as a “proxy war.” And even in these situations, only the US was fighting a proxy war – the Soviets and Afghans and the Russians and Ukrainians fought with blended versions of conventional and irregular warfare.

A Theory of Proxy Strategy

Outlining a simple theory of proxy strategy is helpful in this situation. Again, when we say proxy war, what we’re referring to are wars in which one or more actors use a proxy strategy. That is, one actor (Actor A) relies on another actor to (1) do a significant portion of, (2) a significant portion of, or (3) augment the land forces of another actor (Actor B) in combat against an adversarial combatant (Actor C). If P equals proxy strategy, we can visualize this idea as: P = AB → C (Theorem 1).

That is, one actor (A, the principle) relies on another actor (B, the agent) to achieve tactical objectives through the conduct of military action against an adversarial combatant (Actor C).

Actor A can find a host of players in the international arena to fulfill their need for Actor B. The player fulfilling Actor B’s role plays an important part in determining potential hierarchical implications, explaining the complexity of the dyad’s relationship, and how Actor A leads, manages, or controls the former on the battlefield. Contrary to the quips of scholars like Barbara Elias, a significant amount of published research finds that the structure of a principal and an agent (i.e., our AB dyad) paring is significantly shaped by the attitudes, interests, agency costs, time, and power dynamics that each actor possesses and how those independent variables impact how the AB dyad operates as a unified whole.

Considering that power differential might exist in the AB dyad, the relationship may be hierarchical. The AB dyads represent power differentials in a handful of ways. What most often comes to mind is coercive or exploited behavior, which is what many critics of the principal-agent point at to suggest that proxy language is hurtful and harmful to because it contributes to the delegitimization and control of an agent. However, this is an incomplete view, and does not resonate with longstanding proxy war scholarship, which finds a spectrum of agents within a state’s bullpen of potential proxies, and that proxies often place their own self-interest alongside those of their principal. This can be best appreciated as the agency costs that A incurs when integrated into an AB dyad. Likewise, this can be seen as the emergence of divergent interests between the A and B. Continuing with the AB dyad model, in a practical situation, the Ukrainian military’s attack into Kursk (August 2024) and the Iraqi security force’s attack on Iraqi Kurdistan in October 2017 are both examples of B placing their self-interest ahead of A. Proxy war scholarship’s transactional relationship provides a good starting point for better understanding the dynamics of this type of AB dyad, and its potential behavior. The transactional dyad finds that B, that is, the proxy, will diverge from supporting A in their mutual interests if or when B’s primary security interests are met, or when an opportunity to accomplish a tertiary interest presents itself as a viable opportunity. See figure 1.

Figure 1: Transactional Dyad Relationship

In this situation, B’s actions can often result in A chasing the former to maintain the dyad and continue pursuing their own self-interest. In other cases, A and B’s relationship diverges altogether once their mutual interests have been met, and each actor pursues their self-interest. See figure 2.

Figure 2: Transactional Dyad Relationship

On the other hand, coercive and exploitative behavior generally does not exist between a principal and agents who are private military companies (PMCs), like Wagner Group. PMCs tend to operate independently – that is, under their own commanders – while the principal fosters a supporting relationship and manages their employment far more than controls their forces. It must be noted, however, that if (and when) PMCs go rogue, like Wagner Group did in July 2023, then the principal tightens its hold on the PMC, changing from supporting the group to establishing a hierarchical relationship and transitioning from managing their operations to control their forces.

Coercive and exploitative behavior, nor controlling attitudes, also don’t tend to follow AB dyads in which the agent is another state or a culturally symmetric intercessor. In those relationships, strategic-level agency costs are often low – though this might not be the case at the tactical level – and therefore, the principal supports the proxy with intelligence, equipment, weapons, financial, and combat advising, while managing – not controlling – them on the battlefield. The idea of state-to-state AB dyads and that those relationships differ significantly from coerced or exploitative AB dyads is a longstanding idea in proxy war scholarship (summarized in Table 1).

Table 1: Principal-Proxy Relationships Actor BType of Actor (B)RelationshipAgency CostA Leads B Actor ACoercedNon-stateHierarchical HighControl Actor AExploitedNon-stateAdvisingModerateManage Actor ATransactionalStateSupportingHighManage Actor ACulturalState & Non-stateSituationalSituationalSituational Actor AContractualNon-state (PMC)SupportingLowManage

To suggest that proxy agency is minimalized, that hierarchical implications are misleading, local interests are underrepresented, that control of a proxy is misrepresented, or that the scholarship oversimplifies complex principal-proxy relationships is either a disingenuous bending of existing proxy scholarship, illustrates a serious gap of awareness regarding existing proxy war scholarship, or is a cognitive trap door intended to advance an idealistic position regarding proxy strategy.

Two examples of US proxy strategy are helpful to parse how proxy strategies and AB dyads fit within a general military strategy. Moreover, these examples help illustrate how perspective – or which actor or analytical lenses the research uses – impacts and shapes one’s findings.

Soviet-Afghan War

Considering the importance of perspective, it is correct to state that within the Soviet-Afghan War, the US was fighting a proxy war against the Soviet Union. Or if we accept that there are no proxy wars, the US was using a proxy strategy in its war against the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, the Soviets and Afghans were fighting a war against one another for political primacy in Afghanistan. Both the Soviets and Afghans’ methods of warfare included conventional and irregular warfighting. The Soviets were generally engaged in this conflict alone, whereas the Afghans received external support (courtesy of the US’s proxy strategy) from the US and many other donors.

Considering hierarchical relationships, local agency, and control, one must remember that the US did not create the Afghan fighting forces but tapped into multiple existing local networks. The US deployed advisors to the battlefield to offset the cost of working through local fighters, and to advise and training the Afghans on tactics and weapon system employment.

Using Table 1 as a guide, the Afghans were an exploited proxy. This meant that the US engaged in an advising relationship with the Afghans. The US-Afghan AB dyad came with moderate agency costs. One of example of this was the concern that the US had for its Stinger missiles – a new technology and one that turned the war in favor of the Afghans – going “missing” during the conflict. Nonetheless, the US sought to manage the Afghans, but certainly not control them during the conflict.

Russo-Ukrainian War

The Russo-Ukrainian War is another example where the phrase “proxy war” creates problems. Like the example provided above, in Ukraine, Russia is fighting against Kyiv’s military forces for political agency over Ukraine and for control of significant portions of Ukrainian territory. Thankfully, Ukrainian success at the outset of the conflict, coupled with many strategic and tactical missteps on the part of Russia, prevented Russia from annexing Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other significant sources of Ukrainian sovereignty.

Nonetheless, the war continues to rage in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine. The war between the Russia and Ukraine remains a blend of conventional and irregular warfare. Due to the voracity of the conflict, both sides have received external support to keep the flames of war appropriately stoked. Russia has received helped from China, North Korea, Iran, and some smaller states. Ukraine has received significant support from the US, Poland, the UK, Germany, and other states from across the globe.

Quickly seizing on the opportunity to defeat Russia’s attempt to annex Ukraine and stymy Moscow’s efforts at undercutting Western political, economic, and ideological beliefs throughout southern and eastern Europe, the US rapidly crafted a proxy strategy that brought the US and Ukraine into a transactional AB dyad. Desperate for help and needing significant military assistance, Ukraine stepped into the role of B. In this capacity, a supporting relationship took hold of the US-Ukraine AB dyad. Furthermore, because of Ukraine’s status as a fully functioning state, with all the institutions and bureaucracy required for self-control, the dyad had low agency costs, and the US only sought to manage aspects of the military operation. Thus, the US provides little in the way of advising and controlling the Ukrainian military, but rather supplies Kyiv with the materiel and financing it needs to defeat Russia on the battlefield. The establishment of Task Force Dragon, and later, the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U) reinforces this point. SAG-U serves as the coordination point, “To enable donor countries from around the world to provide military equipment, training, and aid to Ukraine.” SAG-U is a more formal response to the immediacy of Task Force Dragon, which served the same basic function. Nevertheless, both Task Force Dragon and SAG-U are the primary conduits for the US fulfilling its proxy strategy in Ukraine. Reference Figure 1 for a visual depiction of this interaction.

A Word on the Use of Language

Proxy is not a pejorative. Let’s not forget that writer’s express clear thinking about a subject through clear, precise writing. Academic or professional jargon, buzzwords, and flourishes diminish the value of knowledge transmissions. The fewer words an author uses to explain an idea or concept the better understanding the writer has for the content, but also, the more they help the novice understand the content in question. Thus, the goal of writing is to use as few, and most accurate, words as possible to explain a concept. This goal holds truth whether one is writing for an academic audience, in a professional situation, or in any other environment in which the transition of knowledge between the holder of the knowledge and the seeker of knowledge is critical.

Bringing this back to the discussion on the use of the term proxy, the confluence of adjectives to describe a proxy violates the most basic tenets of useful writing. Proxy is clear – an actor doing something for another actor. Proxy does not imply hierarchy, but instead it implies a situationally dependent relationship between two strategic actors (i.e., the AB dyad). Furthermore, proxy strategy is clear – it is a war in which an actor is fighting in a war for another actor, and conversely, a war in which one actor relies on the combat actions of another actor to help fulfill the former’s strategic interests. The confusion with both terms arises from the work of academics who have over-engineered the ideas to fit a host of non-causal oriented proclivities.

Moreover, there are no implications of hierarchy, nor sweeping aside of the proxy’s self-interest in the use of proxy terminology. Individuals and institutions who over-generalize proxy war and do not account for the importance of the structural dynamics of AB dyads are where the devaluing of proxies and their self-interest enter the equation. Or, perhaps more importantly, scholarship, reporting, and field reports that attempt to cull lessons from one conflict and then superimpose observations across the field of proxy war studies encourages the growth of over-generalization and missing the salience of structural dynamics of AB dyads contributes to this problem more than we appreciate.

Thus, instead of lamenting the language of proxy war, scholars, practitioners, analysts, and others interested in proxy war must examine the scholarship more broadly, perhaps getting off of the beaten path of well-worn literature. Scholars, practitioners, analysts, and others must look at the rich field of research that empirically refutes and offers alternative insight into the challenges of proxy war. The information is out there, it is just up to the reader to find it.

Lastly, in doing this analysis, one must not take government press releases at face value. This is because many of these releases are just as much about government narratives as they are about stating true policy and strategy goals. Moreover, government, senior civilian military leaders, and commanders are equally sensitive to the argument that the use of the word proxy comes with negative and potentially demeaning connotations. They therefore don’t often use the term proxy publicly, or in official policy and strategy. It is therefore incumbent on the scholar and researcher to accurately report on causality and empirical evidence, and not get swept away in the pleasantries of advancing political narratives.

Conclusion

The concept of proxy, proxies, and proxy strategy is not a pejorative. Nor is it time to retire the term proxy and the phrase proxy war. If anything, it is time to retire emotive interpretations of international affairs. Flourished interpretations of international affairs and armed conflict offer little in the way of beneficial contribution to the study of proxy strategy and must be cast aside because strategic competition doesn’t operate on kindly deference to other actors’ strategic interests. Strategic competition, instead, is the product of states and other actors, vigorously striving to maintain their own survival, extend their influence, and advance their respective foreign policy goals in a competitive global order. Though this occurs within the limits of their resources, and those they can obtain through proxy strategies (among many other strategies), the pursuit and maintenance of a state’s strategic interest comes at the cost of others.

Lastly, scholars and others dedicated to the study and ontological improvement of proxy war studies must use simple theories and definitions to explain proxy strategy and its place within foreign policy and armed conflict. Proxy strategic theory can be reduced to a basic theory: P=AB→C. Yet within that general theory of proxy strategy, several supporting theories of proxy strategy provide ballast to our theory. The deniability strategy – the basic post-Cold war methodology – and today’s minimalist strategy are the two primary strategic approaches in post-Cold War proxy application. Strategic relationships – outlined earlier in this article – provide the structure to explain how AB dyads operate in minimalist strategies on contemporary battlefields. Moreover, those strategic relationships illustrate that many of the cries of whimsical idealists about proxies losing agency as a result of the language interwoven throughout proxy war literature prove to be little more than strawmen. As a result, we must collectively embrace the sentiment that proxy is not a pejorative, but rather the mot juste.

About The Author

• 
  
• Amos Fox
• Dr. Amos C. Fox is a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University. Amos is also a Contributing Editor at War on the Rocks where he co-hosts the Soldier Pulse and the WarCast podcasts. Amos also hosts the Revolution in Military Affairs podcast. Amos has upwards of 90 publications, to include the book Conflict Realism: Understanding the Causal Logic of War and Warfare. Amos has a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Reading, masters degrees from the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) and Ball State University, and a bachelors degree Indiana University-Indianapolis. Amos is also a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel.

Small Wars Journal · by Amos Fox · November 15, 2024

6. U.S. Must Be Prepared to Expand Nuclear Weapons Force, Biden Officials Say

​We must sustain and improve the full spectrum of our military forces for nuclear warfare, conventional warfare, and irregular warfare. It requires all three for deterrence and winning in warfighting.

The challenge is that we need fiscal restraint to deal with our fiscal crisis and this is in conflict with the requirements for necessary defense spending. As an aside the new administration will do well to focus on its three major constitutional obligations and responsibilities: provide for national defense, regulate commerce to support economic prosperity, and the protection of individual freedom and liberty (freedom to and freedom from) by rejecting tyranny through supporting the bedrock constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers.

U.S. Must Be Prepared to Expand Nuclear Weapons Force, Biden Officials Say

The decision on whether to do so will be left to President-elect Donald Trump

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-must-be-prepared-to-expand-nuclear-weapons-force-biden-officials-say-3f317fc9?mod=hp_lead_pos6

By Michael R. Gordon

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Nov. 14, 2024 8:47 pm ET

President Biden signed a directive this year instructing the Pentagon to develop options to deter aggression from China, Russia and North Korea. Photo: Chris Kleponis/Zuma Press

The U.S. needs to be prepared to expand its nuclear force to deter the growing threats from China, Russia and North Korea, say senior Biden administration officials.

Decisions on whether to deploy more nuclear weapons are being left to the incoming Trump administration, which has yet to spell out its defense plans.

During his first term in office, Donald Trump endorsed all of the major nuclear weapons programs he inherited from the Obama administration and added two new nuclear systems. The Trump transition didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Biden administration’s policy is codified in its “Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning Guidance” and comes as China is proceeding with a major nuclear buildup, Russia is balking at arms-control talks, and North Korea is increasing its nuclear-weapon arsenal.

That highly classified directive, which was signed by President Biden earlier this year, instructs the Pentagon to develop options to simultaneously deter aggression by China, Russia and North Korea. 

Those nations that have been cooperating on military matters, raising the risk that Washington might need to grapple with several conflicts at the same time.

Biden’s policy, administration officials say, stresses the importance of developing advanced nonnuclear systems and deepening military cooperation with allies in Asia and Europe to cope with the potential dangers. The Pentagon, however, is also preparing options to deploy more nuclear warheads should those efforts prove insufficient, given the possibility of arms-control setbacks and further delays in fielding the next generation of U.S. nuclear systems. 

“If current trends continue in the negative direction with Russia saying ‘no’ to arms control, China building up and North Korea building up, there may be a need to increase the number of deployed U.S. nuclear weapons in the future,” said a senior Biden administration official. “The question is can you make it less of a need if you do better on the conventional side and by integrating closely with allies.”

A declassified report on the nuclear employment guidance that will be sent to Congress on Friday doesn’t outline specific options under consideration but notes that “it may be necessary to adapt current U.S. nuclear force capability, posture, composition, or size” to deal with “multiple adversaries who are making nuclear weapons more central to their national security strategies.”

An operational test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile in California last year. Photo: Kadielle Shaw/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Trump will have some ready options to add to all three legs of what is known as the U.S. nuclear triad, which consists of land-based missiles, sea-based weapons and bombers. These potential steps include adding several warheads to the land-based Minuteman III missiles, deploying more nuclear weapons on submarines equipped with ballistic missiles and proceeding with the development of a submarine that carries nuclear-armed cruise missiles, a program that the Biden administration initially canceled but Congress restored.

The Trump administration “will be inheriting some rigorous homework and options,” said Vipin Narang, who served as a senior Defense Department official on nuclear issues until August. “So they can pick up the ball and continue to run with it.”

Those options parallel many of the recommendations in the Strategic Posture Commission, a congressionally appointed panel of former officials and experts charged with looking at security threats from 2027 to 2035. 

Some arms-control experts, however, argue that the emphasis on building up the U.S. nuclear capabilities is misplaced. 

“Investing in conventional capabilities seems to be a much more efficient way to influence adversaries than spending on more nuclear weapons,” said Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit that looks at security issues. “You can use conventional weapons and we have a nuclear arsenal that has been structured to deal with a wide range of different scenarios.”

The current U.S. nuclear modernization program was devised when Washington was actively seeking to negotiate new nuclear limits with Russia, China had not yet embarked on a major nuclear expansion and North Korea’s nuclear program was less advanced. Now the nuclear planning is taking place as the arms-control agreements that regulated the nuclear competition have begun to unravel. 

For decades, a core assumption was that U.S. and Russia nuclear arms could be progressively reduced through reciprocal agreements. But the New Start treaty, which was signed in 2010 and limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 strategic weapons, is due to expire in February 2026, and no talks for a follow-on agreement are currently under way between Washington and Moscow. 

China’s nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles during a military parade in Beijing in 2019. Photo: Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

While Russia has suspended its participation in the agreement, it is still likely observing the accord’s warhead limits, the State Department said in a January report. That will give Trump an opportunity to try to work out a new arms-control arrangement with Moscow, which would ease some of the pressure to add to the nuclear arsenal, at least in the short run. 

A greater challenge, however, comes from China, which rebuffed efforts during Trump’s first term in office and during the Biden administration to be drawn into nuclear discussions. One sign that Beijing might be prepared to take small steps to reduce nuclear risks came in September when it provided advance notice of a long-range ballistic missile test it conducted over the Pacific. 

China, which was estimated to have about 200 operational nuclear warheads in 2018, is projected to have more than 1,000 warheads by 2030, most of which will be deployed on systems capable of reaching the U.S., according to a recent report by the Defense Intelligence Agency. As China’s force grows, the U.S. for the first time will need to deter two nuclear peers. 

The Biden administration has taken a few steps to upgrade, but not enlarge, its nuclear force by announcing it would pursue a new and more potent variant of the B-61 gravity bomb. It also took steps to extend the life of Ohio-class submarines to hedge against delays in fielding its Columbia-class successor. 

“We focused on a ‘better’ approach, not necessarily a ‘more’ approach,” Pranay Vaddi, the top nuclear official on the National Security Council said in a June appearance before the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based group that advocates for limits on nuclear weapons. “But let me be clear. Absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required. And we need to be fully prepared to execute if the president makes that decision.”

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

7. Military suicides rose in 2023, continuing a troubling trend

So many people are working so hard on this tragic issue. We are doing a lot better recognizing that we cannot hide the fact that this epidemic exists but we do not seem to be able to stem the tide of suicides. 

Military suicides rose in 2023, continuing a troubling trend

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · November 14, 2024

Military suicides increased again in 2023, continuing a steady and concerning rise in self-inflicted deaths among servicemembers over more than a decade, according to statistics released by the Defense Department on Thursday.

Pentagon officials downplayed the significance of the 6% rise in suicides from 2022 to 2023 (the latest data available), calling the rise not statistically significant. But they acknowledged “an increasing long-term trend in suicide rates” for active-duty troops despite years of focus on prevention efforts.

“Going forward, it’s our commitment to really invest in tracking these efforts and finding those things that are the most effective,” said Dr. Timothy Hoyt, deputy director of the Office of Force Resiliency.

RELATED

Suicide prevention campaign urges vets to ‘be the one’ who reaches out

American Legion officials hope new partnerships and more focused discussions will amplify their campaign.

“We’re making an unprecedented investment in doing things that work, and our intent is to make sure that we’re able to show that those programs have received sufficient support to really be implemented at scale.”

Military researchers recorded 523 suicides in 2023, the highest total since 2020. The number of active-duty troops was 363, up from 331 a year earlier.

The Marine Corps had the highest rate of suicide, with about 35 cases per 100,000 people in 2023. The Army was just under 33 cases per 100,000.

The Air Force (about 21 per 100,000) and Navy (about 19 per 100,000) saw lower rates. But all four services have seen a steady increase since 2011, when the Department began formally tracking the issue.

The Space Force reported two deaths by suicide in 2023, a figure too small for statistical analysis of force trends.

Officials said the rates generally track with comparable civilian trends, when taking into account how the military skews younger and more male than the general population.

And while Hoyt said the most recent increase does not indicate the problem of suicide in the ranks is rapidly worsening, officials also could not point to evidence that past suicide prevention efforts have helped improve the situation.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin two years ago established a new Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee to generate new ideas on mental health and quality of life improvements to address the problem of military suicide. Early last year, that group issued its report, which included gun safety measures for all servicemembers.

Since then, Pentagon leaders have launched a new campaign to address suicides which includes recommendations — but not mandates — for safe storage of firearms and gun safety. Officials also plan to hire more than 2,000 new mental health professionals focused on suicide prevention in the next four years.

The results of those programs won’t be reflected in suicide figures for several more years, researchers warned.

In a statement accompanying Thursday’s report, Austin said the latest findings “demonstrate the need for the department to redouble its work in the complex fields of suicide prevention and postvention.”

“Our efforts aim to meet the military community where they are in their personal and professional lives — whether through bolstering financial readiness and support, building healthy relationships, improving mental health, or supporting them through life transitions.”

Servicemembers, veterans or family members in need of emergency counseling can reach the Veterans Crisis Line by dialing 988 and selecting option 1 after connecting to reach a VA staffer. In addition, individuals can also text 838255 for help, or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net for assistance.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

8. APEC leaders to open Lima summit as Trump prepares to return to office

​Excerpts:

“While the global economy remains resilient, APEC economies are grappling with persistent inflation, economic disparities, high interest rates and the urgent need to increase investments for a green, climate-resilient future,” said council chairwoman Julia Torreblanca.

APEC is bound to be one of Biden’s last before leaving office, and White House officials insist that his attendance as well as his subsequent visit to Brazil for the Group of 20 meeting next week will be substantive, with talks to focus on climate issues, global infrastructure, counter-narcotic efforts. For the first time since last year’s APEC forum, Biden will meet one-on-one with Chinese President Xi on Saturday. He will also meet with South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol, Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba and Peru’s President Dina Boluarte.

...

The officials say Biden also will use the summits to press allies to keep up support for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia’s invasion and persist in negotiating an end to Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

Still, analysts say he will be overshadowed at APEC by Xi, who arrived Thursday and proceeded to inaugurate a $1.3 billion megaport that is perhaps the clearest sign of Latin America’s ongoing reorientation in the region.

APEC leaders to open Lima summit as Trump prepares to return to office

AP · November 15, 2024

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Representatives from 21 members representing the Pacific Rim are meeting in Peru on Friday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the first global summit since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s victory featuring several major world leaders.

The annual gathering brings together countries and members that jointly account for almost two-thirds of global GDP and half the world’s trade, according to organizers. They confirmed heads of government attending in Lima include outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden, China’s President Xi Jinping, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, among others, as the world wonders how a new U.S. government might upend global dynamics.

Leaders and other representatives will hold closed-door discussions in the morning among themselves, and in the afternoon with members of APEC’s business advisory council. The council met Wednesday and called on APEC nations and members to boost inclusive growth and prioritize the needs of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those led by women and Indigenous entrepreneurs.

“While the global economy remains resilient, APEC economies are grappling with persistent inflation, economic disparities, high interest rates and the urgent need to increase investments for a green, climate-resilient future,” said council chairwoman Julia Torreblanca.

APEC is bound to be one of Biden’s last before leaving office, and White House officials insist that his attendance as well as his subsequent visit to Brazil for the Group of 20 meeting next week will be substantive, with talks to focus on climate issues, global infrastructure, counter-narcotic efforts. For the first time since last year’s APEC forum, Biden will meet one-on-one with Chinese President Xi on Saturday. He will also meet with South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol, Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba and Peru’s President Dina Boluarte.

The officials say Biden also will use the summits to press allies to keep up support for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia’s invasion and persist in negotiating an end to Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

Still, analysts say he will be overshadowed at APEC by Xi, who arrived Thursday and proceeded to inaugurate a $1.3 billion megaport that is perhaps the clearest sign of Latin America’s ongoing reorientation in the region.

The Chancay port will shave 10 days off shipping times to China, which has seen trade with South America boom over the past two decades. Peru’s economy minister in June said neighboring nations are actively modifying their supply chains to benefit from the port, in which total investment will top $3.5 billion.

Ahead of the inauguration at the port, 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Lima, locals told The Associated Press that the development hasn’t buoyed their economic prospects. On the contrary, they said the port has impaired their ability to fish, threatening their livelihoods.

Discontent has been brewing in the middle-class San Borja neighborhood outside Lima’s Convention Center, where the APEC conference is sited. Metal barriers and police equipped with riot gear surround the perimeter where, for the past two days, anti-government protesters angry about a recent spate of gang-fueled violence have shouted slogans demanding that their wildly unpopular presiden t take action against the crime wave.

The rallies have devolved into scuffles with police, who used batons to drive away the more aggressive protesters on Thursday.

___

AP writer Isabel DeBre contributed

AP · November 15, 2024

9. Trump picks former Georgia congressman for VA secretary

​

Maybe one of these days I will apply for veterans benefits and disability.

The buried lede: Mr Collins is a Chaplain in the Air Force. Perhaps the VA will have divine providence (which would be a good thing for our veterans).

Trump picks former Georgia congressman for VA secretary

by Ellen Mitchell - 11/14/24 6:45 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4991854-trump-picks-former-georgia-congressman-for-va-secretary/?mc_cid=ba489fa436

President-elect Trump ​ has announced former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a chaplain in the Air Force Reserve, as his pick for the next Secretary of Veterans Affairs. 

A lawyer by trade and a member of Congress from 2013 to 2021, Collins is a staunch supporter of Trump and was one of his biggest defenders in the House during Democratic-led impeachment hearings against the then-president and attempted to use that stance during an unsuccessful run for Senate in 2020.

Since leaving Washington, D.C., he has served as a legal counsel for Trump, particularly on the MAGA movement’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen in Georgia due to illegally-cast ballots. 

Collins, 58, joined the Air Force Reserve in 2002 after serving for two years as a Navy chaplain in the mid-1990s. He later deployed to Iraq in 2008 as part of the 94th Air Wing at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga. 

In a statement announcing his intent to nominate Collins as VA Secretary, Trump said he will “be a great advocate” for current and former service members.

“Doug is a Veteran himself, who currently serves our Nation as a Chaplain in the United States Air Force Reserve Command, and fought for our Country in the Iraq War,” Trump said. “We must take care of our brave men and women in uniform, and Doug will be a great advocate for our Active Duty Servicemembers, Veterans, and Military Families to ensure they have the support they need.”

10. U.S. commandos retool for China war

​Commandos. Ugh.

Gertz and Miles Yu are referencing the operators (rather than commandos) from 1st Special Forces Group on Kinmen.

"Operator" is another term that belongs to US Army Special Forces. (like "through, with, and by" [Mark Boyatt, 1995] and "special warfare" [US Army Special Warfare Center and School])

'Code of the Special Forces Operator' (1959)

https://arsof-history.org/articles/pdf/v14n1_creed.pdf

U.S. commandos retool for China war

washingtontimes.com · by Bill Gertz

By - The Washington Times - Thursday, November 14, 2024

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

The Army Special Operations Command at Fort Liberty, North Carolina — possibly soon to be renamed back to Fort Bragg, its previous name — is retooling its 35,000 commandos for operations against China.

Last spring, some of the command’s 35,000 special operations forces took part in an unprecedented military deployment to Taiwan’s Kinmen island, about 3 miles from the Chinese mainland, the online military blog SOFREP reported. The commandos were training with Taiwanese military forces under provisions of the 2023 defense authorization law that calls for U.S. military advisers to work with their counterparts on the self-ruled island.

According to SOFREP, the exercises involved U.S. training for the Taiwanese military use of the Black Hornet Nano, a small military unmanned aerial vehicle. The cooperation suggests the outlying Taiwan islands could be used as part of what the commander of the Indo-Pacific Command calls the “Hellscape” strategy.

The strategy involves the use of thousands of armed drones — both aerial and sea-based — that would be used against invading Chinese forces to prevent any rapid takeover of Taiwan and buy time until U.S. and allied forces could arrive in force.

Taiwan’s defense minister at the time, Chiu Kuo-cheng, confirmed in March the U.S. commando deployment near the mainland but declined to elaborate.

“This exchange is for mutual observation, to identify the problems we have, figure out how to improve and to recognize their strengths so we can learn from them,” Mr. Chiu said in March when asked about reports of the commando training.

In addition to Hellscape operations, the commandos are practicing for political warfare and psychological warfare against China.

Kinmen was recently was targeted by military exercises that involved the use of Chinese coast guard ships near the island in an attempt to establish a legal precedent over the outlying islands.

China expert Miles Yu said in a column for the Hoover Institution that the Army commando deployment to Kinmen was a monumental shift in U.S. military and foreign policy that challenged doctrines in place since the 1950s.

“This move not only signifies an important geopolitical pivot, but also breaks a long-standing taboo that has implications for regional stability and U.S.-China relations,” Mr. Yu said.

Until the commandos trained on the island, Kinmen and other outlying Taiwanese islands were viewed as indefensible and geopolitically sensitive to U.S.-China ties.

“This deployment might well be remembered as a pivotal moment when the U.S. took a definitive stand on its commitments in the Taiwan Strait, reshaping regional dynamics for years to come,” Mr. Yu said.

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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11. The Maritime Convoys of 2027: Supporting Taiwan in Contested Seas

The Maritime Convoys of 2027: Supporting Taiwan in Contested Seas

cimsec.org · by Guest Author

2027 War Readiness Week

By Nathan Sicheri

Introduction

The 2027 scenario rests on the notion that President Xi Jinping has directed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready to conquer Taiwan by force no later than 2027. Defeating an invading force will require more than establishing sea control, it will require sustained material support to Taiwan to resupply its armed forces and citizens while fending off a great power invasion. American delays in ship deliveries and the time of technology acquisition within the Department of Defense make it increasingly likely that the force the Navy sails in 2024 will be largely the same in 2027. The next three years of intensive exercises and warfighting development will do more to shape readiness for the conflict than any single capability. These efforts must focus on the key missions and skills that will have outsized impact on wartime success.

Convoy operations for sustaining Taiwan will offer a key method for strategic success. But if the PLA successfully isolates and invades Taiwan, U.S. and allied forces will have only several months at most to effectively resupply Taiwanese defenders. Unknown factors of American public support, Taiwanese political will, and Taiwan’s ability to sustain resistance may mean that decisive sea control may come too late to supply and support Taiwan within the shrinking window of opportunity. The U.S. must carefully consider how to provide logistical support to a besieged island deep within an adversary’s weapon engagement zone and with little enabling sea control.

Blockade Considerations

The debate on how Taiwan should prepare to deter or defeat the PLA includes asymmetric concepts using numerous affordable capabilities, or employing larger conventional assets.1 Regardless of the approach, a central operational problem will be how to sustain Taiwanese defenses and society if the PLA were to blockade the island. Taiwan may not be able to survive a PLA blockade or invasion for more than a few months, whether due to a material, political, or military collapse. Taiwan will require substantial American support to survive.2

Some officials recognize that a Taiwan contingency will likely begin with a PLA-imposed blockade, and how America responds to the blockade will determine whether Taiwan can survive Chinese aggression.3 In a blockade the PLA will likely refrain from firing the first shot to claim some sort of diplomatic high ground, daring America or its allies to shoot first and overtly break the peace. Breaking a blockade can mean different things, including running the blockade, forced entry, or a show of force. But all risk escalation unless the blockading force backs down. Breaking the blockade by force risks outright conflict, potentially leading to a PLA invasion of Taiwan and strikes against American and allied forces in the region. But not breaking the blockade will eventually lead to Taiwanese capitulation. Political calculations amplify the problem, as there is a lack of unanimity amongst the American people for their support of Taiwan against aggression. A 2023 poll showed Americans split on using the Navy to “break a Chinese blockade,” with a majority of Americans opposing putting U.S. troops in Taiwan to fend off an invasion.4

Supporting Taiwan in Contested Seas

Currently the U.S. Navy and allied forces are escorting vessels during strait transits in contested seas, as recently highlighted by Operation Prosperity Guardian, the ongoing defense of vessels in the Red Sea from Houthi attack. While providing critical experience for the sailors under fire, it is crucial that the lessons learned reach the fleet and are adapted to the more complex scenarios that could apply to escort missions in the Western Pacific. As of September 2024, the Houthis have used short-range ballistic missiles, unmanned explosive aerial and surface vehicles, and cruise missiles to attack warships and neutral shipping from the eastern shores of the Red Sea.5 The PLA inventory is far more complex and lethal.6 Most of the weapons employed by the Houthis have been subsonic threats within an enclosed sea, which is much different than the open Philippine Sea where vessels will be susceptible to multi-axis attacks from a wide variety of modern forces.

How modern convoy escort missions work in practice will require considerable time to sort out, hence its importance to begin training for an escort contingency prior to the outbreak of conflict. The Battle of the Atlantic was a continuous work in progress to figure out the multinational coordination required to effectively move men and material across the ocean, initially using lessons learned in the First World War but eventually integrating air power and intelligence to counter 1940s wolfpack tactics. In the modern era, the U.S. Navy went almost 35 years without conducting an exercise specifically focused on screening a cross-Atlantic convoy operation.7

Resupplying Taiwan will be far more complex and demanding due to the PLA’s extensive capability. Integrating numerous resupply ships into a CSG affords them a measure of protection but also creates a distinctly concentrated target that is more inviting of air and missile attack. Distributed operations may disperse the convoys but forces them to rely on the organic missile inventories of their limited numbers of escorts to fend off aircraft and missile raids. Distributed operations, especially for lightly armed supply ships, will shift the key source of survivability to counter-targeting rather than kinetic defense. How may convoys integrate into the counterintelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and counter-targeting concepts of an information warfare commander?8 The tactical problems of survivability and counter-targeting are essential to getting resupply ships into the WEZ and hopefully penetrating deeply enough to resupply a Taiwan under invasion.

America’s most significant advantage is its international partnerships and its ability to generate coalitions. America has four key treaty allies in the Indo-Pacific theater – Japan, Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines. Japan is the best geographically positioned and maintains modern military capabilities. The Philippines is another likely partner but lacks naval power to contribute to convoy operations and sea control, principally providing staging and basing access for American forces. Australia provides basing farthest from the direct conflict area and a capable naval arsenal. Lastly, South Korea is positioned similarly to Japan to provide support for American operations. Allied bases and territories provide potential staging grounds and multiple axes to facilitate resupply, complicating the situation for the PLA. International exercises should integrate Indo-Pacific allies for contested convoy operations from their territories and between key points of resupply.

If convoys approach Taiwan unescorted, the PLA Navy, the Chinese Coast Guard, and possibly the Chinese Maritime Militia would redirect them, board, or attack them. The 2024 Philippine-Chinese dispute over the Second Thomas Shoal forewarns possible tactics for contesting resupply: violent boardings and shoulderings.12 The Second Thomas Shoal and nearby reefs do not hold nearly the same level of political importance as Taiwan, so one can assume vessels inbound towards Taiwan during a blockade or conflict will face more robust threats.

Conclusion

Maritime escort has taken a backseat in recent conflicts due to land route access and uncontested seas, but Taiwan will differ significantly from previous and ongoing 21st-century conflicts. Unlike Taiwan, Ukraine maintains a land border with friendly nations while Israel maintains sea control via allies and access to major sea ports for importing critical equipment. The success of Ukraine fending off Russian aggression without direct American military support, and Israel defending against Iran and its proxies, albeit with direct support, highlights the importance of military resupply. Taiwan suffers from being an island nation dependent upon imports in peacetime, let alone during a conflict. Sealift will be the only way to deliver necessary supplies at scale over a sustained period of time. Airlift and undersea forces can deliver some lightweight resources, but they cannot deliver nearly the same mass as sealift.

The United States must overcome the tyranny of time and distance to preserve Taiwan’s sovereignty. The U.S. Navy will not have the time nor capacity to establish sea control. It must train for contested maritime convoy operations unseen since World War II and develop innovative operational approaches that enable maritime resupply through heavily contested seas. Operation Prosperity Guardian has highlighted the importance of this problem set in the missile age, but the challenge America will face in a confrontation with China will involve far more lethal threats.

Protecting shipping will become a major operational requirement during a 2027 conflict, yet modern U.S. naval doctrine and training places little emphasis on this critical mission. This will prove shortsighted for sustaining Taiwan given how the nation’s survival will be on a short timer for resupply once a major invasion or blockade begins. If America waits for a Mahanian victory to enable unfettered resupply then it may risk strategic defeat, potentially ceding Taiwan to the PRC and having to plan for an even more costly amphibious counter-invasion to liberate the island.

Maritime convoy protection is not simply a byproduct of sea control, but rather a necessary and prominent mission for keeping allies in the fight. It is a fundamental expression of how U.S. naval power underwrites American alliances, yet it is a neglected operation America’s Navy must quickly relearn.

LT Nathan Sicheri commissioned from Virginia Tech NRTOC as a surface warfare officer in 2019. He served as the gunnery officer and repair officer on board USS PORT ROYAL (CG 73) during a Middle East deployment. His second assignment was as the Training Officer onboard PCU JOHN BASILONE (DDG 122) in Bath, Maine. He is currently assigned to Cryptologic Warfare Activity 66 at Fort Meade, MD as a Cryptologic Warfare Officer. He has written previously for USNI.

References

1. Campbell, C. (2024, August 15). Taiwan: Defense and Military Issues. Congressional Research Service. Retrieved September 15, 2024, from https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12481

2. Heath, T. R., Lilly, S., & Han, E. (2023, June 27). Can Taiwan Resist a Large-Scale Military Attack by China? Assessing Strengths and Vulnerabilities in a Potential Conflict. RAND. Retrieved September 15, 2024, from https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1658-1.html

3. Alperovitch, D. (2024, June 5). A Chinese Economic Blockade of Taiwan Would Fail or Launch a War. War on the Rocks. Retrieved September 15, 2024, from https://warontherocks.com/2024/06/a-chinese-economic-blockade-of-taiwan-would-fail-or-launch-a-war/

4. Kafura, C. (2023, November 15). Two-Thirds of Americans Think US-Taiwan Relations Bolster US Security. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Retrieved September 15, 2024, from https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/two-thirds-americans-think-us-taiwan-relations-bolster-us-security

5. Blanchard, C. M. (2024, September 6). Houthi Attacks in the Red Sea: Issues for Congress (10). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved September 22, 2024, from https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12301#:~:text=Since%20October%202023%2C%20the%20Houthis,port%20of%20Al%20Hudaydah%2C%20Yemen.

6. Gormley, D. M., Erickson, A. S., & Yuan, J. (2019). A Low-Visibility Force Multiplier: Assessing China’s Cruise Missile Ambitions. National Defense University Press.

7. Eckstein, M. (2020, February 28). Navy Drills Atlantic Convoy Ops for First Time Since Cold War in Defender-Europe 20 – USNI News. USNI News. https://news.usni.org/2020/02/28/navy-drills-atlantic-convoy-ops-for-first-time-since-cold-war-in-defender-europe-20

8. Barrett, K. R. (2023, September). Make Information Warfare the Supported Warfare Commander | Proceedings – September 2023 Vol. 149/9/1,447. U.S. Naval Institute. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/september/make-information-warfare-supported-warfare-commander

9. Dwyer, M., Tidwell, B., & Blivas, A. (2020, August). Cycle Times and Cycles of Acquisition Reform. CSIS. https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/200804_Dwyer_CycleTimes_V6.pdf

10. O’Rourke, R. (2024, September 24). Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress. Congressional Research Service. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25174318/navy-force-structure-and-shipbuilding-plans-background-and-issues-for-congress-sept-24-2024.pdf

11. Sacks, D. M. (2024, January). Mapping the Unknown and Thinking the Unthinkable: How US Allies Might Respond to a Crisis over Taiwan. East-West Center. https://www.eastwestcenter.org/sites/default/files/2024-01/OP%203_Sacks_01092023.pdf

12. Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2024, August 22). Shifting Tactics at Second Thomas Shoal | Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. Retrieved September 22, 2024, from https://amti.csis.org/shifting-tactics-at-second-thomas-shoal/

Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (February 10, 2024) — The Zumwalt Class Guided Missile Destroyer USS Michael Monsoor (DDG 1001) approaches the Henry J. Kaiser-class fleet replenishment oiler USNS Pecos (T-AO 197) to take on fuel. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Mark D. Faram)

cimsec.org · by Guest Author

12. A task for Trump: stop China in the South China Sea

​But will the new administration stand by its ally? Or will it want to avoid "entanglements?" 

The bottomline question is what is the US vital national interest in the region? The answer to that question must determine the US policy, strategy, and responses.

Excerpts:

In support of this stance, the US could cite the 2016 ruling by an international arbitration tribunal that China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea have no legal basis and that Chinese actions within the Philippine exclusive economic zone violated the Philippines’ sovereignty. But China’s open contempt for that ruling should dispel any hope that the South China Sea’s future will be decided by international law, which is why the US must be prepared to back up such a statement with action.

If the US does stand up for its treaty ally, it can take advantage of the nine Philippine naval and air bases to which it has gained access within the last decade, two of which are located just across from Taiwan and southern China. If it does not, China will continue to solidify its dominance over the South China Sea, thereby cornering the region’s rich energy and fishery resources and gaining the ability to disrupt supply chains and punish countries for acts it deems unfriendly.

China will not stop at the South China Sea. Under Xi’s leadership, China has used a similar combination of deception, bullying, coercion and surprise to expand its territorial control elsewhere, from the East China Sea to the Himalayas, sparing not even the tiny country of Bhutan. As with any bully, the only way to stop China is to confront it with a credible challenger. The US must be that challenger, and it should start by defending the Philippines.

A task for Trump: stop China in the South China Sea | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Brahma Chellaney · November 13, 2024

For more than a decade, China has been using an increasingly aggressive hybrid-warfare strategy to increase its power and influence in the strategically important South China Sea. Countering it will be one of the defining challenges for US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream of global preeminence depends significantly on achieving dominance in the South China Sea and ending America’s primacy in the Indo-Pacific region, an emerging global economic and geopolitical hub. And China has not hesitated to use coercive tactics in service of these objectives.

In recent years, boats belonging to countries whose territorial claims China disregards, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, have faced blockades, ramming, water-cannon attacks, and even bladed-weapon assaults by Chinese vessels. Offshore energy operations endure frequent harassment. Simply fishing in waters that China calls its own can expose a person to a Chinese attack with iron pipes. Such violent confrontations have heightened regional tensions and undermined stability in a crucial corridor linking the Pacific and Indian Ocean.

One might have expected the United States to take action to rein in China’s behavior, especially given its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines. And yet, three successive presidents—Barack Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden—have failed to offer anything beyond statements of support and symbolic action. In 2012, Obama allowed China’s brazen seizure of the disputed Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines to go unpunished.

This was hardly the first time the US had failed to live up to its defense commitments to the Philippines. In 1995, the Philippines requested US help to block Chinese forces from capturing Mischief Reef, just 129 nautical miles from the Philippine island of Palawan. US President Bill Clinton, smarting over the termination three years earlier of America’s right to maintain military bases in the Philippines, refused. Mischief Reef is now an important Chinese military base.

The more China has got away with, the bolder it has become. Following the capture of the Scarborough Shoal, Xi embarked on a land-reclamation frenzy, creating 1300 hectares of land in the South China Sea, including seven artificial islands that now serve as forward operating bases. China has built 27 military outposts on disputed islands, which now bristle with short-range missiles, reconnaissance gear, radar systems and laser and jamming equipment. Its larger islands also feature aircraft hangars, runways and deep-water harbors. By unilaterally redrawing South China Sea’s geopolitical map, China is ensuring that it is uniquely positioned to project power in the region.

Even as China has gradually eroded the Philippines’ security, including Philippine control of areas within its exclusive economic zone, the US has continued to underscore its ‘ironclad’ defense commitment to its ally. Late last year, the Biden administration affirmed that any armed third-party attack against the Philippine military, coast guard, aircraft or public vessels ‘anywhere in the South China Sea’ is covered by the US–Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. Yet China remains unpunished—and undeterred.

What explains this yawning gap between rhetoric and action? First and foremost, the US fears escalation, especially when its resources and attention are being consumed by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Moreover, the US prefers not to weigh in on sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea, where it has no territorial claims of its own. It has not even taken a position on the sovereignty of the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, which China also claims.

The US has, however, made clear that its security treaty with Japan covers those islands and cautioned against ‘any unilateral action that seeks to undermine Japan’s administration.’ It should do the same for the Philippines, stating unequivocally that its treaty commitment to the country covers any efforts to compel a change in areas currently under Philippine administrative control, including Second Thomas Shoal, which China has been attempting to besiege.

In support of this stance, the US could cite the 2016 ruling by an international arbitration tribunal that China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea have no legal basis and that Chinese actions within the Philippine exclusive economic zone violated the Philippines’ sovereignty. But China’s open contempt for that ruling should dispel any hope that the South China Sea’s future will be decided by international law, which is why the US must be prepared to back up such a statement with action.

If the US does stand up for its treaty ally, it can take advantage of the nine Philippine naval and air bases to which it has gained access within the last decade, two of which are located just across from Taiwan and southern China. If it does not, China will continue to solidify its dominance over the South China Sea, thereby cornering the region’s rich energy and fishery resources and gaining the ability to disrupt supply chains and punish countries for acts it deems unfriendly.

China will not stop at the South China Sea. Under Xi’s leadership, China has used a similar combination of deception, bullying, coercion and surprise to expand its territorial control elsewhere, from the East China Sea to the Himalayas, sparing not even the tiny country of Bhutan. As with any bully, the only way to stop China is to confront it with a credible challenger. The US must be that challenger, and it should start by defending the Philippines.

Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). This article is presented in partnership with Project Syndicate © 2024.

Image of a China Coast Guard ship using water canons to attack a supply boat chartered by the Philippine armed forces in the South China Sea on 5 March 2024: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Brahma Chellaney · November 13, 2024

13. How America Lost the Arctic

​Excerpts:

Geostrategic competition is not “looming”; it never left. China has all but internationalized the Arctic, so it really serves little benefit to speak in terms of “non-Arctic” states. For instance, bans throughout the Arctic on Chinese rare earth firms have resulted in more and more Australian companies operating in the Arctic. Biden has allowed the shine of Arctic exceptionalism to wear off, and by dismantling the “guardrails to manage competition and resolve disputes,” Washington now finds itself yet another theater in which it is unprepared to compete with China.

Deterrence requires dialogue just as much as it demands preparatory defense contingencies. Trump 2.0 will inherit an empty Arctic pantry. Obama did the same, handing Trump 1.0, a U.S. Arctic position gutted of regional leadership and respect. Of course, back then, Washington didn’t have to contend with the Chinese Navy or Chinese Coast Guard operating on Alaska’s Arctic doorstep. Trump 2.0 now has the difficult task of prying apart Beijing and Moscow to locate a mutual interest between Russia and the United States in reviving any semblance of “low tension” in the Arctic.

How America Lost the Arctic

The Arctic’s era of “high north, low tension” is over, and Washington may be underprepared for the region's shifting dynamics. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Arctic cooperation ceased, allowing Moscow to pivot toward China and India, expanding supply routes and regional influence.

The National Interest · by Elizabeth Buchanan · November 13, 2024

Geostrategic competition in the Arctic endures despite platitudes of “high north, low tension” in the Arctic-rim state lexicon. However, the window for ensuring collaborative, sustainable development in a strategically benign Arctic arena has closed. Washington just hasn’t realized it yet.

Russia is the Arctic’s largest legitimate stakeholder by way of geography (over 50 percent of the Arctic coastline is Russian territory). Decades of managed competition and collaborative policies protected the Arctic region from broader global politics. Despite the prickly heights of the Cold War and this sharpened period of enhanced militarization throughout the region, communication between Moscow and Washington endured.

In 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Arctic status quo was irreversibly ruptured. Those of us who cautioned against the cessation of Arctic engagement with Russia were branded Putin apologists at best and “useful idiots” at worst. Nonetheless, the Arctic Council (the region’s sole governance forum) suspended work programs with Russia. While select engagement has resumed, Moscow strategically capitalized on the West’s shunning of Russia in the Arctic forum and worked to diversify its Arctic partnerships elsewhere.

China and India have been the main benefactors of Washington’s short-sighted Arctic position. Simply put, Russia has little to no interest in performative Arctic status quo endeavors anymore. This is a critical challenge on the horizon for all Arctic stakeholders, whether in terms of their legitimate national interest (territorial or economic) or global interests in future supply chains and transportation routes. Washington has insignificant leverage to bring Moscow back into the Arctic tent.

Much ink is spilled on imagining the future histories of the Arctic. “New Cold Wars” are hotly debated, and fears of an “Asian Arctic” are routinely hyped. While I have long argued the era of Arctic “exceptionalism” is gone, it is perhaps pertinent to hear from Moscow. So, I asked Russia’s senior Arctic official—long-time Ambassador-at-Large for International Cooperation in the Arctic, Nikolai Korchunov. Korchunov is less sure the Arctic has passed a point of no return when it comes to international engagement, stating a glimmer of “common sense…is still present judging by the statements of some United States representatives” means he is hopeful for a “return to inclusive pan-Arctic dialogue sooner or later.”

China’s rationale for engagement in the Russian Arctic Zone is hotly contested by Arctic experts. Korchunov notes that “cooperation with China facilitates the development of…efficient supply chains,” which is no surprise given the strategic prize that is the northern sea route. The northern sea route is a game-changer that could cut off some 40 percent of the traveling distance of the traditional Suez Canal voyage for goods transiting between Asia and Europe.

Beyond its engagement with Russia, China’s Arctic identity is largely built upon its physical position at the Yellow River Station, Svalbard. Just recently, Beijing celebrated research triumphs at the station, clad with Chinese flags and personnel in military uniform. Does Russia believe the Svalbard Treaty—a cornerstone of the rules-based order in the Arctic—will be maintained? Korchunov diplomatically reiterates Russia’s interest in “its preservation and good faith implementation of all the provisions.” Of course, “good faith” implementation is just as important as interpretation. This is where both Russia and China manage to out-fox us. Washington doesn’t handle “gray zones” well.

Dismantling the Arctic status quo for short-term perceived political messaging gains has backfired for Washington. And it is not just about hard security affairs. As Korchunov laments, “lower effectiveness of existing mechanisms of decision-making by Arctic states on a range of non-military issues (environment, climate change, conservation of biodiversity, resource management, encouragement of sustainable economic development, and promotion of well-being of indigenous peoples of the North) shapes a space of uncertainty and vacuum which attracts other actors.” These actors are not merely drawn to strategic space or saber-rattling opportunities on America’s doorstep; they are looking for long-term economic gain. As Korchunov highlights, Russia has witnessed interest from states and organizations far beyond the Arctic, from Asia, and, more recently, the Arab states.

Washington has yet to realize it has entered the post-exceptionalist Arctic age. The repercussions are numerous. The focus remains on questions of “will they or won’t they” build a deepwater port at Nome (Alaska), or which of the two American icebreakers is not on fire this week? Biden’s Arctic legacy can be summarised in two basic talking points: bans on drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and a second-rate attempt at updating the U.S. National Strategy for the Arctic Region. Washington’s vision for the Arctic (as sketched in the National Strategy for the Arctic) is at odds with the reality of the Arctic today.

Geostrategic competition is not “looming”; it never left. China has all but internationalized the Arctic, so it really serves little benefit to speak in terms of “non-Arctic” states. For instance, bans throughout the Arctic on Chinese rare earth firms have resulted in more and more Australian companies operating in the Arctic. Biden has allowed the shine of Arctic exceptionalism to wear off, and by dismantling the “guardrails to manage competition and resolve disputes,” Washington now finds itself yet another theater in which it is unprepared to compete with China.

Deterrence requires dialogue just as much as it demands preparatory defense contingencies. Trump 2.0 will inherit an empty Arctic pantry. Obama did the same, handing Trump 1.0, a U.S. Arctic position gutted of regional leadership and respect. Of course, back then, Washington didn’t have to contend with the Chinese Navy or Chinese Coast Guard operating on Alaska’s Arctic doorstep. Trump 2.0 now has the difficult task of prying apart Beijing and Moscow to locate a mutual interest between Russia and the United States in reviving any semblance of “low tension” in the Arctic.

About the Author:

Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan is a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Image: Creative Commons.

The National Interest · by Elizabeth Buchanan · November 13, 2024

​14. Fifteen killed in Israeli strikes on Damascus, Syrian state media say

​Under the radar (in more ways than one).

Fifteen killed in Israeli strikes on Damascus, Syrian state media say | CNN

CNN · by Mostafa Salem, Eyad Kourdi · November 14, 2024

Damage following an Israeli strike in Damascus is seen on November 14. Syrian state media said at least 15 people were killed.

Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images

CNN —

Fifteen people were killed and 16 others injured in Israeli strikes on Damascus in Syria, state media SANA said, citing a military source and marking one of the deadliest strikes in months to hit the Syrian capital.

The strikes targeted several residential buildings in the upscale Mezzah neighborhood in the capital and the Qudsaya area in the Damascus countryside, Syrian state media reported. Among those killed were women and children, Syrian state media added.

The Israeli military said in a statement it was striking Islamic Jihad in Syria earlier Thursday and had “inflicted significant damage to the terrorist organization’s command center and to its operatives.” Islamic Jihad is the second-largest militant group in Gaza.

Syrian state media said: “The Israeli enemy launched an aerial attack from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting several residential buildings in the Mezzah neighborhood of Damascus and the Qudsaya area in the Damascus countryside.

“This resulted in the martyrdom of fifteen people and the injury of sixteen others, including women and children, as an initial toll, along with significant material damage to private property and the targeted and neighboring buildings,” Syrian state media said.

Islamic Jihad said the strike killed “a group” of its members in a statement Thursday, but did not specify how many of the militant group were killed.

The group denied Israel’s claims that the strike “targeted military headquarters and centers belonging to the movement,” and instead said the strike hit civilian institutions and residential homes.

Syria’s foreign ministry condemned the strikes on Thursday, calling them “brutal crimes,” SANA reported.

The statement outlined that the attacks on Syria came just two days after the Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh issued a “broad condemnation of [Israel’s] brutal and escalating aggression on Syrian territory,” according to SANA.

The latest assault come after Israeli airstrikes intensified in Syria over the weekend, killing at least seven civilians and leaving 20 injured, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.

The strikes targeted a residential building in the Sayyidah Zaynab area of the Damascus countryside, with women and children among those killed, SANA said.

The Sayyidah Zaynab area, south of Damascus city, is known to have a Hezbollah presence and has come under attack from Israel in recent weeks. On November 4, SANA reported Israeli strikes in Sayyidah Zaynab the same day the IDF said Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck Hezbollah intelligence infrastructure in the Damascus area.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it struck “smuggling routes” between Lebanon and Syria, that it alleges were used to transfer weapons to Hezbollah.

The Syrian defense ministry said on Wednesday an Israeli strike targeted bridges on the Syria-Lebanon border in the Qusayr area of Homs countryside in western Syria, causing “significant damage.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN · by Mostafa Salem, Eyad Kourdi · November 14, 2024

15. Elon Musk Met With Iran’s U.N. Ambassador, Iranian Officials Say

Elon Musk Met With Iran’s U.N. Ambassador, Iranian Officials Say

The tech billionaire, a top adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, was reported to have discussed ways to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/world/middleeast/elon-musk-iran-trump.html

Elon Musk after a meeting in Washington on Wednesday.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

By Farnaz Fassihi

Nov. 14, 2024

Elon Musk, a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday in New York in a session that two Iranian officials described as a discussion of how to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States.

The Iranians said the meeting between Mr. Musk and Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani lasted more than an hour and was held at a secret location. The Iranians, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss policy publicly, described the meeting as “positive” and “good news.”

Asked about whether there was such a session, Steven Cheung, Mr. Trump’s communications director, said, “We do not comment on reports of private meetings that did or did not occur.” Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Karoline Leavitt, the transition spokeswoman for the incoming Trump-Vance administration, said in a statement: “The American people re-elected President Trump because they trust him to lead our country and restore peace through strength around the world. When he returns to the White House, he will take the necessary action to do just that.”

Mr. Musk has emerged as the most powerful private citizen in the Trump transition, and has sat in on nearly every job interview. During a call last week with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president-elect handed the phone to the billionaire. Mr. Musk has played a key role in providing communications capability to Ukraine in the war with Russia.

An early direct meeting between a senior Iranian official and Mr. Musk raises the possibility of a change in tone between Tehran and Washington under the Trump administration, despite a charged history between the president-elect and Iran. One of the Iranian officials said that it was Mr. Musk who had requested the meeting and that the ambassador picked the site.

During his first term Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” and imposed tough economic sanctions on Iranian oil revenues and international banking transactions. He also ordered the assassination of a top Iranian general, Qassim Suleimani, in Iraq in 2020.

In response, Iran’s supreme leader banned any negotiations with the Trump administration and Iranian officials vowed to avenge Mr. Suleimani’s killing. Federal prosecutors said in a court filing last week that Iran had plotted to assassinate Mr. Trump before the election.

But in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election last week, Iran has been openly debating whether it can now reach a new and more lasting deal with the United States. Many members of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s new government favor negotiating, arguing that Mr. Trump likes to make deals and that there may be an opportunity to get the sanctions lifted.

Many in the conservative faction in Iran oppose engagement with Mr. Trump, and any negotiations — or deal — must be approved by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mr. Trump has been an avid supporter of Israel, which has been waging war on the Iranian-backed militias Hamas and Hezbollah since the Oct. 7 attack last year.

On Thursday, in a post on X, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said: “Differences can be resolved through cooperation and dialogue. We agreed to proceed with courage and good will. Iran has never left the negotiation table on its peaceful nuclear program.”

Mr. Araghchi made the comments following a meeting in Tehran with Rafael Grossi, the head of the U.N.’s atomic watchdog.

Analysts said that for all the history of bad blood with Mr. Trump, the Iranians appeared to want to keep the door to diplomacy open. Mr. Trump, too, appears interested, they said.

“Overall, everything is possible with Trump,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group. “He appears to be interested in a deal with Iran.” But some advisers, he said, may favor other approaches, among them increasing the pressure on Iran.

The two Iranian officials said that the meeting with Mr. Musk provided a workaround for Iran, allowing it to avoid sitting directly with an American official. Mr. Musk will, however, have an official role soon. He has been named as the co-director of a new government efficiency agency.

One Iranian Foreign Ministry official said that Ambassador Iravani told Mr. Musk during the meeting that he should obtain sanctions exemptions from the Treasury and bring some of his businesses to Tehran.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations said it would not publicly comment on the meeting.

Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization, and also covers Iran and the shadow war between Iran and Israel. She is based in New York. More about Farnaz Fassihi

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 15, 2024, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Musk Said to Meet With Iranian Envoy to U.N.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

16. Exclusive: Houthi arsenal shocks the Pentagon's top weapons buyer

​Where are all these weapons coming from? (a rhetorical question)

Exclusive: Houthi arsenal shocks the Pentagon's top weapons buyer

Axios · by Colin Demarest · November 14, 2024

16 hours ago - World

• Colin Demarest

Houthi followers carry a mock missile through a crowd in 2023. Photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images

Houthi rebels are brandishing increasingly sophisticated weapons, including missiles that "can do things that are just amazing," the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer said at an Axios event.

The big picture: The militant group has for a year used drones and missiles to strangle waters off Yemen, disrupting international shipping.

• Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante on Wednesday said the Houthis "are getting scary."
• "I'm an engineer and a physicist, and I've been around missiles my whole career," he said at the Future of Defense summit in Washington, DC. "What I've seen of what the Houthis have done in the last six months is something that — I'm just shocked."

State of play: The group's forces menace almost every ship passing by — civilian or military — and have even sent some to the seafloor.

• Two U.S. Navy destroyers were attacked days ago as they slipped through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
• At least eight attack drones, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and four anti-ship cruise missiles were intercepted, according to U.S. Central Command. No injuries or damage to the warships were reported.
• The barrages are said to be in retaliation to Israel's war in Gaza. But many targets have no obvious affiliation.

Zoom out: The Houthis are empowered by Iran. The U.S. considers the regime a national security threat.

• "The Houthis are the only Iranian proxy with anti-ship ballistic missiles," Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Axios. "That is no accident."
• Houthi zeal and Iranian backing, he added, "have proven to be a lethal combination."

Axios · by Colin Demarest · November 14, 2024

17. American fighter pilots explain how they fought an overwhelming Iranian drone swarm in total darknes

​Although not an aviator I think this was pretty amazing by these pilots as well as our entire air and missile defense personnel and systems in the air and on the ground and at sea.

But it is troubling that our ammunition stocks were depleted so quickly.

Excerpts:

It was April 13, and Iran had fired over 300 drones, ballistic and cruise missiles, a far larger strike than the US military had anticipated. Instructed to use every weapon at their disposal to help defeat the attack, Coffey and his crew mate, weapons systems officer Capt. Lacie “Sonic” Hester, came up with a plan.

Speaking to CNN in their first interviews since that night, Hester and Coffey described flying as close as they could to an Iranian drone, well below the minimum safe altitude for the F-15 Strike Eagle, and using a gun — an extremely dangerous maneuver in total darkness, against a barely visible target. They missed.

“You feel the terrain rush, you feel yourself getting closer and closer to the ground,” Coffey told CNN. “The risk was just too high to try again.”

Ultimately, US forces in the air and at sea, including Hester and Coffey, intercepted 70 drones and three ballistic missiles that night. The attack was largely thwarted.

...

Another challenge: The fighter jets’ most effective weapons against the drones were depleted quickly. The F-15E Strike Eagle can carry only eight air-to-air missiles at a time.

“That night, the mission was to shoot down drones with whatever weapons we had available to protect our ally,” said F-15 pilot Lt. Col. Curtis “Voodoo” Culver. “We ran out of missiles pretty quickly…20 minutes maybe.”

Once those were spent, the next task was even more daunting: landing at the US military base, as Iranian missiles and drones intercepted by the base’s Patriot air defense systems exploded overhead and rained debris down on the runways.

American fighter pilots explain how they fought an overwhelming Iranian drone swarm in total darkness | CNN Politics

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky · November 15, 2024

US F-15 fighter pilots describe how they took down a swarm of Iranian drones targeting Israel

03:36 - Source: CNN

CNN —

When F-15 fighter pilot Maj. Benjamin “Irish” Coffey launched his jet one night last spring, he wasn’t expecting to run out of missiles fighting off a massive Iranian attack against Israel.

It was April 13, and Iran had fired over 300 drones, ballistic and cruise missiles, a far larger strike than the US military had anticipated. Instructed to use every weapon at their disposal to help defeat the attack, Coffey and his crew mate, weapons systems officer Capt. Lacie “Sonic” Hester, came up with a plan.

Speaking to CNN in their first interviews since that night, Hester and Coffey described flying as close as they could to an Iranian drone, well below the minimum safe altitude for the F-15 Strike Eagle, and using a gun — an extremely dangerous maneuver in total darkness, against a barely visible target. They missed.

“You feel the terrain rush, you feel yourself getting closer and closer to the ground,” Coffey told CNN. “The risk was just too high to try again.”

Ultimately, US forces in the air and at sea, including Hester and Coffey, intercepted 70 drones and three ballistic missiles that night. The attack was largely thwarted.

Capt. Lacie “Sonic” Hester receiving her Silver Star medal, the third-highest military decoration for valor in combat, on November 12.

CNN

But F-15 fighter pilots, weapons officers, and ground crew who took part in the operation and spoke to CNN described feeling overwhelmed at times as they combated the Iranian onslaught, which was the US Air Force’s first real test against a prolonged and large-scale drone attack. The fighters spent hours in the air that night.

The situation back at an undisclosed US military base in the Middle East was similarly chaotic, as the base’s air defenses shot down Iranian missiles and drones overhead and troops were rushed to bunkers.

Air Force personnel, like the rest of the world, had been waiting and bracing for the expected Iranian strike, a retaliation for Israel’s attack on an Iranian consulate building in Syria that killed several members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“When we were getting our brief to go fly that night, we still had no idea,” Hester told CNN. “It could have just been a bust — just another sortie of flying in a circle, waiting for it to happen.”

Air defense systems at an undisclosed US military base in the Middle East intercept Iranian drones and missiles.

Obtained by CNN

The fighter pilots had not had much time before then to practice, said F-15 pilot Lt. Col. Timothy “Diesel” Causey.

Attack drones “are a low cost, low risk for the enemy to employ. They can send out massive amounts of them and we have to engage them to protect civilians and to protect our allies,” Causey told CNN. “We hadn’t started practicing on a large scale yet.”

The attack drove home how the military will have to grapple with a new generation of warfare that pits multimillion dollar fighter jets against cheap, slow-moving attack drones that can easily evade highly sophisticated radar systems.

“You’re talking about something that is on the very edge of a fighter aircraft’s ability to detect — what we call ‘find, fix, track, target and engage,’” Coffey said. “The best radar in the inventory is in this airplane behind us, and no one really knew whether or not its capability to find these [drones] even existed.”

F-15s at Royal Air Force Lakenheath station in Suffolk, England on November 11.

CNN

Another challenge: The fighter jets’ most effective weapons against the drones were depleted quickly. The F-15E Strike Eagle can carry only eight air-to-air missiles at a time.

“That night, the mission was to shoot down drones with whatever weapons we had available to protect our ally,” said F-15 pilot Lt. Col. Curtis “Voodoo” Culver. “We ran out of missiles pretty quickly…20 minutes maybe.”

Once those were spent, the next task was even more daunting: landing at the US military base, as Iranian missiles and drones intercepted by the base’s Patriot air defense systems exploded overhead and rained debris down on the runways.

Air defense systems at an undisclosed US military base in the Middle East intercept Iranian drones and missiles.

Obtained by CNN

Some of the fighter jets, including Coffey and Hester’s, had to land with a “hung missile” — an emergency situation in which a missile is fired, but malfunctions and doesn’t actually launch.

“This missile — we don’t know if it’s armed, and we don’t know if it’s going to explode on our wing,” Coffey said. “We don’t know if it’s going to explode while maintenance is safing the aircraft. It’s a big deal. And now, as we start into the landing process, we enter alarm red.”

The base had essentially entered a lockdown, signaling an imminent attack.

“Missiles and drones are flying over base, and they’re being intercepted over base, so the alarm red goes off,” Causey said. “Then at that point is really when you see a lot of military discipline and a lot of bravery under fire.”

F-15 pilot Lt. Col. Timothy “Diesel” Causey speaks to CNN in an interview on November 12.

CNN

As pilots tried to land at the base, they saw explosions in the air and called F-15 pilot Maj. Clayton “Rifle” Wicks, who was managing the jets’ operations on the ground at the time.

“Really all we could tell them was stay airborne as long as you can, with the gas that you have,” Wicks told CNN. “Don’t divert, because even our divert airfields – we don’t know what’s going on there either, so if stuff is blowing up over our heads, very likely stuff is blowing up there too.”

Troops on the ground were advised to head to bunkers, but many did not, remaining focused on getting the jets back into the air to continue the fight.

“There was an airman at one point standing next to a fuel truck with tons and tons of fuel in it, just pumping gas into the jet, with stuff exploding over the base,” Culver said. “I mean the courage of that airman, that American, to stand up and do that for an ally, is incredible.”

An F-15 takes off at Royal Air Force Lakenheath station in Suffolk, England on November 12.

CNN

Many of the F-15 pilots, air and ground crews who took part in the operation that night received awards this week for bravery. Hester and Coffey were awarded the Silver Star, the military’s third highest honor for valor in combat. Wicks received the Bronze Star, which recognizes acts of heroism performed in ground combat. And Causey and Culver received the Distinguished Flying Cross with valor, the military’s highest award for extraordinary aerial achievement.

For Culver, the night was emblematic of just how much things have changed for fighter pilots.

“In Vietnam, Robin Olds was shooting down MiG-15s over the Red River,” he said, referring to the celebrated fighter pilot who took down 17 enemy aircraft in the Vietnam War.

“That’s man on man, person on person, one is trying to kill the other,” he continued. “And that is the difference. We went into this understanding that each one of those drones was not trying to kill us in the jet, but potentially, civilian loss of life was on the line. We were engaged in the moment trying to save innocent lives from that air threat. And that is the new nature of this fight.”

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky · November 15, 2024

18. Austin Builds Upon 'New Convergence' of Indo-Pacific Partnerships With 12th Visit to Region

​We must sustain our alliances.

This is an important gift the Biden administration is presenting to the new administration (which is good for the American people). It is our alliances that will contribute to our success against the"Dark Quad" and support us winning not only strategic competition but also the war(s) if our adversaries miscalculate.

Just because some things were done by a previous administration they should not be abandoned by a new administration especially when they are so important to US national security and prosperity.

Austin Builds Upon 'New Convergence' of Indo-Pacific Partnerships With 12th Visit to Region

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3965663/austin-builds-upon-new-convergence-of-indo-pacific-partnerships-with-12th-visit/

Nov. 15, 2024 | By Joseph Clark, DOD News |   

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III departed today on his 12th trip to the Indo-Pacific since taking office as he continues to build upon the strong partnerships forged under his tenure throughout the United States' priority theater of operations.

The secretary will meet with counterparts and senior officials throughout the region as he embarks on a series of engagements in Australia, the Philippines, Laos and Fiji.

The trip will showcase the United States' unwavering commitment to the Indo-Pacific amid what Austin sees as a "new convergence" of like-minded partners throughout the region. 

"We are doing more than ever alongside our allies and partners to take concrete steps toward a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region," Austin said ahead of his departure. 

"During this trip, we will deliver results to advance cooperation, strengthen our relationships, and build an enduring network of allies and partners," he said. "I am proud of the historic progress we've made over the last four years and the depth of continuing U.S. commitment to the region." 

The secretary's first stop will be in Darwin, Australia, where Austin will participate in a trilateral defense ministerial meeting with his counterparts from Australia and Japan. 

During the meeting, which follows the three leaders' most recent engagement during the Group of Seven summit in Italy during the summer, Austin and his counterparts are expected to discuss recent progress the three nations have made with combined military training and interoperability.

Highlighting these advancements, the leaders are expected to announce that Japan will begin integrating its forces into Marine Rotational Force-Darwin rotations where they will train alongside U.S. and Australian forces beginning next year. 

The three leaders will also discuss their three countries' recent advances in combined air and missile defense and information sharing initiatives.

Austin and his counterparts will also tour Royal Australian Air Force Base Darwin, which serves as a critical staging point for annual Marine rotations and regional exercises. 

In previewing the visit earlier this week, a senior defense official emphasized that the upcoming meeting in Darwin further underscores the deepening ties among the U.S., Australia and Japan and represents a "concrete demonstration of just how far this trilateral relationship has come in recent years." 

Following his visit to Darwin, Austin will proceed to the Philippines where he will meet with President Ferdinand Marcos and senior government officials. 

During his discussions, the secretary "will reiterate our steadfast commitment to the mutual defense treaty and discuss ways that we can continue to support the Philippines security through the implementation of the $500 million in foreign military financing that was announced during his last visit to the Philippines," a senior official said.

The secretary will also visit multiple facilities the U.S. is funding to enhance information sharing and capability development, including a new command and control fusion center. 

In addition, Austin will meet with U.S. and Philippine forces and U.S. Agency for International Development personnel who helped deliver nearly 100,000 pounds of aid in response to Typhoon Julian earlier this year. 

Sites established as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement between the U.S. and the Philippines played a critical role in the humanitarian assistance operations in the wake of the storm, further demonstrating the benefits of the deepening alliance between the two countries, a senior defense official said. 

The secretary will also observe a Philippine Navy tech demonstration showcasing T-12 unmanned surface vessels provided by the U.S. through foreign military financing. The T-12 is a key capability used by Philippine forces to protect its sovereignty and operate throughout its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea.

Austin's stop in the Philippines marks his fourth visit to the country since taking office, the most visits ever by a U.S. secretary of defense. 

The secretary's next stop is in Laos where he will attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus. 

U.S. defense secretaries have participated in the forum since 2010 when it was established by the 10-member block of Southeast Asian nations.  

Austin will meet with a range of regional allies and partners on the sidelines of the meeting and reaffirm the United States' commitment to regional security. During this visit, he will announce the first-ever U.S. Department of Defense vision statement for a prosperous and secure Southeast Asia. 

The statement will outline the U.S. vision "for deepening our practical cooperation across Southeast Asia and is a symbol of our enduring commitment to the region," a senior official said. 

While in Laos, the secretary will enumerate several initiatives being taken by the U.S. alongside its ASEAN partners to deepen ties in the region, including an emerging defense leaders program. 

In his remarks during the forum, the secretary is expected to address critical issues facing the region, including China's aggression in the South China Sea and ways regional partners work together to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific. 

Austin's final stop is in Fiji, marking the first visit to the country by a U.S. defense secretary. 

While there, Austin will meet with Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa. 

The secretary is expected to announce that the U.S. and Fiji will begin negotiations on a Status of Forces Agreement that will empower the two countries to work more closely together. 

The two countries will sign an acquisition and cross servicing agreement that will facilitate U.S. logistical support to Fiji quickly in the case of an emergency. 

Austin will emphasize the United States' continued investments in the region, including through recently announced foreign military finance grants. 

Defense officials said the trip underscores Austin's continued engagement in the region as secretary builds upon a decade of progress by U.S. administration in bringing together like-minded nations behind a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific. 

"Secretary Austin has a very unique ability to build coalitions, stich together allies and partners, and use what I think of as a brand of defense diplomacy to bring people to the table that then translates into results," a senior defense official said. "These networks can do very heavy lifting and hard lifting together."

19. SOCOM looking for 'multidomain’ micro drones that can operate in the air and underwater

SOCOM looking for 'multidomain’ micro drones that can operate in the air and underwater

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · November 14, 2024

The acquisition, technology and logistics arm of U.S. Special Operations Command is seeking micro drones that could be launched from a variety of platforms and operate in multiple domains — including in the air and underwater.

A special notice released Thursday told industry that SOCOM’s program management office for remote capabilities is requesting feedback to help identify Group 1 uncrewed aerial systems that could be evaluated next year.

Group 1 drones are at the small end of the spectrum of UAS that the Defense Department uses.

Required characteristics for the platforms that the command is interested in, include the ability to perform multiple mission sets, such as intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance or “kinetic,” according to the request for information.

The term “kinetic,” in U.S. military parlance, generally refers to the ability to strike targets.

“UAS should include modular and durable components that can be replaced, repaired, or configured for specific mission sets … by a trained SOF operator in 30 minutes or less, preferably without tools. Propulsion should be electric, or hybrid based,” the document noted.

Although the drones would be expected to connect to a ground control station, SOCOM also has technology requirements to enable autonomy.

“UAS hardware and software, both on the aircraft and on the ground control station, should maintain a modular open systems approach that allows for the hosting and integration of government developed software for mission planning, command and control, computer vision, autonomy, and collaborative autonomy capabilities, which enable the UAS to work independently and/or together with humans on or off the loop. Government software should be able to interface with the aircraft autopilot, aircraft data bus(es), navigation systems, sensors/payloads, etc. Additionally, the government software should be able to utilize or disable all safety, automated, and autonomous functions organic to the system as delivered by the vendor,” officials wrote.

The drones must also be capable of operating in congested and contested RF and Global Navigation Satellite Systems environments, the document noted.

Other required characteristics for the uncrewed aerial systems include the ability to operate at ranges of 0.5 nautical miles and beyond for at least 12 minutes at standard sea level while equipped with an electro-optical/infrared sensor. They must also be able to cruise at 15 knots indicated airspeed or faster, and be able to launch, operate and recover in daytime and nighttime — including in adverse weather conditions, according to officials.

The list of “highly desired” traits outlined in the document includes an onboard accelerated processing unit with reserved compute power or an independent graphics processing unit to support government-developed AI, autonomy and software.

Officials are also keen on “multidomain” capabilities, including drones that can both fly and go underwater.

“Ability for the UAS to operate beyond its primary role in a maritime environment as an Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle is highly desired. A UAS capable to take off/launch and land/recover from platforms operating across multiple environments to include ground, water/maritime (fresh, salt, and brackish), etc. is highly desired; if intended to land in the water, the UAS should remain afloat till recovery or provide other novel low visibility recovery capability. Ability of UAS to take off/launch and land/recover from multiple SOF operational platforms (ground, aircraft, and maritime vessels) is highly desired,” officials wrote.

SOCOM is also interested in drones that can use multiple control modalities aside from ground control stations, such as first-person view (FPV), augmented reality, or gesture control, the document noted.

Responses to the RFI are due Dec. 13.

Written by Jon Harper

Jon Harper is Managing Editor of DefenseScoop, the Scoop News Group’s online publication focused on the Pentagon and its pursuit of new capabilities. He leads an award-winning team of journalists in providing breaking news and in-depth analysis on military technology and the ways in which it is shaping how the Defense Department operates and modernizes. You can also follow him on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) @Jon_Harper_

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · November 14, 2024

20. Biden’s escalation paralysis has devastated Ukraine

​Escalation paralysis: the single most damaging foreign policy and national security problem with the current administration.

Biden’s escalation paralysis has devastated Ukraine

by Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth, Opinion Contributors - 11/14/24 7:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4988504-biden-administration-ukraine-war/?utm

Bob Woodward’s new book “War” provides a harrowing glimpse into the Biden administration’s national security decisionmaking process. Established early in the war, the White House created its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

President Biden’s self-imposed red line was his evergreen fear of Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. 

Then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley inexplicably told the Kremlin all it needed to know when he asked his counterpart in Russia, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, “under what conditions would you use nuclear weapons?”

Milley was basically asking the Russians, “How far are we allowed to go? What are our limits?” He thus allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to establish our rules.

Gerasimov’s response was this: “If there’s an attack on Russia that threatens the stability of the regime — condition one. Second, is if a foreign power attacks Russia with a weapon of mass destruction — so that’s chemical, biological or nuclear. Third, Russia reserves the right to use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of catastrophic battlefield loss.”

That one phone call gave the Kremlin the roadmap for constraining U.S. support to Ukraine — and the Kremlin has been exploiting it ever since. Biden’s escalation paralysis likely began with this call.

Gerasimov’s third condition to Milley explains the Biden administration’s “just enough” strategy for aid to Ukraine and his “just weaken Russia” approach to the war. As we have argued, the administration’s “fear of winning outweighed the fear of losing. Enabling Ukraine to defend itself became the strategy — a war of attrition that eventually would bring both to the negotiation table was seen as the best course of action. Not for Ukraine — but for the U.S.”

Putin has leveraged that weakness ever since. And the U.S. has obliged. Every battlefield success by Ukraine, every new weapons system provided to the Ukrainian military, was countered with a new Russian nuclear threat.

Tactical and strategic nuclear forces exercises, test launches, aides displaying the Russian “nuclear football” and meetings with North Korea — all designed to reinforce the belief that Russia would respond with a nuclear option.

Enabling Ukraine to win has never been an option. 

“If we do not fully succeed in ejecting Russia from Ukraine, we will have let Putin kind of get away with something,” Biden said. “If we do fully succeed in ejecting Russia from Ukraine, we face a very strong likelihood of nuclear use because Putin is not going to let himself be routed out of Ukraine without breaking the seal on tactical nuclear weapons. So, we’re stuck. Too much success is nukes, too little success is a kind of uncertain indefinite outcome.”

Biden would later say that “if Putin used a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine, the U.S. would not respond with nuclear weapons,” adding that he was not “going to have a nuclear response to battlefield use in Ukraine.” As Bob Woodward concluded, “nuclear weapons were the silent shadow present in all their deliberations.”

The Biden administration chose the easy wrong (arm Ukraine to defend itself) over the difficult but correct decision of arming Ukraine to defeat the Russians and push them out of the country. 

According to retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, Putin “is completely determined to take control of Ukraine … he is also determined to expand into eastern Europe and increase the Russian Empire.” The Kremlin is even integrating 11,000-plus North Korean troops into Russian formations in their Kursk counter offensive. 

However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is determined to secure Ukraine’s independence, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” anchor Kristen Welker, “We aren’t ready to give our freedom to this f—ing terrorist Putin.”

Russian casualties are not a showstopper for Putin — he will continue to press, to create carnage. Putin’s “special military operation” is now nearing 33 months. He has incurred 712,610 Russian casualties. During October, Moscow lost an average of 1,500 troops a day. According to the Ukrainian general staff, Russia lost 1,950 soldiers on November 11.

While the Biden administration attempts to “right the ship” in Ukraine during its final months in office, the incoming Trump team is considering cutting aid to Ukraine and getting firmly behind Israel in its conflict with Hamas. But the two are inextricably connected by an “Axis of Evil” led by Russia.

Keane made this connection on Fox News, “China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are colluding and cooperating and coordinating together and they’ve become so much more aggressive and assertive … It’s not isolated that Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s not isolated that Iran operationalized all of its proxies in the Middle East.”

Sen. Bill Hagerty’s (R-Tenn.) comment on “Face the Nation” about cutting aid to Ukraine to “stop the carnage” is not the solution. It will not stop the carnage — rather, it will simply expedite it.

Russia will fire more artillery, launch more cruise missiles and drones, and throw more bodies into the Ukraine meat grinder until Kyiv capitulates. Ukrainian cities and the civilians who reside there will bear the brunt of the slaughter. So too will the soldiers in the trenches, once they have exhausted their ammunition. 

Biden’s last-minute efforts to disburse the remaining $6 billion remaining from the aid package approved by Congress in April, along with $20 billion in loans to Ukraine, will have no effect on the outcome of the war if they do not also provide precision deep strike weapons and the authorization to use them. Doubling down on defensive weapons will not win the war but only prolong it. Why is that lesson so difficult to understand?

Europe is beginning to get it, however.

If elected German chancellor, Friedrich Merz says “he would push for a 24-hour deadline for Russia to end the war. Should this demand go unmet, he would advocate delivering Taurus long-range missiles to Ukraine.” 

Even the United Kingdom and France are developing much-needed backbone as the second Trump administration looms. According to The Telegraph, “Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron … will discuss on Monday whether Joe Biden … can be persuaded to give Ukraine permission to fire Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia.”

Washington’s best course of action is a Ukraine-first policy — defeat Russia. Ukraine is on the edge of a negative outcome if it is not provided with critical weapon systems to defeat Russian and North Korean troops and their weapon systems in Russia. Israel, on the other hand, can hold its own for now against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Once Russia is defeated in Ukraine, its support to North Korea and Iran will wane.

Trump needs to see a winning hand to get behind. Biden has not enabled Ukraine to win — merely to survive. That said, the Trump administration would likewise do well by remembering Captain James Lawrence’s call concerning the fate of the USS Chesapeake in June 1813: “Don’t give up the ship!” 

Ukraine is that ship — a vessel of democracy in the Black Sea region, fighting for its survival. A Russian win would encourage others within the “Axis of Evil” to pursue territorial aspirations. Preventing that is very much in the national security interest of the U.S. 

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.

21. Will the Department of Government Efficiency Tackle the Pentagon?

​Is national security discretionary spending? Of course technically it is. But if national security is one of the 3 responsibilities of the government - e.g., provide for the national defense, regulate commerce to ensure prosperity, and protect individual liberty and freedom by preventing tyranny, can we afford to make defnse spending discretionary? On the other hand we must seek efficiencies and cost savings or our defense spending can impact our national prosperity. How do we achieve the proper balance?

Excerpt:

 All of which leads to the trillion dollar question. Will Musk and Ramaswamy go after the Pentagon budget, which at $900 billion-plus accounts for more than half of federal discretionary spending? There is plenty there to cut without reducing our security. In fact, with a smarter strategy we could be safer while spending less.

Will the Department of Government Efficiency Tackle the Pentagon?

Forbes · by William Hartung · November 14, 2024

William Hartung

ContributorOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

I am a defense analyst, and cover the economics of Pentagon spending.

Following

Nov 14, 2024,09:19am EST

(Original Caption) 1968-Washington, DC: Exterior aerial view of the Pentagon.

Bettmann Archive

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to create a “Department of Government Efficiency,” co-chaired by businessman Elon Musk and former political rival Vivek Ramaswamy. Both have pledged deep cuts.

In a September 2023 speech in Los Angeles, Ramaswamy pledged to shut down the FBI, IRS, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Education. Just to drive home the point, Ramaswamy said that “[m]ass layoffs are absolutely what I would bring to Washington DC.”

Ramaswamy has failed to explain how the government will be able to carry out basic functions like collecting revenue, enforcing the law, dealing with pandemics, or preventing nuclear accidents once his targeted agencies are no more.

For his part, Musk has suggested that he could cut federal government spending by $2 trillion, nearly a third of current spending levels. This would mean taking a wrecking ball to the government, and it would be difficult to achieve without legislative changes that would allow for reductions in spending on Medicare or Social Security. The easiest items to cut are in the federal discretionary budget, which includes virtually everything the U.S. government does other than entitlement programs like the two mentioned above. But the entire discretionary budget is less than the $2 trillion Musk wants to cut.

So let’s stipulate that cuts in the amount Musk has promised will not happen. He can still do great damage to the social safety net and to programs meant to protect Americans from growing threats like pandemics and severe weather events caused by climate change.

All of which leads to the trillion dollar question. Will Musk and Ramaswamy go after the Pentagon budget, which at $900 billion-plus accounts for more than half of federal discretionary spending? There is plenty there to cut without reducing our security. In fact, with a smarter strategy we could be safer while spending less.

Over the past decade, there have been several studies that have provided blueprints on how to cut at least $100 billion from the Pentagon’s annual budget, from the Cato Institute, the Center for International Policy, and the Congressional Budget Office. Potential targets for cuts include the overpriced, underperforming F-35 combat aircraft; $13 billion aircraft carriers that are vulnerable to modern high-speed missiles; land-based nuclear missiles, which pose risks of sparking an accidental nuclear war; and the Pentagon’s 500,000 plus cadre of private contractors, many of whom do jobs that could be done better and more cheaply by government employees.

All of the above can and should be done, but the only way to get substantial savings is to reduce the size of the armed forces, which now clock in at over 2 million people when regular and reserve forces are taken into account.

But reducing forces will require a change in strategy. The current “cover the globe” strategy, which calls for the capability to intervene anywhere in the world in short order, needs to be abandoned and replaced with a more realistic, restrained strategy that only uses force as a matter of last resort for purposes that can clearly be defined as defensive. The Iraq war would not meet this standard, and the war in Afghanistan would not have been allowed to drag on for twenty years under this approach. Allies would do more in defense of their own regions, and diplomacy would come first in addressing global problems.

It is unlikely that an efficiency commission will tackle the flaws in current U.S. military strategy, but it could go after price gouging, cost overruns, redundant weapons systems, and corrupt practices. Whether it does so will depend on how much political pressure it gets to hold the Pentagon to account. A parallel effort to prevent the commission from gutting essential functions in the name of cost cutting will also be necessary if we are to have a government worthy of the name.

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22. Trump’s Way Could Win the Contest With China Once and for All

​Excertps:

But achieving lasting success will require more than pressuring China for pressure’s sake. It will demand a wider peace-through-strength approach that combines American domestic renewal, enhanced military spending, entrepreneurial dynamism and, critically, the alliance network that Mr. Biden revitalized across Asia and Europe. The incoming administration needs to grasp that this is a crucial piece of the puzzle in confronting China and ensure that a renewed “America First” approach focuses on fair burden sharing among allies rather than excessive tariffs on allies or questioning American commitments to mutual defense arrangements. These would only undermine deterrence and create diplomatic rifts that China would be quick to exploit.

Mr. Trump’s bold style isn’t for the fainthearted. In a time of fierce global competition, he sees balance as weakness and coexistence as capitulation. Yet if he can draw from past lessons, engage with our allies and stay disciplined, he just might be crazy enough to confront China — and win.

Opinion

Guest Essay

Trump’s Way Could Win the Contest With China Once and for All

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/opinion/china-trump-us-rivalry.html?utm

Nov. 14, 2024

Credit...Damir Sagolj/Reuters

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By Craig Singleton

Mr. Singleton is a China analyst and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

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Donald Trump’s first term signaled a historic shift in U.S. policy toward China. His strategic blend of economic pressure, unpredictability, sanctions and tariffs knocked Beijing off balance. It was a turning point: Washington moved from passive acceptance of China’s revisionist ambitions to assertive opposition. The Biden administration has wisely maintained and in some cases expanded on this framework.

Mr. Trump’s second term could help America to win this strategic contest altogether.

China faces an array of challenges, especially a stagnating economy, making it vulnerable to the president-elect’s assertive tactics. If Mr. Trump can couple the blustery style of his first term with a more focused strategy and tighter discipline, the next four years are a golden opportunity to keep Beijing on the defensive and permanently transform the rivalry in America’s favor.

For China, the ideal outcome in the U.S. election would have been another four years of the Biden-Harris administration’s cautious approach. Although President Biden maintained targeted pressure on Beijing, his emphasis on détente and aversion to escalation would have afforded China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the predictability he needs to address his domestic troubles and advance China’s ambitions in critical areas such as technology, trade and the future of Taiwan.

But Mr. Trump isn’t content with merely managing the competition with Beijing. He aims to win it. His zero-sum approach and unconventional tactics — as well as an emerging cabinet of China hawks — are likely to deny Mr. Xi the breathing room he desperately needs and push the Chinese leader into a high-stakes test of wills he cannot easily control or predict.

Despite a decade of projecting outward strength, China is, in fact, a declining power, its rise having been undone by Mr. Xi’s mismanagement, heavy-handed repression and strategic blunders. The country faces crippling debt, record-high youth unemployment and a shrinking, rapidly aging population. His ideology-driven approach, which places the Chinese Communist Party at the heart of economic decision making, has eroded business confidence, spurred capital flight and led to unprecedented drops in foreign investment. China’s era of sky-high growth is giving way to a stagnation reminiscent of Japan’s so-called lost decade, a period of deflation and economic inertia from which Japan has yet to fully recover. Even Mr. Xi cautioned citizens last year to be prepared to “eat bitterness,” a Chinese phrase signaling hard times ahead.

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The U.S. economy, meanwhile, is gaining momentum, and Mr. Trump — who views China’s centrally planned, manufacturing-heavy model as predatory and harmful to American workers — seems ready to aggressively leverage U.S. strength, as he did in his first term. He has proposed tariffs as high as 60 percent on Chinese imports, which, according to some estimates, could shave up to two percentage points off China’s gross domestic product.

The bluster and brinkmanship of Mr. Trump’s first term could also prove invaluable regarding Taiwan. Mr. Xi’s goal is to bring the democratically ruled island under Chinese rule, by force if necessary. Mr. Trump, however, is threatening tariffs as high as 200 percent on Chinese goods if China takes military action. The president-elect summed up the situation best when he noted last month that Mr. Xi wouldn’t dare provoke him over Taiwan because the Chinese leader knows that he’s “crazy.”

Chinese anxiety over Mr. Trump’s return is already surfacing. During the Biden administration, Beijing often struck a defiant tone, accusing the United States of encirclement and containment. But after Mr. Trump’s decisive election victory, Chinese leaders quickly struck a more conciliatory tone, calling for peaceful coexistence and a new era of cooperation.

But America must build on today’s momentum, especially in the high-stakes contest with China over critical technologies such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles and quantum computing — the engines of tomorrow’s industrial revolution. Allowing China to seize the lead would dangerously tilt global power dynamics in its favor, undermining U.S. national security. Mr. Trump recognizes this risk and has signaled he would probably intensify tariffs, export controls and sanctions on China’s tech and manufacturing sectors that have already hindered the country’s economy and its potential for innovation. He may also champion tighter screening of U.S. investments in China’s tech sector, a strategy that has bipartisan support and could impede China’s development and deployment of advanced military capabilities.

Mr. Xi is pinning China’s economic hopes on an outdated, state-subsidized manufacturing-for-export model. But this strategy is highly vulnerable to U.S. tariffs. Mr. Xi might appeal to Mr. Trump’s deal-making instincts by offering selective concessions to blunt the impact of tariffs, but these are unlikely to sway Mr. Trump for long.

Mr. Xi has tools of his own that he can use, but nearly all of them are risky. He could shore up his economy by cutting interest rates, extending tax rebates or further subsidizing exporters. But these are short-term remedies that are likely to worsen long-term economic instability by inflating China’s staggering debt, which is currently estimated to be nearly three times the size of the country’s G.D.P. Striking back with his own tariffs could ignite a trade war that affects U.S. consumers, but Mr. Trump has shown a readiness to absorb short-term political costs for strategic gain, and polls indicate that most Americans support his tariff threats.

Mr. Xi could retaliate by restricting U.S. companies’ access to Chinese markets, but that may further unsettle foreign investors already wary of China’s economic trajectory. Curbing Chinese exports of minerals essential for high-tech manufacturing could also backfire by accelerating U.S.-led efforts to secure alternative sources. Devaluing the Chinese currency would make the country’s exports cheaper, offsetting the impact of tariffs. But it is likely to accelerate capital flight and strain relations with other trade partners.

As a last resort, Mr. Xi could escalate tensions over Taiwan or in the South China Sea, but that risks galvanizing U.S. alliances and inviting a stronger American military presence in the region.

To fully capitalize on China’s current vulnerabilities and secure lasting American advantages, the next Trump administration must recognize the historic opportunity it faces. Today’s international landscape echoes the latter stages of the Cold War, when President Ronald Reagan confronted a weakening Soviet Union and hastened its collapse by forcing Moscow to make costly resource allocation decisions that ultimately bankrupted it. This isn’t to suggest America’s goal with China should be regime change; rather, the United States should aim beyond mere coexistence. It should confidently wield the moral and economic strength of its democratic model until China’s leaders and people recognize that their system is unsustainable and embrace a freer and less hostile path.

But achieving lasting success will require more than pressuring China for pressure’s sake. It will demand a wider peace-through-strength approach that combines American domestic renewal, enhanced military spending, entrepreneurial dynamism and, critically, the alliance network that Mr. Biden revitalized across Asia and Europe. The incoming administration needs to grasp that this is a crucial piece of the puzzle in confronting China and ensure that a renewed “America First” approach focuses on fair burden sharing among allies rather than excessive tariffs on allies or questioning American commitments to mutual defense arrangements. These would only undermine deterrence and create diplomatic rifts that China would be quick to exploit.

Mr. Trump’s bold style isn’t for the fainthearted. In a time of fierce global competition, he sees balance as weakness and coexistence as capitulation. Yet if he can draw from past lessons, engage with our allies and stay disciplined, he just might be crazy enough to confront China — and win.

Craig Singleton (@craigmsingleton) is a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously spent more than a decade serving in national security roles in the U.S. government, focused on East Asia.

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23. With Friends Like These: World War II Advisory Efforts and the Origins of Sino-U.S. Competition

​Interesting history and some important analysis to provoke some thinking.

Excerpst:

The Present and the Past

All of this makes for fascinating history, but the books are also politically salient. While the black-and-white pictures or archaic spellings (“Chungking”) may seem antiquarian, the nature of U.S. aid and empire in Asia is as relevant today as it is sensitive. Reinvigorated defense cooperation with the Philippines, Australia, and Taiwan has brought advisors back to region. In doing so, they inherit generations of historical baggage from earlier alliances and occupations — perhaps none more consequential than the U.S. relationship with China during the last multipolar, great power war. Ignorance of this period presents quotidian risks, like giving offense through naivete (“oh, did you not know about that time when?”) or duplicating knowledge that already exists (“actually, we have already done that”). It also puts U.S. officers and experts at a narrative disadvantage when engaging with counterparts from the People’s Republic of China. Castro and Fredman’s books are “contemporary history” in the sense that though temporally removed, they are also necessary background to understand the present. Encountering this story — of “American Empire” in China and Asia — for the first time in the form of Communist Chinese propaganda would be a poor introduction.

As importantly, Castro and Fredman offer an implicit warning about the power of biases and cultural chauvinism to defeat the good intentions of intelligent people. Promoting deterrence and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific will hinge on an authentic understanding of attitudes in Taipei and Beijing, and for that matter Canberra, Manila, Tokyo, and Seoul. That task was difficult in the 1940s because of U.S. prejudices. In an era of “America First” nationalism and reflexive suspicion toward China, it seems nearly impossible. These books, and the warning they issue about the embedded assumptions of U.S. imperialism, will help anyone interested in improving on the performance of their predecessors.

With Friends Like These: World War II Advisory Efforts and the Origins of Sino-U.S. Competition - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Tommy Jamison · November 15, 2024

Sara B. Castro, Mission to Mao: U.S. Intelligence and the Chinese Communists in World War II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2024); Zach Fredman, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022).

Confucius says, “To have friends come from afar to visit, is that not, indeed, a joy?” Not always, as it turns out — at least when those friends are Americans coming to help in World War II.

This is the argument of two recent books documenting the fractious cooperation between the United States, the Chinese Communist Party, and the Nationalists during the 1940s. Sara Castro, a historian of intelligence at the U.S. Air Force Academy, follows the “bottom up” history of the U.S. “Dixie” Mission to the Communists in their hinterland base at Yan’an. Zach Fredman, who studies the history of the United States and China at Duke-Kunshan University, tells a corresponding story of how U.S. military assistance to the Nationalists — what he calls an “alliance-cum-occupation” — bred an enduring Anti-Americanism in China, even as it helped win the war.

At a moment when the conversation about Sino-U.S. relations is characterized by an “odd mix of mendacity, amnesia, and half-truths,” both Fredman and Castro provide reliable histories that double as cautionary tales. In the 1940s, Americans — often with the best of intentions and considerable skill — got China wrong. They did so, Fredman and Castro argue, because chauvinistic U.S. attitudes (in addition to more mundane bureaucratic frictions) distorted analyses, inhibited cooperation, and engendered resentments. It is unclear if U.S. military leaders and area experts in the 2020s will avoid these same pitfalls. An appreciation of past challenges might help — or at least save the time and pain of learning the hard way all over again.

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A “Forgotten Ally” No Longer

The significance of China’s role in World War II (or the Pacific War, or the War to Resist Japanese Aggression, depending on your politics) has been a subject of debate for several decades. For most of the 20th century, professional and armchair historians in the United States tended to downplay and even degenerate the importance of China in the war. Reading backward from the Nationalist defeat in the Chinese Civil War (1927–49), many portrayed Chiang Kai-shek’s army and political apparatus as inept or, worse still, wantonly corrupt. Illustratively, the senior U.S. officer in China, Gen. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, referred to Chiang as the “peanut”: diminutive, incompetent, and as much an impediment to U.S. designs as an asset. The Communists — viewed through the prism of Cold War tensions — were likewise suspect partners. So too were any number of U.S. “China Hands” who worked with Mao Zedong during the war. The underappreciation was so pervasive that historian Rana Mitter’s 2014 reassessment could describe China as the “Forgotten Ally” of World War II. The Beijing Review offered mostly positive feedback of Mitter’s book in a review titled, “China: A WWII Ally that Should Not Be Forgotten.” Other historians like S.C.M. Paine, Hans van de Ven, and Erez Manela, have likewise worked to rehabilitate China and its contributions to the war.

There is ample reason for all revisionism — indeed, it was overdue. For a start, count the casualties. Estimates vary widely owing to the scale of destruction, but it is certain that millions of soldiers and ordinary Chinese citizens died tying down the Imperial Japanese Army in mainland Asia. Accounting for these deaths is both morally and strategically essential. Then there are the origins of the war: World War II starts in China, either in Manchuria in 1931, or at the Marco Polo bridge in 1937. It ends there as well, with Soviet armies crashing into the heart of Japan’s mainland empire. Finally, consider the prominence of China in the postwar aspirations of U.S. leaders. Franklin D. Roosevelt envisioned Chiang Kai-shek’s China as one of the four policemen of the international order. From start to finish, China was both a crucial combatant in and theater of World War II.

With this broad interest in China’s World War II as a backdrop, historians Sara Castro and Zach Fredman have authored two excellent studies of a more particular and contemporarily relevant set of questions. What did U.S. assistance (successful, attempted, and often frustrated) with the “forgotten ally” look like from the ground up? What can this perspective say about the unraveling of Sino-U.S. relations in the late 1940s? And, critically, how does that legacy — of expectations dashed by misapprehension — affect the present?

The Yan’an Mission

Castro has produced the best account of the U.S. Army Observer Group Yan’an mission to the Chinese Communist Party base in Shaanxi Province (1944–47). This “Dixie Mission” (apparently the nickname evoked rebel forces and was much easier for telegraphists than the formal title) was organized under the auspices of U.S. Army intelligence but included a healthy proportion of Office of Strategic Services operatives. The mission hoped to connect with the Chinese Communists and ascertain a sense of Mao’s capabilities and intentions. Dixie succeeded in linking up, and in some forms of cooperation. After nearly crash-landing a C-47 into Yan’an, Army officers and their Office of Strategic Services colleagues huddled in cave dwellings (like most people in Yan’an), risking carbon monoxide poisoning from fires in the winter cold. Living with the Communists, the Dixie members produced reports, gathered weather data, and worked to build out networks to recover downed airmen.

Despite these achievements, Dixie suffered from substantial limitations, most self-imposed. Castro argues that these were at once bureaucratic and ideological. Bureaucratically, the mission fell afoul of competing U.S. and Chinese interests. U.S. Army intelligence wanted to control information coming out of Yan’an and sparred with the Office of Strategic Services over personnel allocations and analytical judgements. For his part, Chiang Kai-shek wanted to keep tabs on any and all Americans interacting with the Communists. As an unfortunate result, U.S. intelligence on the Chinese Communists was biased by Mao’s arch-enemy Chiang. More corrosively, Castro says, even the savviest of China hands brought with them an implicit cultural superiority born of the Open Door era. Castro calls this “imperial hubris”: a misguided sense of U.S. responsibility over the Chinese. With paternalism baked in, Dixie was never likely to gain authentic insights about the Communists or their revolutionary agenda.

Historians of the Dixie Mission almost always convey this sense of hubris through the same anecdote: the arrival of Gen. Patrick Hurley to Yan’an in November 1944. An Oklahoman, he alighted from his C-47 in dress uniform, letting out a Choctaw “war-whoop” as he did — much to the befuddlement of the Chinese. Just who was this American, and why on earth was this his choice of first impression? Castro, sensitive to the social and cultural dynamics of the Dixie Mission, captures a Chinese response that is still more revealing of the moment and its incongruity. On witnessing Hurley’s arrival, Zhou Enlai turned to the Americans on the flightline, and said, in effect, “stall him” while Zhou scrambled to find Mao and hastily organized an “honor guard” to match the American general and his pretensions.

Today, Yan’an has changed quite a bit from the cave-living days of the 1930s and ’40s. Commonly referred to as a “holy land” of the revolution, the city hosts the monumental Yan’an Revolutionary Memorial Hall. A museum on site celebrates the foreigners that arrived in Yan’an to work with the Communists. These foreigners provided assistance, but also more critically a sense of international recognition. That the U.S. Army and American intelligence services were once welcome in this “holy land” is at once an uncomfortable irony for the Chinese Communist Party and essential context for those hoping to understand the trajectory of Sino-U.S. relations. Castro’s story is a prologue to the present.

Mission to the Nationalists

Zach Fredman shares the goal of revising China’s place in World War II and tells a corresponding story about the United States and the Nationalists. Relative to Castro’s interest in Yan’an, Fredman casts his net across a wider geographic range and “spectrum” of historical actors. His narrative stretches from Chongqing to Burma to Washington, DC, and from the highest echelons of authority down to the latrines and mess halls of ordinary soldiers. Throughout, he argues that even when ostensibly cooperating with the Chinese, U.S. servicemen undermined their effectiveness through bad or misguided behavior: sexual misconduct, racism, unequal living standards, and bad-faith conflicts over strategy. Looking beyond the war’s end in 1945, Fredman contends that the U.S. military, as a result of these actions, transformed in the eyes of many Chinese into an occupying force. In doing so, U.S. troops played into the hands of Communist propaganda. Partnering with the United States won Chiang Kai-shek material and tactical aid, but cost him his anti-imperialist bona fides with his own people — a bad bargain.

Tormented Alliance grows out of an award-winning dissertation, but to the book’s credit, it does not read like a thesis warmed up for publication. It is lively and pugilistic. Fredman’s style benefits from a diverse set of sources, accumulated from archives in mainland China, Myanmar, Taiwan, and the United States. By comparison, Castro works mostly from U.S. archives, supplemented by official compilations of Chinese documents. These collections obviously have biases and gaps, but given research restrictions in the People’s Republic of China, they are often the best available materials. That is especially true for researchers who face additional challenges in mainland China as U.S. government employees.

Fredman’s sources allow him to tell six stories he finds representative of the Sino-U.S. alliance involving housing, interpreters, strategic debates, interactions with ordinary Chinese, sexual relations, and the occupation after 1945. He argues that in all these areas U.S. servicemen managed to alienate their Chinese counterparts. Fredman demonstrates this by focusing on the interpersonal dynamics of the alliance. U.S. servicemembers enjoyed better living standards, casually disrespected Chinese officers, and precipitated a “Jeep Girl” crisis through sexual relations (consensual or not) with Chinese women. U.S. Army leaders stressed, Fredman notes, that “anti-Chinese racism was toxic to the alliance” because it played into Japanese propaganda about “Asia for the Asians.” American military personnel, nonetheless, brought the same assumptions of Open Door imperialism to Nationalist Chongqing that Castro detected in Communist Yan’an. Mao later cited that condescension to discredit Chiang as a “running dog” of the U.S. empire. For Fredman, the big takeaway is this: although the Nationalists benefited from U.S. cooperation — gaining material support and great power status in the form of a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council — Chiang mortgaged his regime’s existence by becoming a junior partner to the United States.

Tormented Alliance is an important work, and quite convincing as an account of the Sino-U.S. experience in China during the 1940s. At times, however, Fredman seems keen to make a generalizable point about the United States, its military, and empire. He begins by staking out the position, “A military alliance with the United States means a military occupation by the United States.” Published in the wreckage of the 2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan (which Fredman covers in the last two paragraphs of the book), it is easy to understand the sentiment. Indeed, to its credit, Fredman’s research should be evaluated alongside related arguments about U.S. imperialism and militarism by Andrew Bacevich, Cynthia Enloe, and Daniel Immerwahr. He shows clearly that U.S. military advisors in China acted functionally as occupiers.

But only the Americans? Were British advisors in China occupiers too? Or the Soviet experts who made their way to the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s? Was Yan’an occupied by the United States? Moreover, alliances and occupations are not created equally. Swedish and Finnish leaders might be surprised to learn they volunteered for occupation by the United States when they joined NATO. Also, empirical work (and anecdotal experience, for what it is worth) shows that relations between local populations and U.S. military bases are more complex than their depictions in much of the academic literature.

The Present and the Past

All of this makes for fascinating history, but the books are also politically salient. While the black-and-white pictures or archaic spellings (“Chungking”) may seem antiquarian, the nature of U.S. aid and empire in Asia is as relevant today as it is sensitive. Reinvigorated defense cooperation with the Philippines, Australia, and Taiwan has brought advisors back to region. In doing so, they inherit generations of historical baggage from earlier alliances and occupations — perhaps none more consequential than the U.S. relationship with China during the last multipolar, great power war. Ignorance of this period presents quotidian risks, like giving offense through naivete (“oh, did you not know about that time when?”) or duplicating knowledge that already exists (“actually, we have already done that”). It also puts U.S. officers and experts at a narrative disadvantage when engaging with counterparts from the People’s Republic of China. Castro and Fredman’s books are “contemporary history” in the sense that though temporally removed, they are also necessary background to understand the present. Encountering this story — of “American Empire” in China and Asia — for the first time in the form of Communist Chinese propaganda would be a poor introduction.

As importantly, Castro and Fredman offer an implicit warning about the power of biases and cultural chauvinism to defeat the good intentions of intelligent people. Promoting deterrence and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific will hinge on an authentic understanding of attitudes in Taipei and Beijing, and for that matter Canberra, Manila, Tokyo, and Seoul. That task was difficult in the 1940s because of U.S. prejudices. In an era of “America First” nationalism and reflexive suspicion toward China, it seems nearly impossible. These books, and the warning they issue about the embedded assumptions of U.S. imperialism, will help anyone interested in improving on the performance of their predecessors.

Become a Member

Tommy Jamison is an assistant professor of strategic studies at the Naval Postgraduate School. The views here do not represent the positions of any U.S. government agency.

Image: United States Archives

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Tommy Jamison · November 15, 2024

24. America’s Last Chance With the Global South

​Excerpts:

If the Trump administration pursues the above agenda, the United States will be poised to gain ground in the global South. But updating its international strategy is only half the battle. Washington must persuade Americans that working with a wider group of potential allies and partners is in the United States’ interest. India’s effort to build domestic support for global leadership by mounting a G-20 road show—encouraging popular participation by creating festival pavilions and scheduling lectures, meetings, and other events in dozens of Indian cities—provides a useful model. The United States can channel and improve on this effort by launching a nonpartisan publicity campaign grounded in the country’s strengths and diversity—for instance, by holding a road show that visits both rural and urban communities to make a targeted case for an effective G-20 presidency. Trump may be one of few salespeople who can sell the G-20’s potential to broad swaths of the United States.

Trump should embrace such a campaign. The G-20’s immense purchasing power offers opportunities for U.S. businesses and workers. From energy innovation to agricultural technology and exports, the U.S. economy stands to gain from the power that the G-20 wields to focus priorities and encourage investment on a global scale. Safeguarding the United States’ supply of crucial goods and inputs demands cooperation across the G-20 countries and the global South.

There are also normative arguments for the United States to prioritize the G-20. By using the forum wisely, Washington can press for joint technology norms and standards to ensure an open and secure digital infrastructure and stronger affinities between the United States and younger democracies such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa. The pandemic upended Trump’s first presidency, demonstrating that cooperation is essential to tackling pandemics, climate-induced migration, and other global threats. Trump’s legacy will depend on his success in preventing another global catastrophe from putting a black mark on his second term.

Trump’s vituperative persona, his enmity toward multilateralism, and his extreme policy agenda could easily sink the United States’ prospects for meaningful leadership of the G-20. But letting the opportunity pass would be a grave mistake. The global South’s growing ambitions make it imperative that the United States embrace new avenues of collaborative leadership. Even Trump should recognize this and take advantage of the unique opening the G-20 presidency provides to mend distrust of the United States and find a way to appeal to countries it cannot afford to lose.

America’s Last Chance With the Global South

In an Age of Great-Power Competition, Washington Needs the G-20

By Leslie Vinjamuri and Max Yoeli

November 15, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Leslie Vinjamuri and Max Yoeli · November 15, 2024

The United States is failing in the global South. Its popularity and influence have waned, and policies that recent U.S. administrations have designed to close the gap have fallen short. Allegations of hypocrisy that countries in the global South now make—centered on the claim that the United States has supported Ukraine but has been complicit in mass death and suffering in Gaza and Lebanon—reflect historic skepticism that Washington’s advocacy for international norms reflects a commitment to humanitarian principles rather than self-interest, and a growing perception that developing countries bear the cost of uneven U.S. leadership. The disproportionate struggle that many global South countries faced in recovering economically from the Covid-19 pandemic only added to their disappointment with advanced economies’ so-called vaccine nationalism. The United States’ rejection of free trade has shrunk sought-after market access opportunities, while new industrial policies raise fresh hurdles. As a result, despite making significant strides in its economic and strategic engagement with the global South, the United States faces a trust deficit.

Countries in the global South have attempted to press the United States for better engagement in multilateral forums. But addressing the trust deficit through these postwar institutions has not been effective, because they have become part of the problem. They have failed to adapt to a new distribution of power, fueling charges of hypocrisy and breeding competitive multilateralism. Antagonistic alternatives—from the expanded BRICS to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—are vying for influence. Neither American nor Western leadership is the only game in town, and more than ever, the United States must earn its partnerships with rising powers such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia.

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election has further raised the stakes. He has vowed to pursue a more unilateral, “America first” foreign policy, championing aggressive economic policies that will buffet emerging markets, antagonizing allies, partners, and adversaries alike, and threatening mass deportations while inveighing against immigrants with dehumanizing language. But Trump will not be able to ignore the global South’s collective demands. The markets and materials that these countries possess will only become more central to solving problems that the incoming president expresses great interest in addressing, such as bolstering U.S. supply chains and securing critical minerals. For the rest of the world, the participation of the global South is increasingly crucial to tackling challenges that Trump tries to ignore, such as climate change and global health crises.

The Trump administration’s success, and the success of administrations that follow, will depend on crafting a strategy that offers genuine partnerships and mutually beneficial opportunities—one that does not reduce the rest of the world to a playing field for countering China’s influence. If Trump keeps up his inflammatory rhetoric and pursues divisive policies, he may only spur more efforts by global South countries and emerging institutions to hedge against the United States in ways that damage U.S. interests.

If his administration can temper its approach, however, it will find a golden opportunity to reap many benefits. In 2026, the United States will assume the G-20 presidency (over China’s objections). This will provide Washington with a unique platform to start rectifying its relationship with the global South: as a multilateral forum that includes the most influential developing countries, the G-20 is becoming an ever more powerful vehicle for brokering deals, advancing shared agendas, and positioning the United States as a problem solver on thorny challenges such as sustainable development, the reform of multilateral institutions, digital connectivity, and energy cooperation. The United States simply cannot afford to botch its G-20 presidency. Its competitiveness, prosperity, and security depend on it.

CENTER STAGE

The G-20 offers a compelling stage for renewed U.S. leadership. Spanning six continents and representing nearly 80 percent of global GDP, the forum includes today’s most powerful states—U.S. partners and allies, as well as adversaries—and has the potential to drive momentum for establishing standards and norms around cooperation on global public goods. Although the G-7 remains an important forum for facilitating international cooperation, it now excludes too many vital partners to anchor an inclusive U.S. global governance strategy. Its primacy has waned: its members’ share of global GDP has fallen by a third since the end of the Cold War, even as G-20 members’ share has held steady. And Trump’s second term threatens to undermine the smaller forum’s greatest strength: cohesion around shared values.

The United States has a strong history of leadership in the G-20. President Barack Obama, along with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, made it a critical forum for international economic coordination during the global financial crisis. But as the United States prepares to chair the body once again nearly two decades later, it faces a different geopolitical landscape. Indeed, since the United States last headed the G-20, in 2008, competition to lead the global South has exploded. New states such as China, Brazil, and India are casting themselves as alternatives to bankrupt Western leadership. Other multilateral institutions, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS, have grown in size and ambition, adopting measures to erode, circumvent, or compete with existing Western-led structures, such as the BRICS’ New Development Bank and its proposed digital currency.

Meanwhile, Americans today are less convinced that their tax dollars should be spent on bolstering their country’s preeminence worldwide. Washington must therefore not only offer a more attractive value proposition to its overseas partners. It must demonstrate at home why developing a better strategy for engaging the global South matters.

KEEPING MOMENTUM

America’s G-20 presidency will follow an unprecedented stretch of presidencies that advanced new priorities and propelled meaningful prospects for reform. Used wisely, a state’s 12-month presidency can set the agenda on key global issues, shape international norms, and spur collective action. Critics of the G-20 are quick to point out that its members have competing and diverse national interests. But that is becoming its strength: the G-20 has a comparative advantage in conferring legitimacy to collective action in an era when many global South states feel that the G-7 is no longer fit for purpose and efforts to reform the UN Security Council’s membership have hit a brick wall.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Indonesia’s 2022 presidency highlighted the need for equitable recovery and emphasized issues related to global health and green and digital transitions. Last year, India leveraged its presidency to advocate reforms in multilateral institutions, calling for “bigger, better, and more effective” multilateral development banks (MDBs) as well as measures to unleash $200 billion in new lending. Throughout its presidency, India specifically sought to elevate the global South’s collective leadership abilities, emphasizing collaboration with Brazil, Indonesia, and South Africa and welcoming the African Union as a permanent G-20 member with U.S. President Joe Biden’s support.

This year, Brazil has likewise prioritized MDB reform and other issues important to the global South, such as sustainable development, poverty, hunger, inequality, and reforms in global governance institutions, including at the UN. South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has committed to pursuing similar goals during his country’s 2025 presidency, including reinvigorating multilateralism; reforming the global architecture for governance, finance, and trade; and accelerating efforts to meet the UN’s sustainable development targets.

The U.S. presidency in 2026 should follow these examples. It is no secret that Trump distrusts multilateral forums, and his counterparts should not harbor any illusions that he will abandon that worldview. But the United States must prepare for a successful G-20 presidency not despite, but because of, Trump’s aspirations for American prosperity and security. In addition to representing some 88 percent of the world’s population and over 40 percent of global GDP, global South states provide fast-growing international markets and strong geopolitical partnerships. India has emerged as a significant global power, displacing the United Kingdom in 2022 as the world’s fifth-largest economy. Africa is home to 24 of the world’s 25 fastest-growing countries, and Asian countries now represent the majority of global GDP and some 60 percent of this year’s growth, much of it coming from emerging economies.

WAKING UP

For the United States to gain the trust it needs to reap the benefits of enduring relationships with these countries, it must foster a more robust and inclusive international order with institutions that facilitate cooperation and provide more evenly distributed benefits. The international order today looks far less liberal than it did even a decade ago, and the consequences are falling on the most vulnerable. Climate catastrophes and wars are displacing tens of millions of people, and the Covid pandemic brought the first jump in global poverty in decades, increasing the number of people living in extreme poverty by 23 million from 2019 to 2022.

Global South countries crave a trustworthy partner. Their optimism that China can offer good-faith partnerships has largely evaporated. Through a combination of coercion and inducement, China has sought to simultaneously expand its geopolitical clout and mitigate its domestic overcapacity challenges by expanding its engagement with the global South. Eleven years after it initiated its Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing is still pursuing such efforts abroad, although its priority avenues have shifted. In the first half of 2023, China signed over 100 BRI-related agreements, together worth $43 billion—about a 20 percent increase from the first half of 2022. Some global South countries still welcome Chinese investment, but Beijing’s selective cooperation—as represented by its “wolf warrior” diplomacy and its truculence in debt negotiations—has only heightened wariness of its intentions and trustworthiness. At present, however, developing countries lack adequate access to U.S. markets or viable alternatives to Chinese investment, so their choices are limited.

U.S. policymakers have woken up to the need for action, but with mixed results. Most recently, the Biden administration conducted a series of high-level visits to global South nations, renewed the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, and invested in new formats to engage partners, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the nascent Atlantic Partnership, which includes 42 countries from Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and the Caribbean. It has also sought to mobilize capital to narrow the immense global infrastructure gap—$15 trillion to provide basic infrastructure by 2040 and $64 trillion to achieve net zero by 2050—through mechanisms including the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI).

But U.S. policy has been unable to deliver adequate economic offers. Some would-be partners are being hit hard by Washington’s embrace of industrial policy and rejection of traditional trade agreements. Although recent U.S. policies have featured bright spots, such as technology diplomacy and novel agreements such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the benefits of such policies have so far been limited, and partners continue to lament the United States’ reluctance to make commitments to digital trade, including its refusal to join 80 countries in signing an e-commerce deal negotiated this summer at the World Trade Organization. The United States has also persistently limited its remaining avenues for engagement to those focused on countering Russia or China. Stressing great-power rivalries may be a way to sell policies in Washington, but it cannot convince states across the global South of the value of U.S. leadership.

MULTILATERAL TRUST

The absence of fresh economic offers from the United States, combined with Trump’s promise of new tariffs, could more deeply alienate global South partners. During Trump’s first term, however, he seemed to recognize, at least in part, the global South’s importance to U.S. strategy. In 2019, his administration launched Prosper Africa, an initiative to increase U.S. trade and investment with the continent. That same year, the administration partnered with Australia and Japan on the Blue Dot Network, an effort to boost high-quality infrastructure investment, but it was soon sidetracked by the pandemic.

The G-20 presidency offers a chance for the Trump administration to build on these gestures. Drawing on the forum’s broad and varied composition, the administration can leverage the G-20 as the anchor of a strategy to increase prosperity for the global South and the United States alike by driving new investment, unleashing economic opportunity, tackling big infrastructure projects, and leading the reform of ossified global institutions rather than bashing them. Since the United States will be assuming the G-20 presidency during Trump’s second year in office, it can offer a well-timed opportunity to demonstrate progress on salient issues in the global South and leave ample time to follow through.

Engineering a global South strategy with the G-20 at its center starts with low-hanging fruit: avoiding incendiary remarks and inflammatory policies that alienate would-be partners. Steering clear of blanket tariffs, mass deportations, or invasions of friendly states is a low bar but an important one. Trump’s appointments to date indicate that he may stick to these plans, but given many foreign capitals’ low expectations of a Trump presidency, they may welcome even modest efforts to rein in fringe voices in his camp.

Establishing a focused global South agenda in 2025 could ensure that by the time Washington assumes the G-20 presidency, it will be able to not only signal its commitment to developing countries but also show results. Trump relishes playing the dealmaker, and during his first term, he often made major threats but settled for minor concessions. His second term offers an opportunity to use economic statecraft more affirmatively to drive more effective outcomes. By embracing diplomacy, participating in reform, and unshackling U.S. economic tools such as financing for development and exports, the next administration and Congress could lay the groundwork for a global South strategy that gives U.S. interests better access to new markets, while also driving forward high-impact projects and local development prospects.

The United States cannot afford to botch its G-20 presidency.

An important first diplomatic step could be a high-profile visit to a global South country in 2025, following Biden’s planned visit to Angola in December. The United States must also embrace diplomacy in international forums—not just the G-20, but also the Quad and the Atlantic Partnership. Multilateral institutions will outlast Trump’s presidency, and he could exert greater influence on their work by leading reform efforts than by inveighing against them. Some Trump advisers, influenced by Project 2025, may advocate withdrawing from international financial institutions, but doing so would be a historic error. Trump can help shape the direction of those institutions as a leading shareholder, for example, by building a relationship with Ajay Banga, the pragmatic businessman leading the World Bank. The expiration of Banga’s five-year term in 2028 will offer Trump the option to renew his nomination and build on a U.S.-led reform agenda. Although the Trump administration may not prioritize developing novel tools and directing robust funding to speed the green transition, at the very least Congress and the administration can fund existing U.S. commitments, send qualified representatives to the MDBs, and play a good-faith role in improving their efficacy.

The most significant, inclusive body through which to pursue a broader set of multilateral reforms is the G-20. The forum can take a leading role in reforming the MDBs, and the Trump administration should start by implementing the recommendations of the Independent Expert Group appointed under India’s G-20 presidency to scale up financing, improve private capital mobilization, and enable transformational investments.

Many avenues for improving U.S. policy toward the global South await action in Washington. Crucial tools, especially for galvanizing private capital, have remained untapped in a historically unproductive Congress. The Trump administration’s priorities should include reauthorizing the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and expanding its capacity. The reach of the U.S. Export-Import Bank would also improve with reforms to raise its statutory default limit, exempt certain classes of loans, and to focus on export value and job creation. Extending and updating the African Growth and Opportunity Act, scheduled to expire in 2025, is another opportunity for engagement that would provide duty-free access to the U.S. market for certain exports from over 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These agencies and programs are not altruistic giveaways; they are essential economic tools that undergird U.S. economic and national security and help American businesses and workers.

At the same time, the United States must keep its earlier promises. This includes taking further action toward targets set by the PGI and helping ensure the success of its funded projects rather than rejecting them because of their ties to the Biden administration. Another attractive outlet could be the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a megaproject unveiled at last year’s G-20 summit but delayed by the war in Gaza. If revived after a cease-fire, this connectivity effort could attract significant private investment in addition to advancing geopolitical goals. Although they are clearly subordinate to urgent humanitarian imperatives, the economic and political opportunities provided by the IMEC could offer yet another incentive to push for a durable resolution to war in the Middle East and dovetail nicely with normalization efforts.

SELLING THE G-20

If the Trump administration pursues the above agenda, the United States will be poised to gain ground in the global South. But updating its international strategy is only half the battle. Washington must persuade Americans that working with a wider group of potential allies and partners is in the United States’ interest. India’s effort to build domestic support for global leadership by mounting a G-20 road show—encouraging popular participation by creating festival pavilions and scheduling lectures, meetings, and other events in dozens of Indian cities—provides a useful model. The United States can channel and improve on this effort by launching a nonpartisan publicity campaign grounded in the country’s strengths and diversity—for instance, by holding a road show that visits both rural and urban communities to make a targeted case for an effective G-20 presidency. Trump may be one of few salespeople who can sell the G-20’s potential to broad swaths of the United States.

Trump should embrace such a campaign. The G-20’s immense purchasing power offers opportunities for U.S. businesses and workers. From energy innovation to agricultural technology and exports, the U.S. economy stands to gain from the power that the G-20 wields to focus priorities and encourage investment on a global scale. Safeguarding the United States’ supply of crucial goods and inputs demands cooperation across the G-20 countries and the global South.

There are also normative arguments for the United States to prioritize the G-20. By using the forum wisely, Washington can press for joint technology norms and standards to ensure an open and secure digital infrastructure and stronger affinities between the United States and younger democracies such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa. The pandemic upended Trump’s first presidency, demonstrating that cooperation is essential to tackling pandemics, climate-induced migration, and other global threats. Trump’s legacy will depend on his success in preventing another global catastrophe from putting a black mark on his second term.

Trump’s vituperative persona, his enmity toward multilateralism, and his extreme policy agenda could easily sink the United States’ prospects for meaningful leadership of the G-20. But letting the opportunity pass would be a grave mistake. The global South’s growing ambitions make it imperative that the United States embrace new avenues of collaborative leadership. Even Trump should recognize this and take advantage of the unique opening the G-20 presidency provides to mend distrust of the United States and find a way to appeal to countries it cannot afford to lose.

• LESLIE VINJAMURI is Director of the U.S. and the Americas Program at Chatham House and Professor of International Relations at SOAS University of London.
• MAX YOELI is a Consulting Fellow in the U.S. and the Americas Program at Chatham House.

Foreign Affairs · by Leslie Vinjamuri and Max Yoeli · November 15, 2024

25. Ukraine’s Trump Tightrope

​Excerpts:

To deal with an uncertain American future, Ukraine’s strategy is straightforward: to explain that a Russian victory would be extremely dangerous for the United States. Not only would it strengthen China, Iran, and North Korea; it would also tempt other autocracies to invade their own neighbors. At the same time, Kyiv can remind Washington that a very large portion of the military aid that the United States has provided to Ukraine is largely spent at home: the American defense industry receives government funds to produce ammunition on American soil by American workers.

From afar, the Zelensky government’s rush to embrace the incoming administration may look like sheer opportunism. But Kyiv is also being strategic. It knows that the Biden administration will have little window for action in the time it has left and that Ukraine must quickly prepare for a different world. What the Biden administration has presented to the press as a final financial package—$6 billion in additional security assistance—was planned a while ago. (In fact, it is simply the remaining part of the $61 billion aid package passed in April.) In the months before the election, Zelensky tried to persuade Biden to support a formal NATO invitation for Ukraine, arguing that it could form a part of his foreign policy legacy. After Trump’s election victory, it is hard to imagine that Biden will try anything so significant. And under Trump, joining NATO will likely be off the table.

Yet the fact is that throughout all the hardest moments of Ukraine’s history, the United States has stood up for the country and its people, making it possible for the nation to survive. Thus far, this has been true under both Republican and Democratic presidents, even when they have differed significantly on policy. It is also true that prolonged war is not something Ukrainians like. Instead of supporting the country “as long as it takes,” as Biden has often said, they would prefer more decisive measures. Whatever happens after January 20, 2025, it will be critical for Ukraine to get further funds and weapons in the remaining weeks of this year. If Trump does try to talk to Putin, Ukraine will need to be in the strongest position possible on the battlefield. Ukrainians know that it won’t be easy to ensure Washington’s continued support. But nothing has been easy up to this point, either.

Ukraine’s Trump Tightrope

Kyiv Must Convince the President-Elect That a Russian Victory Could Hurt Him

By Nataliya Gumenyuk

November 15, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Nataliya Gumenyuk · November 15, 2024

As with many other aspects of their war against Russia, Ukrainians have reacted to the outcome of the U.S. presidential election with a certain dark humor. The morning after the election, Ukrainian social media was full of jokes, including by soldiers commenting that they are “preparing to go home soon, since the war will end in 24 hours.” They were referring, of course, to President-elect Donald Trump’s long-standing claim that he could stop the war in a day if he were elected.

Ukraine has many reasons to be concerned about a second Trump presidency. Trump has not said how he would end the war, or even under what conditions. In his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, in September, he refused to say that he wanted Ukraine to win. He has also repeatedly complained about the amount of military assistance that the United States has been giving Kyiv. In the background, there is his longtime admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who was one of the first Republicans to embrace indifference to Ukraine as a policy position: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other,” he said in 2022. And in polling before the election, where a clear majority of Democrats agreed that the United States had a responsibility to support Ukraine, only about a third of Republican voters said that it did. All this has led many to fear that Washington—by far Kyiv’s biggest arms supplier—might cut off the flow of aid, or even allow Moscow to dictate the terms of peace.

But the reality of the war has made Ukrainians pragmatic: the situation can always get worse, but they still need to adjust and search for a way out to survive. Setting aside Trump’s campaign rhetoric, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is preparing to work with him. After all, Ukrainians lived through the first Trump administration and have some sense of what they are getting: dealmaking and attempts to flatter Putin, but also, eventually, a major sale of lethal arms, including Javelin antitank weapons, which have been critical in the fight against Russia. Zelensky’s task is and will remain to find ways to receive what his government needs to defend the population in the long run.

For Ukraine, then, the meaning of a second Trump administration is complicated. Even if the initial phase of Trump’s return to power is full of speculations, leaks, and disappointments—and even if Washington decides to slow or freeze military aid, causing even more casualties and losses of territory—Kyiv knows that Washington is unlikely to simply cede victory to Putin. It is indisputable that Trump dislikes long and expensive foreign wars. And Ukrainians themselves are ready to end the war—but from a position of strength.

READING THE CROWD

Throughout the war, Kyiv has never taken American support for granted. In sheer magnitude, the United States has provided more military assistance than any other country, and in some crucial areas, like cyberwarfare, advanced air defense systems, and intelligence, U.S. resources cannot be substituted. Yet even a year ago, Ukraine began planning for a future of waning U.S. support. Following the unsuccessful counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, Ukrainian officials interpreted the increasingly negative assessments of the war in the U.S. media as a sign that Washington’s military assistance might shrink.

To prepare for this, the Zelensky government accelerated efforts to expand domestic weapons production and strengthened relations with other partners in Europe, as well as with Canada and Japan. Kyiv also began stepping up its efforts to sell the international community on its so-called peace formula—Ukraine’s multilateral initiative, first announced in September 2022, that aims at recruiting a large group of countries around key issues that will need to be addressed at the end of the war, including food security and environmental damage, as well as the restoration of energy infrastructure and nuclear safety. (So far, some 90 countries have endorsed the formula.)

Ukrainian sappers building defenses along the front line, near Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, October 2024

Oleg Petrasiuk / Press Service of the 24th King Danylo Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces / Reuters

Ukrainian officials have also tried to ensure that if they are forced to negotiate with Russia they will not be alone and that the Ukrainian vision of peace will already be on the table. Ukraine has made clear, for example, that humanitarian issues such as the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia and the exchange of prisoners of war could become the basis for future negotiations.

But whatever the future of U.S. aid, Kyiv has long recognized the need to retain the support of both major parties in the United States. That lesson was learned during Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019, when Trump’s phone call to Zelensky, asking for the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden, became a primary focus of the inquiry. For close to two years, the first Zelensky cabinet had worked with Trump. At the time of the impeachment, Trump was still in the White House, but Ukrainians understood that they needed to engage with Democrats. Conversely, after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, despite the fact that the Democrats were now in power and were their primary interlocutors, Kyiv continued to reach out to Republicans, as well.

That understanding of U.S. politics has been particularly important in obtaining continued military assistance; none of the five Ukraine aid bills could have been passed without Republican votes in Congress. In late 2023, as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives held up a further aid bill, Kyiv began reaching out to even more legislators and others from the Republican camp. In November of that year, Zelensky welcomed Fox News Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch for a meeting in Kyiv. And Ukraine pursued these contacts until the long-delayed aid package was finally approved by Congress in April 2024. In the end, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who had been a skeptic of more U.S. support, was fully persuaded: “I think providing aid to Ukraine right now is critically important,” he said, in announcing his endorsement of the bill.

Kyiv’s courtship continued throughout the presidential campaign. In July, following the Republican National Convention, Zelensky had his first call with Trump since he left the White House, in 2021. (At the time, Trump called it a “very good phone call.”) That month, Zelensky also visited Utah for a National Governors Association meeting, where he engaged with a large group of Republican politicians. Then, in September, Zelensky received Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, and other members of Congress in Kyiv. After the meeting, Graham called for delivering more weapons to Kyiv, noting that Ukrainians are “trying to stop the Russians so we don’t have to fight them.”

Zelensky welcoming U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham in Kyiv, March 2024

Ukrainian Presidential Press Service / Reuters

These efforts culminated in late September, when Zelensky again visited the United States and met with both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. As some analysts have noted, Trump’s willingness to meet with Zelensky during the final weeks of his campaign was not a given, and the fact that he did so shows that he was taking Ukraine seriously. By this point, Kyiv had an additional priority: with the war situation becoming increasingly tough and some Western allies beginning to show signs of war fatigue, Ukraine wanted to show that it had a viable strategy for winning. Thus, Zelensky took the opportunity to present his “victory plan” not just to the Biden administration but to both presidential candidates, as well.

Although its most important parts remain confidential, the victory plan outlined, among other things, how Ukraine would use more sophisticated kinds of weapons to change the reality on the battlefield: by waging a more high-tech war, Ukraine would be able to destroy Russia’s logistics hubs, thereby preventing Russia’s control of airspace along the front and decreasing pressure on Ukraine’s infantry. So far, the U.S. reaction to the Zelensky plan—whether from the Biden administration or Trump’s team—has been hard to assess, but for Kyiv it was another way to make clear that it could work with whoever captured the White House.

LEARNING FROM REALITY

After two years and nine months of fighting, Ukrainians hold few illusions about the limits of U.S. backing. They have long since recognized that the Biden strategy—massive amounts of military assistance, but with many constraints on kinds of weapons and how they can be used—has allowed them to sustain the fight but fallen short of letting them change the direction of the war. At the same time, they are not engaging in wishful thinking or expecting radical breakthroughs with Trump.

Of course, what is said by a head of state must be taken seriously. When Putin repeats that he is planning to destroy the Ukrainian state, it is naive for Ukrainians to think he doesn’t mean it. With Trump, however, it is unclear what he really means when he vows to end the war in 24 hours. For one, it does not appear that he has much leverage with Russia, and there is also little indication that Russia is prepared to listen—unless Trump agrees to allow Moscow to occupy the rest of Ukraine, which seems highly unlikely.

But Ukrainians have something else to go on: how Trump dealt with Russia and Ukraine during his previous term in the Oval Office. Consider the recollections of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. In a meeting with the American Ukrainian community in Pittsburgh just a few weeks before the 2024 election, Yovanovitch described Trump’s press conference in 2018 when he said that he would trust the Russian president more than his own intelligence community. According to Yovanovitch, Trump also refused to push back on Russia over its attack on a Ukrainian ship in international waters in the Black Sea; later, he also canceled joint U.S.-Ukrainian naval exercises. (In 2019, Yovanovitch herself was recalled from her post by Trump.)

In 2024, the Trump campaign was hardly more reassuring. At Trump and Vance campaign rallies that I attended in Pennsylvania and Michigan in late October, neither mentioned the war in Ukraine, but their recurring promises to stop “financing foreign wars” was loudly cheered by the audience. Nonetheless, Trump supporters themselves show a range of views about Ukraine, and even include a sizable number of Ukrainian Americans. In those two swing states, Ukrainian Americans supporting Harris were terrified by the possibility that the United States might end support for Ukraine.

But many others I spoke to supported Trump. Father Jason Charron of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Pittsburgh, who offered a benediction at Trump’s rally in Butler before the assassination attempt, is a vocal supporter of the former president. Many echo the arguments that Trump himself makes: the war didn’t start under Trump, and it was Trump who provided Ukraine with its first lethal weapon—the Javelins.

A Ukrainian soldier unpacking U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles, near Kyiv, February 2022

Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters

Many in Kyiv hope that Trump and his team will become more pragmatic once they start getting security briefings. During Trump’s first term, there was no visible breakthrough, but the level of U.S. support for Ukraine did grow little by little, mainly because over time there was a better understanding of the situation on the ground. That could apply again: once Trump is confronted with what Russia is doing on the battlefield, how deeply North Korea and Iran (a hated enemy of Trump) are involved, and how effective Ukraine can be at destroying Russian weapons, he may see that it is crucial for the United States to do everything possible to prevent a Russian victory.

But in a larger way, Ukraine also understands that Trump’s ultimate policy direction will depend on which people become most prominent in his administration. Trump’s announcement on November 11 that the Republican congressman and retired Green Beret Mike Waltz would be his national security adviser sets down one marker. In the United States, Waltz has been called a Ukraine skeptic, and he is known for questioning U.S. aid packages to Ukraine and claiming that Europe should share more of the burden. He has also said, in the run-up to the election, that there should be some kind of “diplomatic resolution” to end the war.

But Waltz’s precise views may be more complex. During the early stages of the war, Waltz was engaged with Ukrainian civil society members and was adamant in his criticism of Moscow. He also said that Biden was not doing enough to support Ukraine, even arguing, in July 2022, that the United States should send military advisers into Ukraine. “Let’s win this damn war!,” he said at the time. More recently, he has said that if Moscow did not want to negotiate, Trump might try “taking the handcuffs off of long-range weapons we provided Ukraine,” thus allowing Ukraine to raise the cost to Russia.

Also important may be Elon Musk, who in Ukraine remains an ambivalent figure. On the one hand, his Starlink satellite network has been crucial to Ukraine’s war effort. But in the fall of 2022, he denied a Ukrainian request to use Starlink over Crimea, at a time when Ukrainians were targeting Russian warships in the area with no remorse. Musk claimed that he wanted to prevent a scenario in which Putin might use a nuclear weapon. Musk’s move hindered Ukrainian operations, but Ukrainian forces nonetheless managed to make successful strikes on Russian targets in Crimea.

At first, the Ukrainian government held back criticism of Musk, but Zelensky challenged the tech billionaire later that fall, after Musk outlined his own version of a “peace plan” in which he seemed to echo Moscow’s own narratives about the war and suggested that Russia should be allowed to keep Crimea. According to an October report in the Wall Street Journal, it was also in late 2022 that Musk began to have occasional contacts with Putin. (Moscow has denied any contacts beyond a single phone call in which they discussed “space as well as current and future technologies.”) Still, Musk briefly joined Trump’s call with Zelensky after the election, and, according to reports, told the Ukrainian president that he would keep sending Starlink ground stations to Ukraine.

HARD JUST GOT HARDER

There have been many attempts to decipher what Trump means when he talks about ending the war in 24 hours. Apparently, he would persuade Putin to negotiate, although it is unclear how he would do this. (It is possible that Musk, who brags about talking to Putin directly, or that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is friendly with both Trump and Putin, could be potential brokers of such talks.) Even if such a channel were opened, however, it is far from clear what, if anything, it might yield.

Many Ukrainians view the prospect of Putin-Trump talks in the light of Trump’s attempts during his first term to deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. In the end, the special rapport that the former president cultivated didn’t lead to any substantial agreement. And Putin, over whom Washington has even more limited leverage, is a stronger leader than Kim. Already, in the immediate aftermath of the election, leading Russian propagandists have asserted that Moscow doesn’t care about any peace initiatives and warned the United States not to issue ultimatums. They also reiterated that Putin intends to destroy Ukraine. In the end, there is no reason to have the U.S. president be the broker of peace if that role is reduced to pressuring Kyiv to submit to Moscow’s conditions.

Zelensky and Trump at Trump Tower, New York, September 2024

Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

In September, I talked to a group of Ukrainian soldiers close to the Russian border. They freely admitted how tired they were of the war, but they also were unanimous in opposing negotiations with Putin. As they saw it, the Kremlin would use a cease-fire to arm itself, strengthen Russia’s war economy, and prepare for an even more devastating invasion of towns like Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Poltava in the near future. And if that happened, Russian retaliation against the families of Ukrainian soldiers would be extreme. This has already been shown in Russian-occupied territories, where Russian forces have targeted anyone who served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces before 2022. By now, almost every Ukrainian has a family member engaged in the war effort, so every Ukrainian would be a target.

To deal with an uncertain American future, Ukraine’s strategy is straightforward: to explain that a Russian victory would be extremely dangerous for the United States. Not only would it strengthen China, Iran, and North Korea; it would also tempt other autocracies to invade their own neighbors. At the same time, Kyiv can remind Washington that a very large portion of the military aid that the United States has provided to Ukraine is largely spent at home: the American defense industry receives government funds to produce ammunition on American soil by American workers.

From afar, the Zelensky government’s rush to embrace the incoming administration may look like sheer opportunism. But Kyiv is also being strategic. It knows that the Biden administration will have little window for action in the time it has left and that Ukraine must quickly prepare for a different world. What the Biden administration has presented to the press as a final financial package—$6 billion in additional security assistance—was planned a while ago. (In fact, it is simply the remaining part of the $61 billion aid package passed in April.) In the months before the election, Zelensky tried to persuade Biden to support a formal NATO invitation for Ukraine, arguing that it could form a part of his foreign policy legacy. After Trump’s election victory, it is hard to imagine that Biden will try anything so significant. And under Trump, joining NATO will likely be off the table.

Yet the fact is that throughout all the hardest moments of Ukraine’s history, the United States has stood up for the country and its people, making it possible for the nation to survive. Thus far, this has been true under both Republican and Democratic presidents, even when they have differed significantly on policy. It is also true that prolonged war is not something Ukrainians like. Instead of supporting the country “as long as it takes,” as Biden has often said, they would prefer more decisive measures. Whatever happens after January 20, 2025, it will be critical for Ukraine to get further funds and weapons in the remaining weeks of this year. If Trump does try to talk to Putin, Ukraine will need to be in the strongest position possible on the battlefield. Ukrainians know that it won’t be easy to ensure Washington’s continued support. But nothing has been easy up to this point, either.

• NATALIYA GUMENYUK, a Ukrainian journalist, is CEO of Public Interest Journalism Lab and Co-Founder of the Reckoning Project.

Foreign Affairs · by Nataliya Gumenyuk · November 15, 2024

26. Peter Thiel and the Triumph of the Counter-Elites

​Counter-elites? Peter Thiel is the definition of elite. 

But there are some fascinating insights in this piece.

I may go back and listen to the podcast from a year and a half ago.

Excerpt:

On Honestly, Thiel explains why so many of his peers have finally come around to Trump; why he thinks Kamala—and liberalism more broadly—lost the election; why the Trump 2.0 team, with antiestablishment figures willing to rethink the system, will be better than last time. We talk about the rise of historical revisionism, the blurry line between skepticism and conspiracy, and his contrarian ideas about what we might face in a dreaded World War III.

Peter Thiel and the Triumph of the Counter-Elites

The Silicon Valley billionaire made big—and early—bets on Trump and J.D. Vance. What did he see that so many didn’t?

https://www.thefp.com/p/peter-thiel-honestly-trump-jd-vance

By Bari Weiss

November 14, 2024

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On Tuesday night, Donald Trump announced that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, along with the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, will head a new initiative in the Trump administration: the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE.”

Internet meme culture has now landed in the White House. Dogecoin is a memecoin—and if you don’t understand that sentence, fear not—I am sure Nellie will cover it in TGIF tomorrow.

But what the announcement solidifies—if Trump’s win hadn’t already—is the triumph of the counter-elite.

A bunch of oddball outsiders ran against an insular band of out-of-touch elites supported by every celebrity in Hollywood—and they won. They are about to reshape not just the government, but also the culture in ways we can’t imagine.

How they did that—and why—is a question that I’ve been thinking about nonstop since Tuesday.

And there was one person, more than any other, who I wanted to discuss it with. He is the vanguard of those antiestablishment counter-elites: Peter Thiel.

If you listened to my last conversation with the billionaire venture capitalist a year and a half ago on Honestly, you’ll remember that Peter was the first person in Silicon Valley to publicly embrace Trump in 2016. That year, he gave a memorable speech at the Republican National Convention that many in his orbit thought was simply a step too far. 

He lost business at Y Combinator, the start-up incubator where he was a partner. Many prominent tech leaders criticized him publicly, like VC and Twitter investor Chris Sacca, who called Thiel’s endorsement of Trump “one of the most dangerous things” he had ever seen.

A lot has changed since then.

For one, Thiel has taken a step back from politics—at least publicly. He didn’t donate to Trump’s campaign. There was no big RNC speech this time around. 

But the bigger change is a cultural one: He’s no longer the pariah of Silicon Valley for supporting Trump. There’s Bill Ackman, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Shaun Maguire, and Elon Musk, among many other tech titans who have joined the Trump train. 

On the surface, Thiel seems full of contradictions. He is a libertarian who has found common cause with nationalists and populists. He invests in companies that have the ability to become monopolies, and yet Trump’s White House wants to break up Big Tech. He is a gay American immigrant, but he hates identity politics and the culture wars. He pays people to drop out of college, but still seems to venerate the Ivy League.

But perhaps that’s the secret to his success. He’s beholden to no tribe but himself, no ideology but his own.

And why wouldn’t you be when you make so many winning bets? From co-founding PayPal and the data analytics firm Palantir (which was used to find Osama bin Laden) to being the first outside investor in Facebook—Thiel’s investments in companies like LinkedIn, Palantir, and SpaceX have paid off, to say the least.

His most recent bet—helping his mentee J.D. Vance get elected senator and then on the Trump ticket—seems also to have paid off. The next four years will determine just how high Thiel’s profit margin will be.

On Honestly, Thiel explains why so many of his peers have finally come around to Trump; why he thinks Kamala—and liberalism more broadly—lost the election; why the Trump 2.0 team, with antiestablishment figures willing to rethink the system, will be better than last time. We talk about the rise of historical revisionism, the blurry line between skepticism and conspiracy, and his contrarian ideas about what we might face in a dreaded World War III.

Click below to listen to the podcast, watch the full-length video below, or scroll down for an edited transcript of our conversation.

Bari Weiss: I want to start with a broad question, which is, how are you feeling about this political moment that we’re in?

Peter Thiel: I wouldn’t say I’m ecstatic, but I am relieved. I think I would be incredibly depressed if the election had gone the other way. It’s probably a little bit asymmetric—I’m less happy than I would be unhappy had it gone the other way.

BW: Were you surprised by what happened on Tuesday night? Because some have credited you for predicting it. You said it was going to be a blowout in one direction or the other.

PT: I didn’t think it was going to be that close, and I didn’t think that Harris was going to win by a big margin. If you combine those two things, it’s a way of saying I thought it was going to be a solid win for Trump. There were a lot of early tea leaves that suggested things were definitely trending the right way. But—on some level—I think it was just a collapse of liberalism.

BW: Say more.

PT: I think it’s too narrow to blame it on a senile [Joe] Biden and a goofy Kamala Harris. It was this much broader collapse. It feels like a much more decisive election than 2016, when Trump beat the Republicans—the Bush Republicans—and he sort of snuck by Hillary. She didn’t take him seriously at all.

You can’t say that about 2024. Everyone knew it was going to be the Midwest states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. The Democrats gave it their all. I won’t say that the Democratic Party tried to kill Trump. Certainly the institutions did try to prosecute him. They tried to take him off the ballot. They tried to stop him in every way possible. And so, unlike 2016, it was Trump against the Democrats. The Democrats gave it their all and just collapsed.

It exploded the lie of identity politics, that your identity matters more than the argument. Trump made an argument. J.D. Vance made an argument. They made a strong case, and I think there was no argument on the Democratic side—it was free of substance, free of ideas.

On the failure of celebrities to deliver votes for Harris:

PT: It tells us that celebrity isn’t what it used to be. Celebrities used to have a certain mystique. We think of Hollywood celebrities as these left-wing dittoheads. They may be smart people, but they’re not allowed to articulate smart things. I don’t think there is room for individual thought on the left—certainly not in Hollywood. Hollywood in the 1990s was liberal, but behind closed doors, you could say very transgressive things and realize it was this show you were putting on.

Now, I don’t think people are able to have conversations—even in small groups at dinners, behind closed doors, in a liberal context. People are not allowed to think for themselves. Same thing for university professors. When I was at Stanford in the ’80s and early ’90s, it was overwhelmingly liberal, but you had a lot of thoughtful liberals. There was still such a thing as an eccentric university professor, and that’s a species that’s basically gone extinct. 

On Elon Musk’s political evolution:

PT: I’ve known Elon since 2000—almost 25 years. He was never doctrinaire, but for the first 20 years, he was left of center. Tesla was a clean-energy electric vehicle company, and the Republicans were these people who didn’t believe in climate change.

It was much more comfortable in deep-blue, Democratic California. And then at some point, Elon shifted. Part of it is this sort of intellectual straitjacket where you’re not allowed to have ideas, even if you agree with them 80 percent. It’s never enough. You have to be 100 percent.

Likening today’s political environment to ‘Star Wars’:

PT: One of the metaphors I’ve used is that the Democratic Party—it’s like the Empire. They’re all Imperial Stormtroopers, and we’re the Rebel Alliance. It’s an uncomfortably diverse, heterogeneous group, and we have Chewbacca, Princess Leia, and autistic C-3PO policy wonks. It’s a ragtag Rebel Alliance against the Empire.

On the rise of populism:

BW: Populism is en vogue right now. It’s something that always makes me wary, because populism leads to scapegoating, and scapegoating leads to blaming minority groups, and often Jews. I see this sentiment: Vox populi, vox dei—I can’t think of a wronger thing that has been said. I don’t think the voice of the people is the voice of God. How do you contain populist energies and harness them in a productive way without them running roughshod over minority groups?

PT: This is plagiarizing an idea that Eric Weinstein has popularized—this thing called a Russell conjugation—two words that are synonyms, but are emotional antonyms: a fink and a whistleblower. Maybe it’s the same thing, but a whistleblower is a good person and a fink is a bad person.

I would submit that you can see a Russell conjugation with populism and democracy. Democracy is good; populism is bad. It’s democracy when people vote the right way, and it’s populism when they vote the wrong way.

What that tells us is there’s a lot in these concepts that needs to be unpacked. I share your concerns about populism. I also have concerns about democracy for the exact same reason. If everyone gets to vote on everything, that’s rampant majoritarianism.

Republicanism is supposed to be a check on democracy where the people don’t vote on things directly. They vote on them indirectly and you elect representatives. The Constitution is supposed to be a check on republicanism, where even the legislature can’t just do whatever it wants—it still has to be compatible with the Constitution.

I don’t think we are too populist or too democratic because, maybe there’s a mob of voters, but they don’t really get to do all that much on a day-to-day basis, and the problem is we’re less of a constitutional republic than we used to be.

It hasn’t shifted from the constitutional republic to this mob of voters, but it has shifted from the constitutional republic to this unelected technocratic bureaucracy—the deep state. Maybe that’s what you need to have in a technologically advanced society: You need experts; you need a Central Intelligence Agency; you need to have secrets about nuclear weapons, secrets about other things. And so there are all kinds of ways that an advanced technological society—by its very nature—is far less populist or democratic than the U.S. was even in its eighteenth-century conception.

On the fight between the elites:

BW: One of the things I’ve been thinking about since Tuesday, but really over the past few years, is this intramural fight between the elites, what you’ve called “the Borg”—the groupthink that control so many of our institutions and the Democratic Party—and what you’ve described as the Rebel Alliance, who are skeptical of institutions. 

One specific example: the RFK Jr. MAHA movement (Make America Healthy Again). On one hand, it’s right for people to be skeptical of “Big Pharma.” But it can tip so fast into, “vaccines cause autism” territory. How do you think about the fine line between skepticism of an elite, whose gatekeeping has been too strident and falling into a rabbit hole, where there’s no gatekeeping and no institutional authority at all? 

PT: One institution where you can ask this question is science. I always think of the history of science—that it started as a two-front war against both excessive dogmatism and excessive skepticism. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a scientist was a heterodox thinker who didn’t believe in, say, the decayed Aristotelian scholasticism of the Catholic Church.

Maybe you were empirical, and there were dogmas you were questioning. But you also couldn’t be extremely skeptical—you couldn’t trust your senses. Extreme dogmatism was incompatible with science. Extreme skepticism was incompatible with science. The problem is, it’s easy to be against one. If you’re always against dogmatism, maybe you’re too skeptical of everything. If you’re always against skepticism, maybe you’re too dogmatic. There’s this complicated balance where we need to be both anti-dogmatic and anti-skeptical. 

If we fast-forward to 2024 and you asked scientists: Where are people too skeptical? Where are people too dogmatic? I think there is a whole long list of things. There are climate-change skeptics; there are vaccine skeptics; there are Darwin skeptics. There are all these people who are too skeptical, and the skepticism is undercutting science.

Then if you asked the scientists: Where are the scientists too dogmatic? I don’t think they could tell you. Doesn’t that tell you that we have completely lost the sense of balance? What has become “science” is something more dogmatic than the Catholic Church of the seventeenth century.

You can’t go all out skepticism. Obviously, there’s a slippery slope to nihilism, but directionally, that’s where we have to course correct. You have to go through these specific issues and think about them.

I don’t think vaccines lead to autism, but if they did, I don’t think our science would be capable of figuring it out. The results would get suppressed, because they would undercut the vaccine lobby. I’m pretty sure that question isn’t being investigated. There has been a dramatic increase in autism in recent decades, and we don’t have particularly good explanations for it. Surely, it’s something we should be thinking about more.

So again: I don’t think vaccines lead to autism. I do think it would be healthy if we were allowed to ask that question a little bit more than we currently are.

On why 2020 was the anomaly, not 2016:

BW: In 2020, many people—even those who supported Trump—could tell themselves a story: His presidency was some kind of anomaly. Now, with this overwhelming victory, historians are going to be telling themselves a very different story.

PT: We have to tell a story of what happened the last eight years. If Harris had won, the story would have been 2016 was a fluke, we can ignore it, and liberalism’s basically fine. We can go back to the somewhat braindead, but comfortable Obama consensus. The straightforward story is that 2020 was the fluke for this ancient regime with an ancient President Biden to dodder over the finish line one last time. It was not a sign of health at all. 

We can still pretend that it was just the fault of Biden or Harris, but I think it was much broader than that. You go bankrupt gradually, then suddenly, and at some point it’s past the sell-by date. It’s over.

Somehow, the twentieth century went on in this zombie way for another 20 years in the 2000s and 2010s. And now that the twentieth century is over—this New Deal liberalism, this politically correct leftism, the progressive cult that is the university—these things have finally unraveled. I don’t see how it recovers. They will figure something out, but it’s not obvious how they will.

On whether he feels vindicated for his early support of Trump:

BW: Something I’ve been thinking about a lot since Tuesday night is, does Peter Thiel feel vindicated in this moment? In 2016, you were the boogeyman. You made history; you were the first gay man to ever speak at the RNC. And it didn’t lead to a cascade of other people standing with you. 

PT: I think my fantasy in 2016 was that Trump was a way for us to force a conversation about the stagnation. Make America Great Again was the most pessimistic slogan that any presidential candidate—certainly any Republican candidate—had in a hundred years. Maybe you’re going to make it great again, but you’re going to start by saying we are no longer a great country.

And that’s what the slogan meant. It was this powerful political way of articulating this problem of stagnation. What do you do about it? Hard to say. The first step is to talk about it, then maybe we can become great again if we admit where we are. That was my fantasy. I don’t think the country was remotely ready for this and certainly not the Democratic part of the country.

There is now some sort of admission that there was a lot of stuff Trump was right about. We feel like we’re on the wrong track. 

Why prominent tech leaders warmed to Trump:

BW: Let’s talk a little bit about the shift that happened in Silicon Valley. I think what happened was a preference cascade—when several people, around the same time, realize they’re not the only one. 

PT: There was some degree to which it was safer for people to speak out when other people were speaking out.

BW: Was Elon the critical ingredient? Did he give people cover?

PT: I think Elon was incredibly important to it. There were a lot of pieces that had built up in Silicon Valley—for many years, people had been doubling down on the wokeness inside these companies.

It’s always an ambiguous thing. Let’s say wokeness isn’t really working. It’s not making your employees happier and more productive and more constructive. But the ambiguity is, does that mean you need to have more wokeness, or do you need to cut it out altogether?

For a number of years the intuition was, we just have to do a little bit more. There’s some point where it just got exhausted, and a lot of the top tech founders and CEOs felt comfortable telling me this behind closed doors.

In Silicon Valley, I think it was largely experienced as corporate governance—how ridiculous it’s gotten to manage these ideologically deranged millennial employees.

On his relationship with J.D. Vance:

BW: I want to talk a little bit about J.D. Vance. You gave $15 million to help him get elected in the 2022 midterms. It might be the best $15 million you’ve ever spent. You introduced Trump to J.D. Vance in 2021 at Mar-a-Lago. J.D. Vance had been singing a very different tune; he had called Trump reprehensible. He had talked about him being America’s Hitler. Obviously, we’ve come a long way in those three years. What did you see in him? 

PT: I first met him in 2011 at Yale Law School and did a small lunch with the Federalist Society group there. He worked for one of my venture funds, and we became friends. He was a very thoughtful person—he made a great first impression, and I got to know him better over time. 

I do think there are different ways of articulating his shift since 2016.

In 2016, he believed there was a way to convince liberals to figure out a way to solve some of these deep problems: immigration, economics, the crisis of the Midwest. Then at some point, he thought they weren’t really interested in solving them at all, and maybe Trump’s somewhat more adversarial approach was actually more correct than he first thought.

On Trump’s leadership style and whether he’s too difficult to work for:

BW: One of the fears of those that oppose Trump was the fact that he had a lot of people around him who some on the right would view as swamp creatures, but who other people—me included—would view as public servants trying to keep this thing on the rails. The idea is, he’s burned through the A-list, the B-list, the C-list. Who’s left? Do you share that fear? 

PT: Not at all. I think they’ll have a much stronger bench this time. I think a lot of the establishmentarian swamp creature people they ended up with were not that good.

BW: Who are the people that are most influential in Trump’s ear right now?

PT: I think Trump is calling the shots. He’s probably thought about it a lot more than he did in 2016. I’m not sure he’ll get everything right, but I think he is going to be much more focused on bringing in people that are roughly in sync with the program, and I’m hopeful it’ll be off to a much better start. At the end of the day, the buck stops with Trump. It’s very different from Biden or whatever the last four years were.

On the chaos of Trump’s first term:

BW: You said in one interview in 2023 that the Trump administration was crazier and more dangerous than you expected. What do you mean by that?

PT: All these quotes are slightly out of context.

BW: I don’t think that’s an outlandish thing to say.

PT: It felt very unstable. It felt dangerous for the people who got involved. There were all sorts of people who were prosecuted, people who went to jail. They probably did things that were wrong. They were also subject to crazy double standards. It felt like there was a lot of uncompensated volatility for the people that got involved. I’m certain it will be improved this time, but I still worry it will not be improved by enough.

I expect him to fall short in some ways. The problems are extremely difficult. They are harder than they were eight years ago. The border issue is out of control. So, maybe you need to actually deport people instead of just building a wall. And that’s a far more violent, far more drastic thing to do.

And the foreign policy situation—there’s a crisis in Russia and Ukraine; the Iran problem is far worse than it was eight years ago; the China-Taiwan thing—there’s all these ways it feels like the world is sleepwalking to Armageddon.

I think Trump is better than Harris. Is he good enough to stop us from Armageddon? I hope so, but I’m not 100 percent sure he’s good enough.

On the lessons of the twentieth century’s world wars and their relevance today:

PT: The way I would tell the history of the twentieth century is that we had two world wars. And the thing that’s extremely confusing about the two world wars is that they teach diametrically opposite lessons.

The lesson of World War II is you do not appease dictators. But World War I teaches the opposite lesson, which is you don’t want to have a network of secret alliances with hair-trigger escalation schedules—where the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand triggers this four-year conflagration that destroys Europe.

I think you have to learn the lessons of both wars. You can’t have excessive appeasement, and you also can’t go sleepwalking into Armageddon. In a way, they’re opposite lessons.

I won’t say that you should be 100 percent World War I and zero percent World War II, but my contrarian intuition is I’d be maybe 60 or 70 percent focused on World War I and 30 or 40 percent on World War II. 

I think we have a recency bias. We’re always fighting the last war, and the last world war was World War II. So that’s the one we’re obsessed with drawing the lessons from. My contrarian intuition is, if we have a world war, it’ll be more like World War I. It’ll look like what’s been happening the last few years, where it’s this gradually escalating conflagration, but it’ll happen overnight. It will not be World War II, which people could see coming for a long time. 

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