​Quotes of the Day:

"Some believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."

– J.R.R Tolkien

"To love is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."

– Friedrich Nietzsche

"The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism."

– Hannah Arendt

1. After US underestimated Ukraine, DIA developed 'will to fight' analysis and is applying it to China

2. Israel Is Fighting a Different War Now

​3. The Tyranny of Distance: What Trump Needs to Know About the Japan-US Alliance

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 15, 2024

5. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 15, 2024

6. Department of Defense Awards $3.3 Million in NDEP Grants to Support Civic Engagement

7. United by loyalty, Trump's new team have competing agendas

8. Commentary: Elon Musk’s efficiency department is highly inefficient

9. Has Anyone Noticed What BRICS+ Is Telling Us About A New World Order?

10. There Are No ‘Easy Wars’ Left To Fight, But Do Not Mistake The Longing For One

11. Opinion The U.S. Marines’ biggest fight right now is internal

12. Where Does China Stand With the Next White House?

13. US finalises up to US$6.6 billion funding for chip giant TSMC

14. China tests building Moon base with lunar soil bricks

15. 'Last man out of Afghanistan,' Gen. Christopher Donahue tapped for fourth star

16. With Trump’s Presidency, the China Hawks Are Back

17. The Big Five - 16 November edition by Mick Ryan

18. Gabbard Is a Dream Come True for Foreign Policy Realists

1. After US underestimated Ukraine, DIA developed 'will to fight' analysis and is applying it to China

I find it hard to believe that this analysis​ is something we are just now learning to focus on. We have never before developed such a methodology or considered this an important aspect of warfare? As Frank Hoffman says, understanding. Why haven't we focused on understanding the will to fight?

Excerpts:

“The Ukrainians … exhibited a will to fight that was far beyond anything any of us had estimated,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse said at an event put on by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, contrasting Ukraine’s resiliency with that of the Afghan armed forces, which collapsed as US-led coalition forces left that Southwestern Asian nation.

Kruse, who was the military affairs advisor to the Director of National Intelligence in 2022 and took the DIA helm in February 2024, also noted the quality of the Russian equipment, the training of individual soldiers and their willingness to share information within their own organization as all factors the US appeared to have misjudged.

But it was the “will to fight” factor that seems to have made the biggest impact on the DIA, so much so that Kruse said his agency is attempting to make the intangible tangible so it can be incorporated into military power reports going forward.

“And so the team went through and built a ‘will to fight’ all-source tradecraft methodology [to ask] ‘What does that look like? How do we assess what that looks like?'” Kruse said.

After US underestimated Ukraine, DIA developed 'will to fight' analysis and is applying it to China - Breaking Defense

Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse also said that North Korean troops in Russia may be among the best Pyongyang has to offer but probably aren't suited for the job they could be called to do.

breakingdefense.com · by Lee Ferran · November 15, 2024

A Ukrainian serviceman smokes a cigaret in a trench at the front line east of Kharkiv on March 31, 2022. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP) (Photo by FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The pronouncements in February 2022 were dire. If Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, US analysts and officials thought Kyiv would fall within as little as three days.

But today, exactly 1,000 days after the Kremlin rolled tanks towards the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv is still standing, supporting a war effort far into the country’s east where the battle lines have stubbornly settled.

Ukraine’s valiant defense of its land, and Russia’s largely inept attempt to take it, were certainly welcome surprises in Washington — but they were surprises nonetheless, which means it was also something of an intelligence failure for the 17 organization-strong American Intelligence Community.

The chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose bread-and-butter mission is estimating the relative might of foreign militaries, said Thursday that one intangible factor threw off the calculations: the Ukrainians’ “will to fight.”

“The Ukrainians … exhibited a will to fight that was far beyond anything any of us had estimated,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse said at an event put on by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, contrasting Ukraine’s resiliency with that of the Afghan armed forces, which collapsed as US-led coalition forces left that Southwestern Asian nation.

Kruse, who was the military affairs advisor to the Director of National Intelligence in 2022 and took the DIA helm in February 2024, also noted the quality of the Russian equipment, the training of individual soldiers and their willingness to share information within their own organization as all factors the US appeared to have misjudged.

But it was the “will to fight” factor that seems to have made the biggest impact on the DIA, so much so that Kruse said his agency is attempting to make the intangible tangible so it can be incorporated into military power reports going forward.

“And so the team went through and built a ‘will to fight’ all-source tradecraft methodology [to ask] ‘What does that look like? How do we assess what that looks like?'” Kruse said.

Incoming Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Kruse provides remarks at the DIA Change of Directorship ceremony at DIA headquarters on Joint-Base Anacostia-Bolling, Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 2024. (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)

Kruse said the methodology has been applied to “several militaries” so far, including the military’s top priority, China, though he didn’t offer any conclusion on that “will to fight” analysis.

More broadly, elsewhere in his talk Kruse said that the Chinese military did appear to be on track to meet leader Xi Jinping’s goal of being able to invade Taiwan within a predetermined timeline should Xi decide to make that drastic move — likely a reference to reports that Xi set 2027 as the deadline for that capability, what’s known as the Davidson Window. But, Kruse said, he was less sure China had a plan for what to do after the invasion — for the actual holding of land, for preventing Taiwan’s allies from helping and, at the same time, for securing its own borders.

“I’m not convinced that [Xi] is in a place to do all those things just yet,” he said. “So as you know we’re working to make sure we [understand] where that is and, where we can, change the calculus” for Beijing.

North Korea’s Best In Russia?

Back in Russia, Kruse offered an assessment of the surprise movement of North Korean troops to Russian territory — a number “north of” 10,000 in DIA’s estimation.

It’s a significant number, and one that Kruse said may allow Moscow to conduct an effective counter-attack in Kursk, Russian territory currently held by Ukraine. But, he said, the North Korean troops available might not be the best for the job at hand.

“These North Korean forces are from the 11th Corps; they’re special operations forces. They’re the best trained within North Korea, but I’m not sure they’re up to Russian standards,” Kruse said. “Special operations forces are designed to do certain things — raids, sabotage, a variety of things — [but] it may not be that they’re well designed to go in and be at the front of a mass conventional counteroffensive.”

Taking On The New Intelligence ‘Multiverse’

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s increasingly belligerent actions in the Pacific domain were evidence, Kruse said, of a “macroshift” he’s noticed in recent years, that from a rules-based framework to one in which more countries are willing to use “raw power” to achieve their objectives.

But another macrotrend he highlighted during his keynote address is the shift from a unipolar world to that of a “multiverse.” Kruse took pains to say he wasn’t even attempting to be hip enough to be referencing the multiverse as it exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but meant that even more than a shift toward a multipolar world, the influx of mis- and disinformation has created “information microclimates” — multiple universes of truth.

“Today’s information environment, as you all know, increasingly supported by AI, enables the viral growth of information microclimates that can be really hard to break through or change,” he said. “So deciphering fact from fiction, which is important in the intelligence community, to support decision making and to support warfighters will be a significant hurdle for the foreseeable future.”

2. Israel Is Fighting a Different War Now

Excerpts:

The Israelis will persevere, and things may break their way—if, for example, Iran’s internal politics are shaken up by the passing of the supreme leader, by ferocious American sanctions, or by overt and covert punishment for the attempted assassination of President-elect Donald Trump. In any event, the Israelis grimly believe, and with reason, that they have no choice but to continue fighting.

Yet the changes in Israeli society are noticeable. The reserve army that has fought these wars is tired. Many soldiers and airmen have spent most of the past year in battle, and their families have felt the strain. The national-religious component of Israeli society—what would translate in American terms into modern Orthodox Jews—has particularly borne the load. Because of Israel’s reserve system, many of the fallen are middle-aged men, and many leave behind fatherless children. “Ten dead. Fifty-six orphans,” one friend bitterly remarked. The national-religious disproportionately volunteer for frontline combat units. Their antipathy toward the ultra-Orthodox, who are draft-exempt and have been draining government budgets at the expense of subsidies for soldiers whose families and careers have been upended by war, is fierce. “Cowards,” spat out one mild-mannered friend, who now despises a population whose behavior she might once have excused.

As ever, Israel is a complicated and changing place. Yossi Klein Halevi, one of Israel’s shrewdest observers, once said, “Everything you can say about Israel is true. So is the opposite.” And thus it remains. Israel includes alienated secularists and patriotic Arab citizens (increasing numbers of whom quietly join the military); it has liberals and reactionaries, men and women of all skin colors, gay-pride marches and obscurantist religious seminaries. But one thing is certain: It is engaged in an existential war of a kind that most of us in the West cannot appreciate unless we go there, observe, and listen.

Israel Is Fighting a Different War Now

The Israeli high command now sees all of its conflicts as elements of a single, multifront war with Iran.

By Eliot A. Cohen

The Atlantic · by Eliot A. Cohen · November 15, 2024

Over the past year, after suffering a devastating surprise and brutal losses, Israel has achieved remarkable military successes. Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, is dead. So, too, are most of his senior subordinates and military commanders. Hamas guerrillas harass Israeli soldiers in Gaza, but what had been an army of tens of thousands—organized into five light infantry brigades and more than two dozen battalions—has been shattered, with half of the fighters dead, by Israeli estimates, and many others wounded or in captivity.

Up north, the successes are no less dramatic. The charismatic and shrewd head of Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, is dead. So is his successor. So is Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s most important military figure. And so is most of the rest of the high command. Thousands of exploding pagers, walkie-talkies, and laptops have killed or disabled their users in Hezbollah’s army, which was perhaps double the size of Hamas’s.

Most of Hezbollah’s inventory of 150,000 missiles and rockets has been destroyed—more than 80 percent, according to the Israelis—and the group’s ability to coordinate has been so fractured that instead of the feared volleys of 1,000 projectiles a day, it struggles to launch 50 or 100. The area along Israel’s border, in which Israeli soldiers have found stockpiles of anti-tank missiles and other weaponry in many of the houses, has been painstakingly cleared. Here, too, guerrillas are attacking Israel Defense Forces soldiers, but Hezbollah can no longer muster the large, complex military formations that were formerly more numerous, better trained, better equipped, and better led than their Hamas counterparts.

And on top of it all, Iran has thrown two punches at Israel that were deflected and defeated by American and Israeli defenses. In return, Israel has demolished Iran’s main air-defense system—its Russian-made S-300 batteries—leaving it open to future strikes.

Franklin Foer: Yahya Sinwar finally got what he deserved

On a recent trip to Israel, I found that Israel’s military and intelligence leaders—who in December were still stunned, guilt-ridden, and infuriated—were in a different place. They are still racked by their collective failure on October 7, 2023, but have recovered their balance. There was no lightheartedness at their exceptional military achievements, however. This was not only because their losses are felt with particular keenness in a society that values its soldiers’ lives in ways even most liberal democracies do not. It is because the Israelis now understand their war differently than they did in December.

Then, commanders and analysts focused on Gaza and Sinwar. They intended to destroy him and Hamas, and to rescue as many of the hostages as possible. The hostilities launched by Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border—a shower of rockets and sniping every day, which had forced the evacuation of some 80,000 Israelis a few miles from the Lebanon line—were ongoing, but represented an account to be settled later. The Houthis had fired a few missiles at Israel; the major exchanges between Iran and Israel were in the future.

The Israeli high command now sees all of these conflicts as elements of a single, multifront war with Iran. It believes that the preparation for the Hamas attack was intimately tied to Hezbollah, which is, in turn, an Iranian proxy. It believes, moreover, that the purpose of these attacks, over the next few years, was not to inflict damage upon Israel, but to destroy it. “They thought they could conquer Israel,” one sobered general told me. “I had not fully understood that.” A Hezbollah attack would have followed the same pattern as Hamas’s assault—launched along the entire border, from an extensive tunnel system and mustering points concealed within civilian buildings. Had both attacks occurred simultaneously, Israel’s situation might well have been an order of magnitude more dire than it was on October 7.

Why Sinwar launched his attack before Hezbollah felt ready is unclear: He may simply have grown impatient. But the links, some of which were known to Israel before the war, were far deeper than the Israelis had realized. Saleh al-Arouri, one of Hamas’s most senior military leaders, had been living in the vicinity of the Hezbollah high command in Lebanon when an Israeli bomb killed him in January. He and Israel’s other enemies are and have always been absolutely clear about their intention to destroy the country no matter the price paid by civilians. Most Palestinians “would settle in a moment for peace, some deal that will let them get on with their lives,” he told a British interviewer in 2007. “We need to keep them angry.”

Israel is now fighting a different kind of war, which has elicited a different Israeli mindset. “We’re no longer afraid of casualties,” a hard-bitten colonel told me. “I lost 10 guys, and nothing stopped. We don’t go to the funerals; we’ll visit after the war.” This is a fundamental change from the Israel of October 6, 2023. Israel is girding itself for the daunting prospect of a long war against Iran, even as its immediate conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah cannot be swiftly and decisively wrapped up, no matter what American and European leaders might wish.

The IDF has always been a military focused on short-term fixes, on tactical and technical innovation, on agility and adaptability. As an Israeli strategic planner ruefully put it, “We only talk about strategy in English.” That will be a problem in the next phase of this war. Israel does not wish to put Gaza under military government during its reconstruction—but it has also failed to devise any plausible alternative, despite floating ideas such as an international police force or a return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza. Lots of humanitarian aid goes into Gaza—I saw the long lines of trucks—but much of it is immediately hijacked by Hamas gunmen, who control the distribution of relief, and with it the population. Hezbollah is still reeling from its hammering over the past two months, but it survives in the shape of small cells. Israeli and American hopes that the Lebanese armed forces can contain it have always proved to be pipe dreams. The long-range strikes by Iran against Israel will surely continue.

The Israelis will persevere, and things may break their way—if, for example, Iran’s internal politics are shaken up by the passing of the supreme leader, by ferocious American sanctions, or by overt and covert punishment for the attempted assassination of President-elect Donald Trump. In any event, the Israelis grimly believe, and with reason, that they have no choice but to continue fighting.

Yet the changes in Israeli society are noticeable. The reserve army that has fought these wars is tired. Many soldiers and airmen have spent most of the past year in battle, and their families have felt the strain. The national-religious component of Israeli society—what would translate in American terms into modern Orthodox Jews—has particularly borne the load. Because of Israel’s reserve system, many of the fallen are middle-aged men, and many leave behind fatherless children. “Ten dead. Fifty-six orphans,” one friend bitterly remarked. The national-religious disproportionately volunteer for frontline combat units. Their antipathy toward the ultra-Orthodox, who are draft-exempt and have been draining government budgets at the expense of subsidies for soldiers whose families and careers have been upended by war, is fierce. “Cowards,” spat out one mild-mannered friend, who now despises a population whose behavior she might once have excused.

As ever, Israel is a complicated and changing place. Yossi Klein Halevi, one of Israel’s shrewdest observers, once said, “Everything you can say about Israel is true. So is the opposite.” And thus it remains. Israel includes alienated secularists and patriotic Arab citizens (increasing numbers of whom quietly join the military); it has liberals and reactionaries, men and women of all skin colors, gay-pride marches and obscurantist religious seminaries. But one thing is certain: It is engaged in an existential war of a kind that most of us in the West cannot appreciate unless we go there, observe, and listen.

The Atlantic · by Eliot A. Cohen · November 15, 2024

3. The Tyranny of Distance: What Trump Needs to Know About the Japan-US Alliance

​This is really another perspective. We cannot be successful versus China without bases in Japan and Korea (and our alliances with Australia and the Philippines). It is important national security professionals convince both the President-elect and the American people that our alliances and overseas bases are vital to US national security.

The Tyranny of Distance: What Trump Needs to Know About the Japan-US Alliance 

thediplomat.com · by Takahashi Kosuke

Accusations that Japan is free-riding on U.S. security guarantees overlook the immense strategic and geographical value of U.S. military bases in Japan, including Okinawa and Yokosuka.

By

November 15, 2024

A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the 14th Fighter Squadron at Misawa Air Base takes off from the runway at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, June 3, 2022.

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump sees China as the biggest threat and the top-priority for his incoming administration. He has already appointed anti-China hardliners to his national security and foreign policy cabinet positions.

East Asian nations such as Japan and Taiwan, which are located on the first island chain facing China on the very front line, are wary that Trump will demand that they increase defense spending, pay for U.S. protection, and buy more U.S.-made weapons.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the administration of former Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio decided in December of the same year to double defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which was highly praised by the Joe Biden administration.

Trump also praised Japan’s efforts to increase defense spending in April 2024 when he met former Japanese Prime Minister Aso Taro in New York, according to a statement issued by Trump’s campaign.

But it’s unclear whether Trump will be satisfied with this.

Elbridge Colby, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development in the former Trump administration, said in an interview with Japan’s Public Broadcasting NHK earlier this year that Tokyo should increase its defense spending to 3 percent of GDP. Colby is frequently discussed as a potential national security figure in Trump’s second administration.

During his presidency, Trump also demanded that Japan and South Korea increase their annual funding for hosting U.S. troops in their countries to $8 billion and $5 billion, respectively, John Bolton wrote in his book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” published in 2022.

Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the Trump administration, also warned in an interview with the Nihon Keizai Shimbun in March of this year that if Trump returns to power, Japan may be forced to revise its security treaty in a way that would require it to deploy the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in the event of an attack on the U.S. mainland.

Article 5 of the two nations’ security treaty stipulates the United States’ defense obligations to Japan in the event of an attack on Japanese territory. Meanwhile, Japan is not required to aid the U.S. in an armed conflict on the U.S. or other territory beyond Japan’s own borders.

Trump repeatedly complained that this is “unfair,” according to Bolton’s book.

The argument that Japan is a free rider on security is not something that only Trump has been voicing, but has been discussed in Washington for a long time. It’s nothing new to try to get Japan to shoulder its share of the burden in security, and Japan has done this, to some extent.

In the 1970s, the United States lost the Vietnam War after suffering many casualties, and its national power was exhausted. Meanwhile, Japan achieved remarkable economic growth and emerged as the world’s second largest economic power. As Japan’s trade surplus with the United States grew, theories that Japan was free-riding on the security treaty began to emerge, mainly in the U.S. Congress. Critics claimed that while the United States was fighting communism, Japan was unfairly taking advantage of the U.S. to enrich itself.

Then, with the end of the Cold War, “rogue nations” such as Iraq appeared. At the request of the United States, Japan went beyond the realm of exclusively defensive security policy and began to dispatch the JSDF overseas from the 1990s onwards. Starting with the dispatch of the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s minesweeping unit to the Persian Gulf in 1991 after the end of the Gulf War, this led to the dispatch of the JSDF to Iraq (2003-2009) and refueling operations in the Indian Ocean (2001-2010).

Since the 1990s, there has been a historic trend in which Japan’s expanding military role has contributed to the stabilization of the Japan-U.S. security arrangements. Such changes on Japan’s side included the historical cabinet decision by the Abe Shinzo administration in July 2014 to change the interpretation of the Japanese Constitution to allow the exercise of the right of collective self-defense. Previously, JSDF troops were only permitted to use minimal force in response to a direct attack on Japan, but now they are able to retaliate if a close country comes under attack, so long as certain conditions are met.

Given this historical context, how should Tokyo respond to the latest allegations of security free-riding directed at Japan?

Japan should highlight the “tyranny of distance,” a term often used among military personnel in Washington. Understanding this term is the key to understanding the strategic and geographical value of U.S. military bases in Japan, including Okinawa and Yokosuka, for the United States.

Here’s what tyranny of distance means.

From the U.S. perspective, Japan is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. west coast to Japan in the western Pacific are separated by 16 time zones. It takes more than 10 hours to make the journey by plane, and about two weeks by ship at an average speed of 15 knots (about 28 kilometers per hour).

For Washington, the time it takes to cross this vast Pacific Ocean can be saved by stationing U.S. forces in Japan. The operating costs of an aircraft carrier are estimated at about $1 million per day, but if Yokosuka is kept as the home port, the aircraft carrier alone can save $14 million one way and $28 million round trip in Pacific crossing costs. There is no need to dispatch an aircraft carrier from Naval Base San Diego on the U.S. west coast every time the U.S. Navy needs to show the flag in the western Pacific.

In other words, by maintaining a strong U.S. military presence in Japan, the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps can save a lot of time, and money that would otherwise go to personnel and materiel transportation in the event of an emergency in the sea lanes connecting the Middle East and East Asia. And even in peacetime, U.S. forces in Japan can maintain a military presence that maintains U.S. hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region.

Regarding the value of the U.S. Marine Corps being stationed in Okinawa in particular, Lt. Colonel R. K. Dobson, who served as battalion commander of the 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa, noted that from the Japanese island, U.S. Marines can be deployed quickly anywhere in the Asia-Pacific region using air and maritime transport capabilities. He also stressed that Okinawa’s strategic location reduces response time and puts less stress on the limited strategic air and maritime transport capabilities required to transport reinforcements and supplies from the U.S. mainland.

In other words, the United States is committed to having U.S. military bases in Japan, such as Okinawa, Yokosuka, and Sasebo, for reasons of self-interest: to overcome the tyranny of distance.

The above counterargument would be possible against politicians such as Trump who advocate Japan as a free rider.

If the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty is unilateral, then Japan has already lent the United States strategically important and vast bases nationwide. This is also unilateral. If the security system is truly bilateral, Japan should insist that the United States lend it Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in return for Kadena, and Pearl Harbor in Hawai’i and San Diego in California in return for Yokosuka and Sasebo, for example.

And we must not forget the complications to a nation’s independence and pride caused by the presence of a foreign military in one’s mother country. This is also a heavy burden that Japan is paying.

As the late Ebata Kensuke, a senior reporter at Jane’s Defense Weekly, previously wrote in his book, it is generally not desirable for any country to host foreign military forces and bases. A military is a country’s armed force that exercises national sovereignty. If such troops and bases are located in a foreign nation, it would create a situation in which the host country’s national sovereignty would be restricted or sometimes violated, and would inevitably become a source of trouble.

Throughout history, strong opposition has been seen in many places when foreign troops have established bases on foreign soil. If Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru is truly a nationalist, he should aim to reduce the number of U.S. military bases in Japan.

Trump’s political comeback raises questions about how far Japan and the United States can truly cooperate on an equal footing. However, this is not a one-sided equation. Tokyo has to be clear and firm in its communications with Washington, and make efforts to narrow the perception gap between domestic public opinion and that of the United States regarding the security burden. This is what is truly needed to strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance.

Authors

Contributing Author

Takahashi Kosuke

Takahashi Kosuke is Tokyo Correspondent for The Diplomat.

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thediplomat.com · by Takahashi Kosuke

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 15, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 15, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-15-2024

The Kremlin is intensifying its reflexive control campaign aimed at influencing Western decision-making in Russia's favor ahead of or in lieu of possible future negotiations about the resolution of the war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin had a phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on November 15 and reiterated several Kremlin information operations aimed at influencing the German government and other Western states to pressure Ukraine into premature peace negotiations instead of providing Ukraine with further military support. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the Scholz-Putin call "Pandora's box" and warned that the call helps Putin achieve his key goals: reducing his isolation in the international community and bringing about negotiations on Russia’s preferred terms "that will lead to nothing."

Putin and other senior Russian officials have recently intensified rhetoric aimed at influencing the foreign policy of the incoming US government under President-elect Donald Trump. The Kremlin has also recently reiterated its unwillingness to compromise on the terms of any possible future negotiations while strongly indicating that the Kremlin's longstanding goal of complete Ukrainian capitulation remains unchanged. The Kremlin likely aims to take advantage of uncertainty about the future US policy regarding Ukraine by intensifying its reflexive control campaign against Ukraine's European allies. Senior Russian officials, including Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu and Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, have notably used phone calls with Western political and defense officials to spread Kremlin information operations and attempt to threaten the West into making premature concessions on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity since 2022.

Key Takeaways:

• The Kremlin is intensifying its reflexive control campaign aimed at influencing Western decision-making in Russia's favor ahead of or in lieu of possible future negotiations about the resolution of the war in Ukraine.

• Abkhazian oppositionists protested an agreement between the de facto government of Georgia’s Abkhazia region with Russia aimed at enhancing Russian investors’ rights in Abkhazia on November 15.

• Ukraine's Western partners continue to provide Ukraine with military support via various means and platforms.

• Ukrainian forces recently advanced in Kursk Oblast and near Kurakhove, and Russian forces recently advanced near Kupyansk, Toretsk, Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and Vuhledar.

• The Kremlin continues efforts to expand its "Time of Heroes" program to create a new social class comprised of veterans loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime and ideology.

5. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 15, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 15, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-15-2024

Iran has very likely restarted its nuclear weapons research program in the past year. This assessment is based on publicly reported US and Israeli intelligence about Iranian research activity at the Parchin Military Complex outside Tehran in recent months. Unspecified US and Israeli officials told Axios on November 15 that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strikes into Iran on October 25 destroyed an active, top-secret nuclear weapons research facility—Taleghan 2—at the Parchin Military Complex. The Iranian regime previously used the Taleghan 2 facility to test explosives that are needed to detonate a nuclear device before the regime suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. International inspectors found traces of uranium at the Parchin Military Complex in 2015, indicating that a larger quantity of uranium was there at some point, despite Iranian officials denying that the complex was involved in nuclear activities. Unspecified Israeli officials told Axios that the IDF destroyed “sophisticated equipment” dating back to before 2003 that is “needed to design and test plastic explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device and are needed to detonate it.” The officials added that due to the Israeli strike on October 25, Iran would have to acquire new equipment if it decided to pursue a nuclear weapon. CTP-ISW does not assess that Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon at this time.

US and Israeli intelligence began detecting suspicious research activity, including computer modeling, metallurgy, and explosive research, at the Parchin Military Complex earlier in 2024. US and Israeli intelligence services obtained intelligence in March 2024 showing that Iran was running computer models and conducting metallurgical research that could support the development of nuclear weapons. Iran dismissed a warning from the United States in July 2024 about its suspicious research activities. Each one of these activities—computer modeling, metallurgical research, and explosive research—could theoretically have a civilian application. However, when taken together, there is no plausible explanation for these research activities other than that they are meant to support Iran’s development of a nuclear arsenal.

Computer modeling could reduce the amount of time it would take Iran to conduct a successful real-world nuclear test if Iran decided to pursue a nuclear weapon. Computer modeling would enable Iran to simulate a nuclear test before conducting a real-life test. Iran—if it decided to do so—could then build multiple nuclear weapons before a real-life test revealed that Iran had achieved weaponization. Building multiple nuclear weapons would allow Iran to test one weapon while still possessing multiple operational weapons to deter adversaries, which is consistent with CTP-ISW's long-standing assessment that Iran has developed a nuclear program that it intends to use to produce a nuclear arsenal. Iran possessed 164.7 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (uranium enriched up to 60 percent) as of August 2024, which is equivalent to 3.95 significant quantities. The IAEA defines a significant quantity as the “approximate amount of nuclear material for which the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear explosive device cannot be excluded.”

According to Axios, the IDF targeted the Taleghan 2 facility because it is not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program and Iran could therefore not acknowledge the significance of the IDF strikes on the site without admitting that it had violated the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The IDF’s strike also avoided targeting a nuclear facility that the IAEA was actively monitoring by hitting an undeclared site.



Key Takeaways:



• Iranian Nuclear Program: Iran has very likely restarted its nuclear weapons research program in the past year. This assessment is based on publicly reported US and Israeli intelligence about Iranian research activity at the Parchin Military Complex outside Tehran in recent months. US and Israeli intelligence began detecting suspicious research activity, including computer modeling, metallurgy, and explosive research, at the Parchin Military Complex earlier in 2024.

• Ceasefire in Lebanon: The Lebanese government is considering a US-proposed ceasefire draft to end Hezbollah’s war with Israel. The Lebanese parliamentary speaker expressed reservations about the current proposal.

• Senior Iranian Official in Lebanon: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s senior security adviser Ali Larijani met with senior Lebanese officials in Beirut on November 15 to discuss a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. The head of airport security at Rafic Hariri International Airport reportedly detained the Iranian Embassy in Beirut’s security team while it was escorting Larijani.

• Israeli Ground Operations in Lebanon: Israeli forces have advanced to the town of Chama, approximately five kilometers into southwestern Lebanon, as of November 15.

• Supreme Leader Succession: Esfahan interim Friday Prayer Leader and member of the Iranian Assembly of Experts, Seyyed Abolhasan Mahdavi, stated that the Assembly has confidentially identified and prioritized three candidates for leadership succession.

• Israel Drafts Ultra-Orthodox: Israeli Defense Minister Israeli Katz decided that the IDF will soon begin issuing conscription orders to Israeli ultra-Orthodox.

6. Department of Defense Awards $3.3 Million in NDEP Grants to Support Civic Engagement

​I wonder if programs like this will make it through the Musk - Ramaswamy DOGE. Why is DOD doing this and not the Department of Education?

Department of Defense Awards $3.3 Million in NDEP Grants to Support Civic Engagement

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3965336/department-of-defense-awards-33-million-in-ndep-grants-to-support-civic-engagem/

Nov. 14, 2024 |   

The Department of Defense today announced awards totaling $3.3 million for allocation to three institutions of higher education under the National Defense Education Program. The two-year grants support the NDEP's Civil Society programs to provide enhanced civics education in areas such as critical thinking and media literacy and interest in public service.

"Investments in civil society and civics education are vital to ensuring the United States prepares its talent base for the challenges of the 21st century," said Dr. Aprille Ericsson, assistant secretary of defense for science and technology. "DoD invests heavily in STEM to prepare students to tackle current and future technology challenges. It invests in civics education to prepare them to be tomorrow's leaders, able to think independently, communicate adeptly, and engage with their communities as active, informed citizens."

In 2023, 13 institutions received $53 million in grants to support Civil Society program as well as the department's Manufacturing Engineering Education Program, STEM scholarship programs, and Enhanced Civics Education programs.

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering awarded the 2024 grants to the following institutions:

• The Regents of the University of Colorado (Colorado Springs, Colorado): "Digital Citizenship and Civics Leadership in the Pikes Peak Region (DCCL)"
• University of Montana (Missoula, Montana): "Project on American Democracy"
• Winona State University (Winona, Minnesota): "Winona State University Civic Center"

Visit https://dodstem.us/about/partners/ to read the awardees' abstracts and learn about other DoD STEM partners.

About USD(R&E)

The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD(R&E) is the Chief Technology Officer of the Department of Defense. The USD(R&E) champions research, science, technology, engineering, and innovation to maintain the United States military's technological advantage. Learn more at www.cto.mil or visit us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/ousdre.

7. United by loyalty, Trump's new team have competing agendas

A ​useful roll-up from the BBC.

These are four interesting categories and perhaps provide a way to observe and assess the new administration.

Deep State disruptors

Border hardliners

Tech libertarians

China hawks

United by loyalty, Trump's new team have competing agendas

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg5nzr2p8eo?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic/world

10 hours ago

Getty Images

Trump with Gabbard during a town hall meeting

If personnel really does amount to policy, then we’ve learned a lot this week about how Donald Trump intends to govern in his second term.

More than a dozen major appointments, some of which will require Senate approval, offer a clearer picture of the team entrusted to drive his agenda as he returns to the White House.

On the outside they appear united by one thing - loyalty to the top man.

But beneath the surface, there are competing agendas.

Here are four factions that reveal both Trump’s ambition and potential tricky tests ahead for his leadership.

Deep State disruptors

By Mike Wendling, BBC News, Chicago

Who: Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr

Their agenda: This trio have been among the most vocal politicians actively opposing US policies, particularly under President Biden. Choosing Gaetz as his attorney general nominee is possibly Trump’s most controversial pick.

Gaetz has represented Florida's first congressional district since 2017. A graduate of William and Mary Law School, he led the removal of California congressman Kevin McCarthy as the sitting Speaker of the House in October 2023.

He has come under investigation by a House ethics committee for allegedly paying for sex with an underage girl, using illegal drugs and misusing campaign funds. He denies wrongdoing and no criminal charges have been filed.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Five takeaways from Trump's first week

Tulsi Gabbard, picked to be Trump’s director of national intelligence, is a military veteran who served with a medical unit in Iraq. She is a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who switched parties to support Trump.

Gabbard has routinely opposed American foreign policy, blaming Nato for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and meeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – then casting doubt on US intelligence assessments blaming Assad for using chemical weapons.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s nominee to oversee health, is a longtime lawyer and environmentalist. He also spread fringe theories – about vaccines and the effects of 5G phone signals.

1:14

A look at Trump's cabinet and key roles... in 74 seconds

What this tells us: Like Trump, Gaetz, Gabbard and Kennedy are aggressive challengers of the status quo. All three frequently tip over into conspiracy.

They may be among the most determined supporters of Trump’s plan to dismantle the bureaucratic “deep state”. The president-elect has picked particular fights in each of the areas they would oversee - law enforcement, intelligence and health.

But bomb-throwers can also make unruly subordinates. Kennedy wants stricter regulation across food and farming industries, which may collide with Trump’s government-slashing agenda.

Gaetz’s views on some issues - he favours legalisation of marijuana - are outside the Republican mainstream.

And Gabbard, a fierce critic of American power, will be working for a president who is not afraid to use it - for instance, against Iran.

• What RFK could do on vaccines, fluoride and drugs

Border hardliners

By Bernd Debusmann, BBC News, Washington

Who: Tom Homan, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem

Their agenda: The three hardliners tasked with carrying out Trump’s border and immigration policies have vowed to strengthen security and clamp down on undocumented immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border.

Domestically, they - and the wider incoming Trump administration - have called for a drastic uptick in deportations, beginning with those considered national security or public safety threats, and a return to workplace “enforcement operations” that were paused by the Biden administration.

What it tells us: Aside from the economy, polls repeatedly suggested that immigration and the border with Mexico were primary concerns for many voters.

The possibility of increased deportations and workplace raids, however, could put Trump on a collision course with Democratic-leaning states and jurisdictions that may decide to push back or not co-operate. Some Republican states - whose economies rely, in part, on immigrant labour - may also object.

• How would mass deportations work?

Tech libertarians

By Natalie Sherman, BBC business reporter, New York

Who: Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy

Their agenda: Trump has named the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, to lead a cost-cutting effort dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency”.

He will share the role with 39-year-old investor-turned-politician Vivek Ramaswamy, who became an ardent Trump backer after bowing out as a candidate in the Republican primary.

The two men are among the loudest and flashiest tech bros, a group that swung towards Trump this year, seeking a champion to disavow “woke” political correctness and embrace a libertarian vision of small government, low taxes and light regulation.

Musk has floated a possible $2tn in spending cuts, vowing to send “shockwaves” through the government.

Ramaswamy, who has backed eliminating the tax-collecting agency, the IRS, and the Department of Education, among others, wrote after the announcement: “Shut it down.”

What it tells us: The appointments are an acknowledgment of the help Trump got on the campaign trail from Ramaswamy and Musk, the latter of whom personally ploughed more than $100m into the campaign.

But time will tell what power this faction goes on to have.

Despite its name, the department is not an official agency. The commission will stand outside the government to advise on spending, which is partly controlled by Congress.

Trump, who ran up budget deficits during his first term, has shown little commitment to cutting spending.

He has promised to leave Social Security and Medicare - two of the biggest areas of government spending - untouched, which could make cost-cutting difficult.

RFK Jr’s pledge to increase regulation of food additives and ultra-processed foods could also clash with Musk and Ramaswamy’s mandate to cut red tape.

China hawks

By Tom Bateman, BBC state department correspondent

Who: Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, John Ratcliffe.

Their agenda: These men will run Trump’s “America First” foreign policy. They are all hawks on China.

Rubio, nominee for secretary of state, is among Beijing’s harshest critics, having argued for travel bans on some Chinese officials and for the closure of Hong Kong’s US trade offices.

The three are likely to push through Trump’s pledge for much higher tariffs on Chinese imports. They see Beijing as the top economic and security threat to the US. Waltz - picked for national security adviser - has said the US is in a “Cold War” with the ruling communist party.

Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee for CIA director who served as an intelligence chief in his first term, has likened countering China’s rise to the defeat of fascism or bringing down the Iron Curtain.

What it tells us: While Trump often signals his own hawkish economic views on China, he has also vacillated - which could spark tensions with his top foreign policy team.

In his first term, Trump triggered a trade war with Beijing (attempts to de-escalate this failed amid the pandemic) and relations slumped further when he labelled Covid the “Chinese Virus”.

But he also heaped praise on President Xi Jinping as a “brilliant” leader ruling with an “iron fist”.

This unpredictability could make managing America’s most consequential strategic relationship even harder. Rubio might also clash with Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of intelligence, who previously criticised him on foreign policy, saying he "represents the neocon, warmongering establishment".

8. Commentary: Elon Musk’s efficiency department is highly inefficient

​Isn't this a little premature? They have not even formed the organization and begun work. Give them a chance.

But the author is correct, what it takes is effective leadership to make a difference. Can Musk and Ramaswamy provide that leadership? And Congressional support is paramount. We should remember that our government is designed to ensure friction with the separation of powers and check and balances which in effect creates inefficiency by design. Will these disruptors be able to work within the system, and especially with Congress? Will republican control of both houses (and the judiciary) give them free reign?

Of course the critique that they have no experience in how the government works is exactly the reason why some believe that they will be able to make radical changes. I hope they can make positive changes. And my real hope is that they will do everything in accordance with our Constitutional principles and their actions will reinforce the strengths of our federal democratic republic while trying to mitigate some of the inefficiencies that are not created deliberately by our Constitution.

Commentary: Elon Musk’s efficiency department is highly inefficient

What the US needs to combat wasteful spending is effective leadership, not cowboy CEOs with no sense of how the government works, says Kathryn Anne Edwards for Bloomberg Opinion.

Kathryn Anne Edwards

16 Nov 2024 06:00AM

channelnewsasia.com · by Kathryn Anne Edwards

WASHINGTON DC: After spending US$118 million of his personal wealth on the campaign to re-elect Donald Trump as United States president, billionaire Elon Musk has been tapped to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency in the new administration with Vivek Ramaswamy, the chief executive officer of a pharmaceutical company and (very) brief Republican presidential candidate.

It’s no coincidence that the acronym for this new department is DOGE, which happens to be the name of a cryptocurrency hawked by Musk.

Musk might find this amusing, but for the rest of us it can be downright Orwellian, the notion that the path to efficiency is through additional administrative bureaucracy, especially when that bureaucracy that will have tenuous, if any, authority.

You see, Congress controls spending, not an executive agency, and actions it tries to implement will likely be met with significant legal challenges.

If anything, DOGE shows how blustering campaign promises are built on fiction, reflecting a lack of knowledge of how government works. (Spoiler alert: It’s not a company.)

EFFICIENCY MUST START WITH CONGRESS

Let’s start from scratch. Say you are concerned the federal government is prone to waste, fraud and abuse and needs to be kept under close watch. You assume that because it’s the government and not a private company with a profit motive there’s less efficiency. What do you do?

Your primary constraint, the one that supersedes all others with no exceptions, is the US Constitution, which gives the power of the purse to Congress. Congress creates every federal agency, mandates their tasks and approves their funding. If you want efficiency, it must start with Congress.

And a president can’t decide on a whim not to spend money Congress has allocated. We’ve been here before. After Richard Nixon withheld funds allocated by lawmakers, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 enshrining the legal authority of Congress, not the president, to allocate spending.

As president, Trump was found to be in violation of the Act when he withheld aid to Ukraine, a move that led to the first of his two impeachments.

Although keeping a careful eye on spending is the purview of Congress, it’s a lot to put on members or its committees, as both are constantly churning through elections and majority status. Better to create a congressional agency instead. Unlike executive agencies, which report to the president, these agencies report to Congress, just like the Congressional Budget Office.

This new agency would have the power to audit every other government agency and its recommendations would ideally have the power of Congress, unlike the flimsiness of DOGE, which has no legal authority (even to exist, since it’s not being created by Congress!).

AN EFFICIENCY AGENCY ALREADY EXISTS

What’s stopping Trump from asking for Congress to create this efficiency agency? For one, it (largely) already exists, having just celebrated its 100th birthday.

Say hello - again - to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the hawkish auditor of the federal government that clawed back US$70 billion from agencies in fiscal 2023 as part of hundreds of actions to properly steward federal funds.

The GAO staff is comprised of experts in the areas they oversee, and these quiet technocrats punch well above their weight. The agency calculates that it gives back US$133 to the government for every US$1 it spends.

The returns could be much higher because the GAO points out that the biggest problems it finds are often left unaddressed by Congress. The agency curates a “high risk list”, or areas where the potential for waste, fraud and abuse is high and requires changes in law to fix. Some items have been on the list since the early 1990s.

What the federal government needs to combat wasteful spending is effective leadership, not cowboy CEOs with no sense of how the government works leading a make-believe agency with no power. Americans deserve better.

Source: Bloomberg/el

channelnewsasia.com · by Kathryn Anne Edwards

9. Has Anyone Noticed What BRICS+ Is Telling Us About A New World Order?

​Excerpts:

This juicy skewer of participants is notable for its heterogeneity. There are dictatorships and democracies, Muslim, Christian and secular countries, economic superpowers and failed nations, some have characterized as rogue states. Are what we are witnessing merely an updated reiteration of that elastic non-aligned movement launched in the 1960s by Yugoslavia’s Prime Minister Josip Tito and Indian Jawaharlal Nehru, which encompassed two-thirds of the world but never achieved any real global influence? No, something else is happening here. In the space of sixty years, the balance of global power has clearly changed.

Antonio Gutierres is a realist. He understands how historically significant the bubbling events within the BRICS states are. He was in Kazan because it is important. To underline that point, consider a few figures. The nine countries now called BRICS+ account for more than half of the world’s population. Their combined gross national product is already greater than that of their rivals in the G7, the Western directorate comprising the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and the UK. The gap is likely to widen in the coming years, since the BRICS+ growth rate is around 5%, while Western economies are stagnating at 1–2% — and some, like Germany’s, are officially in a recession.

Despite these new geo-economic realities, the international order established by the West after the World War II has been resistant to change. The UN Security Council will remain secure in the hands of its five permanent members — three Western states plus China and Russia — for a long time to come. However, the BRICS states are not seeking to change the United Nations Charter or create a parallel system to the United Nations. Rather, they are focusing on the economic and financial governance of the world.

...

It would be literally impossible to reform the international financial institutions in such a way as to reduce Western influence in them. However, they cannot prevent the creation of parallel systems of payment. The BRICS countries are thus working on three main tasks:

• A mechanism for processing international payments independent of SWIFT — from which Russia was excluded after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• An intensification of trade that is invoiced in local currencies instead of dollars, in order to accelerate the “de-dollarization of the world.”
• A development bank that competes with the World Bank and finances infrastructure projects. There are currently 96 projects underway with a total volume of $32 billion.

Has Anyone Noticed What BRICS+ Is Telling Us About A New World Order? – opEd

eurasiareview.com · November 16, 2024

By Jean-Daniel Ruch

In the beginning, there were four: Brazil, China, India and Russia. Following their first summit in 2009, they expanded to become BRICS with the accession of South Africa in 2011 and then nine in January 2024. At the sixteenth BRICS summit this October in Kazan, Russia, two African countries, Egypt and Ethiopia, and two Middle Eastern countries, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, made up what people now refer to as BRICS+.

Thirteen among the more than thirty countries that have formally expressed their interest in membership are now associated with BRICS+: four Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam), two Latin American countries (Cuba and Bolivia), three African countries (Algeria, Nigeria, Uganda), two Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) and two European countries (Belarus and NATO member Turkey). They were given the status of “partner states” in Kazan.

To say that the Americans are not enthusiastic about the appeal of this new global club would be an understatement. Should the success of the summit in Kazan be interpreted as a sign of the failure of their strategy to isolate Russia? Worse still, are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the American century?

In addition to the nine member states and thirteen partners, the summit was also attended by some representatives of countries whose presence was rather unexpected, such as the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, the very Russophilic Alexander Vulin. However, it was the presence of UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierres that caused outraged reactions, especially in Ukraine. “The UN Secretary-General declined Ukraine’s invitation to the first global peace summit in Switzerland. However, he has accepted the invitation of the war criminal Putin to Kazan,” hammered the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

It is true that Gutierres boycotted the Bürgenstock meeting this spring. It is also legitimate to wonder whether a UN Secretary-General should shake hands with a person accused of war crimes, even if he is the president of a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on March 17, 2023.

This juicy skewer of participants is notable for its heterogeneity. There are dictatorships and democracies, Muslim, Christian and secular countries, economic superpowers and failed nations, some have characterized as rogue states. Are what we are witnessing merely an updated reiteration of that elastic non-aligned movement launched in the 1960s by Yugoslavia’s Prime Minister Josip Tito and Indian Jawaharlal Nehru, which encompassed two-thirds of the world but never achieved any real global influence? No, something else is happening here. In the space of sixty years, the balance of global power has clearly changed.

A motley but (almost) global group with growing influence

Antonio Gutierres is a realist. He understands how historically significant the bubbling events within the BRICS states are. He was in Kazan because it is important. To underline that point, consider a few figures. The nine countries now called BRICS+ account for more than half of the world’s population. Their combined gross national product is already greater than that of their rivals in the G7, the Western directorate comprising the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and the UK. The gap is likely to widen in the coming years, since the BRICS+ growth rate is around 5%, while Western economies are stagnating at 1–2% — and some, like Germany’s, are officially in a recession.

Despite these new geo-economic realities, the international order established by the West after the World War II has been resistant to change. The UN Security Council will remain secure in the hands of its five permanent members — three Western states plus China and Russia — for a long time to come. However, the BRICS states are not seeking to change the United Nations Charter or create a parallel system to the United Nations. Rather, they are focusing on the economic and financial governance of the world.

Parallel to the founding of the United Nations, the victorious Western powers, at the Bretton Woods conference in 1945, created institutions designed to regulate world finance. The dollar became the world’s reserve currency, making every country vulnerable to US sanctions. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which provide financial assistance to countries in difficulty, are run like shareholder meetings, in which the US holds a decisive vote. Together with the other Western nations, they possess an absolute majority. It is these two pillars of Western power in the world that the BRICS states hope to compete with. But how?

It would be literally impossible to reform the international financial institutions in such a way as to reduce Western influence in them. However, they cannot prevent the creation of parallel systems of payment. The BRICS countries are thus working on three main tasks:

• A mechanism for processing international payments independent of SWIFT — from which Russia was excluded after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• An intensification of trade that is invoiced in local currencies instead of dollars, in order to accelerate the “de-dollarization of the world.”
• A development bank that competes with the World Bank and finances infrastructure projects. There are currently 96 projects underway with a total volume of $32 billion.

Critics of the BRICS states doubt that they are able to really compete with the dollar. Despite a steady erosion, the greenback still accounts for 55% of the reserves of the national banks. And when it is replaced by other currencies, these tend to be Western currencies, with the notable exception of the Chinese renminbi. Nevertheless, the trend is clear and the potential of BRICS+ is there. The formation of alternative transportation corridors is part of the same strategy to break free from Western, i.e., American dependency.

Land routes vs. sea routes

In a globalized and interdependent world, the transport of goods represents a strategic dimension. From cars to cell phones, hardly any industrial activity exists that does not include and depend on an accumulation of natural resources and semi-finished products from all corners of the world. Over the last hundred years, goods have primarily been transported by sea. Today, sea freight accounts for 70% of world trade. You only have to look at a map of the 128 US naval bases around the world to realize how important the sea lanes are to Washington’s power strategy. From the Sea of Japan to Malacca, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Panama, Rotterdam and New York, Washington’s ambition — sometimes supported by its British ally — to dominate the seas is obvious.

With its “Belt and Road” initiative, China has been trying for several years to develop land routes to, compete or at least complement the existing sea routes. It is therefore very revealing that one of the flagship projects highlighted in Kazan was the North–South Corridor, which will ultimately connect St. Petersburg with India, without passing through any Western-controlled areas. Is it worth remembering that India has become the largest importer of Russian oil products, despite the very audible gnashing of teeth in Washington?

What is Switzerland doing?

Between soft power and economic impact, the BRICS+ are redrawing the geopolitical map. Is Switzerland even aware of this probably irreversible development? Has it sought an invitation to Kazan?

The answer is yes, Swiss companies are well aware of the underlying forces shaping the world of tomorrow. This is why some, for example in the trade sector, are moving to Dubai. Yes, Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs is well aware of this. It wants to update our free trade agreement with China. Switzerland is the only European country apart from Iceland to have concluded such an agreement. That is an advantage.

Unfortunately, the options chosen by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport have not been helpful. By running after the Americans, who have been losing all their wars for twenty years, weFO° Exclusive: Make Sense of BRICS Summit in Russia

have turned Russia against us and made China doubt our reliability. Moreover, for three quarters of the world Gaza has become a symbol of the moral bankruptcy of the West, including Switzerland. Is there still time to restore our credibility? Is this even possible with the current political cast running our affairs? These are the questions that every Swiss citizen must rightly ask themselves.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

• About the author: Jean-Daniel Ruch is a former Swiss diplomat. He served as Switzerland’s ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro, then to Israel and finally to Turkey. Jean-Daniel also served as a political advisor to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Born in 1963 in Moutier, Canton Bern, Jean-Daniel studied international relations and international security in Geneva.
• Source: This article was published by Fair Observer

eurasiareview.com · November 16, 2024

10. There Are No ‘Easy Wars’ Left To Fight, But Do Not Mistake The Longing For One

A brutal critique of the "Interagency." Although this might be a little over the top, I can't help wondering about something I have long thought about. and that is "agency equities." I cannot count the number of times I have heard people say that agencies' equities must be protected (which is in DOD terms that is usually force structure and budget). But I have always naively thought that all agencies had the same "equity:" accomplishing whatever national security mission was required (and was directed by the President). I used to tell my students that it would be ideal if members of interagency working groups and taak forces could check their agency equities (and egos) at the door and focus on mission accomplishment. But that of course does not happen. However, agencies will have varied views on how best to accomplish the mission based on their area of expertise and these differences should be hashed but in keeping with the overall intent: to accomplish the national security mission that is required to protect US interests and defend the nation.

Excerpts;

Whether deliberate or not, Trump is keeping his cards close to his chest. We have only glimpses of intent – and the water is being seriously muddied by the infamous ‘Inter-Agency’ grandees. For example, in respect to the Pentagon sanctioning private-sector contractors to work in Ukraine, this was done in coordination with “inter-agency stakeholders”.

The old nemesis that paralysed his first term again faces Trump. Then, during the Ukraine impeachment process, one witness (Vindman), when asked why he would not defer to the President’s explicit instructions, replied that whilst Trump has his view on Ukraine policy, that stance did NOT align with that of the ‘Inter-Agency’ agreed position. In plain language, Vindman denied that a U.S. president has agency in foreign policy formulation.

In short, the ‘Inter-Agency structure’ was signalling to Trump that military support for Ukraine must continue.

When the Washington Post published their detailed story of a Trump-Putin phone call – that the Kremlin emphatically states never happened – the deep structures of policy were simply telling Trump that it would be they who determine what the shape of the U.S. ‘solution’ for Ukraine would be.

​However, here is some troubling speculation:

This last month, it was U.S. retired General Jack Keane, the strategic analyst for Fox News, who argued that Israel’s air strike on Iran had left it “essentially naked”, with most air defences “taken down” and its missile production factories destroyed by Israel’s 26 October strikes. Iran’s vulnerability, Keane said, is “simply staggering”.

Kean channels the early Brzezinski: His message is clear – Iran will be an ‘easy war’. That forecast however, is likely to be revealed as dead wrong. And, if pursued, will lead to a complete military and economic disaster for Israel. But do not rule out the distinct possibility that Netanyahu – besieged on all fronts and teetering on the brink of internal crisis and even jail – is desperate enough to do it. His is, after all, a Biblical mandate that he pursues for Israel!

Iran likely will launch a painful response to Israel before the 20 January Presidential Inauguration. Its riposte will demonstrate Iran’s unexpected and unforeseen military innovation. What the U.S. and Israel will then do may well open the door to wider regional war. Sentiment across the region seethes at the slaughter in the Occupied Territories and in Lebanon.

There Are No ‘Easy Wars’ Left To Fight, But Do Not Mistake The Longing For One – OpEd

 November 16, 2024 0 Comments

By Alastair Crooke

eurasiareview.com · November 16, 2024

Israelis, as a whole, are exhibiting a rosy assurance that they can harness Trump, if not to the full annexation of the Occupied Territories (Trump in his first term did not support such annexation), but rather, to ensnare him into a war on Iran. Many (even most) Israelis are raring for war on Iran and an aggrandisement of their territory (devoid of Arabs). They are believing the puffery that Iran ‘lies naked’, staggeringly vulnerable, before a U.S. and Israeli military strike.

Trump’s Team nominations, so far, reveal a foreign policy squad of fierce supporters of Israel and of passionate hostility to Iran. The Israeli media term it a ‘dream team’ for Netanyahu. It certainly looks that way.

The Israel Lobby could not have asked for more. They have got it. And with the new CIA chief, they get a known ultra China hawk as a bonus.

But in the domestic sphere the tone is precisely the converse: The key nomination for ‘cleaning the stables’ is Matt Gaetz as Attorney General; he is a real “bomb thrower”. And for the Intelligence clean-up, Tulsi Gabbard is appointed as Director of National Intelligence. All intelligence agencies will report to her, and she will be responsible for the President’s Daily briefing. The intel assessments may thus begin to reflect something closer to reality.

The deep Inter-Agency structure has reason to be very afraid; they are panicking – especially over Gaetz.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have the near impossible task of cutting out-of-control federal spending and currency printing. The System is deeply dependent on the bloat of government spending to keep the cogs and levers of the mammoth ‘security’ boondoggle whirring. It is not going to be yielded up without a bitter fight.

So, on the one hand, the Lobby gets a dream team (Israel), but on the other side (the domestic sphere), it gets a renegade team.

This must be deliberate. Trump knows that Biden’s legacy of bloating GDP with government jobs and excessive public spending is the real ‘time bomb’ awaiting him. Again the withdrawal symptoms, as the drug of easy money is withdrawn, may prove incendiary. Moving to a structure of tariffs and low taxes will be disruptive.

Whether deliberate or not, Trump is keeping his cards close to his chest. We have only glimpses of intent – and the water is being seriously muddied by the infamous ‘Inter-Agency’ grandees. For example, in respect to the Pentagon sanctioning private-sector contractors to work in Ukraine, this was done in coordination with “inter-agency stakeholders”.

The old nemesis that paralysed his first term again faces Trump. Then, during the Ukraine impeachment process, one witness (Vindman), when asked why he would not defer to the President’s explicit instructions, replied that whilst Trump has his view on Ukraine policy, that stance did NOT align with that of the ‘Inter-Agency’ agreed position. In plain language, Vindman denied that a U.S. president has agency in foreign policy formulation.

In short, the ‘Inter-Agency structure’ was signalling to Trump that military support for Ukraine must continue.

When the Washington Post published their detailed story of a Trump-Putin phone call – that the Kremlin emphatically states never happened – the deep structures of policy were simply telling Trump that it would be they who determine what the shape of the U.S. ‘solution’ for Ukraine would be.

Similarly, when Netanyahu boasts to have spoken to Trump and that Trump “shares” his views regarding Iran, Trump was being indirectly instructed what his policy towards Iran needs to be. All the (false) rumours about appointments to his Team too, were but the interagency signalling their choices for his key posts. No wonder confusion reigns.

So, what can be deduced at this early stage? If there is a common thread, it has been a constant refrain that Trump is against war. And that he demands from his picks personal loyalty and no ties of obligation to the Lobby or the Swamp.

So, is the packing of his Administration with ‘Israel Firsters’ an indication that Trump is edging toward a ‘Realist’s Faustian pact’ to destroy Iran in order to cripple China’s energy supply source (90% from Iran), and thus weaken China? – Two birds with one stone, so to speak?

The collapse of Iran would also weaken Russia and hobble the BRICS’ transport-corridor projects. Central Asia needs both Iranian energy and its key transport corridors linking China, Iran, and Russia as primary nodes of Eurasian commerce.

When the RAND Organisation, the Pentagon think-tank, recently published a landmark appraisal of the 2022 National Defence Strategy (NDS), its findings were stark: An unrelentingly bleak analysis of every aspect of the U.S. war machine. In brief, the U.S. is “not prepared”, the appraisal argued, in any meaningful way for serious ‘competition’ with its major adversaries – and is vulnerable or even significantly outmatched in every sphere of warfare.

The U.S., the RAND appraisal continues, could in short order be drawn into a war across multiple theatres with peer and near-peer adversaries – and it could lose. It warns that the U.S. public has not internalized the costs of the U.S. losing its position as the world superpower. The U.S. must therefore engage globally with a presence—military, diplomatic, and economic—to preserve influence worldwide.

Indeed, as one respected commentator has noted, the ‘Empire at all Costs’ cult (i.e. the RAND Organisation zeitgeist) is now “more desperate than ever to find a war it can fight to restore its fortunes and prestige”.

And China would be altogether a different proposition for a demonstrative act of destruction in order “to preserve U.S. influence worldwide” – for the U.S. is “not prepared” for serious conflict with its peer adversaries: Russia or China, RAND says.

The straitened situation of the U.S. after decades of fiscal excess and offshoring (the backdrop to its current weakened military industrial base) now makes kinetic war with China or Russia or “across multiple theatres” a prospect to be shunned.

The point that the commentator above makes is that there are no ‘easy wars’ left to fight. And that the reality (brutally outlined by RAND) is that the U.S. can choose one – and only one war to fight. Trump may not want any war, but the Lobby grandees – all supporters of Israel, if not active Zionists supporting the displacement of Palestinians – want war. And they believe they can get one.

Put starkly and plainly: Has Trump thought this through? Have the others in the Trump Team reminded him that in today’s world, with U.S. military strength slipping away, there no longer are any ‘easy wars’ to fight, although Zionists believe that with a decapitation strike on Iran’s religious and IRGC leadership (on the lines of the Israel’s strikes on Hizbullah leaders in Beirut), the Iranian people would rise up against their leaders, and side with Israel for a ‘New Middle East’.

Netanyahu has just made his second broadcast to the Iranian people promising them early salvation. He and his government are not waiting to ask Trump to nod his consent to the annexation of all Occupied Palestinian Territories. That project is being implemented on the ground. It is unfolding now. Netanyahu and his cabinet have the ethnic cleansing ‘bit between their teeth’. Will Trump be able to roll it back? How so? Or will he succumb to becoming ‘genocide Don’?

This putative ‘Iran War’ is following the same narrative cycle as with Russia: ‘Russia is weak; its military is poorly trained; its equipment mostly recycled from the Soviet era; its missiles and artillery in short supply’. Zbig Brzezinski earlier had taken the logic to its conclusion in The Grand Chessboard (1997): Russia would have no choice but to submit to the expansion of NATO and to the geopolitical dictates of the U.S.. That was ‘then’ (a little more than a year ago). Russia took the western challenge – and today is in the driving seat in Ukraine, whilst the West looks on helplessly.

This last month, it was U.S. retired General Jack Keane, the strategic analyst for Fox News, who argued that Israel’s air strike on Iran had left it “essentially naked”, with most air defences “taken down” and its missile production factories destroyed by Israel’s 26 October strikes. Iran’s vulnerability, Keane said, is “simply staggering”.

Kean channels the early Brzezinski: His message is clear – Iran will be an ‘easy war’. That forecast however, is likely to be revealed as dead wrong. And, if pursued, will lead to a complete military and economic disaster for Israel. But do not rule out the distinct possibility that Netanyahu – besieged on all fronts and teetering on the brink of internal crisis and even jail – is desperate enough to do it. His is, after all, a Biblical mandate that he pursues for Israel!

Iran likely will launch a painful response to Israel before the 20 January Presidential Inauguration. Its riposte will demonstrate Iran’s unexpected and unforeseen military innovation. What the U.S. and Israel will then do may well open the door to wider regional war. Sentiment across the region seethes at the slaughter in the Occupied Territories and in Lebanon.

Trump may not appreciate just how isolated the U.S. and Israel are among Israel’s Arab and Sunni neighbours. The U.S. is stretched so thin, and its forces across the region are so vulnerable to the hostility that the daily slaughter incubates, that a regional war might be enough to bring the entire house of cards tumbling down. The crisis would pitch Trump into a financial crisis that could sink his domestic economic aspirations too.

• This article was published by Strategic Culture

eurasiareview.com · November 16, 2024

11. Opinion The U.S. Marines’ biggest fight right now is internal

Excerpts:

The Corps, which produces hard people in soft times, and vows to be “most ready when the nation is least ready,” has often had its nature and function questioned. President Harry S. Truman, a World War I Army artillery officer, called the Corps “the Navy’s police force” with “a propaganda machine almost equal to Stalin’s.”

He said that in August 1950. One month later, he found the Corps came in handy at Inchon.

Opinion  The U.S. Marines’ biggest fight right now is internal

A project to transform the Marine Corps and redefine its mission has run into choppy seas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/15/marine-corps-force-design-overhaul-criticism/?pwapi_token=

Marine Corps Gen. Eric M. Smith in D.C. on May 9. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

By George F. Will

November 15, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST

“Marines,” proclaim their recruiting ads, are “The Few. The Proud.” Nowadays, they also are: The Fractious. Their hymn (“From the halls of Montezuma …”) says Marines are “First to fight.” Today, for a number of senior Marines — including 22 retired four-star generals — the fight is intramural.

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It concerns the U.S. Marine Corps’ future. And its understanding of itself, which is rooted in the past century, in major battles in major wars: e.g., Belleau Wood (1918), Iwo Jima (1945), the Tet Offensive (1968), Fallujah (2004). The Corps’ intensely practical, and perhaps perishable, élan is at stake in the heated debate about how Marines fit into the nation’s security strategy.

In March 2020, the USMC announced Force Design 2030, a 10-year plan to reconfigure the Corps and shrink it by 12,000 (currently there are 174,500 Marines) to conform to a national defense plan primarily — too much, critics of Force Design contend — focused somewhat on Russia but mostly on China. To that end, Force Design involves eliminating all the Corps’ tank battalions and bridging companies, reducing from 24 to 21 the number of infantry battalions, reducing the number of artillery battalions from 21 to five, and deactivating a number of aviation (helicopter and fixed-wing) squadrons.

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Force Design envisions a USMC transformed for assisting the Navy to control seas, and to deny access to seas, by an adversary’s — China’s — naval forces. Hence the shedding of components intended for sustained land operations. For example, about 90 percent of the Corps’ approximately 450 tanks have already been transferred to the Army.

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The principal architect of Force Design, now-retired commandant Gen. David H. Berger, said the Corps’ future depends on a willingness “to discard legacy things.” Force Design’s critics say the Corps’ essential utility is being discarded.

The Corps’ diminished fleet of amphibious warships, combined with Force Design’s other curtailments, mean, critics say, that the Corps cannot be what it has been: a rapid-response force for crises anywhere. Neither can it be ready to meet various needs of U.S. combatant commanders and allies.

The current commandant, Gen. Eric M. Smith, is correct in his planning guidance, released in August, that, “As the war in Ukraine continues to demonstrate, the cycle from development to procurement to obsolescence in both hardware and software is lightning fast on a modern battlefield.” But this, too, is correct: Ukraine’s fight for survival demonstrates, as does Israel’s, the continuing relevance of warriors holding weapons.

And with two regional wars raging, the United States, while planning for China’s challenge, cannot discount the possibility of a multifront war. Then, Force Design’s “light, lethal and austere” (Smith’s words) China-centric USMC — shaped for surveillance, reconnaissance and ship interdiction — would be far from optimal.

Gary Anderson, former chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, writing for RealClearDefense in August, said the Corps is transforming itself “from a robust combined arms team into a combination of light infantry and coastal artillery.” This is not what will be most urgently needed if there are two major regional conflicts.

Anderson said the Force Design Corps will be unable to quickly deploy “a potent combined arms team replete with armor, artillery, aviation, and assault engineers.” Instead, Force Design “has the Corps buying anti-ship missiles for use in a blue water fight that will likely never happen.” And retired Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, an astringent critic of Force Design, questioned whether Marines who fire an anti-ship missile can quickly escape in the minutes before an enemy’s counterattack.

Writing in the National Interest, Jim Webb, former Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia, who was awarded Silver and Bronze stars and the Navy Cross for heroism in Vietnam combat, said Force Design will undo the Corps’ value “as the one-stop guarantor of a homogenous tactical readiness that can ‘go anywhere, fight anybody, and win.’” Force Design’s Corps will be, he wrote, specialized for “short-term, high-tech raids against Chinese military outposts on small, fortified islands in the South China Sea.” This will disqualify the Corps for the kind of challenges it has often faced, and is “ignoring the unpredictability of war.” Webb also wrote: “The war you get is rarely the war that you game.”

The Corps, which produces hard people in soft times, and vows to be “most ready when the nation is least ready,” has often had its nature and function questioned. President Harry S. Truman, a World War I Army artillery officer, called the Corps “the Navy’s police force” with “a propaganda machine almost equal to Stalin’s.”

He said that in August 1950. One month later, he found the Corps came in handy at Inchon.

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Opinion by George F. Will

George F. Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs. He began his column with The Post in 1974, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977. His latest book, "American Happiness and Discontents," was released in September 2021.follow on X @georgewill

12. Where Does China Stand With the Next White House?

Where Does China Stand With the Next White House?

A few questions remain about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s China policy.

Palmer-James-foreign-policy-columnist20

James Palmer

By James Palmer, a deputy editor at Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy · by James Palmer

• Foreign & Public Diplomacy
• Politics
• United States
• China
• James Palmer

November 12, 2024, 3:45 PM

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Questions remain about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s China policy, Chinese authorities shut down a spontaneous nighttime cycling movement, and Taiwan seeks to curry favor with the next White House by pitching an arms deal.

Trump’s China Policy: 3 Questions

As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump prepares for his return to the White House, it’s clear that a more hard-line China policy is coming—but the shape that it will take and its limits are not yet apparent. There are some big questions and divisions already emerging in the circles around Trump.

The second Trump administration must ask: Can its China policy can be reconciled with its domestic economic needs? Tariffs are the most certain policy, and it’s possible that trade hawk Robert Lighthizer will return as U.S. trade representative. Some Republican advisors aspire to total decoupling from China, which is the largest supplier of goods to the United States and its third-largest buyer.

Trump’s oft-stated preference for tariffs on China set at 60 percent may lead to significant inflation and lead the United States to turn to cheaper manufacturing alternatives in countries such as Indonesia or Vietnam. That might ease the blow, though even so-called friend-shoring would run up against the 10 to 20 percent tariffs Trump says he wants to apply to all countries, including allies.

Sticker shock had painful consequences for Democrats in recent years, and the same may apply for Republicans once in power, especially if Americans simultaneously lose access to low-cost goods through Chinese apps such as Temu and Shein.

Another big question: How much leverage do business holdings in China among Trump allies give Beijing? Trump himself has long-standing interests in the country; key ally and real estate developer Steve Wynn has invested heavily in Macao’s casinos.

However, the most important figure will be the man whom Trump watched the election results with at Mar-a-Lago: Elon Musk, whose success with manufacturing Teslas in China is tied to favorable policies from Beijing. Musk has walked the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) line issues such as Taiwan and Xinjiang and described himself as “kind of pro-China.”

Trump has repeatedly shown that he can be persuaded when it comes to Chinese business interests if spoken to directly. As president, he reversed positions on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE after phone calls with Chinese political leadership in 2018 and on Huawei after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in 2019.

After advocating for banning social media app TikTok—and failing to do so in 2020—Trump made U-turn this year after meeting with megadonor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass. As with the first Trump administration, policy may depend on whom the president talked to last.

In some ways, the most abstract question about Trump’s future China policy is the biggest one: Is the United States facing down China out of ideological principle, or is it doing so out of a need for geopolitical primacy? That makes a difference in the nature of the opposition. Grand bargains are possible if Washington sees Beijing as a fellow player on the board but not if it conceives of the CCP as abhorrent.

These differences in approach would significantly affect U.S. positions on Taiwan. Trump strategists such as Elbridge Colby have criticized Ukraine as a distraction from the Asia-Pacific while also saying that Taiwan isn’t doing enough to defend itself. Trump has blamed Taipei for being a security freeloader and implied that he might not defend the island.

If the United States sees Taiwan as a vital beacon of democracy, Taipei will have a lot more leverage in Washington than if it is seen as a troublesome and expensive ally.

Staffing choices matter here. It may be difficult for allied China hawks to cite the work of human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch if they are also reporting on and criticizing Trump-backed policies. But some figures in Trump’s orbit have shown a commitment to human rights in China, including his pick for national security advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz.

Sen. Marco Rubio, who has played a prominent role in human rights work, is also broadly in this camp. On Monday, it was reported that he is Trump’s likely pick for secretary of state. Like fellow China hawk Sen. Ted Cruz, Rubio is also influenced by the views of conservative Latinos in his constituency who are opposed to communist regimes, either from personal experience or family memory.

Yet that is not a view that Trump shares. He has praised Xi for ruling “with an iron fist” and for his abolition of presidential term limits. As a result, ideological competition between democracy and autocracy may play second fiddle in the relationship.

What We’re Following

The great China bike ride. Last week, tens of thousands of students joined a nighttime cycling trend—traveling from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng, a distance of about 40 miles—until authorities stepped in to shut it down. It’s a sterling example of how the Chinese official mindset can turn spontaneous joy into a political problem.

Cycling has enjoyed a resurgence among Chinese students this year after years of restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. In June, four students completed the Zhengzhou-to-Kaifeng ride in a joking bid to enjoy Kaifeng’s soup dumplings. Others soon started imitating it, and their numbers grew to more than 100,000 this past weekend.

The movement did not seem political; some students carried Chinese flags and sang the national anthem, wary that they might be labeled a threat. Chinese media at first praised the trend, but as the numbers grew, the authorities started to see it as a potential vector for youth mobilization. One WeChat group message from a school warned students, “This incident has developed into a political movement. If you participate in it, your life is over.”

To be sure, the ride presented logistical challenges in Kaifeng, with highways packed and bikes abandoned in the city. But young Chinese already struggling with their country’s limits will take the abrupt shutdown as a simple message: “We won’t even let you have this.”

China reacts to Trump win. Reactions to Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election are relatively muted in China; comments on the official Xinhua announcement are heavily censored. Ultranationalists are celebrating the win, seeing it as favoring their side against liberals, feminism, and ethnic minorities.

However, hawkish picks such as Rubio and Waltz are likely to cause discontent in Beijing. China previously targeted Rubio, among others, in an online influence campaign focused on down-ballot races. (Rubio’s team has spent a lot of time and effort working on China issues.) But Chinese officials are unlikely to react publicly to the picks as they quietly scope out who will join the new administration.

If Rubio ends up the next secretary of state, I expect that the Chinese sanctions against him in retaliation for his positions on Hong Kong may not be officially lifted but will be quietly ignored for any future China visits.

Tech and Business

Taiwan arms sales. Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s administration reportedly didn’t waste any time before trying to curry favor with the new order in Washington—pitching an arms deal that could include up to $15 billion in U.S. equipment. The list, which reportedly includes up to 60 F-35 jets, an Aegis destroyer, and as many as 400 Patriot missiles, attracted immediate criticism for being more geared toward U.S. needs than Taiwanese defense priorities.

Taiwan’s air force is large and politically influential, but it would be rapidly endangered in any conflict with China. There are frequent calls from U.S. military experts to move toward a more dispersed, drone-based force. But Taipei may see buying favor with Washington as a better value purchase.

Insurance frauds? Chinese authorities delivered another blow to fallen real estate giant China Evergrande Group: Several former senior executives from its insurance arm have likely been detained amid investigations into financial mismanagement. Evergrande Life Insurance was among the top life insurance firms in China, with approximately $31.8 billion in assets.

The probe is likely part of a wider crackdown triggered by accusations of wide-ranging insurance fraud against drugmaker AstraZeneca. The company’s China chairperson has been detained, and dozens of senior executives are being investigated.

FP’s Most Read This Week

• Why She Lost by Michael Hirsh
• The 10 Foreign-Policy Implications of the 2024 U.S. Election by Stephen M. Walt

A Bit of Culture

For the last 1,500 years, The Peach Blossom Spring by poet Tao Yuanming (365-427) has been the archetypal vision of a quiet, untroubled life in China—safe from malice, free from want, and innocent of history. However, it bears no resemblance to the world of chaos and collapse that Tao himself lived in during the Six Dynasties period.—Brendan O’Kane, translator

The Peach Blossom Spring

By Tao Yuanming

During the Taiyuan years of the Jin, there was a fisherman from Wuling who lost track of how far upstream he had gone and found himself amid a grove of flowering peach trees. For hundreds of paces on either side, the stream was lined with nothing but peach trees, sweet-scented and beautiful, and the air was full of falling petals fluttering to the ground.

The fisherman marveled at the sight and then pressed on through the grove to find the far edge. On the far side of the trees was a spring, and on the other side of the spring there was a mountain, and in the mountain there was a small opening, and through that opening the fisherman could just make out what looked like a light.

He left his boat and squeezed through the narrow opening, which was just wide enough to admit a person. A few dozen paces inside, the crack opened suddenly onto a broad, level plain laid out with neat little cottages. There were rich cultivated fields and lovely ponds, and bamboo, mulberry, and other plants grew there. Paths crisscrossed the fields, close enough for one household’s chickens to hear the neighbors’ dogs.

Men and women, dressed just like ordinary people, went back and forth at their work in the fields, and everyone, young and old, was content and free of cares. The sight of the fisherman caused a commotion. They asked how he had got there, and he told them the whole story. He was invited to one villager’s home, where they served him wine and killed a chicken for a feast. As word of the newcomer got around, the villagers came to see him.

They said their ancestors had fled the turmoil of the Qin. With their wives and children and neighbors, they had taken refuge in this secluded place and never left. The village had been completely cut off from the outside world ever since. They asked him what dynasty it was and proved never even to have heard of the Han, let alone the Wei or the Jin.

The fisherman enumerated the dynasties, recounting what he knew of the fortunes of each; the villagers sighed sympathetically. Each of the villagers invited the fisherman to their homes, and in every home he was offered wine and food. He stayed several days before leaving. As he left, one of the villagers said, “No one outside needs to know about us.”

Foreign Policy · by James Palmer

13. US finalises up to US$6.6 billion funding for chip giant TSMC

US finalises up to US$6.6 billion funding for chip giant TSMC

16 Nov 2024 01:36AM

(Updated: 16 Nov 2024 07:39AM)

channelnewsasia.com

WASHINGTON: The United States will award Taiwanese chip giant TSMC up to US$6.6 billion in direct funding to help build several plants on US soil, officials said on Friday (Nov 15), finalising the deal before Donald Trump's administration enters the White House.

"Today's final agreement with TSMC - the world's leading manufacturer of advanced semiconductors - will spur US$65 billion of private investment to build three state-of-the-art facilities in Arizona," said President Joe Biden in a statement.

The Biden administration's announcement comes shortly before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Trump has recently criticised the CHIPS Act, a major law passed during Biden's tenure aimed at strengthening the US semiconductor industry and reducing the country's reliance on Asian suppliers, including Taiwan.

While the US government has unveiled over US$36 billion in grants through this act, including the award to TSMC, much of the funds remain in the due diligence phase and have not been disbursed.

But once a deal is finalised, funds can start flowing to companies that have hit certain milestones.

TSMC is the second company after Polar Semiconductor to finalise its agreement.

"Currently, the United States does not make on our shores any leading-edge chips, and this is the first time ever that we'll be able to say we will be making these leading-edge chips in the United States," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters on Thursday.

"I want to remind everyone that these are the chips that run AI and quantum computing. These are the chips that are in sophisticated military equipment," Raimondo added.

Making these chips in the United States, she noted, helps address a national security liability.

The first of TSMC's three facilities is set to fully open by early-2025, Biden noted.

At full capacity, the three facilities in Arizona are expected to "manufacture tens of millions of leading-edge logic chips that will power products like 5G/6G smartphones, autonomous vehicles, and high-performance computing and AI applications," the Commerce Department said.

It added that "early production yields at the first TSMC plant in Arizona are on par with similar factories in Taiwan".

The investment is anticipated to create around 6,000 direct manufacturing jobs.

A senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity that they expect at least US$1 billion to go to TSMC this year.

Besides the US$6.6 billion in direct funding, the United States is also providing up to US$5 billion in proposed loans to TSMC Arizona.

While the United States used to make nearly 40 per cent of the world's chips, the proportion is now closer to 10 per cent – and none are the most advanced chips.

TSMC shares closed 1.3 per cent lower in New York on Friday.

Source: AFP/fs/mi

channelnewsasia.com

16 Nov 2024 01:36AM

(Updated: 16 Nov 2024 07:39AM)

channelnewsasia.com

WASHINGTON: The United States will award Taiwanese chip giant TSMC up to US$6.6 billion in direct funding to help build several plants on US soil, officials said on Friday (Nov 15), finalising the deal before Donald Trump's administration enters the White House.

"Today's final agreement with TSMC - the world's leading manufacturer of advanced semiconductors - will spur US$65 billion of private investment to build three state-of-the-art facilities in Arizona," said President Joe Biden in a statement.

The Biden administration's announcement comes shortly before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Trump has recently criticised the CHIPS Act, a major law passed during Biden's tenure aimed at strengthening the US semiconductor industry and reducing the country's reliance on Asian suppliers, including Taiwan.

While the US government has unveiled over US$36 billion in grants through this act, including the award to TSMC, much of the funds remain in the due diligence phase and have not been disbursed.

But once a deal is finalised, funds can start flowing to companies that have hit certain milestones.

TSMC is the second company after Polar Semiconductor to finalise its agreement.

"Currently, the United States does not make on our shores any leading-edge chips, and this is the first time ever that we'll be able to say we will be making these leading-edge chips in the United States," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters on Thursday.

"I want to remind everyone that these are the chips that run AI and quantum computing. These are the chips that are in sophisticated military equipment," Raimondo added.

Making these chips in the United States, she noted, helps address a national security liability.

The first of TSMC's three facilities is set to fully open by early-2025, Biden noted.

At full capacity, the three facilities in Arizona are expected to "manufacture tens of millions of leading-edge logic chips that will power products like 5G/6G smartphones, autonomous vehicles, and high-performance computing and AI applications," the Commerce Department said.

It added that "early production yields at the first TSMC plant in Arizona are on par with similar factories in Taiwan".

The investment is anticipated to create around 6,000 direct manufacturing jobs.

A senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity that they expect at least US$1 billion to go to TSMC this year.

Besides the US$6.6 billion in direct funding, the United States is also providing up to US$5 billion in proposed loans to TSMC Arizona.

While the United States used to make nearly 40 per cent of the world's chips, the proportion is now closer to 10 per cent – and none are the most advanced chips.

TSMC shares closed 1.3 per cent lower in New York on Friday.

Source: AFP/fs/mi

channelnewsasia.com

14. China tests building Moon base with lunar soil bricks

China tests building Moon base with lunar soil bricks

15 Nov 2024 06:14PM

(Updated: 15 Nov 2024 06:29PM)

channelnewsasia.com

BEIJING: China is expected to push forward in its quest to build the first lunar base on Friday (Nov 15), launching an in-space experiment to test whether the station's bricks could be made from the Moon's own soil.

Brick samples will blast off aboard a cargo rocket heading for China's Tiangong space station, part of Beijing's mission to put humans on the Moon by 2030 and build a permanent base there by 2035.

It is a daunting task: any structure has to withstand huge amounts of cosmic radiation, extreme temperature variations and moonquakes, and getting building materials there in the first place is a costly procedure.

Constructing the base out of the Moon itself could be a solution to those problems, scientists from a university in central Wuhan province hope.

They have created a series of prototype bricks made of various compositions of materials found on earth, such as basalt, which mimic the properties of lunar soil.

Slivers of those test bricks will be subjected to a series of stringent tests once they reach the Tiangong space station.

"It's mainly exposure," said Zhou Cheng, a professor at Wuhan's Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

"To put it simply, we put (the material) in space and let it sit there ... to see whether its durability, its performance will degrade under the extreme environment."

The temperature on the Moon can vary drastically between 180 degrees Celsius and -190 degrees Celsius.

Its lack of an atmosphere means it is subjected to large quantities of cosmic radiation as well as micrometeorites, while moonquakes can weaken any structure on its surface.

The exposure experiment will last three years, with samples sent back for testing every year.

"GOOD CHANCE OF SUCCESS"

Zhou's team developed their prototype bricks after analysing soil brought back by China's Chang'e-5 probe, the world's first mission in four decades to collect Moon samples.

The resulting black bricks are three times stronger than standard bricks, he said, and interlock together without a binding agent.

The team has also worked on the "Lunar Spider", a 3D printing robot to build structures in space, some of which are conical in shape.

"In the future, our plan is definitely to use resources on-site, that is, make bricks directly from the lunar soil, and then do various construction scenarios, so we won't be bringing the materials from Earth," said Zhou.

It's "an obvious thing to try" because using materials already on the Moon would be much cheaper, said Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University in Britain.

"The experiments have a good chance of success, and the results will pave the way to building moonbases," he told AFP.

LEGO BRICKS

Beijing is far from alone in looking to build the first lunar base.

China's planned outpost on the Moon, known as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), is a joint project with Russia.

A dozen countries – including Thailand, Pakistan, Venezuela and Senegal – are partners in the initiative, as well as around 40 foreign organisations, according to Chinese state media.

The United States is aiming to put humans back on the Moon in 2026 and subsequently set up a station there, though its Artemis programme has already seen various delays.

As part of the US preparations, researchers at the University of Central Florida are testing potential building bricks of their own, made using 3D printers.

The European Space Agency, meanwhile, has carried out studies on how to assemble bricks based on the structure of Lego.

channelnewsasia.com

15. 'Last man out of Afghanistan,' Gen. Christopher Donahue tapped for fourth star

'Last man out of Afghanistan,' Gen. Christopher Donahue tapped for fourth star

The 2021 photograph of the then-two-star general boarding the last C-17 out of Kabul came to symbolize the U.S. withdrawal after 20 years of war.

Matt White

Posted 12 Hours Ago

taskandpurpose.com · by Matt White

Army general Christopher T. Donahue, whose picture as the last soldier to board the final C-17 out of Afghanistan became an iconic image of the American withdrawal from the country, was nominated for promotion to the rank of four-star general and to command U.S. Army Europe-Africa, according to a Pentagon list of general officer nominations released Friday.

Donahue must be confirmed by the Senate to assume the rank and position.

Donahue spent most of his field and company-grade officer years in special operations, including several assignments within the Army’s secretive Delta Force. As a general officer, he has spent the last four years in charge of conventional forces at Fort Liberty, first as the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division for two years, and then as the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps.

He also oversaw the name change of the Army’s largest base from Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty, participating in meetings with the local civilian community and Pentagon leaders that produced the new name.

But Donahue’s career will likely be remembered best for the photo taken during his 18th deployment at Kabul’s airport in August 2021 when he was a two-star general in charge of the 82nd Airborne. Taken by Army Master Sgt. Alex Burnett through a night vision device, the photo captures Donahue mounting the ramp of an Air Force C-17 after checking to make sure no Americans were still waiting to board. Donahue’s plane and four other C-17s departed Kabul just minutes before midnight on Aug. 31, 2021, meeting a deadline for U.S. forces to leave the country after nearly 20 years of war.

Donahue’s decision to be the last service member to leave Afghanistan was part of the Army’s officer and leader culture, according to David Cotter, director of the military history department at the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

“In a field or combat environment, for example, the commander eats last, after all the soldiers have been fed,” Cotter told Task & Purpose in 2021. “Similarly, the commander’s tank is the last to cross back into friendly areas when executing a rearward passage of lines.”

Donahue’s service history is somewhat shrouded in mystery, with no year-by-year unit assignments available in his various online biographies. Instead, his biographies describe assignments, training schools and awards that paint a picture of an officer deep within the special operations world. After graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Donahue commanded a rifle company in the 75th Ranger Regiment, served at the Pentagon as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff then was assigned to the Army’s Special Operations Command. There, his biography says, he served a series of leadership roles including squadron and brigade commander at then-Fort Bragg, North Carolina — roles that match up with positions of a stint at Delta Force.

He was then named director of operations for the Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees Delta Force and other elite units from across the military.

Donahue is a graduate of Ranger School and Military Freefall School, holds the combat infantryman badge and expert infantryman badge and has personal awards that include five Bronze Stars, two with ‘V’ device for valor in combat duty.

At U.S. Army Europe-Africa, Donahue will oversee a relatively new major command that was consolidated from Africa and Europe-based organizations in 2020. Based in Wiesbaden, Germany, the command oversees Army operations from Arctic-like Scandinavian nations to Africa. The command has 37,000 soldiers, according to an Army fact sheet, who are responsible for operations in 104 countries. The command is involved in extensive training and supply missions around the war in Ukraine.

The latest on Task & Purpose

• Marine recruit flees boot camp, stopped at airport
• Navy fires commander of San Diego Leadership and Ethics Command
• Air Force fires commander at Montana nuclear missile base after investigation
• DoD can’t confirm whether North Korean troops in Russia are ‘gorging on pornography’
• An enemy commander told him to surrender. This Army captain threw a grenade instead.

taskandpurpose.com · by Matt White

16. With Trump’s Presidency, the China Hawks Are Back

​Still waiting to see where Elbridge Colby ends up. Probably USD(P)

Excerpts:

Trump’s picks thus far demonstrate a consensus on a much firmer China policy — a recognition that post-Cold War engagement was a strategic failure that facilitated the rise of a new peer competitor to the United States. Trump and these advisers surely don’t want war with China, but they understand that the best way to avoid war is to prepare for it in such a way that the adversary is deterred. That will be the most important mission of Trump’s new China hawks.

With Trump’s Presidency, the China Hawks Are Back 

- The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator | USA News and Politics

spectator.org · by Francis P. Sempa · November 14, 2024​

They demonstrate a recognition that post-Cold War engagement was a strategic failure.

by

November 14, 2024, 1:07 PM

Ivan Marc/Shutterstock

President-elect Donald Trump is moving at record speed to nominate Cabinet officials and select White House staffers, especially in the area of national security policy. The world is watching and waiting, especially our allies and adversaries in the Indo-Pacific. The China hawks are back, and that most likely means that the United States will actually (instead of rhetorically) “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific. The Cold War with China is about to intensify.

Let’s begin with Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, currently a Fox News analyst and a decorated combat veteran of the Afghan and Iraq wars. Hegseth has stated that China is building an army that is specifically dedicated to defeating the U.S. Hegseth believes that America’s armed forces need to be more lethal, less concerned with “diversity, equity and inclusion,” and focused on winning wars. China, he believes, wants to take over Taiwan and gain control over its semiconductor industry. China’s leaders, he recently remarked, “have a full-spectrum long-term view of not just regional but global domination.” Hegseth will likely advocate for shifting resources from the Ukraine war to bolstering our ability to deter and if necessary defeat China in the western Pacific.

Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, also a retired army combat veteran, says that China is an “existential threat,” and has called for the U.S. to arm Taiwan “now before its too late.” Like Trump, Waltz has also urged Taiwan’s leaders to provide more for their own defense. Waltz values America’s alliances with Japan and South Korea, and sees India as a potential valuable ally against China. Waltz compares our current struggle with China to the 20th-century Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union. He is more supportive of Ukraine than Hegseth, but has also urged our European allies to provide more help in a war that affects them more than it does the United States.

Perhaps the biggest China hawk on Trump’s new team is Secretary of State nominee Sen. Marco Rubio. Rubio has warned that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan may happen in the next few years. “We must do all we can to deter an attack on Taiwan,” Rubio said in 2022, “or we risk losing the Indo-Pacific region to the Chinese Communist Party.” Rubio is probably more interventionist than Trump or some of his other advisers, but on China he is in lockstep with other Trump national security picks.

Meanwhile, Trump has nominated New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to be America’s UN ambassador. Stefanik has been an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its influence operations within the United States. Last year, Stefanik traveled to the Indo-Pacific region to meet with allied leaders in Japan, Singapore, and Thailand, where she pledged to “continue to strengthen key alliances and partnerships in the region” in the face of what she called China’s encroachment in the Indo-Pacific.

Trump’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, another army veteran, for director of national intelligence (DNI), is not so much a China hawk as a Ukraine war skeptic, who like Trump was highly critical of the interventionist policies of Bush 43, Obama, and Biden. She previously opposed Trump’s trade war with China, but also warned that Biden’s policies were pushing China and Russia closer together. For CIA director, Trump has selected former DNI Director John Ratcliffe, described as a “hardliner against China.” Ratcliffe was quoted as saying that “Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily, and technologically.”

Trump’s picks should come as no surprise, and it is likely that sub-cabinet positions and other national security and military positions will complement those at the top. Toward the end of Trump’s first term as president, the China “superhawks” (to borrow Josh Rogin’s term in Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century) were ascendant. Rogin noted that after two years of infighting, the “hardliners in the Trump administration ultimately succeeded in moving the government closer to a competitive stance vis-à-vis China than any administration that had come before.” This was no small feat given the consensus behind engagement with China that dominated post-Cold War thinking since the early 1990s. Trump started to reverse that in his first term, but the Biden administration shifted back to “competitive engagement,” a policy that emboldened the CCP to place even more pressure on Taiwan. Moreover, Biden’s support for a Ukrainian victory in its war with Russia moved Russia closer to China.

Trump’s picks thus far demonstrate a consensus on a much firmer China policy — a recognition that post-Cold War engagement was a strategic failure that facilitated the rise of a new peer competitor to the United States. Trump and these advisers surely don’t want war with China, but they understand that the best way to avoid war is to prepare for it in such a way that the adversary is deterred. That will be the most important mission of Trump’s new China hawks.

spectator.org · by Francis P. Sempa · November 14, 2024

​17. The Big Five - 16 November edition by Mick Ryan

T​opics (plus more analysis up front on Ukraine and the INDOPACIFIC):

1. Russia’s Dobas Battering Ram

2. China Scenarios for U.S.-Australia Collaboration

3. Pay Now or Pay Later

4. The Israel-Iran War

5. The Implications of Trump Presidency

The Big Five

The Big Five - 16 November edition

My regular update on conflict and confrontation in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Pacific, accompanied by recommended readings on modern war and future conflict.

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-big-five-16-november-edition?utm

Mick Ryan

Nov 16, 2024

Image: @DefenceU on Twitter

There is an old Chinese saying: strangle the chicken and frighten the monkey. In essence, if you wish to shape the behaviour of a big competitor, attack and destroy a small ally of that competitor. Unfortunately, U.S. and NATO ‘strategy’ for Ukraine in the past three years, their strategic impatience, and inclination to rush into negotiations with Russia means that the West instead has ‘fed the chicken and encouraged the monkey’.

As is every week these days, it was a fascinating week in war and international affairs. In this week’s update, I will focus mainly on the war in Ukraine but also provide an update on affairs in the Pacific as well.

Ukraine

The war in Ukraine and Russia continues to centre on two main campaigns - Kursk and the Donbas. However, more recently the Russians have begun an offensive in southern Ukraine and small raids into Kharkiv.

The Campaign in Kursk. This week the Ukrainians continued to inflict significant casualties on Russian attacking forces in Kursk. But the overall trend in this campaign is favourable to the Russians (and their North Korean allies). They have retaken about a quarter of the territory Ukraine seized in its August offensive. And while Ukraine has recently been able to retake a small amount of territory, the overall trend here is one of the Russians slowly grinding out advances in a manner similar to their eastern offensive over the past year.

With large numbers of glide bombs and drones, EW and drones, and the evolving use of meat tactics, the Russians have developed a viable tactical and operational method which they will apply in Kursk.

Ukrainian controlled territory in Kursk 1 October and 16 November 2024. Source: Deep State Map

With a force of around 50,000 Russians and North Koreans assembled there, with who nows how many North Koreans to follows, the Russians may be able to sustain a longer counter offensive here than the Ukrainians can sustain a defence of their ground given their manpower shortages and other pressures in the Donbas.

The Donbas Campaign. Unfortunately, the news from eastern Ukraine continues to be grim. While no major Russian operational breakthrough is expected, the Russians have been able sustain their pressure on the Ukrainians for about a year now and it is telling. The Russian gains in territory has accelerated as their eastern offensive has continued. And while they continue to take massive casualties, now over 1500 per day, they have also continued to learn and adapt their tactics and campaign (which is also explored in one of my Big Five recommended articles this week).

The Russian eastern offensive rolls on and it has advanced in areas south of Pokrovsk. Indeed, it has recently accelerated its gains in this area. Russia has also made gains on its Vuhledar axis of advance, taking control of several towns.

Russian forces are also consolidating along the Oskil River. The Russians are slowly clearly north and south from the territory it holds on the eastern bank of the Oskil. and is pushing both north and south of its positions on the east bank.

Map showing recent Russian advances to the Oskil River and to Kupyansk. Source: ISW.

Russian forces made further advances into the city of Kupyansk as part of their offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line. Kupyansk is a major rail hub with five different lines intersecting in the town. Occpuied by the Russians in February 2022, it was subsequently liberated by Ukraine in their September 2022 offensive. Now, the Russians are back.

Russian Missile Attacks. Russia has sustained its campaign to destrot Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and terrorise Ukrainian civilians through drone and missile attacks. Over the past couple of weeks, targets in Odesa, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy and Kyiv. Large attacks took place on 13 November (96 Russian missiles and drones launched), 11 November (76 Russian missiles and drones launched), and 10 November (145 Russian missiles and drones launched).

Overall, the number of Russian drone and missile attacks have increased in the past three months compared to the same period last year (see graphs below from CSIS Russian Strike Tracker). Just as the Russians are throwing as many people as possible into battle to seize territory in the lead up to a Trump inauguration, they appear to be doing the same in the drone and missile war.

Russian drone and missile strikes August-November 2023 and 2024. Source: CSIS Russia Strike Tracker.

The Putin-Scholz Call. This week, it has emerged that the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has spoken with Vladimir Putin about ending the war in Ukraine. While apparently Scholz informed Putin that he had not achieved his overall goal for the war - the subjugation of Ukraine - in the past three years, that is unlikely to have any influence on the Russian leaders strategic calculus. He has been ‘successful enough’ to convince Western leaders to seek a ceasefire around current territorial holdings.

As the New York Times has reported, “Mr. Putin told his German counterpart that any peace deal in Ukraine must be based on new territorial realities and, most importantly, address the root causes of the conflict.” This is very unsubtle code for Putin keeping all the territory he already has, and keeping Ukraine out of NATO, as the likely start point from Russia for any negotiation.

Putin has the measure of his Western counterparts. And given the reaction of European and U.S. leaders to North Korea joining the war, which in essence was a couple statements about it being very bad but no action (again), Putin probably believes for good reason he has the upper hand should negotiations about Ukraine commence. And, he has not given up on his overall goal of subjugating all of Ukraine.

I explored this in my post this week about Ukraine, where I noted the following:

The West’s strategy for Ukraine has been failing for some time. A series of decisions by the Biden administration including slow delivery of weapons, avoiding ‘escalatory weapons’ for Ukraine, denials on long range strike weapon use and refusal to place any NATO boots on the ground early in the war has resulted in Russia believing the West lacks the will to fully support a Ukrainian victory, and that the U.S. president is more afraid of a Russian failure than a Ukrainian failure.

The West’s strategy for Ukraine is no longer failing. It has clearly failed.

And despite the fact that U.S. and European strategy for supporting Ukraine has failed, there appears to be no appetite on their part to revise their strategy. The moral cowardice of our politicians in this regard will come back to bite us all - in Europe and the Pacific. And it will do so in the near future.

Ukraine’s Military Strategy. I wanted to finish up my Ukraine update with some thoughts on Ukraine’s military strategy. In February this year, when President Zelenskyy appointed General Syrskyi as commander-in-chief, he gave him several important tasks. One of these was developing a revised Ukrainian military strategy for the war. As Zelenskyy described it on 8 February, he had tasked the new commander-in-chief with developing the following:

A realistic, detailed action plan for the Armed Forces of Ukraine for 2024 must be presented. It must take into account the real situation on the battlefield now and the prospects.

Key elements of this strategy will have included the more effective generation of forces (which included the mobilisation bill, which took months to debate and endorse) but also more streamlined training and allocation of personnel to frontline units. The manpower shortages of the past few months are indicators that this effort has not been successful.

But perhaps the most important element of the revised strategy was to find a way to reset the trajectory of the war after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive. Not only was this a significant military setback, it was a political setback. Expectations of Ukrainian success were set so high that the failure of the offensive led to soul searching in many European capitals, as well as the prolonged debate on aid in the U.S. congress.

This year, the Ukrainian military sought a way to address the rolling Russian offensive that was steadily gaining ground in eastern Ukraine and influencing the decision-making of Ukraine’s supporters. Thus was born the idea for the Kursk offensive, which was designed to change the trajectory of the war, hold Russian territory at risk, change Western perceptions of how the war was progressing for Ukraine, and force a military and political response from Putin.

By and large, it has (unfortunately) not achieved this. Key reasons include the Russian capacity to learn and adapt better than it did earlier in the war, Russia improving the employment of its larger military force, and Putin’s determination to focus on taking as much Ukrainian territory – regardless of casualties – before a change in U.S. administrations to influence the minds of the incoming Trump administration.

The extraordinarily high daily losses currently being suffered by the Russians, the highest of the war so far, indicate that Putin believes that if he can sustain the pressure for just a few more months, he can further wear down Ukraine, degrade its morale and potentially achieve a western capitulation (I don’t imagine a Ukrainian capitulation - they actually know the terrible stakes involved with Russian occupation).

Source: @WarMapper.org on Twitter.

The overall Ukrainian military strategy, which has seen Russia retain the strategic initiative, Ukraine lose territory in the east at an accelerating pace, the conduct of an offensive in Kursk which has not achieved its objectives and drawn valuable resources from defending eastern Ukraine, and the decline in Ukrainian strategic influence and Washington DC and Brussels, appears to have been unsuccesful in 2024.

Whether this might result in challenges in the Zelenskyy-Syrskyi relationship, as we saw in the Zelenskyy-Zaluzhny relationship in 2023 after the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, remains to be seen.

The Pacific

China and the South China Sea

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week released coordinates demarcating China's claimed territorial sea baseline around Scarborough Shoal. By announcing this territorial sea baseline around Scarborough Shoal, China is seeking to legitimise its territorial claim through the fraudulent application of internationally recognized maritime law concepts. Given this shoal is claimed by the Philippines, the government there was not happy, issuing a statement noting that “the said baselines infringe upon Philippine sovereignty and contravene international law.”

Australia-Indonesia Joint Exercise

Australia and Indonesia conducted a large bilteral exercise this week. Conducted in Indonesia, the exercise included Australian and Indonesian air, naval, amphibious, and land operations. Called Exercise Keris Woomera, the combined joint exercise culminated with a live-fire exercise that included tanks, artillery, infantry and attack helicopters.

Images: Australian Department of Defence

US-Japan-RoK exercise

This week, the U.S., Japan and South Korea also commenced exercise Freedom Edge, which is demonstrating air defense capabilities as well as the integration of 5th-gen fighters into a multi-domain warfighting construct.

Source: @ianellisjones

As a press released noted, “Freedom Edge continues to demonstrate the defensive posture & unbreakable will of Japan, the ROK, & the U.S. to promote trilateral multi-domain interoperability & to protect freedom for peace & stability in the Indo-Pacific, including the Korean Peninsula.”

Albo the Chinese Deputy Sheriff?

Finally in the Pacific this week, the Chinese media praised the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as a model for other leaders in the Pacific to emulate. While there will be some on the left of Australia politics who will be jumping for joy at such an endorsement, the reality is that it speaks poorly of the current Australian government’s embrace of China. Articles such as this are deliberately designed by the Chinese Communist Party to foster discord in the U.S.-Australia relationship as the Trump administration begins its transition into government in January 2025.

*****

Since my last Big Five post here, I have published a few articles. On 5 November I published a piece at the Lowy Institute that explored how the concept of victory remains relevant in modern warfare. I also published an article here that examined the potential components of any ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine. Finally, I published two articles that contained observations and reflections from my visit to Israel last week. You can read them here and here.

Two podcasts were released in the last couple of weeks where I was interviewed. First, I was interviewed by Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman on their Shield of the Republic podcast. We discussed the war in Ukraine, and my new book, The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire. Also, this week, the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) released a podcast where I was interviewed about the war in Ukraine, and how military organisations can learn from the war, but also improve their own learning and adaptation systems.

This week I also gave presentations to the National Security College in Canberra (on Chinese learning and adaptation from the war in Ukraine) and the Indian Navy’s war college in Goa (on learning and adaptation in the war in Ukraine).

Finally, for those who weren’t aware, I have been posting on BlueSky more frequently (you can follow me here). I will retain a presence on both Twitter and BlueSky for the time being and post pretty much the same stuff on each. I have seen a drop off of followers on Twitter in the past couple of weeks (I am not the only one) and a big increase in BlueSky followers. For a long time there have been very good mil twitter, NATSEC and OSINT communities on Twitter. It would be nice to see these have an active presence on BlueSky as well.

*****

So, to the recommended readings…

This week, a mix of articles including a good exploration of Russia’s evolving tactics and campaign execution in eastern Ukraine from the relaunched Small Wars Journal. I have also included a great piece from Stacie Pettyjohn that looks at the Australia-U.S. alliance the China scenarios, an update on the war in the Middle East from Eliot Cohen, and a very interesting study from the Kiel Institute about the costs to Germany of supporting Ukraine now and the costs of a Russian victory. Finally, there is a piece on the potential national security implications of a Trump 2.0 presidency.

As always, if you only have time to read one article, the first one is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. Russia’s Dobas Battering Ram

As I noted in my update, the Russians have continued to advance in eastern Ukraine. Their seizure of Ukrainian territory has accelerated in the last couple of months. It is an excellent, and quite detailed piece from the re-launched Small Wars Journal that explores how the Russians have learned and improved since the beginning of the war As the author notes: “Russian military strategy and tactics are gradually evolving after the setbacks of the first two years, progressing from the operational-tactical level to the operational level, and potentially toward a more cohesive operational-strategic level. This development presents a dangerous scenario for the future.” You can read the full article here.

2. China Scenarios for U.S.-Australia Collaboration

While AUKUS gets a lot of attention, the United States-Australia relationship is one that goes back to our battlefield exploits in the First and Second World Wars, the signing of the Anzus alliance in 1951, and our continuing close relationship fostered through exchanges, exercises, intelligence sharing, arms sales and technological collaboration. In this article, the author explores recent developments in the ever-closer military alliance between the United States and Australia. She then examines three hypothetical scenarios of Chinese aggression and proposes ways the U.S. and Australia can strengthen their collective response. You can read the full article here.

3. Pay Now or Pay Later

One of the truisms of national security affairs and human conflict is ‘pay now or pay later’. In essence, this means that a challenge left unaddressed now will probably metastacise and therefore be more expensive to confront in the future. With that in mind, this new report from the Kiel Institute is quite timely. It examines the costs of Germany supporting Ukraine now (and now providing sufficient support) versus the future costs of a Russian victory. As the report finds, supporting a Ukrainian victory now is a much better investment, and much cheaper, for Germany. You can read the full report here. And, hat tip to Ulrike Franke (on BlueSky) for pointing me towards this.

4. The Israel-Iran War

Eliot Cohen, a friend who I accompanied on the recent trip to Israel, has produced his first article on our visit. His article explores how the focus of Israel’s military operations has shifted since our previous visit there in December 2023. Using his long standing relationships in the Israeli national security community as a foundation, this is a very good examination of how the Israeli’s are currently viewing their strategic threats and how to address them. You can read the article here.

5. The Implications of Trump Presidency

It has been hard to avoid the media commentary and online conversations about the implications of a Trump 2.0 presidency in the past ten days or so. The flurry of annoucements about his future administration have only intensified debate, expecially around some of the more controversial nominees. In this piece, the author argues that “When the rest of the world looks at Trump, they will no longer see an aberrant exception to American exceptionalism; they will see what America stands for in the twenty-first century.” While I am personally taking the view of ‘lets sit back and see what actually happens from January next year’, this article is one of many notable explorations of the coming four years published since the election of Trump. You can read the full piece here.

18. Gabbard Is a Dream Come True for Foreign Policy Realists

​Hmmmm... Quite the ironic, oxymoronic, paradoxical, nonsequiteur thesis: "The liberal theological impulse to use force to promote egalitarianism and sexual rights." (note sarcasm: I just wanted to use all those words at once).

​Excerpt:

But, perhaps, the cause of liberal fear is something else. Gabbard’s appointment is also a sign that Trump is serious about reforming the intelligence apparatus of this country. Given that she's opposed to the core theological impulse of this regime—promoting egalitarianism and sexual rights often by force across the globe as a revolutionary power—this causes paranoia among those who have sinecures in the regime’s bureaucratic apparatus. And for that, and for that alone, she deserves our support and praise.

Gabbard Is a Dream Come True for Foreign Policy Realists

Interventionists haven’t forgiven her for her opposition to Syrian intervention. 

The American Conservative · by Sumantra Maitra · November 15, 2024

It has been absolutely fascinating to see whom CNN is trotting out to oppose the president-elect’s new appointments, especially the (now) former Rep. Matt Gaetz to the Department of Justice or the former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence. John Bolton, Adam Kinzinger, Andy McCabe, and Jeh Johnson are unhappy, and on CNN, talking about how each of these picks are “unqualified.”

Enough ink has been already spilled to oppose the stinking credentialism often mistaken for meritocracy and the “consensus politics” that goes on in the name of bipartisanship in the capital of this country; it is not the job of this magazine to defend those called upon to serve, as they will face their own inquisitions, and will have to come out of them bold and gracious. That said, there are some egregious accusations that deserve to be scrutinized for the sake of propriety.

Two of them include Gabbard’s stances on Syria and Ukraine, the epitome of liberal hubris. The trotting out of Obama-era Democrats to denigrate Gabbard shows that they have not forgiven her for her cardinal sin, the heresy of opposing the prophet at the height of liberal internationalism.

Gabbard opposed the toppling of Assad in Syria by force, going against Obama and the U.S. government’s stated policy of “Assad must go.”

Consider Gabbard’s own statement justifying her views. “Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States,” she told The View. The congresswoman and then presidential aspirant further tweeted, “We heard attacks from warmongers in politics/media before. Those opposed to Iraq/Libya/Syria regime change wars are called ‘dicatator-lovers’ [sic] or ‘cozy’ with evil regimes. Rather than defend their position, they resort to name-calling & smears. American people wont [sic] fall for this.”

In 2016, she wrote an op-ed arguing against U.S. interventions in the Middle East, where she correctly assessed that “to maintain order after Assad’s fall would require at least 500,000 troops in a never-ending occupation.”

“Our actions to overthrow secular dictators in Iraq and Libya, and attempts now to do the same in Syria, have resulted in tremendous loss of life, failed nations, and even worse humanitarian crises while strengthening the very terrorist organizations that have declared war on America,” Gabbard wrote. “A recent New York Times article reported that these ‘rebel groups’ supported by the United States ‘have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, formerly known as Al Nusra.’ How the United States can work hand-in-hand with the very terrorist organization that is responsible for the killing of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 boggles my mind and curdles my blood.”

The idea that a secular dictator might be better than ostensible democracy infused with hardline Islamists in a region that is culturally incompatible with Madisonian democracy might be an amoral position, but it is a realist one, and is supported by evidence and international relations literature.

On the question of NATO, opposition to Gabbard bordered on the cusp of outright libel and calumny.

She tweeted in 2022, “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border.” POLITICO called her “Russia-friendly” for that.

The fact that Russia has a legitimate security interest in its near abroad, has defined redlines, and is reactive to perceived encroachment of the same, isn’t a controversial position. It is validated by research, including a book-length analysis by your humble columnist, as well as by the statements of the current CIA director, William Burns, and the former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The fact that anyone still denies that chain of causation is a sign of severe intellectual mediocrity and corrupting ideology.

But, perhaps, the cause of liberal fear is something else. Gabbard’s appointment is also a sign that Trump is serious about reforming the intelligence apparatus of this country. Given that she's opposed to the core theological impulse of this regime—promoting egalitarianism and sexual rights often by force across the globe as a revolutionary power—this causes paranoia among those who have sinecures in the regime’s bureaucratic apparatus. And for that, and for that alone, she deserves our support and praise.

The American Conservative · by Sumantra Maitra · November 15, 2024

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