Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world."

- Charles F. Kettering

"Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both."

- John Andrew Holmes

"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph."

- Theodore Roosevelt

1. Is the Pentagon Organized to Fight a Cold War With China?

2. Top Marine, released from hospital, prepares for heart procedure

3. Some young Americans on TikTok say they sympathize with Osama bin Laden

4. Jewish Celebrities and Influencers Confront TikTok Executives in Private Call

5. Scoop: Biden's team weighs joining TikTok to court young voters

6. Nepal bans TikTok citing disruption to social harmony

7. Veteran suicides rose in 2021 despite increased prevention efforts

8. Insight: Forever war? Israel risks a long, bloody insurgency in Gaza

9. Who is winning the information war about Hamas' terrorist attack against Israel?

10. TikTok ‘aggressively’ taking down videos promoting Bin Laden letter

11. Defense Secretary Austin affirms U.S. defense commitment to Taiwan in wake of Xi-Biden summit

12. Congress passes stopgap funding bill, hampering Pentagon initiatives

13. Redefining Success in Ukraine

14. Putin the Ideologue

15. What Do US Indo-Pacific Allies Think of the Biden-Xi Summit?

16. The lost opportunity of the Biden-Xi meeting

17. Marine recruit who first held a rifle at boot camp ties shooting record

18. The Myanmar Military Is Facing Death by a Thousand Cuts

19. Not a World War But a World at War

20. In war for talent, Army’s new direct commissions an admin ‘disaster’

21. Myanmar’s junta suffers startling defeats

22. DOD Official Describes Crucial Role of National Defense Strategy

23. We Shouldn’t Fear a Resistance Victory in Myanmar

1. Is the Pentagon Organized to Fight a Cold War With China?

Political warfare. There, I said it too.

Conclusion:

Reconsidering the 1947 National Security Act would allow us to perceive what the U.S. got right against the Soviets, and how that might apply to confrontation with China. The Pentagon, Congress and the White House must be united in the goal of defeating a major threat to the U.S. with political warfare and, if necessary, cyber, terrestrial, maritime, air and space warfare.

Is the Pentagon Organized to Fight a Cold War With China?

Published 11/15/23 08:30 AM ET

Capt. (Ret.) James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

themessenger.com · November 15, 2023

The National Security Act of 1947 organized the U.S. government to fight the Cold War, putting the big pieces in place for that conflict with the Soviet Union. The act had a great effect on the armed services, creating the Air Force from the Army, the Intelligence Community (IC), as it is the genesis of the CIA, and the national security community, as it birthed the Department of Defense from the Constitution’s original War Department and Department of the Navy, as well as the National Security Council.

Today, Congress and the Biden administration should consider conducting a “blank page” exercise and returning to the national security infrastructure that defeated the Soviets. The point of the exercise would be to determine whether — in the context of the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party — the U.S. national security community should be reorganized. How might it need to be changed to ensure an effective fight against China? Of course, there are numerous changes that might be made for each of the military services and in the architecture of the Department of Defense, but in the context of the current cold war with China, there are two major points of consideration.

First, can the Defense Department institutionalize a focus on great-power threats and peer competition for each of the services, and place a demand on Congress and the IC for those threats to remain, respectively, a primary funding target and analytic responsibility? A new National Security Act would require the services to address great-power and peer-competitive enemies as their first priority, and for this to be the case across government. The costs of institutionalization would be considerable, but the result could be to prevent the risks of threat deflation.

Second, there is the salient issue of whether political warfare — in essence, waging war short of kinetic war — should be centered in the Department of Defense. The U.S. has a long and successful history of conducting political warfare during the Cold War that was rooted in the IC and the State Department. But it may be time to do what China has done and create a separate “Political Warfare” service within the Defense Department. As a communist state, China views political warfare as the highest form of warfare, one that seeks to defeat the enemy without resorting to kinetic war. It’s an idea as old as Sun Tzu’s assertions, and is reflected in the writings of other strategic Chinese thinkers, as well as being a principle in the West.

There is some value in placing political warfare under the Department of Defense, because it serves the mission of stopping peer-competitive threats by defeating or substantially diminishing their ideology. It permits the creation of policies to undermine the enemy’s hold on power before security competition turns into kinetic war. Congress and the Pentagon should examine the liabilities and strengths of the Department of Defense to execute the political warfare mission.

The U.S. also should consider making political warfare the equal of other services, in that it allows the Defense Department to recognize that war has a political aspect. That enables an understanding that war is a part of power politics that never ends.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken (R) and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee on May 16, 2023, about investing in U.S. security and examining relations with China.Win McNamee/Getty Images

Since political warfare centers on ideology, U.S. policymakers and defense decision-makers should focus on the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology and its intention to trounce the U.S. and upend the international order. China intends to defeat U.S. national security interests globally, and will target the U.S. population and homeland. In the decades since the Cold War, U.S. officials have largely dismissed China’s communist ideology as “boilerplate,” seeing it as a legacy of the past that had diminished utility as China embraced capitalism, on a path toward becoming a democracy. But that assumption isn’t true.

This way of thinking in the U.S. has spawned failed policy and helped to promote China’s strategy of threat deflation. Far from abandoning its ideology, the Chinese Communist Party has sustained it and, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, strengthened adherence to it. In political warfare, senior civilian and military officials in the United States must think like China’s leadership when considering the Sino-American confrontation. Understanding Marxist-Leninist thought, and how Mao Zedong derived China’s ideology from that of Soviet revolutionary Joseph Stalin, remains relevant today. Knowledge of communism’s history, of the core ideas of its major proponents, and how the ideology drives conflict with the West, explains why Beijing believes that history is on its side. And this could help U.S. defense and intelligence leaders to devise more effective actions to defeat it.

China’s ideology demands that it confront and defeat the United States. Not taking this ideology seriously was — and is — a profound mistake of the engagement school of thought, and has misinformed decisions of several White House administrations. The belief that increased wealth or engagement with the West would “cure” China of its communism is a major misunderstanding of communist ideology. If U.S. defense officials view the world through the Leninist lens, they will understand why communist ideology will always trump economic growth in China and Beijing will always value control over the Chinese people.

There can be no accommodation with the Chinese Communist Party. The U.S. must fight to win this cold war — and must acknowledge that the Party’s ideology will drive it forward until defeat or victory.

Reconsidering the 1947 National Security Act would allow us to perceive what the U.S. got right against the Soviets, and how that might apply to confrontation with China. The Pentagon, Congress and the White House must be united in the goal of defeating a major threat to the U.S. with political warfare and, if necessary, cyber, terrestrial, maritime, air and space warfare.

Capt. (Ret.) James Fanell is a government fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and a former director of intelligence and information operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Bradley A. Thayer is director of China policy at the Center for Security Policy and the co-author with Lianchao Han of “Understanding the China Threat.”

themessenger.com · November 15, 2023

2. Top Marine, released from hospital, prepares for heart procedure

Some slightly good news.

Top Marine, released from hospital, prepares for heart procedure

marinecorpstimes.com · by Irene Loewenson · November 16, 2023

The top Marine general, who had been hospitalized since his cardiac arrest Oct. 29, is home and preparing for a procedure to fix an underlying heart condition.

Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, 58, was released from inpatient care Wednesday and is recovering “well ahead of schedule,” the Marine Corps said Thursday in a news release.

Smith is now preparing for a medical procedure to repair a bicuspid aortic valve in his heart, according to the release. The Corps didn’t specify when that procedure will take place or what it will entail.

A bicuspid aortic valve is a heart abnormality, present since birth, that commonly causes heart problems in middle age, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Doctors determined Smith’s aortic valve problem contributed to his medical episode, the news release stated.

As both the No. 1 and No. 2 Marine, his schedule is ‘not sustainable’

“I don’t mind breaking my own back,” said Gen. Eric Smith, who is both the acting and assistant commandant. “It’s just, I have to make good decisions.”

While Smith recovers, Assistant Commandant Gen. Christopher Mahoney is performing the duties of commandant. The Senate confirmed Mahoney on Nov. 2 through a roll-call vote, pushing the nominees through despite a monthslong hold by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, on approving senior military nominees via the typical process of unanimous consent.

Since July, Smith had been performing the top job in the Marine Corps without a deputy, first as the acting commandant and then as the official commandant.

Smith has been in contact with Mahoney, the Marine Corps news release said. He has indicated he intends to return to the commandant job once he has recovered.

Smith said in the release that he and Mahoney “see eye to eye on the strategic direction of our Corps.” They share a focus on force modernization, day-to-day crisis response and taking care of personnel, according to Smith.

About Irene Loewenson

Irene Loewenson is a staff reporter for Marine Corps Times. She joined Military Times as an editorial fellow in August 2022. She is a graduate of Williams College, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper.

3. Some young Americans on TikTok say they sympathize with Osama bin Laden

Excerpts:

Ahmed, who has been studying the rise of conspiracy theories among young people, told CNN that TikTok “claims to be an entertainment machine” but is really “an indoctrination machine.” Right now, “we have no visibility nor any control over the algorithms that are shaping the minds of young people in America today,” he explained.

The letter itself is a broad critique of American foreign policy that is also filled with antisemitic tropes and even repeats the conspiracy theory that AIDS was a “Satanic American Invention.”

There is a particular focus on US support for Israel. “It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine,” it reads.

Peter Bergen, a CNN National Security Analyst who produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, said he finds the virality of the letter “puzzling.”

“Most of the people were either not born or were very young children when Bin Laden and 9/11 happened, so they don’t have much historical context.”

Some young Americans on TikTok say they sympathize with Osama bin Laden

cnn.com · by Donie O'Sullivan · November 16, 2023

An undated file picture of Osama Bin Laden.

CNN —

Dozens of young Americans have posted videos on TikTok this week expressing sympathy with Osama bin Laden, the notorious terrorist who orchestrated the September 11 attacks, for a two-decade-old letter he wrote critiquing the United States, including its government and support of Israel.

The letter, which attempts to justify the targeting and killing of American civilians, was first published in 2002. It began to recirculate this week on the social media platform, and videos on the topic had garnered at least 14 million views by Thursday. Many of the videos, which supported some of Bin Laden’s assertions and urged other users to read the letter, were shared in the wider context of criticism of American support for Israel in its ongoing war against Hamas.

TikTok said on Thursday that videos promoting the letter violate its rules against “supporting any form of terrorism.” The company said the number of videos promoting the letter were “small” and added “reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate.”

TikTok declined to provide specific data to support this assertion.

TikTok is hugely popular with young Americans, with a majority of Americans under 30 using the app at least once a week, according to a KFF survey. Many of TikTok’s users were born after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks when 19 men hijacked commercial airliners, intentionally crashed the planes, and killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Washington, DC, and rural Pennsylvania. The attack was orchestrated by Bin Laden, the former leader of the al Qaeda terrorist group who was killed in a US special forces raid in 2011.

TikTok’s design makes it difficult to precisely measure how popular or widespread a sentiment is on the platform, but an initial CNN review found a few dozen videos overtly praising or sympathizing with the sentiments expressed in the letter, which is titled “Letter to America.”

Many of the videos were shared with the hashtag #lettertoamerica. By Thursday, views of those videos had exceeded 14 million, yet some videos were from users expressing frustration and disgust about the letter and how it was being praised by others on the platform.

In one video no longer available on the platform that had been viewed more than 1.6 million times, a New York-based lifestyle influencer encouraged others to read the letter and said, “if you have read it, let me know if you are also going through an existential crisis in this very moment, because in the last 20 minutes, my entire viewpoint on the entire life I have believed, and I have lived, has changed.”

The video was later removed. CNN has reached out to the user for comment.

In another video viewed more than 100,000 times, a TikTok user who regularly posts criticisms of the American government said of the letter, “If we’re going to call Osama bin Laden a terrorist, so is the American government.”

‘Utterly ruthless’

A White House spokesman slammed the apparent online trend in a statement, calling it an insult to the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.

“There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history – highlighting them as his direct motivation for murdering 2,977 innocent Americans,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told CNN.

“No one should ever insult the 2,977 American families still mourning loved ones by associating themselves with the vile words of Osama bin Laden,” Bates added, “particularly now, at a time of rising antisemitic violence in the world, and just after Hamas terrorists carried out the worst slaughter of the Jewish people since the Holocaust in the name of the same conspiracy theories.”

Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, explained that TikTok incentivizes high engagement at all costs. The platform “is utterly ruthless about whether it uses hate, disinformation, or positive content to keep you addicted.” As such, “the smart takes aren’t the ones that succeed. It is the dumb takes that get the most virality on a platform like TikTok.”

Ahmed, who has been studying the rise of conspiracy theories among young people, told CNN that TikTok “claims to be an entertainment machine” but is really “an indoctrination machine.” Right now, “we have no visibility nor any control over the algorithms that are shaping the minds of young people in America today,” he explained.

The letter itself is a broad critique of American foreign policy that is also filled with antisemitic tropes and even repeats the conspiracy theory that AIDS was a “Satanic American Invention.”

There is a particular focus on US support for Israel. “It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine,” it reads.

Peter Bergen, a CNN National Security Analyst who produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, said he finds the virality of the letter “puzzling.”

“Most of the people were either not born or were very young children when Bin Laden and 9/11 happened, so they don’t have much historical context.”

Bergen, who has written several books on the deceased terrorist, remains skeptical of the letter’s origin. “There’s no proof it was written by bin Laden and some of the things that he focuses on are inconsistent with his other writings,” he told CNN.

On Wednesday, The Guardian newspaper, which first published a translated copy of the letter in 2002, removed it from its website after TikTok users linked directly to the document. In a statement, the newspaper said the letter “published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.”

The letter, however, is still available elsewhere online.

New data from the Pew Research Center released Wednesday shows TikTok is rapidly becoming a place where more and more young Americans get their news.

Nearly a third of Americans ages 18-29 regularly get news from TikTok, according to Pew – and overall, the share of US adults who say they regularly get their news from TikTok has quadrupled from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak and Jenn Agiesta contributed to this report.

cnn.com · by Donie O'Sullivan · November 16, 2023

4. Jewish Celebrities and Influencers Confront TikTok Executives in Private Call

I would say it is all about the benjamins but for Tik Tok, as a journalist wrote in another article, it is an indoctrination machine.

Jewish Celebrities and Influencers Confront TikTok Executives in Private Call

TikTok faces escalating accusations that it promotes pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel content. “Shame on you,” Sacha Baron Cohen said on the call.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/technology/tiktok-jewish-open-letter-antisemitism.html

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The actress Debra Messing was one of the celebrities who joined a meeting with TikTok executives.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

By Sapna Maheshwari

Nov. 16, 2023

More than a dozen Jewish TikTok creators and celebrities confronted TikTok executives and other employees in a private meeting on Wednesday night, urging them to do more to address a surge of antisemitism and harassment on the popular video service.

The meeting, held on a video call for about 90 minutes and joined by more than 30 people in all, included the actors Sacha Baron Cohen, Debra Messing and Amy Schumer. It was led by Adam Presser, TikTok’s head of operations, and Seth Melnick, its global head of user operations. The executives said they wanted to know more about what the creators were experiencing to improve the app, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.

The celebrities and creators described, sometimes with fiery rhetoric, how TikTok’s tools did not prevent a flood of comments like “Hitler was right” or “I hope you end up like Anne Frank” under videos posted by them and other Jewish users.

“What is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis,” Mr. Cohen, who does not appear to have an official TikTok account, said early in the call. He criticized violent imagery and disinformation on the platform, telling Mr. Presser, “Shame on you,” and claiming that TikTok could “flip a switch” to fix antisemitism on its platform.

Mr. Presser and Mr. Melnick of TikTok, who are also Jewish and based in the United States, were largely conciliatory in the meeting. “Obviously a lot of what Sacha says, there’s truth to that,” Mr. Presser said, referring to Mr. Cohen’s remarks that social media companies needed to take more action. Mr. Presser later said there was no “magic button” to address all the concerns raised.

Image

Sacha Baron Cohen said TikTok was feeding young people antisemitic content.Credit...Buck Ellison for The New York Times

TikTok is urgently trying to push back against escalating claims that it is promoting pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel content through its powerful feeds. Several Washington lawmakers have renewed their calls to ban the app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, arguing that Beijing may be influencing the content promoted through the platform’s algorithms.

Antisemitic and Islamophobic hate speech has surged on many online services since the Israel-Hamas war began. Antisemitic content soared more than 919 percent on X and 28 percent on Facebook in the month since Oct. 7, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group. TikTok has gained particular attention because of its ties to China, and its powerful algorithm drives content to 150 million users in the United States.

“If you think back to Oct. 7, the reason why Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women was they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate,” Mr. Cohen said in the meeting. He accused TikTok of feeding similarly incendiary content to young people.

“We recognize this is an incredibly difficult and fearful time for millions of people around the world and in our TikTok community,” TikTok said in a statement. “Our leadership has been meeting with creators, civil society, human rights experts and stakeholders to listen to their experiences and feedback on how TikTok can remain a place for community, discovery and sharing authentically.”

TikTok arranged the Wednesday meeting with the creators in response to an open letter they sent last week criticizing the company.

One TikTok user, who couldn’t be identified through the recording, was incredulous about a “Letter to America” written by Osama bin Laden two decades ago that started going viral on TikTok this week, finding some support among young Americans. In the letter, Bin Laden justified the killing of Americans, and expressed hatred of Jewish people and anger about Palestine.

The letter, the person said, had become the “talk of the app,” and added: “In regards to trending topics right now as we speak, this trend needs to end. This app needs to ban this letter.”

TikTok said it was “proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”

Miriam Ezagui, a TikTok creator and nurse with 1.9 million followers, said some popular editing features on the site were being used by some users to twist her words in a video and send waves of hatred her way.

Mr. Presser said the use of the tools to perpetuate hate was another “important flag” for the company to follow up on.

“We can do better,” he said.

Ms. Messing, who has more than 37,000 followers on TikTok, pressed executives on TikTok’s moderation of the pro-Palestinian slogan “from the river to the sea,” which many Americans regard as a call to eradicate Israel. It has been deemed antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League and has appeared in messages and comments to many Jewish TikTok users, regardless of what they’re posting.

Mr. Presser said the phrase was up for interpretation by TikTok’s 40,000 moderators.

“Where it is clear exactly what they mean — ‘kill the Jews, eradicate the state of Israel’ — that content is violative and we take it down,” he told the group. “Our approach up until Oct. 7, continuing to today, has been that for instances where people use the phrase where it’s not clear, where someone is just using it casually, then that has been considered acceptable speech.”

The notion of the term being used “casually” upset several participants.

Ms. Messing asked the company to reconsider its stance, saying: “It is much more responsible to bar it at this juncture than to say, ‘Oh, well, some people, they use it in a different way than it actually was created to mean.’ I understand that you are in a very, very difficult and complicated place, but you also are the main platform for the dissemination of Jew hate.”

TikTok said in a statement, “We don’t allow content with this phrase when it’s used in a way that threatens violence and spreads hate.”

Several creators asked why they could not directly reach individuals at TikTok for help with the harassment. One creator said that when she reported harassment, it took three to five days for TikTok to respond.

The executives said that while TikTok used to have managers for each creator, that became harder as the company grew. It’s now trying to reorganize its creator management teams to get more individual or community support for bigger accounts, Mr. Presser said.

“To hear that this place, this platform, this community that has brought you so much joy and helps each of you as individuals is becoming a place that feels like somewhere that you’re not sure you want to spend time on, I mean, that’s devastating,” he said.

“This is where we get the feedback, this is where we hear what isn’t working,” Mr. Presser said as the call concluded. “A lot of it, honestly I am embarrassed to say, is new. I haven’t heard a lot of it.”

Do You Have Something to Share About TikTok?

May 10, 2023

Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Hate Speech Surges Across the Internet

Nov. 15, 2023

Sapna Maheshwari is a business reporter covering TikTok and emerging media companies. Previously she reported on retail and advertising. Contact her at sapna@nytimes.com. More about Sapna Maheshwari

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 17, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Jewish Celebrities Confront TikTok Over Antisemitism on Site. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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The Rise of TikTok

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A new crop of blue-collar TikTok personalities includes a trucker, a shepherd and a commercial fisherman. What they earn from sponsorships is just a nice bonus.
As young Americans turn to TikTok for information on mental health, the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard is building its own team of influencers.
A growing number of TikTok food stars are using their online clout to break into the publishing world — and top the best-seller lists with their cookbooks.
TikTok, which has cemented itself as an advertising venue for brands aiming to reach its young users, is hoping to add a major new revenue stream with its own marketplace.

5. Scoop: Biden's team weighs joining TikTok to court young voters

So if the campaign does this, how will the chineseTik Tok algorithm influence the campaign?

Will this backfire for the campaign? Will the Chinese control of Tik Tok interfere with the election?

2 hours ago -Politics & Policy

Scoop: Biden's team weighs joining TikTok to court young voters

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/biden-campaign-weighs-joining-tiktok-young-voters-2024

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Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios

President Biden's re-election campaign privately has been weighing whether to join the social media platform TikTok to try to reach more young voters, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

Why it matters: Most Republicans have avoided TikTok over data security concerns because it's owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, but Democrats are increasingly split about using the popular app for short-form videos.

Despite the security concerns several prominent Democrats who have signaled presidential ambitions have joined TikTok, in part to reach young voters who are crucial to the party's chances in the 2024 elections.
The Biden campaign is considering a jump onto the platform at a time when polls suggest the president needs to boost his appeal to voters under 30, a group that typically favors Democrats by significant margins.

Zoom in: So far, Biden's campaign has tried to benefit from TikTok without joining it, by leaning on friendly social media influencers and having the Democratic National Committee on the platform.

Prominent Democrats on TikTok include Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), Gavin Newson (California) and Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania), Sen. Cory Booker (New Jersey) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York).
"I'm trying to reach everyone, wherever they are," Shapiro told Axios. "And that's why I said you have to be on every platform and engage with them on my administration's work."
The DNC has said it takes precautions to protect its data by having dedicated devices for use on TikTok.

A Pew survey in July found 59% of Americans believe TikTok is either a minor or major threat to national security.

Even so, TikTok has been one of America's most-downloaded apps since 2018, and its executives told Axios earlier this year that the app had more than 150 million monthly active users.

Between the lines: Whitmer posts TikTok videos under the handle "biggretchwhitmer" in a nod to the "Big Gretch" moniker she's known as in Democratic circles.

Shapiro invited dozens of Pennsylvania content creators and influencers to cover the reopening of the collapsed I-95 bridge.

Some lesser-known Democrats also have found large audiences on the platform.

Rep. Jeff Jackson of North Carolina, now running to be the state's attorney general, has 2.5 million TikTok followers — far more than Ocasio-Cortez's 942,100.
Some Democratic state parties, such as Wisconsin's, also have joined TikTok.

Zoom out: In recent polling, young voters have indicated they're less enthusiastic about Biden's re-election bid than they were when he ran in 2020.

Biden is effectively tied with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump among voters aged 18-29 in six politically divided swing states that will be crucial to deciding the 2024 election, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month.

Biden was not on TikTok in 2020, but more Americans are relying on it for political content today.

32% of adults under 30 said they regularly get news from TikTok — a 255% increase since 2020, according to a recent Pew survey.

The intrigue: Biden's campaign is considering TikTok's merits as a campaign tool at the same time his administration is trying to regulate it and has banned it on government devices.

Earlier this year, the social media company brought on David Plouffe and Jim Messina — veterans of Barack Obama's presidential campaigns — to help defend it in Washington.

The other side: Many Republicans argue that TikTok is a Chinese influence operation.

GOP presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are campaigning on banning the platform in the United States.
Montana's Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, signed a bill this year banning TikTok inside the state. That new law is being challenged in court.
The debate over TikTok and the security concerns it poses has surfaced in recent Republican presidential debates — which the company has counter-programmed with commercials touting the platform during the debates.

6. Nepal bans TikTok citing disruption to social harmony

We all need some social harmony.

Nepal bans TikTok citing disruption to social harmony

BBC · by Menu

Published
1 hour ago

About sharing

Image source, Getty Images

By Mariko Oi

Business reporter

Nepal has banned China's TikTok because its content "was detrimental to social harmony."

The decision comes days after the country introduced a new rule requiring social media firms to set up liaison offices in the country.

TikTok, which has around a billion monthly users, has been banned by several counties including India.

Earlier this year, Montana became the first US state to ban it while the UK Parliament banned it from its network.

Minister for Communications and Information Technology Rekha Sharma has told the BBC Nepali that the platform spread malicious content.

She added that "the ban would come into effect immediately and telecom authorities have been directed to implement the decision".

But Gagan Thapa, a senior leader of Nepali Congress, which is part of the coalition government, has questioned the government's decision to impose a ban on TikTok.

He said it was an attempt to curb the freedom of expression and officials should focus on regulating the platform.

TikTok has come under scrutiny from authorities around the world over concerns that data could be passed to the Chinese government.

Its parent company, ByteDance, has previously rejected the allegation. TikTok did not respond to the BBC's request for comment on the latest ban by the government in Nepal.

Although TikTok lags behind the likes of Facebook and Instagram, its growth among young people far outstrips its competitors.

More than 1,600 TikTok-related cyber crime cases have been registered over the last four years in Nepal, according to local media reports.

According to the BBC Media Action report on the media usage in Nepal, TikTok is the third most used platform nationally.

While YouTube and Facebook are popular among internet users of all age groups, TikTok is highly popular with younger age groups with more than 80% of social media users aged between 16 and 24 using the platform.

Pakistan has temporarily banned the app at least four times since October 2020 while its online shopping service was shut in Indonesia last month.

Veteran suicides rose in 2021 despite increased prevention efforts

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · November 16, 2023

The suicide rate among veterans rose slightly in 2021 as federal officials struggled to make more progress in their outreach and emergency response efforts designed to curb self-harm.

According to estimates released by the Department of Veterans Affairs on Thursday, suicides among veterans were up 1.8% from 2020 to 2021, the most recent year for which state death data is available. The totals had dropped each of the two years before the 2021 reversal.

An estimated 17.5 veterans died by suicide every day in 2021. That’s the second lowest rate since 2007 but still translates into nearly 6,400 preventable veteran deaths that year.

Officials said stress from the coronavirus pandemic may be partially to blame for the increase, noting that suicide rates across America rose from 2020 to 2021. Researchers also found higher levels of gun ownership among all Americans in 2021, a complicating factor since most veteran suicide deaths involve firearms.

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

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

But they emphasized that suicidal thoughts and actions are rarely the result of a single factor, and addressing the problem will require a complex array of support services and public education efforts.

More than 71,000 veterans died as a result of suicide from 2011 to 2021. That’s 10 times the total number of troops killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 years.

“We will do everything in our power to learn from this report and use its findings to help us save lives,” VA Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal said in a statement accompanying the data release. “It will take all of us working together to end veteran suicide, and we will not rest until that goal becomes a reality.”

VA researchers found that veterans are nearly twice as likely as their civilian peers to die by suicide, a persistent trend in recent years that has led to billions of dollars in outreach and intervention programs over the last 20 years. But efforts to bring down those suicide totals have been limited and inconsistent.

Fewer than 40% of the suicide deaths among veterans involved individuals who had recently used VA health services. Department leaders said that points to the need for wider community involvement in helping veterans in times of crisis.

“VA health care is not the only part of the answer,” Elnahal said.

Researchers found lower rates of suicide among veterans aged 75 years and older and those 34 years and younger, both encouraging signs. But they also reported higher rates among women veterans, homeless veterans, American Indian and Alaska native veterans, and numerous other subsets of the veteran population.

In the last year, VA officials have launched several initiatives to help provide additional support services to veterans experiencing mental health emergencies. That includes offering no-cost suicide prevention care at any health care facility — VA managed or unaffiliated with the department — since January, an effort officials said has already helped 33,000 veterans.

A slide from the Department of Veterans Affairs annual report on veterans suicides shows higher death rates among former service members than the rest of the American public. (Courtesy of VA)

The department has also increased campaigns focused on the safe storage of firearms, which were used in 72% of veteran suicides in 2021. By contrast, 54% of all U.S. suicide deaths in 2021 involved guns. These efforts have included distribution of more than 400,000 gun locks and lethal means safety training to about 2,300 community health care providers.

But Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, in a statement accompanying the report, acknowledged that more needs to be done on the issue.

“One veteran suicide will always be one too many, and we at VA will use every tool at our disposal to prevent these tragedies and save veterans’ lives,” he said.

Including suicide deaths among active-duty troops, National Guard personnel and military reserve members raises the suicide rate for the military and veterans community to about 20 individuals every day.

Some veterans advocates have argued that figure is likely much higher, because some drug overdose deaths and other accidental fatalities are not included in official federal calculations of suicides.

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., called the report’s findings worrisome.

“Too many of our veterans are still suffering in silence,” he said in a statement. “While Congress has made an incredible investment in VA’s suicide prevention efforts over the past decade … this increase is still troubling.”

Bill Clark, national commander at AMVETS, called for large-scale changes in VA’s approach to suicide prevention in light of the lack of progress in addressing the problem over the last 20 years.

“We cannot afford to lose more lives while navigating bureaucratic processes,” he said. “We need swift, decisive action that puts the well-being of our veterans at the forefront.”

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

About Leo Shane III

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

8. Insight: Forever war? Israel risks a long, bloody insurgency in Gaza

Will it be an insurgency? How to define these words.

JP 3-24

Insurgency is the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region. An insurgency is a form of intrastate conflict, and counterinsurgency (COIN) is used to counter it.

An insurgency normally begins before it is recognized by the governing authorities, allowing the insurgent leaders to organize and operate in a clandestine manner until it chooses to commit violence and subversion. US military operations, as well as the operations and efforts of other USG departments and agencies, all have led to an acknowledgment of an increasing nexus between insurgent groups, transnational criminal organizations, and transnational terrorist organizations. Also, the increasing influence of commercial, informational, financial, political, and ideological links between previously disparate parts of the world has created new dynamics that further shape insurgencies and other irregular forms of conflict.

Insurgent groups tend to adopt an irregular approach because they initially lack the resources required to directly confront the incumbent government in traditional warfare. Over time, insurgencies work to force governments to the negotiating table or grow until insurgent forces can directly confront and defeat the government security forces and seize control over the seat of government.

Insurgencies driven by commercial or criminal objectives are an exception. Rather, they focus on gaining political control of the country’s leaders and security apparatus.

The three conditions that must be present for an insurgency to develop are opportunity, motive, and means. Opportunity alludes to the emergence of significant gaps in the ability of the national government or local allies to provide security for its territory and population.

There should be a compelling motive to organize an insurgency, because insurgents are generally treated as violent, traitorous criminals by the security forces, government authorities, and potentially some segments of the indigenous population. For means, the leaders of emerging insurgencies will covertly establish systems that allow them to procure, assemble, and organize personnel, funds, weapons, secure communications, and logistics.

Others:

A state of revolt against constituted authority by rebels who are not recognized as belligerent communities.

An insurgency is a movement within a country dedicated to overthrowing the government. An insurgency is a rebellion. Insurgencies are movements to overthrow governments. The United States was founded by an insurgency, when the colonies fought England for independence.

an active revolt or uprising.
"rebels are waging an armed insurgency to topple the monarchy"

Did you know?

Insurgencies fall into the category of "irregular warfare", since an insurgency normally lacks the organization of a revolution, even though it has the same aims. Revolutions often begin within a country's armed forces, whereas insurgencies often arise in remote areas, where they gain strength slowly by winning the confidence of rural populations. An insurgency may be based on ethnic or religious identity, or its roots may be basically political or economic. Since insurgencies are rarely strong enough to face a national army head-on, insurgents (often called guerrillas) tend to use such tactics as bombing, kidnapping, hostage taking, and hijacking.

Insurgency is a protracted political-military activity directed toward completely. or partially controlling the resources of a country through the use of irregular. military forces and illegal political organizations.

Insight: Forever war? Israel risks a long, bloody insurgency in Gaza

Reuters · by Samia Nakhoul

Summary
With no exit strategy, Israel risks long engagement in Gaza
Israel invasion to generate more Hamas fighters, sources say
Israel may face Iraq, Afghanistan insurgency playbook
US, allies want "revitalized" Palestinian Authority to run Gaza

Nov 17 (Reuters) - Israel risks facing a long and bloody insurgency if it defeats Hamas and occupies Gaza without a credible post-war plan to withdraw its troops and move toward the creation of a Palestinian state, U.S. and Arab officials, diplomats and analysts said.

None of the ideas floated so far by Israel, the United States and Arab nations for the post-war administration of Gaza have managed to gain traction, according to two U.S. and four regional officials as well as four diplomats familiar with the discussions, raising fears the Israeli military may become mired in a prolonged security operation.

As Israel tightens its control over northern Gaza, some officials in Washington and Arab capitals fear it is ignoring lessons from the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan when swift military victories were followed by years of violent militancy.

If Gaza's Hamas-run government is toppled, its infrastructure destroyed and its economy ruined, the radicalization of an enraged population could fuel an uprising targeting Israeli troops in the enclave's narrow streets, diplomats and officials say.

Israel, the U.S. and many Arab states agree that Hamas should be ousted after it launched a cross-border raid on Oct. 7 that killed some 1,200 people and took around 240 hostages. But there is no consensus on what should replace it.

Arab countries and Western allies have said a revitalized Palestinian Authority (PA) – which partially governs the West Bank – is a natural candidate to play a greater role in Gaza, home to some 2.3 million people.

But the credibility of the Authority – run by 87-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party - has been undermined by its loss of control over Gaza to Hamas in a 2007 conflict, its failure to halt the spread of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and accusations of widespread corruption and incompetence.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the weekend that the PA in its current form should not take charge of Gaza. He said the Israeli military was the only force capable of eliminating Hamas and ensuring that terrorism did not reappear. In the wake of Netanyahu's comments, Israeli officials have insisted that Israel does not intend to occupy the Gaza Strip.

Mohammed Dahlan, who was the PA's security chief for Gaza until it lost control of the strip to Hamas and has been suggested as a future leader of a post-war government there, said that Israel was mistaken if it believed that tightening its control of Gaza would end the conflict.

"Israel is an occupying force and the Palestinian people will deal with it as an occupying force," Dahlan said in his office in Abu Dhabi, where he now lives. "None of the Hamas leadership or fighters will surrender. They will blow themselves up but won't surrender."

Dahlan has the backing of the influential United Arab Emirates to lead a post-war administration in Gaza, according to diplomats and Arab officials. But he said no-one, certainly not him, would want to come in to govern a broken and demolished territory without a clear political path in sight.

"I have not seen any vision from Israel, America or the international community," Dahlan said, calling for Israel to stop the war and to start serious talks on a two-state solution.

U.S. President Joe Biden warned Netanyahu on Wednesday that occupying Gaza would be 'a big mistake'. So far, the U.S. and its allies have not seen any clear roadmap from Israel for its exit strategy from Gaza beyond the declared aim of eradicating Hamas, diplomats say. U.S. officials are pressing Israel for realistic objectives and a plan for how to achieve them.

The Israeli government did not respond to requests for comment on its post-war plan in Gaza. Israel's operation in Gaza – launched in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack – has so far killed more than 11,000 people and left more than 1 million people homeless, according to the U.N. and Red Crescent.

While insisting on Israel's right to defend itself, some U.S. officials are concerned that high civilian casualties could radicalize more Palestinians, driving new fighters into the arms of Hamas or future militant groups that might spring up to replace it, according to a source familiar with U.S. policymaking.

More than a dozen Gazans interviewed by Reuters said the Israeli invasion was spawning a new generation of militants. Abu Mohammad, 37, a public servant from Jabalia refugee camp, said he would rather die than face Israeli occupation.

"I am not Hamas but in days of war, we are all one people, and if they finish off the fighters, we will take up the rifles and fight," he told Reuters, declining to give his full name for fear of reprisals. "The Israelis may occupy Gaza, but they will never feel secure, not for a day."

U.S.-LED TALKS

Washington's discussions of a post-war plan for Gaza are still in the very initial stages with the PA, other Palestinian stakeholders, and allies including Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"We're certainly not there yet in terms of any effort to sell that vision to our regional partners who ultimately will have to live with it, and or implement it," one senior U.S. official said.

While Biden has insisted the war must end with a "vision" for a two-state solution – which would unify the Gaza Strip and the West Bank into a Palestinian state - he and his senior aides have neither offered specifics on how they expect to achieve this nor proposed a restart of talks.

Some experts see any effort to revive the negotiations as a long shot, not least because of the embittered mood of Israelis over Hamas' Oct. 7 atrocities and of Palestinians due to Israel's retaliation in Gaza.

"Among the many tragedies of Hamas's terrorist attack is that it fundamentally undermined and set back the Palestinian cause for a sovereign, independent state," said Jonathan Panikoff, the U.S. government's former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Biden may decide on a more modest initiative that could include outlining a path towards an eventual resumption of negotiations. Biden's aides recognize that Netanyahu and his far-right coalition, which has rejected the notion of Palestinian statehood, has little appetite for renewed talks.

As Biden seeks re-election next year, he may be reluctant to alienate pro-Israel voters by being seen to pressure Netanyahu for concessions to the Palestinians.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a speech last week in Tokyo, explained Washington's red lines in Gaza, saying the administration was opposed to the forced displacement of Palestinians from the territory, any reduction in its size, its occupation or blockade by Israel. He also said it could not become a platform for terrorism.

Blinken has repeatedly said Washington would like to see a "revitalized" PA ultimately running the Gaza Strip and its governance unified with the West Bank.

Under Abbas – who has run the Authority since 2005 – its credibility has dwindled as the promise of a path to a two-state solution outlined in the 1993 Oslo peace accords has ebbed.

That dynamic needs to shift, U.S. officials say. A change of leadership within the PA might be possible, with Abbas remaining perhaps in an honorary role, some diplomats said. Another step under discussion is handing the PA a key role in distributing post-war aid in Gaza to revive its legitimacy, a senior European diplomat said.

Asked about the discussions, a senior PA official said the return of the Authority to Gaza was the only acceptable scenario and that was being discussed with the U.S. and other Western powers. He declined to comment on the proposal that Dahlan or others could lead a Palestinian government.

Some senior Palestinian officials, including Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, have said that the Palestinian Authority will not return to power in Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks.

A proposal for a two-year transitional administration of technocrats in Gaza backed by U.N. and Arab forces has been floated by Western partners and some Middle Eastern states, diplomats said.

But there has been resistance from key Arab governments – including Egypt - to being drawn into what they regard as the Gaza quagmire, the diplomats said.

Regional powers fear that any Arab forces deployed in Gaza might have to use force against Palestinians and no Arab nation wants its military put in that position.

NO AGREEMENT ON LEADERSHIP

While the ageing Abbas is unpopular among many Palestinians, there is no agreement about who might replace him as a future leader.

Dahlan would likely be acceptable to Egypt and Israel but - though he worked closely with the U.S. during his time as Gaza security chief - a U.S. source said that Washington would have some misgivings about him returning to power. He has a long-running enmity with Abbas and the PA's inner circle, as well as with Hamas supporters.

Dahlan led a wave of arrests and crackdowns against senior Hamas leaders in 1996 after a series of suicide bombings against Israel.

A UAE official said Abu Dhabi would support any post-war arrangements agreed by all parties in the conflict and supported by the United Nations to restore stability and achieve a two-state solution.

Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader imprisoned by Israel since 2002 for murder, is popular among many Palestinians but seen by some in Washington as impractical as the Israeli government would be loath to release someone they accuse of having "blood on his hands".

A U.S. official said selecting the leader would be complex as regional players each have their own favorites and interests at heart. Ultimately, Washington would cast its lot with any leader who gains support from the Palestinian people and its regional allies, as well as Israel.

"Clearly a rejuvenation of Palestinian leadership is desperately needed, but getting there again is a very tricky thing," said Joost R. Hiltermann, Middle East and North Africa Program Director of the International Crisis Group. He said Arab nations could veto any candidate they disliked and Hamas – which has portrayed itself as the champion of Palestinian independence – would likely win any election.

The stakes are high with the possibility of the conflict spilling over to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and beyond Israel.

Not since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 has there been such widespread concern about military action raging across the Middle East, according to Arab officials and diplomats.

Whatever Biden decides to do diplomatically, his aides say he has no interest in the U.S. getting dragged into a direct military role in the conflict, unless America's own security interests are threatened by Iran or its regional proxies.

"There's no plans or intentions to put U.S. military troops on the ground in Gaza, now or in the future," White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters this month.

Additional reporting by Nidal al- Mughrabi in GAZA; Humeyra Pamuk and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Andrew Mills in Doha; James Mackenzie and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; John Irish in Paris; Aidan Lewis in Cairo; Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; Writing by Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Daniel Flynn

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Humeyra Pamuk

Thomson Reuters

Humeyra Pamuk is a senior foreign policy correspondent based in Washington DC. She covers the U.S. State Department, regularly traveling with U.S. Secretary of State. During her 20 years with Reuters, she has had postings in London, Dubai, Cairo and Turkey, covering everything from the Arab Spring and Syria's civil war to numerous Turkish elections and the Kurdish insurgency in the southeast. In 2017, she won the Knight-Bagehot fellowship program at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She holds a BA in International Relations and an MA on European Union studies.

Reuters · by Samia Nakhoul

9. Who is winning the information war about Hamas' terrorist attack against Israel?

Here are excerpts from today's Just Security, Reuters, Associated Press, the Morning Dispatch, and Semafor daily emails that cover Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel. (My deliberate description which is no longer used to describe the war)

Just Security:

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

Gaza suffered a blackout of “all telecoms services” yesterday as fuel being used to run generators also ran out. Two major Palestinian mobile networks said that the Gaza Strip was out of service “as all energy sources sustaining the network have been depleted, and fuel was not allowed in.” Hiba Yazbek reports for the New York Times.

No delivery trucks were able to enter Gaza from Egypt for the second consecutive day yesterday due to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) trucks lacking fuel, as future deliveries or humanitarian aid convoys “will be impossible to manage or coordinate” due to the communications shutdown, the UNWRA confirmed today.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) claimed they found an “operational tunnel shaft” inside the Al-Shifa hospital complex yesterday. In a social media post, the IDF released a video allegedly showing the tunnel shaft – which appears to be reinforced with concrete – located around 30 meters away from one of the hospital’s main buildings, as well as exposed wiring close to the surface. In a televised briefing yesterday, IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said military engineers were working to continue exposing the tunnel network. Andrew Carey reports for CNN.

The Hamas-run media office yesterday denied it was using Al-Shifa hospital as a command center and control center, and labeled Israel’s claims as “baseless lies.” The statement added that the Hamas-run ministry of health “has repeatedly requested dozens of times from all institutions, organizations, international bodies, and relevant parties to form technical teams to visit and inspect all hospitals, in order to refute the false incitement narrative.” Abeer Salman reports for CNN.

A group of U.N. experts said yesterday in a statement there was “evidence of increasing genocidal incitement” against the Palestinian people in what it said were “grave violations” committed by Israel. The statement was made by U.N. experts including several U.N. special rapporteurs. The statement cites the “discernibly genocidal” and “dehumanizing rhetoric” used by senior Israeli government officials, as well as some professional groups and public figures, including calling for the “total destruction,” and “erasure” of Gaza, and the need to “finish them all.” The U.N. experts have previously issued warnings that Palestinian people were at “grave risk of genocide”.

Three people were killed and more than 15 people injured following an Israeli raid at the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Hamas-run health ministry said today. The IDF said in a statement that “an armed terrorist cell” was struck by Israeli aircraft during the raid, and that at least five “terrorists” were killed. The IDF also said they confiscated weapons, military equipment and explosives during the raid, which saw “eight wanted suspects” apprehended. Lawahez Jabari and Lina Dandees report for NBC News.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for an independent investigation into Israel’s Al-Shifa hospital claims. “This is precisely where you need an independent international investigation, because we have different narratives,” he said yesterday. “You cannot use … hospitals, for any military purposes. But you also cannot attack a hospital in the absence of clear evidence.” Andrew Carey and David Shortell report for CNN.

Civilians in Gaza face the “immediate possibility of starvation,” according to the World Food Programme Executive Director. Bread production has ceased at all bakeries in the Gaza Strip due to a lack of fuel, and the trucks providing food supplies via Egypt have met only 7% of the daily minimum needs for the 2 million people in Gaza. Frances Vinall reports for the Washington Post.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that Israel had “strong indications” that hostages were being held at Al-Shifa hospital. He said it was “one of the reasons” the Israeli military entered the hospital, and added that “if they were [there], they were taken out.” A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Force said yesterday on social media that they found the body of a hostage in a building near Al-Shifa. Mikhail Klimentov, Adam Taylor, and Sammy Westfall report for the Washington Post.

The body of a second Israeli hostage was recovered near the Al-Shifa hospital, the IDF said today. The statement said the body of 19 year-old Noa Marciano, a corporal in the IDF, was located and transferred to Israeli territory. Hamas previously claimed Marciano was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a video which emerged this week. Lucas Lilieholm and Alex Stambaugh report for CNN.

Benjamin Netanyahu said his forces’ attempts to minimize civilian casualties had been “not successful” in an interview with CBS yesterday. He said the IDF were working to defeat Hamas but the group is using civilians as “human shields,” adding that Hamas “don’t give a hoot about the Palestinians.” BBC News reports.

Israel dropped leaflets across southern Gaza on Wednesday urging civilians to “evacuate immediately” to “known shelters,” indicating a possible expansion in its ground operation. The leaflet read: “Everyone who finds themselves near the terrorists or their buildings expose their lives to danger. Every house used by terrorist organizations will be targeted. Respecting the instructions of the IDF will prevent you, the civilians, being exposed to harm.” Andrew Carey and Christian Edwards reports for CNN.

Reuters:

ISRAEL AND HAMAS AT WAR

U.N. aid deliveries to Gaza were suspended again due to shortages of fuel and a communications shutdown, deepening the misery of thousands of hungry and homeless Palestinians as Israeli troops battled militants in the enclave.
Israel risks facing a long and bloody insurgency if it defeats Hamas and occupies Gaza without a credible post-war plan to withdraw its troops and move toward the creation of a Palestinian state, US and Arab officials, diplomats and analysts said.
With mapping robots and blast gel, Israel is waging war on Hamas' tunnels. Clearing the tunnels is an important part of Israel's military campaign against the Palestinian militant group in response to the deadly attack on Oct. 7.

Associated Press:

IN OTHER NEWS

Israel-Hamas war: Thousands of bodies lie buried in rubble in Gaza. Families dig to retrieve them, often by hand

Morning Dispatch:

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said yesterday they had discovered the body of Judith Weiss, who lived in Kibbutz Be’eri and was kidnapped by Hamas, on Wednesday near Al-Shifa hospital. Weiss, 65, was being treated for breast cancer before she was abducted on October 7—though it’s unclear whether she died in captivity or was already dead when taken from the kibbutz. The Israeli military had been closing in on the hospital for days, and IDF officials have released videos purporting to show Hamas weaponry and tunnels discovered within and underneath the complex—U.S. intelligence officials have reportedly echoed the claim that Hamas has a “command node” under the Al-Shifa hospital. “Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier this week. “Without getting into this specific hospital or that specific claim, this is Hamas’ track record, both historically and in this conflict.”

Semafor:

Israel’s high-stakes hospital search

All eyes are on Gaza, where the Financial Times reports that Israel is handing out leaflets in southern Gaza asking residents in some areas to evacuate — suggesting the Israeli military is preparing an operation there and widening the offensive. Israel’s military is still combing through Gaza’s largest hospital for proof that it sits above a massive underground Hamas command center. So far, it has only turned up modest evidence of its claim. On Thursday, the IDF released photos and video of what it called an “operational tunnel shaft” inside the al-Shifa hospital complex, as well as a booby-trapped pickup truck that had contained a large number of weapons. It also said searchers recovered nearby the body of a woman taken hostage during the Oct. 7 attack. A day earlier, it touted a cache of guns and other equipment soldiers found near an M.R.I. machine. Capturing the medical center was one of Israel’s primary war aims, and proving it was a Hamas stronghold is a key goal for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as it attempts to assuage allies anxious about aggressive military tactics that have cost more than 11,000 lives in Gaza so far. Still, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. had its “own intelligence that convinces us that Hamas was using al-Shifa as a command and control node and most likely as well as a storage facility.”

10. TikTok ‘aggressively’ taking down videos promoting Bin Laden letter

Too little too late?

TikTok ‘aggressively’ taking down videos promoting Bin Laden letter

Platform says content promoting letter – published on the Guardian’s website two decades ago – ‘clearly violates our rules’

The Guardian · by Blake Montgomery · November 16, 2023

TikTok is “proactively and aggressively” taking down videos boosting a letter written by Osama bin Laden laying out his justification for the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

Videos referencing the 2002 letter, which was published on the Guardian’s website two decades ago, had spread across multiple social networks earlier in the week, though how widely was unclear.

“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTok said in the statement. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got on to our platform.”

Videos dissecting and responding to Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” had gained traction on TikTok in past days amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. The hashtag #lettertoamerica had accrued more than 10m views by Thursday before the company blocked searches for it.

The clips crossed over to X, formerly Twitter, in a supercut tweeted by the writer Yashar Ali, who wrote that “thousands” of the videos had proliferated across TikTok. Ali’s tweet itself racked up more than 11,000 retweets and 23.8m views.

“The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Many of them say that reading the letter has opened their eyes, and they’ll never see geopolitical matters the same way again,” wrote Ali.

TikTok said in its statement that the number of videos publicizing the letter was lower as was made out to be. The Guardian could not independently verify how widely the videos had proliferated or been viewed.

The company said: “The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate. This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media.”

The TikTok videos about Bin Laden’s letter often linked to the Observer, which published the full text in translation on 24 November 2002.

In response to the letter’s renewed spread, Guardian News and Media removed it on 15 November 2023, replacing it with the statement: “The transcript published on our website had been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we decided to take it down and direct readers instead to the news article that originally contextualised it.”

In a statement on Thursday, the White House said: “There is never a justification for spreading the repugnant, evil, and antisemitic lies that the leader of al Qaeda issued just after committing the worst terrorist attack in American history”.

The Guardian · by Blake Montgomery · November 16, 2023

11. Defense Secretary Austin affirms U.S. defense commitment to Taiwan in wake of Xi-Biden summit

Defense Secretary Austin affirms U.S. defense commitment to Taiwan in wake of Xi-Biden summit

Chinese leader says future of island 'most dangerous issue' in Sino-U.S. relations

washingtontimes.com · by Bill Gertz

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left shakes hands with Indonesia’s Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto after signing a document following their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus, in Jakarta, … U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, … more >

By - The Washington Times - Thursday, November 16, 2023

The United States is not backing off its defensive support for Taiwan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday, a day after President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the future of the island democracy at a summit of Pacific Rim nations in San Francisco.

“In terms of what we will continue to do with respect to Taiwan, as you know, of course with the Taiwan Relations Act, we are committed to doing what’s necessary to help Taiwan acquire the means to defend itself,” Mr. Austin told reporters traveling with him on a visit to Indonesia. “And we’ve done that for a number of years, and we’ll continue to do that,” he said.

Mr. Austin said there was nothing in the discussions between the two leaders that would cause American support to “move in a different direction.”

The Pentagon will continue to follow the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act that calls for supplying defense arms to Taiwan, Mr. Austin said, adding that he did not believe a conflict with China over Taiwan was inevitable or imminent.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi held four hours of talks on Wednesday, with Taiwan prominent among the topics of discussion between the two leaders.

Mr. Xi told the president that Taiwan was the “most dangerous” issue in U.S.-China relations, according to a senior U.S. official who briefed reporters after the talks.

The Chinese leader reportedly said again that Beijing prefers to resolve the Taiwan issue peacefully but then outlined conditions under which the Communist regime was ready to use military force, the official said.

Mr. Xi‘s remarks indicated China was not preparing for an invasion of Taiwan and they do not change the American approach to deterring a conflict, the official said.

“”President Xi … underscored that this was the biggest, most potentially dangerous issue in U.S.-China relations, laid out clearly that, you know, their preference was for peaceful reunification but then moved immediately to conditions that the potential use of force could be utilized,” the official said, according to Reuters.

Mr. Biden told the Chinese leader the United States is determined to maintain peace in the region and would stick by its existing commitments to Taipei.

“President Biden responded very clearly that the long-standing position of the United States was … determination to maintain peace and stability,” the official said.

“President Xi responded: ‘Look, peace is … all well and good but at some point we need to move towards resolution more generally,” the official said.

The commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. John Aquilino, has said Mr. Xi has ordered his forces to prepare for military action against in the next several years.

Mr. Biden declined to comment on the specifics of the discussion on Taiwan when asked by a reporter after the talks if he is still committed to sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese military attack.

Instead, he repeated the U.S. policy of adhering to a “one-China” principle that is defined differently in Beijing and Washington.

China insists Taiwan, which broke from the mainland in 1949, is part of its sovereign territory. The United States position is Taiwan‘s sovereignty remains undetermined.

Mr. Biden has pledged on several occasions to defend the island democracy in the event of Chinese military action. The White House and State Department each time sought to clarify that the remarks were not a new policy.

The Taiwan Relations Act states that the response to threats to Taiwan will be determined by the president in consultation with Congress.

Talking again

The Biden-Xi meeting did result in defense and military communication being restarted between the two militaries. China cut off all military and non-military talks in August 2022 to protest the visit of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022.

The Pentagon said Thursday the scope of the talks has not be established, but they will include defense policy meetings and military maritime consultations aimed at preventing accidents and mishaps that could lead to conflict. U.S. officials have complained that China in the past two years has stepped up dangerous aerial intercepts of U.S. surveillance aircraft and also has shadowed and confronted U.S. warships in the region.

During a speech Wednesday night, Mr. Xi said the No. 1 question is whether the United States sees China as an adversary or partner.

“If one sees the other side as a primary competitor, the most consequential geopolitical challenge and a pacing threat, it will only lead to misinformed policy-making, misguided actions, and unwanted results,” he said.

The Chinese leader then said Beijing is ready to be a friend and partner to the U.S. based on “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation.”

Mr. Xi said respect means not seeking to undermine China‘s communist system.

“The path of socialism with Chinese characteristics has been found under the guidance of the theory of scientific socialism, and is rooted in the tradition of the Chinese civilization with an uninterrupted history of more than 5,000 years,” he said. “We are proud of our choice, just as you are proud of yours.”

Mr. Austin said no one wants war with China and said any change in the status quo across the Taiwan Strait is “undesired.

“We have maintained our course there. …. That hasn’t changed,” he said.

Mr. Biden, meanwhile, prompted fresh outrage from China‘s Foreign Ministry after repeating his earlier characterization that Mr. Xi is a “dictator” at Wednesday’s press conference.

“Look, he is,” Mr. Biden said in response to a reporter’s question. “He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters Thursday: “This statement is extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation.”

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

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12. Congress passes stopgap funding bill, hampering Pentagon initiatives

While we all breathe a sigh of relief that the government will not shutdown, we forget about the impact of this Congressional budget chaos on DOD operations, currently and in the future.

Congress passes stopgap funding bill, hampering Pentagon initiatives

Defense News · by Bryant Harris · November 16, 2023

WASHINGTON ― Congress on Wednesday passed a temporary spending bill needed to avoid a government shutdown, funding military construction through Jan.19 and the rest of the Defense Department through Feb. 2.

It’s the second short-term funding bill, or continuing resolution, Congress passed in two months, freezing budgets at the last fiscal year’s level. If lawmakers fail to pass a full defense spending bill, the Pentagon could face a year-long continuing resolution for FY24.

The lack of a full defense spending bill for the first four months of the fiscal year will hamper Pentagon contracting as the Defense Department seeks to accelerate it. Defense officials spent the week warning publicly that programs from shipbuilding to Air Force procurement to the wilted munitions industrial base will be harmed.

“It’s the additive domino effect of delays, and the particularly hard hit on the sub-tier supplier base that really on the acquisition side compounds the problem,” Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Radha Plumb told Defense News.

She pointed to counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems slated for delivery in 2024 and 2025 and that could be delayed by the continuing resolution. Plumb also noted that the short-term spending bills threaten Pentagon subcontractors, who depend on stable revenue.

Plumb’s boss, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante, told the Politico Defense Summit on Tuesday that continuing resolutions have a “devastating effect” and can lead to layoffs within the defense industry.

“If the [continuing resolution] ends in January…the money that goes will not flow out to the commands that do the contracting probably until about May because of all the processes,” said LaPlante. “Nothing happens without contracting.”

The short-term funding bills cascade delays in Pentagon contracting and can punt scheduled training to later dates. But they at least avoid some of the most disastrous impacts caused by government shutdowns, which threaten troop pay and furlough most civilian workers.

The Senate on Wednesday passed 87-11 the bifurcated continuing resolution to fund military construction through January 19 and the Defense Department through February 2. The House voted 336-95 to pass it on Tuesday. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the measure into law.

More House Democrats voted to pass the bill than Republicans. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had to use the same procedural mechanism to move it to the floor that his predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., resorted to for passage of the first short-term funding bill in September.

This tactic led to McCarthy’s ouster as speaker in a vote instigated by a handful of right-wing Republicans. But that same group of lawmakers has not sought to oust Johnson despite their opposition to the second continuing resolution.

Shortly after voting on the continuing resolution on Wednesday, the Senate also voted to begin conference negotiations with the House on the FY24 defense authorization bill. Still, Congress must also agree on final spending levels and legislation for the full FY24 military construction and defense appropriations bills to fund that authorization bill.

‘A screeching halt’

Inside the continuing resolution is a rare exemption that allows the Navy to begin building the second Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine before Congress passes a full FY24 defense budget. The Navy requested this carveout to keep the program from falling behind an already tight schedule, which could potentially create a nuclear deterrence gap.

“This is a critical exception for the Navy’s number one acquisition priority that will ensure construction remains on schedule as our shipyards and suppliers dramatically ramp up capacity,” said Rep. Joe Courtney, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee’s sea power panel, whose district includes the Electric Boat shipyard that builds the submarines.

Still, the Navy can’t proceed with three of its six shipbuilding programs until Congress passes a full FY24 defense spending bill: the Virginia-class attack submarine, the Constellation-class frigate and a submarine tender replacement.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at the Center for a New American Security on Monday that the continuing resolutions bring new initiatives “to a screeching halt.” About a dozen of the service’s new starts would remain in limbo without Congressional approval.

Among the programs affected, Kendall said, would be the Air Force’s C3 battle management system, part of the Pentagon’s larger goal to form a unified network powered by artificial intelligence. Spending on the system, he said, was scheduled to double next year but can’t without a full spending bill.

Kendall also noted that the Air Force has multiyear procurement requests for three munitions pending before Congress: the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile and the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range.

The Pentagon hopes using multiyear buys for munitions, a mechanism usually reserved for larger items like ships and aircraft, will help ramp up that sector of the industrial base, which is lagging as the U.S. rushes massive amounts of weaponry to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Plumb, the Pentagon acquisition official, noted that continuing resolutions also hamper Defense Department efforts to ramp up munitions production for items such as 155mm artillery shells.

“We’re looking to get 100,000 rounds per month, and we need the workforce and the machines and the factories to be able to do that,” said Plumb. “All of that gets delayed, and that’s on a more traditional munition.”

“You can look at the other timelines in terms of new starts and new technologies that need to get integrated in,” she added. “That looks even worse.”

If Congress ultimately fails to pass a full FY24 defense budget, the May debt ceiling agreement mandates that a full-year continuing resolution with a 1% cut from FY23 spending levels goes into effect.

“We’ve sadly learned to adapt our business practices to manage through these more short term [continuing resolutions],” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at the Politico Defense summit. “Heaven forbid if we went closer to a year continuing resolution, then yes, some of our new modernization programs would be significantly disrupted.”

About Bryant Harris and Noah Robertson

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

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

13. Redefining Success in Ukraine

We need balance and COHERENCY among ends, ways, and means along with a constant reassessment of assumptions that drive the strategy and focus on the acceptable durable political arrangement that will sustain, protect, and advance strategic interests.

Excerpts:

Ukraine’s friends in the West can and should sweeten what would be a bitter pill for Ukrainians. The United States and select NATO members (a friends of Ukraine coalition of the willing) should commit not just to long-term economic and military help but also to guaranteeing Ukraine’s independence. This undertaking would be modeled on Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, which provides for immediate consultations whenever “the territorial integrity, political independence, or security” of a member is threatened. The European Union, which has recently announced its intention to begin accession negotiations with Kyiv, should accelerate the membership timetable for Ukraine and offer it a special EU-lite arrangement in the interim. The Western allies should also make clear that most sanctions against Russia would remain in place until Russian forces leave Ukraine, and that they would help Ukraine restore its territorial integrity at the negotiating table.

It is quite possible that the prospects for a mutually agreed cease-fire and follow-on negotiations over territory will improve markedly after the 2024 presidential election in the United States. If the winner is committed to the continuation of transatlantic solidarity and further efforts to ensure Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, Putin would have little reason to presume that time is on Russia’s side. But the U.S. election is a year away, and it could lead to an outcome that leaves Ukraine in the lurch. Neither Washington nor Kyiv should run that risk. The United States needs to work with Ukraine now to pivot to a new strategy that reflects military and political realities. To do otherwise is to recklessly gamble on Ukraine’s future.

Redefining Success in Ukraine

A New Strategy Must Balance Means and Ends

By Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan

November 17, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan · November 17, 2023

Ukraine’s counteroffensive appears to have stalled, just as wet and cold weather brings to a close the second fighting season in Kyiv’s effort to reverse Russian aggression. At the same time, the political willingness to continue providing military and economic support to Ukraine has begun to erode in both the United States and Europe. These circumstances necessitate a comprehensive reappraisal of the current strategy that Ukraine and its partners are pursuing.

Such a reassessment reveals an uncomfortable truth: namely, that Ukraine and the West are on an unsustainable trajectory, one characterized by a glaring mismatch between ends and the available means. Kyiv’s war aims—the expulsion of Russian forces from Ukrainian land and the full restoration of its territorial integrity, including Crimea—remain legally and politically unassailable. But strategically they are out of reach, certainly for the near future and quite possibly beyond.

The time has come for Washington to lead efforts to forge a new policy that sets attainable goals and brings means and ends into alignment. The United States should begin consultations with Ukraine and its European partners on a strategy centered on Ukraine’s readiness to negotiate a cease-fire with Russia and to simultaneously switch its military emphasis from offense to defense. Kyiv would not give up on restoring territorial integrity or holding Russia economically and legally accountable for its aggression, but it would acknowledge that its near-term priorities need to shift from attempting to liberate more territory to defending and repairing the more than 80 percent of the country that is still under its control.

Russia may well reject Ukraine’s offer of a cease-fire. But even if the Kremlin proves intransigent, Ukraine’s shift from offense to defense would limit the continuing loss of its soldiers, enable it to direct more resources to long-term defense and reconstruction, and shore up Western support by demonstrating that Kyiv has a workable strategy aimed at attainable goals. Over the longer term, this strategic pivot would make it clear to Russia that it cannot simply hope to outlast Ukraine and the West’s willingness to support it. That realization may eventually convince Moscow to move from the battlefield to the negotiating table—a move that would be to Ukraine’s ultimate advantage, since diplomacy offers the most realistic path for ending not only the war but also, over the long term, Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory.

STALEMATE

The current situation on the battlefield yields a glass-half-full, glass-half-empty picture. On one side of the ledger, Ukraine has demonstrated stunning resolve and skill, not only denying Russia’s attempt to subjugate it but also taking back a considerable portion of the territory seized by Russia last year. On the other side of the ledger are the enormous human and economic costs of the war and the reality that Russia has succeeded, at least for now, in using force to seize a sizable piece of Ukraine’s territory. Despite Ukraine’s much-heralded counteroffensive, Russia has actually gained more territory over the course of 2023 than Ukraine has. Overall, neither side has made significant advances. Ukrainian and Russian forces have fought to an effective standstill: a stalemate has set in.

What, then, is to be done? One option for the West is to do more of the same, continuing to provide an enormous amount of weaponry to Ukraine in the hope that doing so will enable its forces to eventually defeat Russia’s. The problem is that Ukraine’s military shows no signs of being able to break through Russia’s formidable defenses, no matter how long and hard it fights. Defense tends to have the advantage over offense, and Russian forces are dug in behind miles of mine fields, trenches, traps, and fortifications. The West can send more tanks, long-range missiles, and eventually F-16 fighter jets. But there is no silver bullet capable of turning the tide on the battlefield. As Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, recently admitted, “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.” We are where we are on the battlefield in Ukraine, and where we are looks at best like a costly deadlock.

Time will not be on Ukraine’s side if a high-intensity war drags on indefinitely. Russia’s economy and its defense industrial base are on a war footing. Moscow is also importing arms from North Korea and Iran and has access to consumer items that contain technology that it can repurpose for military uses. Should Russia need to reinforce its military presence in Ukraine, it has a large pool of manpower on which to draw. Russia has also found new markets for its energy, while sanctions have had only a modest effect on the Russian economy. Putin appears politically secure and in control of the levers of power, from the military and security services to the media and public narrative.

Russia has actually gained more territory in 2023 than Ukraine has.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, soldiers and civilians alike continue to lose their lives in significant numbers, the military is burning through its weapons stocks, and the economy has shrunk by about one-third (although it is beginning to show signs of growth). Among Ukraine’s Western supporters, Ukraine fatigue is starting to take a toll on their readiness to keep up the flow of support to Kyiv. The United States remains central to the provision of Western aid to Ukraine, but opposition to providing sizable amounts of further assistance is growing in the Republican Party, so far foiling the Biden administration’s requests for new funding. The leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, former President Donald Trump, has a history of siding with Russia and distancing himself from the United States’ partners—including Ukraine. That Trump is polling ahead of Biden in key swing states only adds to the uncertainty about the trajectory of U.S. policy. And wobbliness in U.S. support for Ukraine will increase wobbliness in Europe, where one EU member, Slovakia, has already decided to cease the provision of military aid to Kyiv.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing conflict in Gaza have also grabbed the world’s attention, relegating the war in Ukraine to the back burner. The issue is not only that Washington is distracted; the U.S. military has only finite resources, and U.S. defense industrial base has far too limited production capacity. The United States is stretched thin as it supports two partners engaged in hot wars. Defense analysts are already pronouncing the nation’s defense strategy to be “insolvent,” as a recent RAND study put it; others argue that the United States should be devoting its attention and resources to strategic challenges in the Indo-Pacific.

It will not be politically easy for either Ukraine or the West to confront these sobering strategic realities. But it is far preferable for both Kyiv and its supporters to embrace a new strategy that puts ends and means back into balance than to continue pursuing a course that has led to a dead end—and which could, before long, bring about a sharp decline in Western support for Ukraine.

TURN THE TABLES

Washington needs to take the lead in launching consultations with Ukraine and Western allies aimed at persuading Kyiv to offer a cease-fire in place while pivoting from an offensive to a defensive strategy. The West should not press Ukraine to give up on restoring its 1991 borders or on holding Russia responsible for the death and destruction that its invasion has caused. Yet it must seek to convince Ukrainians that they need to adopt a new strategy to pursue these objectives.

A cease-fire would save lives, allow economic reconstruction to get underway, and enable Ukraine to devote incoming Western arms to investing in its long-term security rather than to quickly expending weaponry on a deadlocked battlefield. The precise terms of a cease-fire—the timing, the exact location of a line of contact, the procedures for the pullback of weapons and forces, the provisions for observation and enforcement—would have to be hammered out under broad international supervision, most likely under the auspices of either the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

A cease-fire would go into effect only if both Ukraine and Russia agree to its terms. Moscow’s compliance is not out of the question. Russian forces have been suffering grievous losses on the battlefield, and the Kremlin’s act of aggression has clearly backfired, by strengthening NATO, transatlantic cohesion, and Ukraine’s determination to forever free itself of Russia’s sphere of influence. Putin just might seize the opportunity to stanch the bloodletting and try to bring Russia in from the cold.

Still, it is much more likely that Moscow would spurn a cease-fire proposal. Putin still harbors expansive war aims in Ukraine and seems to believe that Russia has more staying power than Ukraine. He is no doubt closely following opinion polls in the United States indicating that Trump’s return to the White House is a realistic possibility, an outcome that would surely weaken if not end U.S. support for Ukraine. Even if the Kremlin wanted to avoid outright rejection of a cease-fire proposal in order to sidestep the reputational costs of doing so, it could counter with terms sure to be unacceptable to Ukraine and the West.

Ukraine needs to pivot to a defensive strategy.

Yet ultimately, trying to broker a cease-fire between Kyiv and Moscow is worth a shot less for what it would accomplish than for what it would reveal. Even if Russia were to reject a proposed cease-fire, it would still make sense for Kyiv to put one on the table. Doing so would allow Ukraine to seize the political initiative, reminding publics in the West and beyond that this war remains one of Russian aggression. The Kremlin’s rejection of a cease-fire would help Western governments maintain and tighten sanctions against Russia and help Ukraine nail down long-term military and economic support.

Whether or not a ceasefire takes hold, Ukraine needs to pivot to a defensive strategy, away from its current offensive strategy. Kyiv’s existing approach is one of high costs and low prospects, putting Ukrainians in the awkward position of asking for open-ended Western assistance on behalf of an effort with diminishing chances of success. Instead, Ukraine should focus on holding and rebuilding the territory that it now controls, reversing the offense-defense equation and putting Russia in the position of having to bear the exorbitant costs of conducting offensive operations against well-dug-in Ukrainian forces and expanded air defenses. Even as it switched to a defensive strategy along the frontlines, Ukraine could continue using long-range weapons, naval assets, and covert operations to strike at Russian positions in rear areas and in Crimea, raising the costs of continuing occupation. And should clear evidence emerge that Russia’s military capability or will is faltering, Ukraine would retain the option of returning to a more offensive-oriented strategy.

A strategy shift along these lines would turn the tables on Russia, requiring its forces to accomplish something they have thus far shown they are incapable of: effective combined arms offensive operations. At the same time, this shift would save Ukrainian lives and money and reduce its defense needs from the West, something that might prove essential if U.S. support falls off and Europe is left carrying the load. Ukraine would be wise to devote incoming resources to its long-term security and prosperity instead of expending it on the battlefield for little gain.

Persuading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian public to change course would be no easy task, given the justice of their cause and all that has already been sacrificed. But the reality is that what began as a war of necessity for Ukraine—a fight for its very survival —has morphed into a war of choice, a fight to recapture Crimea and much of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. It is not only an unwinnable war; it is also one that risks losing Western support over time. It makes far more sense for Ukraine to ensure that the bulk of the country under Kyiv’s control emerges as a prosperous and secure democracy than to risk the nation’s future in a long-shot military effort to reclaim territory still under Russian control. Ukraine’s emergence as a successful and resilient democracy capable of defending itself would constitute a resounding defeat of Russian ambition.

A BETTER BET

Ukraine’s friends in the West can and should sweeten what would be a bitter pill for Ukrainians. The United States and select NATO members (a friends of Ukraine coalition of the willing) should commit not just to long-term economic and military help but also to guaranteeing Ukraine’s independence. This undertaking would be modeled on Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, which provides for immediate consultations whenever “the territorial integrity, political independence, or security” of a member is threatened. The European Union, which has recently announced its intention to begin accession negotiations with Kyiv, should accelerate the membership timetable for Ukraine and offer it a special EU-lite arrangement in the interim. The Western allies should also make clear that most sanctions against Russia would remain in place until Russian forces leave Ukraine, and that they would help Ukraine restore its territorial integrity at the negotiating table.

It is quite possible that the prospects for a mutually agreed cease-fire and follow-on negotiations over territory will improve markedly after the 2024 presidential election in the United States. If the winner is committed to the continuation of transatlantic solidarity and further efforts to ensure Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, Putin would have little reason to presume that time is on Russia’s side. But the U.S. election is a year away, and it could lead to an outcome that leaves Ukraine in the lurch. Neither Washington nor Kyiv should run that risk. The United States needs to work with Ukraine now to pivot to a new strategy that reflects military and political realities. To do otherwise is to recklessly gamble on Ukraine’s future.

RICHARD HAASS is President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior counselor at Centerview Partners. He is the author of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.
CHARLES KUPCHAN, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University, served as Senior Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council during the Obama administration. He is the author of Isolationism: A History of America’s Efforts to Shield Itself From the World.

Foreign Affairs · by Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan · November 17, 2023

14. Putin the Ideologue

Excerpts:

Nonetheless, the overall outlook remains gloomy. The flexibility of Putin’s ideological machine, the simplicity of its narratives, and Russians’ susceptibility to history-inflected mythmaking suggest that this outlook is here to stay and may even become further entrenched in Russian society. Despite its flaws, Putin’s ideological campaign has successfully cultivated support within the Russian public. The worldview it inspires will serve as a bulwark against future challenges to his regime. And as Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine has shown, the Kremlin’s configuration of geopolitical and civilizational thinking can be radically destabilizing outside of Russia’s borders.

U.S. policy should reflect the existence of a Russian ideology. Russia’s Kremlin-inspired worldview is not something that can be eroded or overturned from Washington. Policymakers can, however, use it as a window into the Putinist regime and into the relationship between state and society in contemporary Russia. As a well-honed tool for justifying the Kremlin’s actions to the Russian public, this ideology is modestly predictive of Moscow’s behavior—of its intent to wage a long war in Ukraine and to push back against Western power and influence on a global scale. If an ideologically mobilized Russia cannot be transformed from without, its aggressive actions will have to be contained—something that the United States is already helping to do in Ukraine and throughout Europe.

The United States also should not confuse Russia writ large with the Kremlin’s ideology. Throughout World War II, the United States maintained a distinction between Nazi Germany and German culture—giving safe haven and citizenship, for example, to critics of Hitler’s regime, including the German writer Thomas Mann. Today, the United States should fund diaspora communities and institutions that harbor different views of Russia’s past and of Russia’s future, and it should do what it can to project the journalism, the debates, the books, and the culture of this “other Russia” back into Putin’s Russia. These efforts would constitute a longer-term investment in an ideologically diverse Russia and would help remind Russians that there are alternatives to the reigning ideology—that, in other words, another Russia is not impossible.

Putin the Ideologue

The Kremlin’s Potent Mix of Nationalism, Grievance, and Mythmaking

By Maria Snegovaya, Michael Kimmage, and Jade McGlynn

Foreign Affairs · by Maria Snegovaya, Michael Kimmage, and Jade McGlynn · November 16, 2023

With the war in Ukraine heading into what will seemingly be a bloody winter for both Russia and Ukraine, there is one person who does not appear to have suffered on the home front: Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose approval rating has remained at a steady high even as casualties from the conflict continue to mount. Putin’s political resilience may come as a surprise to many who assumed that Western sanctions, alongside the human toll of war, would kindle societal opposition to the war and fragment Russian elites, eventually opening the door to Putin’s ouster. But these accounts focus overwhelmingly on the socioeconomic factors underpinning Putin’s grip on power and overlook another key factor that helps explain the Russian leader’s survival: ideology. The Kremlin has succeeded in crafting a worldview that explains why Russians must endure war-related challenges and allows them to make sense of their circumstances. This ideology has become an enduring feature of Putin’s regime.

Many analysts have missed Putin’s ideological drive having assumed that the regime would have little need for it. Rather than building authentic support among the public, the Kremlin could wield such tools as patronage and surveillance technology to control Russian society. Ideology, this thinking goes, can even hem in modern autocrats: leaders can be more flexible in the methods they use to maintain power if they don’t have to adhere to a rigid worldview. Some observers have also pointed to the opportunism behind Putin’s domestic and foreign policy, to the inconsistencies of Moscow’s messaging, and to the plasticity of the narratives spread by Russian propaganda as evidence that Putin holds no coherent ideology, other than one that advances his goals of personal enrichment and power.

In recent months, however, the Kremlin has released a series of documents that seek to codify state ideology. In January 2022, for instance, Putin released a special presidential decree that introduced a list of Russia’s spiritual and moral values. In 2023, the Kremlin updated the Fundamental Principles of Legislation on Culture, a document that regulates Russian cultural heritage and national patrimony, to advocate for a common Russian worldview and establish a cultural consciousness for the nation. Moscow has overhauled the country’s education system as part of that same ideological effort, standardizing modern history textbooks to fit the official propagandist line, requiring that every Russian school have a counselor to facilitate the civic and patriotic upbringing of students, instructing all schools to hold a flag-raising ceremony every week, and other such measures. These steps constitute a widespread effort to inculcate a top-down ideology, anchored by a vision of Russia as a distinct civilization.

This recent ideological push is just the latest phase of the Kremlin’s sustained, decades-long campaign to cultivate specific ideological narratives across Russian society. Since he came to power in the first decade of this century, Putin has made consistent and increasing investments in education and memory politics—the shaping of mythologized understandings of the past for political purposes—to promote a particular vision of Russian identity. The Kremlin has ramped up its ideological campaigns during periods of perceived external and internal challenges to the regime, including the “color revolutions” that rocked the post-Soviet world in the early years of the century, waves of domestic protest in Russia, and Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. And over the past decade, the Kremlin has deepened its efforts, moving beyond narrative promotion toward directed public engagement with this ideology, such as funding and establishing youth movements, historical memory initiatives, social clubs, camps, battle reenactments, tourist attractions, and country-wide “Russia—My History” exhibitions (which have been lambasted by professional historians). All told, these efforts reflect something like a coherent worldview, in which an embattled yet inherently great Russian civilization must fight to the last to restore its rightful place in the world. The Russian state and, importantly, its leader, must lead the Russian people to victory. The existence and prevalence of the Kremlin’s ideology have significant implications for U.S. foreign policy—and for Washington’s efforts to counter Putin’s international adventurism.

PUTIN’S ILLUSIONS

The core elements of Putin’s ideology are internally consistent, even if they are not codified in any one text. The first tenet is the imperative of a strong, stable Russian state. Echoing themes from both the tsarist and Soviet eras, this principle holds that the Russian state embodies the historical essence of the nation, which for centuries has persevered in multiple forms: the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and Putin’s Russia. It is the state, the narrative goes, that guarantees Russia’s great-power status and that guards the country’s traditional values and ways of life. Without the state, there is no Russia.

Statism connects to another component of Putin’s ideology: the safeguarding of Russian exceptionalism and the cultural conservatism that preserves it. This element promotes a near-messianic vision of Russia as a state-civilization, borrowing heavily from fascist theories that have circulated for over a century and emphasizing a civilizational and even racial aspect of Russian identity. Russia is not just a modern political entity—it is a civilization, a historic people who possess a unique culture rooted in a traditional set of values and a love of the state. This framework is made plain in Russia’s newly adopted Foreign Policy Concept, which refers to Russia explicitly as “a distinctive state-civilization” with a “historically unique mission” to ensure the development of humanity. This narrative gives ideological ballast to Russia’s efforts to challenge the existing global order and to its invasion of Ukraine as the defense of an imperiled Russian civilization.

The Kremlin’s indoctrination effort is not only paying off; as the war in Ukraine continues, it is also accelerating.

Worries about the possible collapse of Russian civilization are another pillar of the regime’s ideology. This narrative is able to draw from public anxieties that are somewhat legitimate given the country’s turbulent history. The unraveling of the Russian Empire in 1917 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s undergird public fears of political chaos and humiliation. The chief aggressor, in the Kremlin’s telling, is the West, whose desire is to destroy Russia; the main threat to the Russian state-civilization is outside intervention. This story reaches as far back as the seventeenth century, when Polish-Lithuanian forces occupied Russia during a political crisis known as the Time of Troubles, and extends through the 1812 French invasion of Russia under Napoleon and the 1941 German assault on Russia under Hitler to NATO expansion and “color revolutions” in the post-Soviet world. These events amount, per the Kremlin’s narrative, to a centuries-long project on the part of Western invaders to create and then exploit a weakened Russia, to plunder its wealth, and to wipe out its culture and replace it with alien values.

Fundamental to the Kremlin’s ideology building is the weaponization of memory and mythmaking around World War II, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. World War II dominates the Kremlin’s anti-Western narrative, in which the West is implicated in the history of Nazi aggression, a fiction informed by the Soviet belief that Nazism was part of a broader anti-Soviet conspiracy in the West. According to the Kremlin, the Soviet Union singlehandedly defeated Hitler and rid the world of the Nazi plague. This warped historical narrative has helped justify Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, which he claims is run by resurgent Nazi forces that enjoy backing from the West. To once again wipe out the Nazi threat, Putin claims, Russia must remember its sacred victory in the Great Patriotic War. This storyline bolsters the Kremlin’s efforts to instill a sense of permanent war with the West and to forge an unconditional, top-down national unity, without which Russia will once again fall victim to external besiegement.

These ideological strands together constitute a simple and understandable theory of how the world works. Putin himself has been laying ideological groundwork for decades, working to unify Russian opinion in support of the regime. And the Kremlin’s indoctrination effort is not only paying off; as the war in Ukraine continues, it is also accelerating.

THE HOUSE RUSSIA LIVES IN

Several factors are helping the Kremlin consolidate and intensify its ideological campaign. First, many of the narratives spread by the regime draw on attitudes that are already deeply entrenched in Russian society. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russian society experienced something of an ideological void. Putin seized the opportunity; where liberals largely failed to come up with a collective pro-Western Russian identity, Putin simply adopted many of the quasi-Soviet and tsarist themes that were already familiar in Russia, including Russia’s great-power status, cultural exceptionalism, and anti-Westernism. Putin’s version of Russian identity proved palatable in part because of a Russian predisposition toward “blind and militant” patriotism: the belief that one should support one’s country regardless of whether it is right or wrong, that the nation can pursue its interests even at the expense of others, and that coercion trumps compromise or negotiation.

Second, the malleability of Putin’s ideology helps the regime accommodate change, smooth over discrepancies, and appeal to different constituencies without undermining its core message. Unlike Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Marxist-Leninist ideology, for instance, Putin’s worldview is not spelled out in philosophical texts but absorbed through signs, symbols, and popular culture, making it accessible to less intellectual and less literate groups. In the absence of one definitive party line, Russians do not need to give their complete assent to Putin’s ideology. They can give partial assent, or simply live in its ambiance. Rather than trying to make everyone a true believer in one fixed idea, Putin’s propaganda offers a menu of options. Russians can select the messages that most resonate for them—and that best rationalize the Kremlin’s actions. Amid fluid news cycles, they can do so without ideological friction.

Third, although observers often claim that this ideology lacks a forward-looking vision for Russia, the Kremlin does in fact provide such a vision, fueled by a potent and effective combination of nationalism, resentment, and nostalgia. The Kremlin’s offer is essentially to make Russia great again: Russia’s future, the Kremlin suggests, will be better because it will look more like the past, with the country restored to its former glory and international status. From this vision follows Moscow’s claim to an assertive global role, in which a declining West and an emerging multipolar order will enable the return of Russia (and its partner, China). Russia’s mission in this new order, the Kremlin promises, is to free other countries from U.S. cultural colonization and hegemony.

Fourth, the share of the Russian population willing and able to counter these ideological trends is shrinking rapidly. Even before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, consistently pro-Western liberals constituted only seven to eight percent of Russian society. Younger Russians, who tend to be more liberal and pro-Western, have lower rates of political participation. Since Putin launched his assault on Ukraine in February 2022, liberals have been actively fleeing the country; of at least 800,000 Russians who have since left Russia, many are younger, more antiwar, and more pro-West than the average Russian. Coupled with a protracted war of conquest and mounting state-led indoctrination efforts, these demographic and political trends foreshadow a Russian public poised to embrace these beliefs even more staunchly—and to grow even more distrustful of Putin’s critics and ideological opponents.

A CASE OF RUSSIAN IDENTITY

The Kremlin’s ideology is not invincible. The regime’s ideological ventures have vulnerabilities, particularly if the war in Ukraine drags on. First, the Kremlin’s narratives, while popular, are also thin and performative, and therefore may not sustain the sacrifices demanded by war. Russians tend to endorse state-promoted narratives as long as they do not interfere with their personal well-being and may grow tired of all the sacrifices that are being asked of them. The incursion of war into day-to-day life may already be shifting the tide. Polls have shown, for instance, a decline in support for the war among Russians residing in the regions neighboring Ukraine, which are the areas most likely to be affected by military raids and drone attacks.

Nor does the Kremlin have a monopoly on ideology in today’s Russia. The absence of the state in much of public life, especially the lack of a social and economic safety net, have given rise to new forms of community activism and mutual aid that could eventually evolve into political forces in their own right. The failed mutiny by Wagner paramilitary company leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in June also demonstrated the possibility of an alternative right-wing challenge—one fueled by a frustration with Russia’s flawed performance on the Ukrainian battlefield and a demand for a more boundless approach to war. There is still room for ideological challengers. Should the war exact an unacceptable toll on the population or should Russia be defeated by Ukraine, these alternatives might succeed where the regime’s ideology-building efforts fall short.

The Kremlin’s ideology is not invincible.

Nonetheless, the overall outlook remains gloomy. The flexibility of Putin’s ideological machine, the simplicity of its narratives, and Russians’ susceptibility to history-inflected mythmaking suggest that this outlook is here to stay and may even become further entrenched in Russian society. Despite its flaws, Putin’s ideological campaign has successfully cultivated support within the Russian public. The worldview it inspires will serve as a bulwark against future challenges to his regime. And as Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine has shown, the Kremlin’s configuration of geopolitical and civilizational thinking can be radically destabilizing outside of Russia’s borders.

U.S. policy should reflect the existence of a Russian ideology. Russia’s Kremlin-inspired worldview is not something that can be eroded or overturned from Washington. Policymakers can, however, use it as a window into the Putinist regime and into the relationship between state and society in contemporary Russia. As a well-honed tool for justifying the Kremlin’s actions to the Russian public, this ideology is modestly predictive of Moscow’s behavior—of its intent to wage a long war in Ukraine and to push back against Western power and influence on a global scale. If an ideologically mobilized Russia cannot be transformed from without, its aggressive actions will have to be contained—something that the United States is already helping to do in Ukraine and throughout Europe.

The United States also should not confuse Russia writ large with the Kremlin’s ideology. Throughout World War II, the United States maintained a distinction between Nazi Germany and German culture—giving safe haven and citizenship, for example, to critics of Hitler’s regime, including the German writer Thomas Mann. Today, the United States should fund diaspora communities and institutions that harbor different views of Russia’s past and of Russia’s future, and it should do what it can to project the journalism, the debates, the books, and the culture of this “other Russia” back into Putin’s Russia. These efforts would constitute a longer-term investment in an ideologically diverse Russia and would help remind Russians that there are alternatives to the reigning ideology—that, in other words, another Russia is not impossible.

MARIA SNEGOVAYA is a Senior Fellow with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a Postdoctoral Fellow with Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She is the author of the forthcoming book When Left is Right: The Decline of the Left and the Rise of the Populist Right in Postcommunist Europe.
MICHAEL KIMMAGE is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of the forthcoming book Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Insecurity.
JADE MCGLYNN is a Research Fellow in the Department for War Studies at King’s College London and a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is the author of two books, including Russia’s War and Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia.

Foreign Affairs · by Maria Snegovaya, Michael Kimmage, and Jade McGlynn · November 16, 2023

15. What Do US Indo-Pacific Allies Think of the Biden-Xi Summit?

Excerpts:

While it’s become an adage that China-U.S. bilateral relationship is the most important in the world, few countries have as much directly at stake as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea – all U.S. treaty allies dependent on Washington for their security, but closely linked economically with China. Located in the Indo-Pacific region, these countries would bear the brunt of any China-U.S. conflict.

Taiwan, which faces an existential threat from China, is even more invested in China-U.S. relations. Beijing considers Taiwan to be an “inalienable part of China” and reserves the right to achieve full “reunification” by force. With China’s military maneuvers around Taiwan becoming ever-more provocative, the threat of forcible annexation looms large – and the question of how the United States would respond is the subject of immense debate. While Washington is not treaty-bound to defend Taiwan – the two have not had a formal alliance since they severed diplomatic ties in 1979 – it is widely assumed the U.S. would intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.

Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United States have all adopted the “free and open Indo-Pacific” and “rules-based international order” mantras – both diplomatic code for “let’s counter China’s bad behavior.” They have embraced, albeit at times reluctantly, U.S.-led economic measures designed to target China’s access to cutting-edge technology and “de-risk” by reconfiguring trade ties away from China wherever possible.

What Do US Indo-Pacific Allies Think of the Biden-Xi Summit?

Views from Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan.

thediplomat.com · by Shannon Tiezzi

Views from Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan.

November 17, 2023

U.S. President Joe Biden Meets with China’s President President Xi Jinping at the Filoli Estate in Woodside, Calif., Nov, 15, 2023, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative conference.

Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool

Governments around the world were keeping a close eye on this week’s summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden, held on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leader’s Meeting in San Francisco. In their first in-person meeting since November 2022 – and just their second since Biden assumed office – the two presidents sought to reframe the relationship to avoid escalation and “responsibly” manage competition.

Biden called his four-hour meeting with Xi “some of the most constructive and productive discussions we’ve had.” China’s foreign minister, in a post-summit briefing to the press, hailed the talks as “strategic” and “historic.”

What did the United States’ Indo-Pacific allies think?

While it’s become an adage that China-U.S. bilateral relationship is the most important in the world, few countries have as much directly at stake as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea – all U.S. treaty allies dependent on Washington for their security, but closely linked economically with China. Located in the Indo-Pacific region, these countries would bear the brunt of any China-U.S. conflict.

Taiwan, which faces an existential threat from China, is even more invested in China-U.S. relations. Beijing considers Taiwan to be an “inalienable part of China” and reserves the right to achieve full “reunification” by force. With China’s military maneuvers around Taiwan becoming ever-more provocative, the threat of forcible annexation looms large – and the question of how the United States would respond is the subject of immense debate. While Washington is not treaty-bound to defend Taiwan – the two have not had a formal alliance since they severed diplomatic ties in 1979 – it is widely assumed the U.S. would intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.

Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United States have all adopted the “free and open Indo-Pacific” and “rules-based international order” mantras – both diplomatic code for “let’s counter China’s bad behavior.” They have embraced, albeit at times reluctantly, U.S.-led economic measures designed to target China’s access to cutting-edge technology and “de-risk” by reconfiguring trade ties away from China wherever possible.

They have also joined the U.S. in efforts to counter China militarily. Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States launched AUKUS, a new trilateral alliance widely seen as a response to China’s growing military might. Japan and South Korea have been deepening both bilateral and trilateral military cooperation with the United States. The Philippines too has expanded its already-tight military partnership with the U.S. And Taiwan has seen stepped-up arms sales from Washington, as well as more overt military cooperation (although still falling far short of the bilateral drills that characterize a formal alliance).

Given these convergences, all the name of countering China, how are U.S. allies viewing the Biden-Xi summit?

For the most part, positively. Nearly every country in the world – U.S. allies included – has deep concerns about China-U.S. tensions reaching a point of no return, and potentially sparking a great power war. While their alliance (and in Taiwan’s case, quasi-alliance) relationships with the U.S. mean they have effectively already “chosen sides,” none of these countries wants to be forced to entirely write off its relationship with China. In that sense, any progress in China-U.S. relations is both welcome and a relief.

That said, each country’s positioning is unique and worth considering.

Australia

Australia actually beat Biden to the punch in securing an ice-breaking summit with Xi: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Beijing and Shanghai from November 4 to 7. Like the Biden-Xi summit, Albanese’s trip to China was the culmination of a broader diplomatic process that had seen the resumption of ministerial-level talks.

With Australia engaged in its own thaw with China, the fact that the United States is taking a similar turn is likely to be a source of relief. A sharp downturn in China-U.S. relations could jeopardize Australia’s own warming ties with Beijing, especially on the economic front.

“From my perspective there are some clear similarities but also clear differences between how the Albanese government and the Biden administration are speaking about their respective efforts at returning bilateral ties with China to some level of equilibrium,” Michael Clarke, an adjunct professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney, and a senior fellow at the Centre for Defense Research at the Australian Defense College, told The Diplomat via email.

Both are emphasizing the need to stabilize relations and manage competition “responsibly” – and neither is seeking a return “to a presumed earlier and more amicable era of relations.” But, Clarke noted, the United States was more explicit in emphasizing that competition remains a defining feature of the relationship.

“So from the perspective of an ally like Australia,” Clarke concluded, “I think the view will be that while Biden and Xi’s efforts at stabilizing their relations is a good thing, their meeting has demonstrated that ‘competition’ is now the default setting for Sino-U.S. relations.”

Japan

For its part, Japan is interested in following the United States’ lead, with Prime Minister Kishida Fumio seeking his own summit with Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit. For a time, Japan was able to manage the tricky balancing act of keeping engagement with China going despite leaning more and more into the “free and open Indo-Pacific” concept and adopting a more muscular security policy.

That has now changed. Beijing adopted a particularly shrill opposition to Japan’s release of treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, banning all imports of seafood from Japan in response. China has also been stepping up its military activity near Japan, using both naval vessels and aircraft.

After the Biden-Xi summit, “the U.S.-China relationship has already been sorted out and an agreement on that relationship has been formed in the U.S. and China,” Kawashima Shin, a professor at the University of Tokyo and an expert on Chinese foreign policy, told The Diplomat. “It may be said that competition and its rules are being formed. In contrast, in the Japan-China relationship, there is less dialogue between politicians than in the U.S.-China relationship, and even the nature of the relationship is unclear.”

At the Kishida-Xi summit, the Japanese leader is likely to push for a warmer relationship by seizing on the example of the United States. Kishida’s “pro-China” reputation in Japan has, ironically, constrained his administration from being “proactive in its policy toward China,” Kawashima said, as it faces heavy criticism for any moves seen as overly friendly to Beijing. But with Biden having made his move, Kishida can seek to match it by improving dialogue and communication mechanisms with China.

“Military tensions are currently on the rise in East Asia,” Kawashima noted. “Dialogue and security management are essential if mutual deterrence is to be enhanced. The importance of top-level communication between Japan and China is now at an all-time high.”

The Philippines

The Philippines will have been watching the Biden-Xi summit particularly closely, as Manila is locked in a tense stand-off with China in the South China Sea. Chinese coast guard and maritime militia vessels repeatedly give chase to Philippine boats attempting to resupply Second Thomas Shoal, where the Philippines has troops stationed abroad a grounded vessel. Manila claims the shoal, which is well within its exclusive economic zone; so does China.

Earlier this week, just before Xi departed for California, Chinese vessels used water cannons to attempt to drive Philippine ships away from the shoal. In October, Chinese vessels collided with Philippine boats engaged in a resupply mission.

As the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. leans into a defiant response to China’s actions in the South China Sea, Manila is ramping up defense cooperation with the United States. While Marcos’ predecessor threatened to scrap a key defense deal with the United States, Marcos has taken the opposite tack, expanding the number of bases being refurbished with U.S. funds under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) from five to nine. U.S. forces will also have access to these bases, some of which are in the northern Philippines, near Taiwan.

While run-ins between China and the Philippines continue to make headlines, however, the issue did not feature prominently in the Biden-Xi summit. The official readout from the White House made a brief mention of the importance of “maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea and East China Sea.” Biden himself, in his post-summit press conference, said he had “raised areas where the United States has concerns about the PRC’s actions, including … coercive activities in the South China Sea.” But that was it.

Potentially more worrying is that Marcos was granted a summit not with Biden but with Vice President Kamala Harris – a fact that many Chinese analysts read as the Biden administration distancing itself from Manila and its South China Sea policy.

That seems a stretch, considering repeated affirmations that the United States’ treaty obligation to defend the Philippines extends to the South China Sea. A more likely explanation is that Harris, thanks to repeated trips to the region, has effectively become the Biden administration’s face in Southeast Asia, so continuing that engagement is purposeful.

Did the de-emphasis on the South China Sea, or the VP-level meeting, worry Manila? Not really, according to Richard Heydarian, a well-known commentator on Philippine and Asian affairs. “ I think in the Philippines there is enough realism to appreciate that Biden needs to establish some guardrails in its bilateral relations with China. After all, not only is two-way trade massive, but also no one wants war,” he told The Diplomat.

But the Philippines will also have noted that “neither superpower has budged on any core issue nor can top leaders in the two countries afford to,” Heydarian pointed out. “I see less optimism after this meeting than the one in Bali, especially with U.S. elections and expected China-bashing in DC expected to gain steam in both parties.”

In the end, Manila will be more concerned with actions, rather than words. “And what speaks loudest for the Philippines is action: EDCA projects are pushing ahead with huge momentum and bilateral defense ties are deepening by the minute,” Heydarian said.

South Korea

South Korea is in a similar position as Japan, with the administration of President Yoon Suk-yeol having taken a noticeably harder line on China. Yoon has been particularly intent on improving relations with both the United States and Japan, and the three countries cemented their trilateral partnership with the Camp David summit earlier this year. While these efforts, from Seoul’s perspective, are largely aimed at addressing the North Korea problem, the Yoon administration has been more willing than its predecessors to expand the scope of trilateral cooperation beyond the Korean Peninsula – to include the China challenge.

It’s clear from the readouts of both China and the U.S. that the Korean Peninsula didn’t feature heavily in the Biden-Xi summit, despite worrying new developments in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs over the past year. But “I don’t think South Korea is concerned about the fact that the Korean Peninsula was not covered prominently in the Biden-Xi summit,” said Miyeon Oh, director and senior faculty lead of Korea Studies at John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “South Korea understands that there are other pressing issues that are more directly affecting the bilateral relations such as Taiwan, human rights, and export controls.”

Like Kishida, Yoon may be hoping that the thaw in China-U.S. relations gives him an opening to advance largely stalled China-South Korea ties, a perspective put forth by South Korean analysts. In particular, Seoul is keen to lock in a commitment to resume the once-annual trilateral summit between the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea, as it’s South Korea’s turn to host the event.

While North Korea didn’t merit a mention in either the U.S. or Chinese readouts of the Biden-Xi summit, China remains a key player in strategies for addressing Pyongyang. Oh, who is also senior adviser and senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, noted that China’s position on “North Korea nuclear threats has significant policy implications for both the United States and South Korea, specifically given the increasing military ties between North Korea and Russia.”

“Which position that China would take will have significant implications for the national security of the United States and South Korea respectively,” Oh continued. “The Yoon and Biden administrations are seemingly aligned with in terms of shaping its strategy to deal with China’s stance.”

Taiwan

Taiwan is the most complex case, as it both has the most at stake and was a topic of discussion – without being in the room. Taiwan continues to be the number one issue for China when it considers the Sino-U.S. relationship, and Xi devoted time in the meeting to “elaborate” on China’s position.

“The U.S. side should take real actions to honor its commitment of not supporting ‘Taiwan independence,’ stop arming Taiwan, and support China’s peaceful reunification,” Xi told Biden, according to the Chinese readout.

“China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable.”

The extent to which Biden pushed back on that assertion is unknown. According to Biden’s own account, he didn’t engage on the issue much beyond affirming the United States’ longstanding “One China policy.”

“I reiterate[d] what I’ve said since I’ve become president and what every previous president of late has said… we maintain an agreement that there is a One China policy and that – and I’m not going to change that,” Biden told reporters. “And so, that’s about the extent to which we discussed it.”

The official White House readout had more details:

[Biden] reiterated that the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, that we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, and that the world has an interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. He called for restraint in the PRC’s use of military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.

The Chinese readout claimed Biden also promised not to support Taiwan independence, a point that did not appear in the White House version (but has been officially U.S. policy for decades).

Overall, it sounds like both sides simply restated their positions on Taiwan, without much actual dialogue.

A spokesperson for Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the ministry “appreciates and welcomes that President Biden has again publicly underlined the United States’ firm position on the maintenance of cross-strait peace and stability through a meeting with the Chinese leader.” The spokesperson added that “the Biden administration has emphasized its rock-solid security commitment to Taiwan on multiple occasions and expressed its unwavering support for Taiwan through concrete actions.”

In other words, Taiwan is not reading too much into the Biden-Xi summit.

“Taipei is obviously paying close attention to the evolving relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, but any unease that would have been present maybe 10 years ago is not present for this summit,” said Russell Hsiao, executive director of the DC-based Global Taiwan Institute.

“While there may have been more concerns in past summits about the possibility of a grand bargain between Washington and Beijing, those concerns are far less pronounced at present,” Hsiao continued. A “grand bargain” refers to the idea, previously raised by a minority of U.S. analysts, that the United States should “abandon” Taiwan in exchange for concessions from China on other issues.

That idea is no longer a pressing fear, Hsiao argued, “given both the reassurances provided to Taipei by Washington by successive US administrations, increased trust between Washington and Taipei over recent years, as well as the structural shifts in the U.S.-China relationship that are unlikely to change as a result of this meeting.”

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What did the United States’ Indo-Pacific allies think?

Given these convergences, all the name of countering China, how are U.S. allies viewing the Biden-Xi summit?

That said, each country’s positioning is unique and worth considering.

Australia

Japan

The Philippines

South Korea

Taiwan

“China will realize reunification, and this is unstoppable.”

The official White House readout had more details:

[Biden] reiterated that the United States opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, that we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, and that the world has an interest in peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. He called for restraint in the PRC’s use of military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.

The Chinese readout claimed Biden also promised not to support Taiwan independence, a point that did not appear in the White House version (but has been officially U.S. policy for decades).

Overall, it sounds like both sides simply restated their positions on Taiwan, without much actual dialogue.

In other words, Taiwan is not reading too much into the Biden-Xi summit.

STAFF AUTHOR

Shannon Tiezzi

Shannon Tiezzi is Editor-in-Chief at The Diplomat.

thediplomat.com · by Shannon Tiezzi

16. The lost opportunity of the Biden-Xi meeting

From the Quincy Institute.

Conclusion:

The Biden-Xi meeting was arguably a lost opportunity to open the door toward a more genuinely stable and productive long-term Sino-American relationship. At best, it has temporarily slowed the pace toward more contention and possibly conflict, especially over Taiwan. Lacking the will and political courage to take the hard, risky steps that could put relations on a sound footing over the longer term, the two presidents opted for “small beer,” in the form of a few soothing words and limited agreements. As a result, the relationship will likely continue to slide downward and remain prone to severe disruptions. Perhaps it is asking too much of the two presidents to take any risks in attempting to reach a more solid foundation, but the stakes involved suggest that they would be well worth taking.

The lost opportunity of the Biden-Xi meeting

responsiblestatecraft.org · by Michael D. Swaine · November 16, 2023

The leaders made some progress on reducing tensions, but a more fulsome detente remains distant.

Nov 16, 2023

The much-ballyhooed summit meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, occurring yesterday on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in San Francisco, was viewed by many observers as a critical opportunity for the two nations to establish a degree of enduring stability in their tumultuous relationship.

Although some limited agreements and understandings were apparently reached and some encouraging remarks uttered, the meeting fell far short of providing an enduring basis for much of anything beyond a willingness to keep talking and avoid conflict.

On the positive side, of greatest note is the fact that the two presidents agreed on steps to reduce the influx into the United States from China of items fueling the fentanyl crisis in this country and affirmed a general desire to strengthen dialogue on various military-to-military topics and reaffirm the openness of direct lines of communication between military leaders responsible for Asia-Pacific security. Additionally, according to the Chinese readout of the summit, President Biden reiterated the so-called five-point commitment he made regarding Taiwan at the Bali summit last year– that the United States does not seek to start a new Cold War, change China’s political system, mobilize alliances against China, or support Taiwan independence, and has no intention of engaging in conflict with China.

While certainly helpful, such developments and repetitions of past statements do not appreciably stabilize the overall relationship in an enduring manner, nor, in the absence of such stability, create serious momentum for the creation of a substantive crisis communication dialogue between the two sides. Particularly worrisome is the fact that no progress whatsoever was evident in creating an agreed-upon vision and framework for the relationship that could provide genuine stability over time. Indeed, nothing that occurred at the summit has altered the fundamentally adversarial nature of relations, nor appreciably lessened the deep levels of mutual suspicion and uncertainty that plague it.

For its part, Washington has made it very clear, in comments made before and after the summit by President Biden and senior officials, that it intends to remain primarily focused on improving its competitive capacities at home, pulling countries into greater alignment with the United States in countering China, and competing intensely with Beijing in a largely zero-sum struggle between democratic and authoritarian values, norms, and international structures.

In this effort, achieving genuine, substantive cooperation in reaching a middle ground or compromise on key issues like the climate challenge, high-tech innovation, and developing more broad-based, inclusive economic and trade structures, is either dismissed by U.S. officials as unrealizable or having been tried and failed in the past. And no effort is being made to define what a stable relationship should look like over the long term. In short, the primary focus of U.S. policymakers remains on keeping talking and avoiding the worst case, not the creation of a durable basis for productive, mutually beneficial relations.

For its part, Beijing has shown no evidence that it has altered its view that the problems in the relationship are due solely to U.S. actions. It continues to insist that China only wants “win-win,” productive outcomes and that it has no intention nor desire to displace the U.S. position in the world nor undertake policies designed to weaken or constrain the United States. But this belies a determined Chinese effort to reduce international support for U.S. alliances, create alternative economic, security, and political structures to those led by the United States, and increase its military or quasi-military pressure on U.S. allies and partners. Such soothing Chinese words also run counter to internal statements made on several occasions by Xi Jinping and Chinese officials to the effect that China must develop far greater economic and military capabilities in order to counter a United States that is fundamentally committed to weakening China and ending communist party rule.

Whether precipitated by supposedly threatening U.S. actions or rooted primarily in preexisting ideological views (or both), such Chinese behavior and attitudes will continue to validate, in the minds of many U.S. observers, the disingenuous nature of Chinese statements and the fundamentally threatening nature of the Chinese regime and thereby continue to justify arguments for ever greater levels of deterrence over any meaningful attempts at reassurance on virtually any issue, from trade to Taiwan.

Adding to the problem, the mutually reinforcing, negative dynamic still operating on both sides will no doubt continue to generate considerable fatalism among some scholars, political figures, and defense analysts who posit that greatly increased levels of military deterrence are needed to avert an otherwise unavoidable conflict, or that such conflict will ultimately prove inevitable regardless of how much deterrence is employed. From this perspective, the notion that Washington or Beijing can be reassured in meaningful ways on vital issues becomes largely moot.

The most significant source of such pessimism is the specific dynamic regarding Taiwan, along with the poor state of crisis communication between Washington and Beijing. On the former issues, leaders in both countries publicly espouse, in rote terms, their commitment to the original bilateral understanding regarding the island that has kept the peace for decades — involving Chinese support for peaceful unification as a top priority and U.S. support for its One China policy. However, both sides have nonetheless steadily eroded the credibility of that understanding through both words and actions, to the point where such mutual assurances now carry little weight in either capital. As both sides fail to credibly reassure each other, the likelihood of an eventual conflict would increase.

Nothing that Biden and Xi said at their meeting offers the prospect of altering this dynamic going forward, despite Biden’s endorsement of the One China policy and his reported reaffirmation of commitments he made last year in Bali. Rather than clearly reaffirming and explaining the basic limits that will exist on U.S. relations with and support for Taiwan (central to the One China policy) and the absence of any deadline for Chinese efforts to unify with Taiwan (central to Beijing’s policy of peaceful unification), the two presidents merely repeated past statements, while advising one another to stop provoking the situation.

On defense issues and crisis communication, the two presidents’ statement of their commitment to resuming or strengthening a few defense dialogues and channels of communication is certainly a good thing. However, no mention was made of several more important interactions, including the Defense Consultative Talks (renamed the Defense Strategic Dialogue in 2020), the Asia Pacific Security Dialogue (renamed the Defense Policy Exchange, also in 2020), and the Crisis Communication Working Group (CCWG), which fell into disuse after 2021. These dialogues are all highly essential to any effort to provide an enduring and productive foundation for the relationship

In the absence of such stability, the failure of the two presidents to clearly reaffirm the CCWG is particularly disappointing. In fact, resuming CCWG meetings should be the first step in creating a broader crisis dialogue that extends well beyond the mil-mil level. This dialogue should involve both civilian and military officials from several agencies with the experience, knowledge, and authority to discuss the full range of attitudes, policies, and possible mechanisms that relate to managing and preventing crises.

Such an ambitious but necessary effort will likely require the creation of a two-tier or two-channel crisis dialogue, one focusing on national-level issues relating to the strategy and policy aspects of crisis prevention and management, and the second channel relating primarily to defense establishment prerogatives and responsibilities, but with some civilian input. The latter would focus mainly on crisis management mechanisms, and the former on risk reduction/prevention and policy solutions.

Creating such a structure will, in turn, require a willingness on both sides to recognize that they each contribute to the negative dynamic driving toward a crisis over Taiwan or some other bilateral political-military dispute and that both crisis prevention and crisis management must be essential topics for discussion in any efforts to avoid confrontation and conflict. None of this was suggested at the Biden-Xi summit.

Because of this failure, Beijing will likely continue to resist creating genuine crisis management dialogues and mechanisms, viewing them as a way for Washington to escalate its provocative, crisis-inducing behavior while avoiding an actual conflict. And Washington will continue to resist Beijing’s desire to discuss crisis prevention, viewing it as a way for China to pressure the United States to reduce its support for Taiwan, or its military presence in Asia.

Overcoming this impasse will not be easy but could occur with the assistance of unofficial crisis dialogues held at the Track Two or Track 1.5 level. Such conversations between former officials, scholars, and military officers, some in existence for years, can raise topics and present ideas and solutions that would prove virtually impossible at the official Track One level. But no hint of this was evident at the summit, or in subsequent remarks by lower-level officials.

The Biden-Xi meeting was arguably a lost opportunity to open the door toward a more genuinely stable and productive long-term Sino-American relationship. At best, it has temporarily slowed the pace toward more contention and possibly conflict, especially over Taiwan. Lacking the will and political courage to take the hard, risky steps that could put relations on a sound footing over the longer term, the two presidents opted for “small beer,” in the form of a few soothing words and limited agreements. As a result, the relationship will likely continue to slide downward and remain prone to severe disruptions. Perhaps it is asking too much of the two presidents to take any risks in attempting to reach a more solid foundation, but the stakes involved suggest that they would be well worth taking.

Michael D. Swaine

Michael D. Swaine is a Senior Research Fellow on East Asia at the Quincy Institute and is one of the most prominent American scholars of Chinese security studies.

Photo credit: Chinese President Xi Jinping (Shutterstock/Alexander Khitrov) and President Joe Biden (Luca Perra/Shutterstock)

17. Marine recruit who first held a rifle at boot camp ties shooting record

I have always heard that the best trainees are the ones that have never fired a rifle. They have no bad habits to correct.

I recall many years ago that my team was training a foreign military. One of the training events was pistol marksmanship for counter terrorism training. In this military (like so many) only the officers carried sidearms and the enlisted/NCOs carried rifles. But when we conducted training the NCOs outshot all the officers on the pistol range (and in all other training scenarios). They had no bad habits and listened and absorbed the instruction from the US SF NCOs while the officers thought they already knew how to shoot.

Marine recruit who first held a rifle at boot camp ties shooting record

marinecorpstimes.com · by Irene Loewenson · November 16, 2023

The first time now-Pfc. Francis “Frankie” Flannery picked up a firearm was in Marine boot camp.

Initially, as he and other recruits at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, practiced handling rifles without live rounds, Flannery had trouble getting the hang of the technique for controlling his breathing.

But as Flannery, 18, started shooting live rounds, “it kind of came to me, and it started to become natural,” he told Marine Corps Times Wednesday.

In October, a week and a half after first picking up a rifle, he tied the recruit depot’s marksmanship record.

Meet the ‘deadliest recruit on Parris Island’

The new Marine scored 248 out of a possible 250 on Table 1 of the Marine Corps Rifle Qualification and followed it by a perfect 100 on Table 2.

By Philip Athey

When Flannery grew up in South Plainfield, New Jersey, he didn’t learn to shoot, and he displayed no affinity for marksmanship otherwise. He was terrible at video games that involved shooting, though good at the saxophone, he said.

He was a smaller kid, never really the leader among his friends. By around age 10, he knew he wanted to become a Marine.

“I thought it would be a good way to gain respect and to grow as a man, and also it would give me a good sense of pride that I’ve never really had the chance to get,” Flannery said.

At boot camp in South Carolina, he learned to shoot the M16A4 service rifle with help from primary marksmanship instructor Sgt. Juan Jimenez, the Marine considered the best shooter there, according to Flannery.

“They see movie scenes of Marines kicking in doors and sending rounds down range,” Jimenez said of recruits, as quoted in a Marine Corps news release. “But to get there, they have to first learn the fundamentals. So that they can do it fast, but right.”

Jimenez and the other coaches taught Flannery how to breathe in, breathe out and then shoot. Flannery learned not to force the shot. If he wasn’t ready, he would take a little more time.

“And yes…he shot with an optic for marksmanship training,” recruit depot spokesman Chief Warrant Officer 3 Bobby Yarbrough noted on a Facebook post about Flannery. “Just as every Marine has for nearly the past two decades. #IronSightsAreGone”

Flannery went into rifle qualification day thinking he would score an expert qualification, which 25% to 30% of Marines earn, Marine Corps Times previously reported. That’s the top rifle marksmanship qualification, above sharpshooter and marksman.

It was the beginning of the chilly autumn weather but still comfortable. Flannery said he and other recruits “may or may not have” taken advantage of the fact their drill instructors weren’t around to sing whatever songs they could think of, because it had been a while since they had been able to listen to music. That helped him relax.

By the time he was shooting at the target from 500 yards away, the target looked tiny in his sight and he had to aim way off to the right to account for the wind. On his one less-than-perfect shot, he didn’t factor in the wind enough, he said.

In the end, Flannery scored 249 out of a possible 250 points on “Table 1,” a known-distance course consisting of shots from the 200-, 300- and 500- yard line, Yarbrough told Marine Corps Times on Thursday. He also scored a 99 out of 100 on “Table 2,” the combat marksmanship course designed to simulate close-quarter battles.

He tied the overall marksmanship score of Austin Ferrell, the private first class whom the Corps dubbed “the deadliest recruit on Parris Island” for his achievements at the South Carolina boot camp in 2020, according to Yarbrough. And Ferrell had been shooting since he was age 5 or 6, he previously told Marine Corps Times.

The Marines working at the range didn’t know if they believed what had just happened, Flannery recounted, so they double-checked the targets and made him come in the next day to verify his abilities. With the recruits from his platoon audibly reacting to each shot, he didn’t do quite as well, but he shot high enough to keep his score, Flannery said.

Flannery was excited, and his fellow recruits were excited for him. Because of his cyber and crypto operations military occupational specialty, he did come in for some ribbing: The best shooter on the island is a computer guy.

‘Every Marine a rifleman’ still relevant, says sergeant major of the Corps

The Marine Corps culture will always maximize the war fighting spirit, says Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Troy Black.

By Philip Athey

Drill instructors aren’t supposed to act excited, Flannery said, but he suspects his drill instructor Sgt. Bryan McGuigan, who taught him shooting fundamentals, was pleased with him. McGuigan was quoted in the Marine Corps news release calling Flannery “an above average recruit…able to retain knowledge quicker than most.”

And Flannery’s senior drill instructor gave the recruit the rare chance to call home. Flannery said his mother was proud, and he was glad to hear her voice.

Having graduated from boot camp Nov. 9 as a private first class, he is back home in New Jersey, spending time with family and friends before he departs Nov. 21 for Marine Combat Training in North Carolina.

Wherever in the Marine Corps he ends up, he said, he wants to go to the range regularly, and he might become a coach there. He also might like to teach his family what he’s learned.

That sense of pride Flannery sought in signing up for the Marine Corps? He said he’s found it.

About Irene Loewenson

18. The Myanmar Military Is Facing Death by a Thousand Cuts

Excerpts:

The United States can help push for negotiations by burying the junta in economic sanctions, hampering its access to international markets, arms, and revenue, and preventing it from attaining diplomatic recognition. On Oct. 31, the United States issued sanctions on Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, the junta’s most important remaining revenue source. This follows sanctions this past summer that severely restrict the military’s access to foreign reserves and jet fuel.

However, U.S. sanctions have remained cautious and highly targeted to avoid alienating regional allies and partners like Thailand. More vigorous efforts, coupled with fulfilling the provisions of the BURMA Act, would put further pressure on the junta. Backdoor U.S. diplomacy can also play a key role in convincing Beijing and others in the region that supporting the junta is the wrong move and a return to democracy will benefit their interests. The United States should emphasize privately and publicly that reversing the coup in Myanmar is not solely about democracy but also regional stability: the military has served as the primary destabilizing force throughout Myanmar’s post-independence history and has shown little willingness to address Myanmar’s growing cross-border crime problem. Finally, U.S. diplomatic efforts should also include facilitating and supporting political cooperation within the resistance coalition.

Inside Myanmar, political cooperation across the resistance coalition still faces serious challenges, specifically on what the “day after” will look like. Indeed, it remains to be seen to what extent the Three Brotherhood Alliance cooperates politically with the National Unity Government and other pro-democracy actors following Operation 1027, and whether it shares their vision for federalism. Importantly, many in the People’s Defense Forces and civil society are increasingly frustrated with the National Unity Government and the political old guard. As the Sagaing Forum shows, the anti-military popular resistance is a bottom-up movement with real revolutionary goals and a genuine desire to move beyond the old ways of doing things, particularly Bamar-dominated centralized hierarchies. A framework that incorporates and satisfies ethnic minority, youth, and civil society demands for and differing visions of an inclusive and federal democracy is crucial for creating the stability that has eluded Myanmar since independence. This is particularly true for the National Unity Government, which needs to persuade the ethnic armed organizations and many younger citizens that they will not repeat the disappointments of the previous democratic transition. A “day after” political framework in Myanmar is an extremely difficult task but a necessary one given the resistance’s rapidly snowballing successes.

Although the war is far from over and it remains unclear what a future Myanmar will look like, events are moving fast, and we are likely facing a turning point in the conflict. The resistance’s limited strategic cooperation during the first two years appears to have been replaced by a series of well-planned, country-wide offensives that caught the junta on its back foot. The resistance is doubtlessly planning further offensives, targeting isolated outposts, strategic border roads, and small towns with the goal of expanding their territory. With the junta bleeding from a thousand cuts, now is the time to ramp up pressure both inside and outside Myanmar.

The Myanmar Military Is Facing Death by a Thousand Cuts - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Lucas Myers · November 17, 2023

Events in Myanmar’s renewed civil war took a dramatic turn these past three weeks, reminding us not to forget about the world’s longest running conflict. Just prior to the break of dawn on Oct. 27, 2023, the Three Brotherhood Alliance of the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army launched a surprise assault — called Operation 1027 — on junta forces in northern Shan State. Within a couple of weeks, the three ethnic armed organizations have reportedly seized over 150 military outposts and several key towns astride a strategic road to the Chinese border, as well as highways crisscrossing Shan State. With operations continuing to expand, this marks a significant battlefield defeat for the increasingly overstretched military junta.

While the fog of war demands analytical caution, Operation 1027 carries important implications for the future of Myanmar. First, the Myanmar military is increasingly overstretched despite its airpower and artillery advantages. Second, the Three Brotherhood Alliance potentially aligning itself more openly with the pro-democracy movement — at least militarily — highlights the resistance’s determination and coalition-building efforts. Third, China’s turn toward the junta has proven a poor bet. Considered together, the Myanmar military is more vulnerable than at any time in the past half century. Now is the moment for Myanmar’s pro-democracy resistance to push hard and for their international supporters to crank up the pressure on the junta. The resistance should continue to build momentum with operations across the country, while international backers like the United States should increase the tempo of sanctions and redouble their diplomatic efforts to convince the junta that it cannot prevail.

Become a Member

The Junta Is Bleeding

Since overthrowing the democratically elected government of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1, 2021, the Myanmar military has fought an expanding coalition of longstanding ethnic armed organizations, the pro-democracy parallel National Unity Government, and a variety of People’s Defense Forces. Facing a fluid and complex battlefield situation, the Myanmar military junta has largely held onto the cities and towns while suffering substantial losses to guerrilla fighters operating in rural areas.

Deeply unpopular, brutal to civilians, and performing poorly at the tactical level, the Myanmar military relies upon airpower and heavy artillery to prevent the resistance from taking and consolidating its hold over populated areas. For example, the Karen National Union and several local People’s Defense Forces units launched an offensive in October 2022 to take Kawkareik near the Thai border. Initially successful, the military pulled back before junta forces retaliated with airstrikes and heavy artillery, ultimately dispersing resistance units into the countryside.

However, Operation 1027 represents perhaps the most significant battlefield victory thus far in the renewed civil war. Taking the town of Hsenwi in particular cuts the primary road to China through the border at Chinshwehaw, which the Three Brotherhood Alliance also captured. Almost $300 million in trade passed through it from April to July 2023, according to a junta mouthpiece. Resistance forces are now attempting to surround other strategic towns such as Laukkai and Nawngkhio and seize other locations along the border On a strategic level, the loss of these routes cuts off the junta from one of the larger border crossings to its most important international backer, Beijing. Spurred by the Three Brotherhood Alliance’s success in Shan State, People’s Defense Forces units assaulted and seized Kawlin, a district-level town in Sagaing Region in a first for them, as well as Khampat near the Indian border. Fighting this past week in Chin, Kayah, and Rakhine States further herald that the junta is increasingly tottering.

The junta is closer to military-economic collapse than is often understood. As analyst Ye Myo Hein has demonstrated, the Myanmar military is badly undermanned, likely marshalling only about 70,000 combat-capable forces to pacify a population of 53 million. Due to the scarcity of manpower, the military relies upon rapid redeployments of its elite light infantry divisions to strategic flashpoints, such as recent fighting in Kachin, and retaliatory airstrikes to disperse resistance units and punish its opponents.

Importantly, this is becoming increasingly difficult. Junta convoys and supply lines are increasingly subject to ambushes. Its sudden loss of control of outposts throughout Shan State exposes the critical weakness inherent to the military’s overstretch: The military redeployed 3,000 troops out of Shan State to other parts of Myanmar earlier this year. It appears unlikely that they have the reserves to launch a concerted counter-offensive, and their air force is increasingly overtasked. Combined with the National Unity Government’s revenue denial strategy, Myanmar’s continued economic tailspin, and the increasingly tight U.S., U.K., and E.U. sanctions, the junta bleeds from a thousand cuts. The junta itself admitted earlier this year that it lacks control over almost half of the country.

The Junta’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy Is Failing

The reason that the junta felt it could safely redeploy 3,000 soldiers from Shan State despite periodic skirmishes with the Three Brotherhood Alliance is its confidence in a divide-and-conquer strategy. The two key elements of this approach are the junta’s air force and China’s growing economic and political support.

Myanmar is home to hundreds of armed actors, and a pan-ethnic coalition was always the military’s greatest post-coup threat. However, forging such an alliance is an immense task given the deep divides existing between the Bamar majority and the numerous historically oppressed ethnic minority groups. Initiatives like the National Unity Consultative Council aim to address these challenges by bringing a diverse range of actors together to talk, but it remains slow going. This is particularly so as a result of deep wounds stemming from the Aung San Suu Kyi government’s failure to incorporate ethnic voices or advance federalism. While the movement’s explicit goal is to create an inclusive, federal democracy, getting everyone on board and actually doing so are easier said than done. For instance, a unified command and control system is still a work in progress.

The Myanmar military’s strategy therefore aims to force a wedge between the National Unity Government and the minority ethnic armed groups, particularly those that are formally allied with the pro-democracy movement such as the Chin National Front, Kachin Independence Army, Karen National Union, Karenni Army, and a few others. This is possible because the ethnic armed organizations historically pursued autonomy or de facto independence in their conflicts with the military, while the National Unity Government and the pro-democracy forces seek to seize the central state apparatus and reform the national-level government. The junta again believes it can coerce or placate the ethnic armed organizations to give it the breathing room to crush the People’s Defense Forces and the National Unity Government piecemeal.

Buying off or isolating rival factions and groups is the military’s historical playbook in dealing with opponents to its authority. For example, the military convinced a faction within the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army to revolt in 2009, which proceeded to split and form the now regime-aligned Kokang Border Guards Force. More recently, the Arakan Army agreed to an informal ceasefire with the junta in Rakhine State in 2022, allowing the junta to focus elsewhere. In the current fighting, the Myanmar military employs an airpower compellence strategy against opposing ethnic armed organizations and “Four Cuts” operations targeting civilians and villages with indiscriminate violence to intimidate the population. The junta’s objective is to drag out the war, exhaust the population, split the ethnic minorities along the periphery from the Bamar of the interior, and then pick them off one by one over time.

However, the Three Brotherhood Alliance’s entrance into the war coupled with stronger strategic coordination between the diverse actors making up the anti-regime movement signal that the junta’s strategy has failed to close the resistance’s window of opportunity. In particular, the Arakan Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and Ta’ang National Liberation Army had until now sought to support the anti-junta resistance from a distance. They trained and armed some of the People’s Defense Forces while occasionally clashing with the junta. But they also resisted moving too far beyond their territory or joining the fight outright. That they are now launching an all-out offensive against the junta in Shan State, and likely now in Rakhine, demonstrates greater strategic cooperation between resistance forces. It is likely that the Three Brotherhood Alliance sees the hated military’s weakness as an opportunity to secure their long-desired autonomy and that painstaking efforts to build trust across anti-regime factions are finally bearing fruit.

A recent statement from the Three Brotherhood Alliance declared: “The moment has arrived for all ethnic revolutionary organizations, the forces of the Spring Revolution, and the people to fully engage in the elimination of the military dictatorship and wholeheartedly commit to the establishment of a Federal Democratic Union.” Shortly after Operation 1027 began, the National Unity Government’s ministry of defense issued its own statement announcing it will “join forces with the Brotherhood Alliance in Operation 1027. We will actively engage in the required operations to collaborate effectively in their endeavors.” The surge in fighting in Shan State comes amidst intense and continued warfare between the junta and the Kachin Independence Army farther to the north. A variety of People’s Defense Forces units are cooperating with the Three Brotherhood Alliance, and the Karen National Union and Karenni forces in the southeast launched strikes against Kawkareik and Loikaw respectively, reportedly seizing several facilities in both towns. Fighting has also reportedly surged in the Chin State, Magwe, and Sagaing Regions. The capture of Kawlin represents a serious advance in the People’s Defense Forces’ ability to take towns. If Loikaw falls to resistance forces, it will be the first state capital taken.

The anti-regime coalition looks stronger than ever, and the odds of the junta buying off or coercing some of the ethnic armed organizations are diminishing. Unlike past instances, the military is visibly weakened in a manner unseen since the mid-20th century, with battalion-sized formations now surrendering to resistance forces. Crucially, the Bamar majority now largely opposes the military even in the historically pro-military heartland of Sagaing and Magwe, which are now two hotbeds of armed revolt. Although coalition-building efforts between the National Unity Government, the ethnic armed organizations, and other actors within the resistance have a long way to go and distrust remains high, the ethnic armed groups fighting the regime appear convinced that the current moment is a real opportunity to make gains against their military foe.

Deep Flaws in China’s Myanmar Policy

The junta has recently received a diplomatic boost from China, which cautiously reengaged the military regime in Naypyidaw over the past year. This threatens to rehabilitate it internationally and give the junta diplomatic and economic succor.

During the coup’s early days, China adopted a pragmatic stance by hedging its bets. It engaged the junta publicly but kept its distance, maintaining ties to the ousted National League for Democracy party as well as friendly ethnic armed organizations along the border.

However, because it misperceived U.S. support for the pro-democracy movement through a Cold War lens, Beijing has swung toward the Myanmar military over the past year, albeit not completely. China sent its foreign minister to Myanmar, conducted a high rate of bilateral visits, ramped up Belt and Road Initiative projects, and warned the resistance behind closed doors to not get too close to the United States. It has also deployed a special envoy to attempt negotiations between the junta and the ethnic armed groups on the border.

China’s mediation efforts specifically targeted the Three Brotherhood Alliance, which it has long backed publicly and privately. Indeed, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army are ethnically Kokang Chinese and closely tied to China and authorities in Yunnan Province. Beijing has historically supported the border ethnic armed organizations and armed them via the United Wa State Army, the largest and best-equipped group. China often tries to play broker in peace talks.

However, China’s influence on the Three Brotherhood Alliance is apparently less than it once seemed. Although the United Wa State Army has cooperated with China in publicly cracking down on growing human trafficking and cybercrimes along the border, including by giving up high-ranking officials, the Three Brotherhood Alliance has evidently decided that the military in Myanmar has to go. For China, this is a clear setback and sign of diminished sway over these groups. Instability along the border is a problem given China’s strategic interests in Myanmar and the risk of refugees crossing into Yunnan. Indeed, Beijing confirmed Chinese nationals have been killed in the recent fighting, and a junta artillery shell struck the Chinese side of the border.

The Three Brotherhood Alliance’s statement indicates that it is hoping to secure Beijing’s backing. The three ethnic armed organizations announced that “our commitment extends to combatting the widespread online gambling fraud that has plagued Myanmar, particularly along the China-Myanmar border.” By taking an explicitly anti-crime stance and reportedly raiding criminal networks, the Three Brotherhood Alliance is directly appealing to Beijing’s interests. During fighting outside the border town of Laukkai, where many criminal networks operate, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army was careful to argue that the Myanmar junta was protecting local criminal leadership from China’s crackdowns. The Three Brotherhood Alliance hopes to draw a contrast with the Myanmar military junta, which has dragged its feet on cracking down on such a lucrative illicit funding source. Operation 1027 is also targeting the Kokang Border Guards Force, a militia aligned with the junta that is notorious for its ties to criminal networks.

China’s response to the past weeks’ fighting is ambiguous, but it appears to lean toward the junta by calling for a ceasefire, as has its closest proxy, the United Wa State Army, which vowed to continue its neutrality in the civil war. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called for “relevant parties to cease fire as soon as possible, settle disputes in a peaceful manner through dialogue and consultation, avoid escalation of the situation, and take effective measures to ensure the security and stability of China-Myanmar border areas.” A week later, Chinese authorities expressed “strong dissatisfaction with the escalation of the armed conflict and the casualties caused to Chinese personnel,” lodging “solemn protest with relevant parties.” Concurrent to the fighting, the junta defense minister met with a Chinese Central Military Commission vice chairman for a previously scheduled visit to Beijing, during which they reportedly discussed the border. China’s Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong reportedly traveled to Naypyidaw and also raised the issue of the recent fighting during a meeting with Min Aung Hlaing. From Nov. 3–5, Assistant Foreign Minister Nong Rong visited Myanmar’s capital for the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation meeting, urging the junta to cooperate on border security.

These public moves would seem to benefit the junta with shows of confidence, but Beijing also appears to have avoided weighing in privately against the Three Brotherhood Alliance’s efforts. Although analysts debated the possibility that China greenlit Operation 1027, the rapid collapse of junta forces and ensuing instability, coming so soon after Beijing’s public support for the regime this past year make it seem unlikely. As such, it remains to be seen how China will respond in the long term. It could quietly shift back toward a more balanced position or double down on the junta due to its misguided belief that only the military can keep Myanmar together. In either case, it will continue to maintain its leverage over Myanmar’s diverse range of actors.

Finishing Off the Myanmar Junta

Many of Myanmar’s neighboring countries hold the view that the renewed civil war is simply the latest outbreak of chronic post-independence fighting — that it is nothing new and unlikely to topple the junta, which remains the only force holding the country together. The past weeks’ fighting should dispel the misplaced notion that the military in Myanmar can prevail or hold the country together.

With the junta on its back foot, now is the time for the international community to pressure the military and convince it that victory is impossible. Only then will the junta contemplate coming to the negotiating table. China, India, and Thailand should cease their efforts to rehabilitate the faltering junta. Meanwhile, the Association for Southeast Asian Nations member states that are opposed to the military coup, particularly the organization’s outgoing chair Indonesia, should move beyond quiet diplomacy and meet publicly with the National Unity Government and other pro-democracy actors and ethnic armed organizations.

The United States can help push for negotiations by burying the junta in economic sanctions, hampering its access to international markets, arms, and revenue, and preventing it from attaining diplomatic recognition. On Oct. 31, the United States issued sanctions on Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise, the junta’s most important remaining revenue source. This follows sanctions this past summer that severely restrict the military’s access to foreign reserves and jet fuel.

However, U.S. sanctions have remained cautious and highly targeted to avoid alienating regional allies and partners like Thailand. More vigorous efforts, coupled with fulfilling the provisions of the BURMA Act, would put further pressure on the junta. Backdoor U.S. diplomacy can also play a key role in convincing Beijing and others in the region that supporting the junta is the wrong move and a return to democracy will benefit their interests. The United States should emphasize privately and publicly that reversing the coup in Myanmar is not solely about democracy but also regional stability: the military has served as the primary destabilizing force throughout Myanmar’s post-independence history and has shown little willingness to address Myanmar’s growing cross-border crime problem. Finally, U.S. diplomatic efforts should also include facilitating and supporting political cooperation within the resistance coalition.

Inside Myanmar, political cooperation across the resistance coalition still faces serious challenges, specifically on what the “day after” will look like. Indeed, it remains to be seen to what extent the Three Brotherhood Alliance cooperates politically with the National Unity Government and other pro-democracy actors following Operation 1027, and whether it shares their vision for federalism. Importantly, many in the People’s Defense Forces and civil society are increasingly frustrated with the National Unity Government and the political old guard. As the Sagaing Forum shows, the anti-military popular resistance is a bottom-up movement with real revolutionary goals and a genuine desire to move beyond the old ways of doing things, particularly Bamar-dominated centralized hierarchies. A framework that incorporates and satisfies ethnic minority, youth, and civil society demands for and differing visions of an inclusive and federal democracy is crucial for creating the stability that has eluded Myanmar since independence. This is particularly true for the National Unity Government, which needs to persuade the ethnic armed organizations and many younger citizens that they will not repeat the disappointments of the previous democratic transition. A “day after” political framework in Myanmar is an extremely difficult task but a necessary one given the resistance’s rapidly snowballing successes.

Although the war is far from over and it remains unclear what a future Myanmar will look like, events are moving fast, and we are likely facing a turning point in the conflict. The resistance’s limited strategic cooperation during the first two years appears to have been replaced by a series of well-planned, country-wide offensives that caught the junta on its back foot. The resistance is doubtlessly planning further offensives, targeting isolated outposts, strategic border roads, and small towns with the goal of expanding their territory. With the junta bleeding from a thousand cuts, now is the time to ramp up pressure both inside and outside Myanmar.

Become a Member

Lucas Myers is the senior associate for Southeast Asia at the Wilson Center’s Asia Program.

The views expressed are the author’s alone, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government or the Wilson Center.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Lucas Myers · November 17, 2023

19. Not a World War But a World at War

Excerpts:

These three explanations—coincidence, multipolarity, Russia’s war in Ukraine—are not mutually exclusive. If anything, they are interrelated, as wars are complex events; the decline of U.S. hegemony contributes to growing multipolarity; and great-power competition has surely fed Russia’s aggression and the West’s response. The consequence is that others are caught in the great-power cross fire or will seek to start fires of their own. Even if none of these wars rise to the level of a third world war, they will be devastating all the same. We do not need to be in a world war to be in a world at war.

Wars were already a persistent feature of the international system. But they were not widespread. War was always happening somewhere, in other words, but war was not happening everywhere. The above dynamics could change that tendency. The prevalence of war, not just its persistence, could now be our future.

Not a World War But a World at War

The past two years have seen the most conflicts of any time since the end of the Second World War.

By Paul Poast

The Atlantic · by Paul Poast · November 17, 2023

Just in the past 24 months, an astonishing number of armed conflicts have started, renewed, or escalated. Some had been fully frozen, meaning that the sides had not sustained direct combat in years; others were long simmering, meaning that low-level fighting would intermittently erupt. All have now become active.

The list encompasses not just the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, but hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, Serbian military measures against Kosovo, fighting in Eastern Congo, complete turmoil in Sudan since April, and a fragile cease-fire in Tigray that Ethiopia seems poised to break at any time. Syria and Yemen have not exactly been quiet during this period, and gangs and cartels continuously menace governments, including those in Haiti and Mexico. All of this comes on top of the prospect of a major war breaking out in East Asia, such as by China invading the island of Taiwan.

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which has been tracking wars globally since 1945, identified 2022 and 2023 as the most conflictual years in the world since the end of the Cold War. Back in January 2023, before many of the above conflicts erupted, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed sounded the alarm, noting that peace “is now under grave threat” across the globe. The seeming cascade of conflict gives rise to one obvious question: Why?

From the March 2015 issue: Be not afraid

Three theories can plausibly explain the phenomenon, and whichever one of them is right—or even if all of them are contributing—their upshot suggests that conflicts will likely continue proliferating for some time to come.

The first explanation holds that the cascade is in the eye of the beholder. People are too easily “fooled by randomness,” the essayist and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb admonished in his 2001 book of the same title, seeking intentional explanations for what may be coincidence. The flurry of armed confrontations could be just such a phenomenon, concealing no deeper meaning: Some of the frozen conflicts, for instance, were due for flare-ups or had gone quiet only recently. Today’s volume of wars, in other words, should be viewed as little more than a series of unfortunate events that could recur or worsen at any time.

Though this theory may be reasonable, it is not reassuring, nor does it help predict when conflicts will arise or how large they will eventually become.

Although coincidences certainly do occur, the current onslaught happens to be taking place at a time of big changes in the international system. The era of Pax Americana appears to be over, and the United States is no longer poised to police the world. Not that Pax America was necessarily so peaceful. The 1990s were especially disputatious; civil wars arose on multiple continents, as did major wars in Europe and Africa. But the United States attempted to solve and contain many potential conflicts: Washington led a coalition to oust Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from Kuwait, facilitated the Oslo Process to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fostered improved relations between North and South Korea, and encouraged the growth of peacekeeping operations around the globe. Even following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the invasion of Afghanistan was supported by many in the international community as necessary to remove a pariah regime and enable a long-troubled nation to rebuild. War was not over, but humanity seemed closer than ever to finding a formula for lasting peace.

Over the subsequent decades, the United States seemed to fritter away both the goodwill needed to support such efforts and the means to carry them out. By the early 2010s, the United States was bogged down in two losing wars and recovering from a financial crisis. The world, too, had changed, with power ebbing from Washington’s singular pole to multiple emerging powers. As then–Secretary of State John Kerry remarked in a 2013 interview in The Atlantic, “We live in a world more like the 18th and 19th centuries.” And a multipolar world, where several great powers jostle for advantage on the global stage, harbors the potential for more conflicts, large and small.

Specifically, China has emerged as a great power seeking to influence the international system, whether by leveraging the economic allure of its Belt and Road Initiative or by militarily revising the status quo within its region. Russia does not have China’s economic muscle, but it, too, seeks to dominate its region, establish itself as an influential global player, and revise the international order. Whether Russia or China is yet on an economic or military par with the United States hardly matters. Both are strong enough to challenge the U.S.-led international order by leveraging the revisionist sentiment they share with countries throughout the global South.

Great-power competition can be a recipe for disorder. As Hanna Notte and Michael Kimmage recently observed in Foreign Affairs, great powers consumed with the need to variously vie and collude with one another are often too distracted to respond when “midsize powers, small powers, and even nonstate actors collide.” The result is that even if the great powers avoid war with one another, their actions can foment war elsewhere.

Multipolarity isn’t the only systemic change preceding the present wave of conflicts. But the others, including climate change and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, seem to point back toward multipolarity, if not as a cause, as a factor in the ineffectuality of the global response, and therefore the spiral toward more conflict. Global problems require cooperative solutions, but cooperation can be in short supply when the great powers are motivated to compete and deny, rather than collaborate and share.

Read: The world could be entering a new era of climate war

Suppose, though, that the proliferation of wars doesn’t have a systemic cause, but an entirely particular one. That the world owes its present state of unrest directly to Russia—and, even more specifically, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 and its decision to continue fighting since.

The war in Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since World War II and one poised to continue well past 2024, is absorbing the attention of international actors who otherwise would have been well positioned to prevent any of the abovementioned crises from escalating. This case is not the same as the great-power distraction, in which the world’s most powerful states simply fail to focus on emerging crises. Rather, the great powers lack the diplomatic and military capacity to respond to conflicts beyond Ukraine—and other actors know it.

Consider the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan anticipated that Russia would be unable or unwilling to respond if it moved forces into the Nagorno-Karabakh region and reset the territorial status quo with Armenia. That gamble proved correct. Though Russia played a role in helping to end previous conflicts between the two countries, Moscow has not responded to Azerbaijan’s recent actions against its longtime ally Armenia. The strongest statement from Russia came from Vladimir Putin himself, who only quipped, “If Armenia itself recognized Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, what do we have to do with it?”

Consider also the war in Gaza. With the major powers focusing their diplomatic and military resources on Ukraine, Hamas judged the international environment opportune for striking Israel. The deputy head of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, was explicit on this point back in April, telling Al Jazeera: “Sensing the importance of the current battle with Russia over global influence, the United States places a priority on preventing the outbreak of other conflicts and maintaining global calm and stability until the end of the Ukraine battle … Our responsibility is to take advantage of this opportunity and escalate our resistance in a real and dangerous way that threatens the calm and stability they want.”

These three explanations—coincidence, multipolarity, Russia’s war in Ukraine—are not mutually exclusive. If anything, they are interrelated, as wars are complex events; the decline of U.S. hegemony contributes to growing multipolarity; and great-power competition has surely fed Russia’s aggression and the West’s response. The consequence is that others are caught in the great-power cross fire or will seek to start fires of their own. Even if none of these wars rise to the level of a third world war, they will be devastating all the same. We do not need to be in a world war to be in a world at war.

Wars were already a persistent feature of the international system. But they were not widespread. War was always happening somewhere, in other words, but war was not happening everywhere. The above dynamics could change that tendency. The prevalence of war, not just its persistence, could now be our future.

The Atlantic · by Paul Poast · November 17, 2023

20. In war for talent, Army’s new direct commissions an admin ‘disaster’

I recall hearing some describe this as the answer to talent shortages. But I guess the bureaucracy just was not prepared.But I guess the bureaucracy just was not prepared.

Excerpts:

And it’s not just Estrada Lupianez who experienced a waiting period while the Army figured out its admin procedures.

“We had some [civil affairs] folks who — bless their hearts — endured two years before they were commissioned, but they stuck with the program,” Daniels said.

Personnel expert Kate Kuzminski, who heads the Military, Veterans and Society branch of the Center for a New American Security think tank, emphasized how important it will be to iron out the kinks in direct commissioning before the Army’s next large-scale war.

“[Direct commissions] harken back to how we historically had to tap into the nation’s talent,” she said in reference to World War II officer procurement efforts.

She argued the services have largely accounted for the big-picture challenges — cultural barriers, fiscal barriers, and policy barriers — that could impede modern direct commissions. Kuzminski also thinks the practice could pay dividends beyond just niche capabilities like cyber and space, to include areas like logistics and acquisitions.

In war for talent, Army’s new direct commissions an admin ‘disaster’

armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · November 16, 2023

In order to fight tomorrow’s wars, the Army is increasingly looking to its past, and a space officer’s recent appointment illustrates how far its efforts have come — and how much further they have to go against bureaucratic headwinds.

Capt. Jenniffer Estrada Lupianez, a newly minted Army Reserve space operations officer, works by day as a research scientist in the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Intelligence and Space division. She also looked to the past — her family’s — when she decided to follow her uncle and late father’s footsteps into the Army.

But in doing so, Estrada Lupianez became the first space officer to emerge from the Army’s embrace of an older tradition: appointing specialized officers based on civilian expertise rather than forcing them to go through typical commissioning programs. The direct appointments were a crown jewel of recent Army talent management reform efforts — collectively dubbed the “war for talent” by now-retired Gen. James McConville, the service’s former chief of staff.

Eight decades ago, when the world was at war, the Army needed experts it couldn’t mass produce: medical professionals, lawyers, intelligence analysts, communications experts, electrical engineers, industrial planners, film actors and more.

Direct commissions filled the void, according to service historians, producing around 104,000 officers in 1942 from experienced civilians. Examples ranged from the Signal Corps building 404 battalions around direct commissioned officers with experience in fields like telephone repair, to the president of General Motors shunning the private sector to become a three-star general overseeing industrial logistics. Over time the process fell out of practice except for medical, religious and legal specialties.

In fiscal years 2019 and 2020, Congress expanded direct commission authorities and allowed the services to provide active or reserve appointments to hard-to-find experts. Priority areas include space, cyber, civil affairs and more — all spaces where the military will need America’s best and brightest should war with China or another superpower break out.

Speaking at a panel discussion last month, Army Reserve chief Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels, spoke candidly about her struggles cutting through red tape to appoint new officers via direct commission.

“Our process right now for direct commission is a disaster,” the three-star general said.

The numbers largely support Daniels’ argument.

Outside of specialty fields (like law, the chaplaincy and medical professions), the Army only netted 13 direct commission officers in fiscal year 2020 and 32 in fiscal 2021, according to annual historical summaries. But those totals are slowly improving as the service adjusts its process. Daniels said the Reserve in fiscal year 2022 saw “over 50″ direct commissions and that nearly 100 such officers entered in fiscal year 2023.

Those who have made it thus far, like Estrada Lupianez, have largely done so through administrative tenacity, patience and support from the units they’re aiming to join.

The Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence’s commandant, Col. Donald Brooks, praised the “resourceful” new captain because “she found her way to Army space and started working with the Army Space Personnel Development Office to submit her packet,” which launched a year-long process where offices around the Army developed policies allowing her to enter the space functional area.

Newly commissioned Capt. Jenniffer Estrada-Lupianez poses with fellow members of the U.S. Strategic Command's Army Reserve troop program unit after her commissioning ceremony on Nov. 3, 2023. (Dottie White/Army)

And it’s not just Estrada Lupianez who experienced a waiting period while the Army figured out its admin procedures.

“We had some [civil affairs] folks who — bless their hearts — endured two years before they were commissioned, but they stuck with the program,” Daniels said.

Personnel expert Kate Kuzminski, who heads the Military, Veterans and Society branch of the Center for a New American Security think tank, emphasized how important it will be to iron out the kinks in direct commissioning before the Army’s next large-scale war.

“[Direct commissions] harken back to how we historically had to tap into the nation’s talent,” she said in reference to World War II officer procurement efforts.

She argued the services have largely accounted for the big-picture challenges — cultural barriers, fiscal barriers, and policy barriers — that could impede modern direct commissions. Kuzminski also thinks the practice could pay dividends beyond just niche capabilities like cyber and space, to include areas like logistics and acquisitions.

“How great would it be to get a vice president from DHL or UPS to come in and help overhaul logistics, if that’s what we needed?” she asked, or “teams from the private sector who have the vast [logistics and acquisition] experience we need in order to enable the operations [in which] we will be engaged.”

Now it’s just a matter of removing administrative roadblocks and streamlining the process before it’s needed at scale — and getting the word out, she said.

Potential leaders like Estrada Lupianez are ready to answer the call.

“Going from ‘street to seat’ means I have quite a learning curve,” she said. “But I have several fantastic mentors in my unit and in the space operations community.”

One of Daniels’ deputies at Army Reserve Command, Brig. Gen. Kelly Dickerson, said the long waits for civil affairs experts have provided valuable lessons in improving the pathway.

“We have the talent — we can do these things, and that took a lot of pushing on the system,” Dickerson said. “It is [around] 46 steps to be directly commissioned into the United States Army … we’re going to fix that.”

About Davis Winkie

Davis Winkie covers the Army for Military Times. He studied history at Vanderbilt and UNC-Chapel Hill, and served five years in the Army Guard. His investigations earned the Society of Professional Journalists' 2023 Sunshine Award and consecutive Military Reporters and Editors honors, among others. Davis was also a 2022 Livingston Awards finalist.

21. Myanmar’s junta suffers startling defeats

Myanmar’s junta suffers startling defeats

The armed opposition is growing more unified. The West should help it.

Nov 16th 2023

The Economist

IT DID NOT take long before the world’s gaze drifted from Myanmar after, in February 2021, its army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, carried out a brutal coup. Western hopes for Myanmar’s democratic future had been vested in the figure of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. When the general threw her and her recently re-elected government into jail, those hopes appeared to be conclusively snuffed out.

To be sure, fugitive members of the elected government promptly formed an administration-in-exile. And, back in Myanmar, even Burmese who had never lifted a gun flocked to join resistance militias known as people’s defence forces (PDFs). Yet for many Myanmar-watchers these efforts seemed too feeble and disparate to promise much. Raggle-taggle bands were surely no match for Myanmar’s powerful armed forces—witness the long struggles of the many ethnic militias scattered around the country’s rugged periphery.

It is time to revise that view. Since late last month Myanmar’s armed forces have suffered astonishing setbacks. On October 27th, in an operation now known as the 1027 offensive, a coalition of ethnic armies, the Three Brotherhood Alliance, launched attacks on the junta and its allies in northern Shan state, bordering China. The alliance has overrun over 100 outposts and seized towns that are key to the regime’s lucrative trade with China. The biggest prize, Laukkai, the administrative centre of the Kokang region, may soon fall to the alliance. Laukkai is the base of notorious Chinese crime kingpins and junta allies who run huge online gambling and internet scams out of the town (much to the annoyance of the Chinese authorities).

These successes are mirrored by opposition fighters elsewhere. In Chin state, in the west, a rebel army has overcome outposts on Myanmar’s mountainous border with India. In Kayin state, in the south-east, the Karen National Liberation Front has attacked the local military headquarters. A new front has also re-opened in Rakhine state. Its main rebel group, the Arakan Army, has been fighting as a member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance way to the north, but has also now breached a ceasefire to resume attacks on the Burmese army in Rakhine.

These ethnic armies appear to be thinking strategically and acting in concert. Several have also made common cause with the PDFs, whom they both train and involve in their campaigns. The armed opposition is looking less raggle-taggle; the Burmese armed forces appear overstretched and demoralised. With little in reserve, they may conceivably not have the strength to recover.

The junta has only itself to blame for the concerted nature of this assault. Since the coup it has helped bring violence to 315 of the country’s 330 townships, calculates Shona Loong of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a think-tank in Singapore. For the first time since independence in 1948, even the majority-Bamar (and Buddhist) heartlands from which the army is largely recruited have risen in revolt against it. Hatred of the armed forces is evident across the country. Rising numbers of army conscripts are defecting or surrendering to the militias.

Repelled by the junta’s violence, Myanmar appears to be uniting in opposition. A new and diverse generation of leaders is coming together to “break with past social and political patterns”, as Priscilla Clapp of the United States Institute for Peace, a think-tank, writes. Huge numbers of Burmese, across ethnic divisions, want to stake out a more inclusive, federal future—or at least one not governed by their bullying generals.

It is high time the Western powers re-engaged with Myanmar’s struggle. In a forthcoming book for the IISS, “New Answers to Old Questions”, Aaron Connelly and Ms Loong argue that the mistaken Western hopes pinned on the often illiberal and controlling Ms Suu Kyi are now more likely to be realised by the new emerging leaders. The West should help and encourage them. Even if supplying arms to the Burmese opposition is out of the question, providing it with satellite internet access would help both its operations and delivery of humanitarian aid to non-junta areas.

Meanwhile, the West’s near-absence in back-channel diplomacy is leaving the field open to outside powers, including China, which care little about democracy and rights. Much is at stake in Myanmar, and not only for its 50m inhabitants. Democracy is also on the line. The West should come to its aid. ■

Read more from Banyan, our columnist on Asia:

Australia and China patch things up (Nov 7th)

The Economist

22. DOD Official Describes Crucial Role of National Defense Strategy

I attended an event last evening by the Army Strategist Association. I would love to hear that room full of strategists discuss this article and the national defense strategy.

DOD Official Describes Crucial Role of National Defense Strategy

defense.gov · by Jim Garamone

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III calls the National Defense Strategy the department's "North Star," and officials throughout the world are working to implement the strategy and link the strategy to resources, said Mara Karlin, who is performing the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.

Tour Time

Mara Karlin, performing the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, speaks to West Point cadets during a tour to the Pentagon, March 24, 2023.

Download: Full Size (6.25 MB)

Photo By: Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jack Sanders, DOD

VIRIN: 230324-D-XI929-2002

Karlin just returned from meetings in Australia discussing the trilateral defense agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Today, she fought off the effects of jet lag to brief reporters on the trip and to mark the one-year anniversary of the release of the National Defense Strategy.

Spotlight: National Defense Strategy Spotlight: National Defense Strategy: https://www.defense.gov/National-Defense-Strategy/

"We continue to see a rapidly changing global balance of military capabilities, an escalation of competitors malign activities, the introduction of emerging technologies, and enduring transboundary challenges that pose difficulties for our collective security for the foreseeable future," she said. "We have seen increasingly risky and coercive military activities in the Indo-Pacific and an unprovoked [and] brutal invasion of Ukraine. And, of course, we have witnessed the harrowing events in Hamas' recent terrorist attacks against Israel."

Spotlight: Focus on Indo-Pacific

China, Russia, Iran, terrorism and more present daunting difficulties, she said, but the nation remains committed to facing the challenges and maintaining U.S. leadership in the world.

The strategy implementation in the Indo-Pacific region has been particularly successful, she said. In addition to the AUKUS security agreement among Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S., there have been agreements with Japan and South Korea. There are additional opportunities with the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. U.S. military relations with India, Indonesia, Singapore and more have become closer. The efforts in the region are "delivering a U.S. military that is more capable, more forward and more deeply integrated with our allies and partners than ever before," she said.

Spotlight: AUKUS Spotlight: AUKUS: https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/AUKUS/

U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific are receiving new military capabilities, testing new doctrine and operating in more areas. "Being forward [deployed] means being more physically visible and agile in the region," she said. "We're updating our posture from a concentration of large operating bases in Northeast Asia, and our agreements with Australia, Japan, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea are updating our posture and enabling the U.S. military to be more distributed and resilient."

Half a world away, U.S. efforts to support Ukraine as it resists Russian invasion also strengthens U.S. deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. "By reinforcing our stance against Russian aggression in Europe, we signal our resolve against all forms of global aggression," Karlin said. "Russia remains an acute threat …, one that is immediate and sharp. Over the past year and a half since Russia's invasion, we continue to stand with Ukraine. We have moved assistance with unprecedented speed, including more than $44 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration."

Spotlight: Support for Ukraine

And the United States is not operating in a vacuum, other NATO and partner nations have matched U.S. support also producing tens of billions of dollars of security assistance as Ukraine pushes back the Russian bear.

The Hamas terror attack on Israel shows terrorist organizations cannot be ignored, and she said the United States maintains the capabilities to respond to contingencies without major impacts to the European or Indo-Pacific theaters.

Secretary Austin is personally involved in overseeing implementation of the highest priority national defense strategy efforts, particularly focusing on the most complex and cross-cutting issues, Karlin said. The secretary routinely meets with DOD leaders to discuss the situation and how they are moving along. Austin has also empowered senior leaders to change their processes, policies and plans to align with the National Defense Strategy.

The department has made tremendous progress in "operationalizing" the defense strategy. "Of course, this work is generational in nature, and we have much work ahead of us," she said.

"This all marks a major departure from past strategy implementation efforts," she said. That work will require bipartisan support, she said. "I actually see substantial bipartisan agreement across the American public, across our Congress in terms of the need to focus, in particular, on urgently sustaining and strengthening deterrence vis-a-vis the People's Republic of China," Karlin said.

She said she believes that most Americans agree "on the need to make sure we have security and stability in the Indo-Pacific and an understanding [of] why the United States needs to play a role working closely with our allies and partners in ensuring that that is a reality."

Karlin said U.S. leadership is key to strategic success of the international rules-based order. She said a recent example of the role the U.S. must play is Austin's trip to Europe and the Middle East last month. "It was, in many ways, a spectacular example of the importance of American leadership," she said.

On the first day of the trip, the secretary convened the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group with 50-plus allies and partners discussing support to Ukraine. "The next day, he sat in NATO defense ministerial, where there was robust discussion on the tremendous progress that we have seen across NATO, which is getting bigger," she said.

Spotlight: NATO

The very next day, the secretary traveled to Israel to discuss support to the nation as it reeled from the Hamas terror attack. "It's a role not able to be played by other countries," she said. "[It] very much requires the United States to work very closely with other countries from around the world, and I would argue when we are doing that, we see increased security, stability and peace."

Still, there are Americans who believe the nation does not need allies and partners. "I am hard pressed to find examples where it strategically makes sense for us to operate on our own: Go all the way back to our Revolutionary War and the support that we got from the French," she said. "The history of the United States is working with allies and partners in various ways, and the evidence is there of just how much stronger we are together."

defense.gov · by Jim Garamone

23. We Shouldn’t Fear a Resistance Victory in Myanmar

We Shouldn’t Fear a Resistance Victory in Myanmar

Research shows the fight against the junta is seeding fertile ground for a more inclusive, equitable and stable state.

Thursday, November 16, 2023 / BY: Billy Ford; Thin Zar Htet

usip.org

That question has gained urgency as recent developments put the military’s staying power in growing doubt. Since October 27, armed resistance groups have seized numerous strategic border crossings along Myanmar’s frontier with China, India and Thailand and routed the army from more than 150 bases or posts. Driving this remarkable development is unprecedented interethnic coordination among three ethnic armies and Bamar-majority People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) that sprung up after the coup in 2021. In an additional blow to the junta, Beijing almost certainly approved the offensive after the junta generals ignored its appeals to crack down on lucrative crime centers along the border that prey on Chinese nationals.

Prospects for Stability?

To assess the possible future for governance in Myanmar should the regime fall, USIP supported six research projects over the past two years. The work explored key factors such as the relationship between resistance leaders and communities, the impact of the post-coup movement on national identity and the state of intercommunal relations.

Our research concluded that the movement in Myanmar has characteristics that would contribute to stability in a post-junta period.

Expectations in the international community that instability and chaos would follow the military’s ouster are not without foundation — major challenges include political divisions, longstanding grievances and criminality. Yet many of the worst-case scenarios are based on historical precedents or cross-country comparisons that may not apply to this unique movement and moment in Myanmar’s history.

Critically, the sociopolitical advances in the new generation of leaders to emerge within the resistance structures have been underestimated and even discounted, along with plans they have made for a post-coup interim administration.

Four principal findings from USIP research support this conclusion:

1. Fragmentation and warlordism are unlikely because the resistance is connected to communities and motivated by a desire for a new political paradigm.

Two unpublished USIP-supported projects that involved wide-ranging interviews with resistance actors found that most are motivated primarily by a desire to protect communities from the rampaging army and to achieve a new political and social paradigm. Many resistance fighters, including PDFs, have roots in communities they serve. Likewise, the core ethnic resistance organizations (EROs) started as social movements decades ago, not armed groups, and continue to serve their own communities. They include the Kachin Independence Organization, Chin National Front, Karenni National Progressive Party, and Karen National Union.

Despite international anxiety that unaccountable armed groups may emerge and exploit local communities, USIP research and programming has found few instances of this phenomenon as compared to similar conflict settings. Other than a massacre by the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO) in mid-2021 (which led to the KNDO being expelled from the Karen National Union), there are no documented cases of civilian massacres by the resistance. When intra-resistance conflict does occur, it receives widespread news coverage, yet evidence shows that these flare-ups constitute an aberration.

Although national-level political dialogue among resistance forces remains stuck, including those within the National Unity Consultative Council, on the ground, a continuity of mission exists across ethnic lines. This common objective is likely to motivate resistance stakeholders to negotiate a shared future rather than to pursue warlordism, fragmentation or their own political objectives. Basic conditions on the ground in central Myanmar, especially the absence of widespread high-value extractives, also limit these threats. Most resistance actors there depend on public support to sustain themselves.

Achieving a new political arrangement will not be straightforward and will likely require years of national dialogue. But USIP research shows that the movement has already made meaningful progress toward national reconciliation and building a shared vision. The various forms of collaboration between EROs and Bamar communities on military operations, social service provision and humanitarian response further demonstrate growing solidarity.

2. Underlying social cohesion is stronger than perceived.

Jangai Jap and Isabel Chew’s research finds that interethnic relations in Myanmar are no worse than in countries with substantially lower levels of violence. Furthermore, national identity (i.e., Myanmar) is at least as important as ethnic identity — another factor that would motivate resistance groups to seek a national political agreement rather than to fragment.

Both findings from Jap and Chew’s experimental research cut against the dominant narratives about intercommunal relations in Myanmar. They undermine the fatalistic perception that Myanmar is irreconcilably fractious and dispersed and its citizens loyal to subnational ethnic identities. In fact, this movement has been more resilient and effective against powerful military forces than many comparable resistance movements (Myanmar in 1988, Iran, Syria, Sudan, etc.) — because its participants aren’t as fractured as many observers believe them to be.

These findings suggest that intercommunal conflict is driven primarily by exclusionary governance structures and divisive political dialogue. Both issues are priorities for the resistance movement and are addressed in the Federal Democracy Charter. Similar results on national identity emerged in a second, yet to be published, USIP-supported survey of the Myanmar diaspora by Jap and Amy Liu.

Jap and Chew’s research also found that “collective effort” is a powerful narrative for building intercommunal solidarity. A national reconstruction process based upon the notion that “we are in this together” paired with major investment in mental health and psychosocial support could help a stable federal democracy take root.

3. Shifts in political power and norms could enable a successful political dialogue where past peace processes have failed.

Myanmar has never had a genuine nation-building process. The peace processes that emerged every decade or so from 1950 to 2021 failed under the weight of military domination. A national dialogue freed from military control and led by pro-democracy stakeholders tied to communities opens the way for a more equitable, just, inclusive and stable political paradigm.

USIP-supported research by Bertil Lintner identifies three main ways that past peace processes have failed — all of which are less likely to plague a post-junta dialogue. First, whereas past peace processes have failed because key actors were excluded, the resistance is led by the most inclusive political coalition in Myanmar’s history. If it continues to be governed by the principle of inclusion and collective leadership, a dialogue is more likely to succeed. Second, whereas misinformed foreigners ignored the public and injected resources into past peace processes, thereby creating unbalanced negotiation, there has been considerably less international involvement in intra-resistance dialogue processes. And, third, the military did not participate in the peace process in good faith and structured the process (called “among the most complicated in the modern world”) to serve its own aims. If the military is involved in a political dialogue process, it would do so from a position of weakness.

Furthermore, the lack of a single charismatic leader or political party has allowed the emergence of a new political landscape of younger and more diverse leaders. Although many analysts have cited this as a vulnerability for the movement, it has proven to be a critical asset. This diversity will continue to be a plus in a post-conflict national dialogue.

4. Positive shifts in intercommunal relations since the coup have diminished the potential for intercommunal violence and offer a better environment for dialogue.

Three USIP-supported research projects found improvements in interethnic and interreligious trust and affinity since the coup. A team of researchers from among the pro-democracy movement interviewed young people in the movement from seven states and four regions. Respondents from across ethnic and religious communities articulated a remarkably consistent vision for an inclusive federal democracy characterized by secularism, nondiscrimination and protection for the cultures of traditionally marginalized communities. Many cited an exclusionary national identity propagated by successive Bamar-dominated governments, both military and National League for Democracy-led administrations, as the primary driver of conflict and violence in Myanmar.

Respondents in this research, as well as in a separate project by USIP student scholar Thin Zar Htet, confirmed marked improvements in interethnic relations since the coup. Sympathy and understanding of traditionally marginalized groups, including Rohingya, has increased. Virtually all respondents in these two projects, many of whom hold important positions within the resistance movement, see the movement as a unique historic opportunity to build a more stable and equitable Myanmar around a more inclusive national identity.

This is visible in the previously inconceivable military collaboration and resistance solidarity between Bamar and ethnic minority organizations — as manifested in the most recent coordinated multi-group operations involving Kokang, Rakhine, Bamar, Shan and Ta’ang fighters and with Karen, Karenni and Chin groups operating in parallel.

Thin Zar Htet’s research found that while extreme forms of religious nationalism persist, the public has become more politically informed and resistant to extremist propaganda and incitement, so extremist viewpoints are less likely to escalate to violence. Respondents also indicated support for a more secular governing structure, wary of politicians who manipulate religion for political gain. The younger generation saw what was possible during the transition period of relative freedom under an elected government. Their sense of empowerment has been supercharged by the achievements of the resistance movement.

The Resistance Is Laying the Foundation for a New Nation

The research findings echo throughout USIP’s programs.

For example, demand for USIP’s Peace Education program, which trains nonviolent actors in core peacebuilding skills and mental health awareness, has grown considerably since the coup. Although “dialogue” has taken on negative connotations since misinformed international actors began pressing resistance groups to engage in talks with the coup government, resistance stakeholders continue to request more training on peacebuilding methods. In response, USIP has trained nearly 1,000 nonviolent resistance actors in peacebuilding skills since the coup.

The participants tell USIP that they join the training not only to build more effective resistance cohesion and resolve community-level tensions, but also to prepare for a national dialogue process. Demand for these skills aligns with the conclusion that this movement is about political transformation and that communities will push their leaders to engage in dialogue toward that end.

USIP research on local governance structures in areas controlled by the resistance identified a widespread and interconnected network of institutions that could serve as a starting point for stable administration and distribution of assistance in a post-junta period.

Work to Be Done

Many respondents in USIP-supported research agree that the resistance leadership, particularly the National Unity Government, reflects progress over the past senior actors. But in their view, leaders must show a greater commitment to a new governing paradigm by devolving more authority to ethnic minority-led organizations and to local leaders who hold moral authority in their communities.

Critically, the various studies summarized here indicate positive trends among the public for a dialogue process. That support, however, is unlikely to hold up if elites who do not share the public’s perspectives or have ulterior motives control the process — as happened in the past. It is essential, therefore, that the bottom-up nature of this movement be maintained in all dialogue efforts. Participation in the national process should be based on community legitimacy, not coercive power.

Many in the international community seem to prize stability above all, making them indifferent to whether Myanmar is under the control of a military dictatorship. Of course, the military is the primary cause of instability, while the resistance movement offers the most credible path to stability. But stability per se is not the movement’s foremost objective. USIP’s research clearly shows that this is a national uprising aimed at building a new nation, with the accompanying hope that stability will follow.

Myanmar’s problems are challenging and complex, but not intractable. Military domination is not inevitable. Despite constant contention in the international community that the military cannot be defeated, the resistance is gaining. Despite receiving little tangible assistance, the regime’s opponents have persisted. As the resistance movement enters a new phase, its participants should be allowed to choose their own future.

Thin Zar Htet is a graduate student at Brandeis University and a student scholar at USIP. She has supported peacebuilding programs in Myanmar for almost 10 years.

usip.org

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

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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Prospects for Stability?

1. Fragmentation and warlordism are unlikely because the resistance is connected to communities and motivated by a desire for a new political paradigm.

2. Underlying social cohesion is stronger than perceived.

3. Shifts in political power and norms could enable a successful political dialogue where past peace processes have failed.

4. Positive shifts in intercommunal relations since the coup have diminished the potential for intercommunal violence and offer a better environment for dialogue.

The Resistance Is Laying the Foundation for a New Nation

Work to Be Done