Quotes of the Day:

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more , so that we may fear less.” 

– Marie Curie

“But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.”

– Ernest Hemingway

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." 

– Harvey Fierstein

1. How President-elect Trump’s Foreign Policy Approach Could Influence China’s Calculus on Taiwan

2. Biden Allows Ukraine to Strike Russia With Long-Range U.S. Missiles

3. Retired US colonel: Biden is sending a message to North Korea and China about supporting Russia

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 17, 2024

5. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 17, 2024

6. House GOP Moves to Ram Through Bill That Gives Trump Unilateral Power to Kill Nonprofits

7. President Xi Jinping Meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in Lima_Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China

8.  It is now more a question of can America defend Taiwan, not will it

9. An Irregular Struggle: U.S. Search for an Irregular Warfare Strategy By Thomas A. Marks and David H. Ucko

10. The DOGE Cheat Sheet

11. How Trump Can Help Ukraine Win

12. ATACMS, Putin and Trump

13. Here's a Look at the Number of Women in Military Combat Roles

14. As Beijing Threatens, Taiwan Looks Nervously at Trump

15. War and Peace in the Age of Artificial Intelligence By Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Craig Mundie ​

16. Rhodes Scholarship Recipients for 2025 Include 4 West Point Cadets

17. Can the War in Gaza Be Won?

18. Joe Biden's long-range missile call helps Donald Trump

19. American Defense Planning in the Shadow of Protracted War

20. 5 Questions with Dave Dilegge on Small Wars and COIN Cocktails

21. SOF’s Role in Conflict

1. How President-elect Trump’s Foreign Policy Approach Could Influence China’s Calculus on Taiwan

Excerpts:

Conclusion

The implications of President-elect Trump’s foreign policy approach—characterized by a transactional view of alliances, economic nationalism, and skepticism toward longstanding commitments—could profoundly impact the CCP’s decision-making on Taiwan. A perceived retreat from U.S. global commitments, coupled with the introduction of steep tariffs and a reduction in support for Ukraine and NATO, may embolden Beijing to act decisively on its longstanding goal of “reunification.”

Should the U.S. ultimately refrain from intervening, the consequences would be far-reaching, fundamentally altering the global power balance and reshaping America’s role in the world. The loss of U.S. credibility, diminished military posture, economic disruption, financial instability, and erosion of democratic values would collectively redefine the post-war global order, leaving lasting impacts for decades to come.

A significant shift in U.S. foreign policy under President-elect Trump could significantly reshape international dynamics and influence China’s actions regarding Taiwan. The global community will be watching closely as the incoming administration’s policies unfold, potentially setting the stage for a transformative period in international relations. A shift toward a more isolationist U.S. posture may embolden rivals and reshape alliances, leading to a reordering of global power that could diminish the U.S.’s influence and strengthen authoritarian regimes. As China grows more assertive in the region and beyond, the U.S. will face crucial decisions that could define its role in safeguarding democratic values, maintaining global stability, and supporting its allies in an increasingly multipolar world.

In the years to come, the impact of these policies will be measured by the resilience of U.S. alliances, the strength of its economic and technological influence, and its capacity to counterbalance rising powers. The outcomes of these policies will not only affect Taiwan but will also echo across continents, influencing the trajectory of the 21st century’s international order.

How President-elect Trump’s Foreign Policy Approach Could Influence China’s Calculus on Taiwan

By Jeremiah Monk

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/how-president-elect-trump-s-foreign-policy-approach-could-influence-china-s-calculus-on-taiwan

Introduction

President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy positions—particularly concerning Taiwan, trade relations with China, and U.S. support for allies in NATO and Ukraine—have sparked global debate. His stance on Taiwan has shown a shift toward a transactional approach, while his policies on tariffs, NATO, and Ukraine may collectively influence the strategic calculations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regarding a potential invasion of Taiwan. As we look ahead to the inauguration of the 47th U.S. President, Strategy Central would like to take this opportunity to examine the strategic implications that could face the U.S. regarding a potential shift in its long-standing policy regarding Taiwan. In this article we will:

1.   Outline Trump’s position on Taiwan, his policies on tariffs, NATO, and Ukraine.

2.   Explore how these policies may affect the CCP’s calculus on Taiwan.

3.   Examine the strategic and long-term implications for the U.S. in the diplomatic, military, economic, financial, informational, and legal domains if it opts not to intervene in such a conflict.

President-elect Trump’s Position on Taiwan

Since his 2024 presidential campaign, President-elect Trump has approached Taiwan in a markedly transactional manner. While past U.S. policy has operated under “strategic ambiguity,” Trump has emphasized that Taiwan should “pay us for defense,” effectively likening U.S. military support to an insurance premium (AP News).

Trump has been critical of Taiwan’s dominance in the semiconductor industry, framing the issue as a challenge to U.S. economic security. By suggesting that Taiwan bear the cost of its defense, Trump has cast doubt on the U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s defense in the event of Chinese aggression. Analysts worry that Trump’s approach could embolden the CCP, creating uncertainty around whether the U.S. would intervene should China attempt reunification by force.

President-elect Trump’s Position on Tariffs, Ukraine, and NATO

• Steep Tariffs on Chinese Goods: Trump’s trade policy has been marked by a commitment to “America First” and a focus on addressing trade imbalances with China. Trump has suggested imposing up to a 60% tariff on Chinese-made goods to reduce American reliance on Chinese imports, spur domestic production, and diminish China’s economic leverage over the U.S. (Reuters).
• Withdrawal of Support for Ukraine: President-elect Trump has indicated he may halt U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless it negotiates a peace agreement with Russia. Trump’s stance suggests that, under his administration, U.S. support for Ukraine would be contingent on peace talks, rather than on maintaining Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression. This potential shift has raised concerns about the implications for U.S. credibility as a global security partner, as well as the broader impact on NATO unity and stability in Europe (Reuters).
• Threatened Withdrawal from NATO: Trump’s criticisms of NATO focus on what he sees as an undue financial burden on the United States for European defense. He has repeatedly called for NATO members to increase their defense spending to the target of 2% of GDP or risk diminished U.S. support for the alliance (AP News). This stance raises questions about the future of U.S. commitments in Europe and could suggest a potential pullback, leaving European and Asian allies uncertain about American reliability.

How Trump’s Policies Could Influence China’s Decision to Invade Taiwan

China’s long-standing goal of “reunification” with Taiwan has been central to the CCP’s national agenda. Xi Jinping has reiterated that achieving this objective is crucial to China’s “national rejuvenation.” The Trump administration’s policies—particularly perceived U.S. retrenchment from global commitments—could alter China’s risk calculations on Taiwan. If Beijing perceives the U.S. as unwilling to intervene in conflicts involving allies, the CCP may view a Taiwan invasion as a viable and lower-risk endeavor (Taipei Times).

In the context of Trump’s proposed tariffs, withdrawal from NATO, and reduced support for Ukraine, China might calculate that a move on Taiwan would face limited opposition from the U.S. The CCP could interpret U.S. isolationist policies as an opportunity to act on Taiwan, aiming to reunify it with the mainland while expecting minimal U.S. military involvement.

Strategic Ramifications and Long-term Implications for the U.S.

If China were to invade Taiwan under the assumption that the U.S. would not intervene, the decision could lead to profound consequences for American influence globally. Here, we examine the potential impacts across diplomatic, military, economic, financial, informational, and legal domains.

Diplomatic Ramifications:

• Alliance Credibility: U.S. reliability as an ally would be critically undermined, especially among Indo-Pacific allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia. If the U.S. does not come to Taiwan’s aid, these allies might question whether they can depend on American security guarantees, potentially seeking other security arrangements or alliances.
•  ASEAN Realignment: Southeast Asian countries, wary of a growing Chinese influence, could tilt further towards Beijing. A perceived lack of U.S. commitment might push ASEAN nations to forge stronger ties with China, reshaping regional power dynamics.
• Global Influence: U.S. credibility would likely suffer worldwide, diminishing American leverage in international organizations and weakening its ability to counter authoritarian regimes elsewhere.

Military Ramifications:

• Strategic Loss of the First Island Chain: Taiwan’s strategic position in the “First Island Chain” is vital to U.S. military strategy in the Pacific. Losing Taiwan would allow China to project power further into the Pacific, complicating U.S. defense and reducing American naval and aerial maneuverability in the region.
• Nuclear and Defense Posture Adjustments: With Chinese military presence so close to Japan and the Philippines, the U.S. may need to reassess its nuclear posture and regional missile defense strategy, likely spurring allied countries to bolster their own military capabilities.
• Increased Defense Burden: Allies such as Japan and South Korea may increase their defense budgets, potentially exploring nuclear options to deter China, while the U.S. would face higher costs to maintain strategic deterrence in the Pacific.

Economic Ramifications:

• Global Semiconductor Supply Chain Control: Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, especially TSMC, is crucial to the global tech sector. If China controls this industry, it would grant Beijing leverage over high-tech production worldwide, potentially restricting access to advanced technology for countries perceived as adversaries.
• Regional Trade Reorientation: The U.S. could find itself increasingly isolated from Asian economic frameworks, with China asserting more influence over regional trade agreements. This shift could weaken U.S. economic influence and marginalize American-led trade initiatives.
• Supply Chain Instability: Companies reliant on Taiwan-based supply chains would need to diversify, prompting costly relocations and a shift toward markets such as India or Southeast Asia.

Financial Ramifications:

• Market and Currency Impact: China’s control over Taiwan could lead to market destabilization, particularly in the tech and electronics sectors, impacting global stock markets. China’s strengthened position may also support the yuan’s use in trade, challenging the dollar’s dominance.
• Alternative Investment Destinations: Investors might shift away from East Asia due to perceived instability, redirecting capital to the U.S., Europe, or other “safe havens.”
• Investment Shifts in U.S. Firms: Corporations may need to reevaluate risk exposure and dependency on Chinese and Taiwanese supply chains, accelerating diversification efforts.

Informational Ramifications:

• Technological Dominance: Access to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry would enhance China’s tech sector and may allow Beijing to dominate critical emerging technologies, reducing the U.S. technological edge.
• Propaganda and Influence: A successful annexation of Taiwan could bolster China’s global narrative, reinforcing Beijing’s model of authoritarian governance and promoting its influence over developing nations.
• Cybersecurity Risks: Chinese control over Taiwan’s tech infrastructure could raise cybersecurity concerns for the U.S., as critical components in global supply chains may carry increased risk of surveillance or cyber manipulation.

Legal Ramifications:

• Erosion of International Law Norms: A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, particularly without a robust U.S. response, would weaken norms against territorial conquest and shift the perception of force as a viable tool for border changes.
• Implications for Maritime Law: China’s extended control in the South China Sea could further undermine the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and challenge freedom of navigation operations, affecting international rights in these waters.
• Human Rights Concerns: Taiwan’s integration into China’s authoritarian system would likely erode its democratic institutions, posing a challenge to U.S. global advocacy for democracy and human rights.
•  

On the Other Hand: Potential Positive Implications

The strategic implications should Taiwan fall to the CCP are enormous and cannot be discounted. However, should the U.S. opt not to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, there may also be a measure of strategic benefit. One advantage would be the ability to reallocate resources domestically, focusing on areas like infrastructure and technological development, while conserving military assets for other global contingencies. This approach could also lessen the risk of U.S. overreach, allowing the U.S. to pivot more of its resources toward emerging strategic domains, including cybersecurity and space defense, where maintaining an edge over China may have lasting benefits for national security. This benefit comes at a price, however, as the U.S would sacrifice significant leverage and influence in the process, ultimately putting us in a more reactive position, dependent on other greater powers.

Non-intervention could also incentivize regional allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia to increase their defense spending, creating a more balanced distribution of security responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific. This shift may encourage the development of a multilateral defense framework within Asia, fostering a regional balance of power independent of U.S. intervention. Additionally, avoiding a Taiwan conflict would support efforts to “friend-shore” critical supply chains, reducing U.S. dependency on East Asia and providing leverage in global trade negotiations by diversifying supply sources. Again, there is a cost to this benefit, as those nations would pursue security means independently, potentially to include the development of nuclear capabilities.

In terms of diplomatic strategy, non-intervention could pave the way for a reset in U.S.-China relations, lowering the risk of direct conflict and potentially allowing for cooperation on shared global issues, such as climate change and health security. While choosing not to intervene would be controversial and could challenge longstanding U.S. alliances, it presents an opportunity for the U.S. to recalibrate its role on the global stage. By focusing on domestic resilience, allied self-sufficiency, and strategic innovation, the U.S. might fortify its influence in ways that could prove more sustainable in the evolving international order. But doing so would hand over significant power and influence to China, which in turn would put the U.S. at more of a disadvantage in future negotiations.

Conclusion

The implications of President-elect Trump’s foreign policy approach—characterized by a transactional view of alliances, economic nationalism, and skepticism toward longstanding commitments—could profoundly impact the CCP’s decision-making on Taiwan. A perceived retreat from U.S. global commitments, coupled with the introduction of steep tariffs and a reduction in support for Ukraine and NATO, may embolden Beijing to act decisively on its longstanding goal of “reunification.”

Should the U.S. ultimately refrain from intervening, the consequences would be far-reaching, fundamentally altering the global power balance and reshaping America’s role in the world. The loss of U.S. credibility, diminished military posture, economic disruption, financial instability, and erosion of democratic values would collectively redefine the post-war global order, leaving lasting impacts for decades to come.

A significant shift in U.S. foreign policy under President-elect Trump could significantly reshape international dynamics and influence China’s actions regarding Taiwan. The global community will be watching closely as the incoming administration’s policies unfold, potentially setting the stage for a transformative period in international relations. A shift toward a more isolationist U.S. posture may embolden rivals and reshape alliances, leading to a reordering of global power that could diminish the U.S.’s influence and strengthen authoritarian regimes. As China grows more assertive in the region and beyond, the U.S. will face crucial decisions that could define its role in safeguarding democratic values, maintaining global stability, and supporting its allies in an increasingly multipolar world.

In the years to come, the impact of these policies will be measured by the resilience of U.S. alliances, the strength of its economic and technological influence, and its capacity to counterbalance rising powers. The outcomes of these policies will not only affect Taiwan but will also echo across continents, influencing the trajectory of the 21st century’s international order.

References

Lisa Baertlein and David Kirton, “US suppliers, importers prepare for promised Trump tariffs,” Reuters, 6 November 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-suppliers-importers-prepare-promised-trump-tariffs-2024-11-06/

Ellen Knickmeyer, “Can you ‘Trump-proof’ NATO? As Biden falters, Europeans look to safeguard the military alliance,” AP News, 8 July 2024. https://apnews.com/article/nato-summit-trump-biden-europe-ukraine-e45273ef1bd408d72245f8f7fd1ec5c0

Gram Slattery and Simon Lewis, “Trump handed plan to halt US military aid to Kyiv unless it talks peace with Moscow,” Reuters, 25 June 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-reviews-plan-halt-us-military-aid-ukraine-unless-it-negotiates-peace-with-2024-06-25/

Didi Tang, “Trump says Taiwan should pay more for defense and dodges questions if he would defend the island,” AP News, 17 July 2024. https://apnews.com/article/trump-taiwan-chips-invasion-china-910e7a94b19248fc75e5d1ab6b0a34d8

Y. Tony Yang, “Trump’s dangerous Taiwan gamble,” Taipei Times, 30 October 2024. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2024/10/30/2003826076

2. Biden Allows Ukraine to Strike Russia With Long-Range U.S. Missiles

So with two months left in office he finally relents to common sense and military necessity. I wonder if he thinks he can do this now and prevent escalation because the President-elect will take office in january. Does he think Putin will not escalate because of President-elect Trump? Or is this a petty I told you so if Putin does escalate? ( do not believe that President Bdiden would be so petty) But I do think it is possible he might assess that President-elect Trump's election win actually might provide him top cover and allow him freedom of action and still keep within his foreign policy prime directive of no escalation because he believes Putin will not escalate with the inauguration on the horizon.

Biden Allows Ukraine to Strike Russia With Long-Range U.S. Missiles

With two months left in office, the president for the first time authorized the Ukrainian military to use the system known as ATACMS to help defend its forces in the Kursk region of Russia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/us/politics/biden-ukraine-russia-atacms-missiles.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20241117&instance_id=139876&nl=breaking-news&regi_id=93950932&segment_id=183416&user_id=09bcb5a1ef91c3828d6acca464836bc6

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Mr. Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, came in response to Russia’s decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight.Credit...John Hamilton/White Sands Missile Range, via Associated Press

By Adam EntousEric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes

Reporting from Washington

Nov. 17, 2024

Updated 1:51 p.m. ET

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

President Biden has authorized the first use of U.S.-supplied long-range missiles by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia, U.S. officials said.

The weapons are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops in defense of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, the officials said.

Mr. Biden’s decision is a major change in U.S. policy. The choice has divided his advisers, and his shift comes two months before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, having vowed to limit further support for Ukraine.

Allowing the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, came in response to Russia’s surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight, officials said.

Mr. Biden began to ease restrictions on the use of U.S.-supplied weapons on Russian soil after Russia launched a cross-border assault in May in the direction of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

To help the Ukrainians defend Kharkiv, Mr. Biden allowed them to use the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which have a range of about 50 miles, against Russian forces directly across the border. But Mr. Biden did not allow the Ukrainians to use longer-range ATACMS, which have a range of about 190 miles, in defense of Kharkiv.

While the officials said they do not expect the shift to fundamentally alter the course of the war, one of the goals of the policy change, they said, is to send a message to the North Koreans that their forces are vulnerable and that they should not send more of them.

The officials said that while the Ukrainians were likely to use the missiles first against Russian and North Korean troops that threaten Ukrainian forces in Kursk, Mr. Biden could authorize them to use the weapons elsewhere.

Some U.S. officials said they feared that Ukraine’s use of the missiles across the border could prompt President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to retaliate with force against the United States and its coalition partners.

But other U.S. officials said they thought those fears were overblown.

The Russian military is launching a major assault by an estimated 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, on dug-in Ukrainian positions in Kursk with the goal of retaking all of the Russian territory that the Ukrainians seized in August.

The Ukrainians could use the ATACMS missiles to strike Russian and North Korean troop concentrations, key pieces of military equipment, logistics nodes, ammunition depots and supply lines deep inside Russia.

Doing so could help the Ukrainians blunt the effectiveness of the Russian-North Korean assault.

Whether to arm Ukraine with long-range ATACMS has been an especially sensitive subject since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Some Pentagon officials opposed giving them to the Ukrainians because they said the U.S. Army had limited supplies. Some White House officials feared that Mr. Putin would widen the war if they gave the missiles to the Ukrainians.

Supporters of a more aggressive posture toward Moscow say Mr. Biden and his advisers have been too easily intimidated by Mr. Putin’s hostile rhetoric, and they say that the administration’s incremental approach to arming the Ukrainians has disadvantaged them on the battlefield.

Proponents of Mr. Biden’s approach say that it had largely been successful at averting a violent Russian response.

Allowing long-range strikes on Russian territory using American missiles could change that equation.

In August, the Ukrainians launched their own cross-border assault into the Kursk region, where they seized a swath of Russian territory.

Since then, U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned about the state of the Ukrainian army, which has been stretched thin by simultaneous Russian assaults in the east, Kharkiv and now Kursk.

The introduction of more than 10,000 North Korean troops and Mr. Biden’s response come as Mr. Trump prepares to re-enter office with a stated goal of quickly ending the war.

Mr. Trump has said little about how he would settle the conflict. But Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow the Russians to keep the Ukrainian territory that their forces have seized.

The Ukrainians hope that they would be able to trade any Russian territory they hold in Kursk for Ukrainian territory held by Russia in any future negotiations.

If the Russian assault on Ukrainian forces in Kursk succeeds, Kyiv could end up having little to no Russian territory to offer Moscow in a trade.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has long sought permission from the United States and its coalition partners to use long-range missiles to strike Russian soil.

The British and French militaries have given the Ukrainians a limited number of Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles, which have a range of about 155 miles, less than the American missile system.

While British and French leaders voiced support for Mr. Zelensky’s request, they were reluctant to allow the Ukrainians to start using their missiles on Russian soil unless Mr. Biden agreed to allow the Ukrainians to do the same with ATACMS.

Mr. Biden was more risk-averse than his British and French counterparts, and his top advisers were divided on how to proceed.

Some of them seized on a recent U.S. intelligence assessment that warned that Mr. Putin could respond to the use of long-range ATACMS on Russian soil by directing the Russian military or its spy agencies to retaliate, potentially with lethal force, against the United States and its European allies.

The assessment warned of several possible Russian responses that included stepped-up acts of arson and sabotage targeting facilities in Europe, as well as potentially lethal attacks on U.S. and European military bases.

Officials said Mr. Biden was persuaded to make the change in part by the sheer audacity of Russia’s decision to throw North Korean troops at Ukrainian lines.

He was also swayed, they said, by concerns that the Russian assault force would be able to overwhelm Ukrainian troops in Kursk if they were not allowed to defend themselves with long-range weapons.

U.S. officials said they do not believe that the decision will change the course of the war.

But they said Mr. Biden determined that the potential benefits — Ukraine will be able to reach certain high-value targets that it would not otherwise be able to, and the United States will be able to send a message to North Korea that it will pay a significant price for its involvement — outweighed the escalation risks.

Mr. Biden faced a similar dilemma a year ago when U.S. intelligence agencies learned that the North Koreans would supply Russia with long-range ballistic missiles.

In that case, Mr. Biden agreed to supply several hundred long-range ATACMS to the Ukrainians for use on Ukraine’s sovereign territory, including the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. Those supplemented the more limited supplies of Storm Shadow and SCALP missiles that the Ukrainians received from Britain and France.

The Ukrainians have since used many of those missiles in a concerted campaign of strikes against Russian military targets in Crimea and in the Black Sea.

As a result, it is unclear how many of the missiles the Ukrainians have left in their arsenal to use in the Kursk region.

Adam Entous is a Washington-based investigative reporter focused on national security and intelligence matters. More about Adam Entous

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E. Barnes

3. Retired US colonel: Biden is sending a message to North Korea and China about supporting Russia

Response to north Korea troops is one thing. But I would like to know what message we think Kim and Xi are actually receiving. How do we think we are interpreting such a message if one is intended? What is the message and how do we expect Kim and Xi to act if they receive it and understand it and interpret it the way we intend?

Retired US colonel: Biden is sending a message to North Korea and China about supporting Russia

US Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton (Ret.) says that he thinks President Joe Biden reversed course and authorized Ukraine to use US-made long-range attack missiles in response to North Korea military personnel entering the conflict.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/17/world/video/biden-ukraine-long-range-missiles-leighton-nr-digvid?cid=external-feeds_iluminar_flipboard

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 17, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 17, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-17-2024

The New York Times (NYT) and Washington Post reported that US President Joe Biden has authorized Ukrainian forces to use US-provided ATACMS in limited strikes against Russian and North Korean military targets within Kursk Oblast. The NYT and Washington Post reported on November 17 that unspecified US officials expect Ukrainian forces to initially conduct strikes against Russian and North Korean forces within Kursk Oblast and that the Biden Administration could expand this authorization to use ATACMS against targets elsewhere in Russia in the future. The US officials stated that the US authorized these limited Ukrainian strikes in response to the deployment of North Korean forces to the battlefield in Kursk Oblast to deter North Korea from deploying more forces to Russia. The US officials stated that the partial lifting of restrictions aims to generate a "specific and limited" battlefield effect and will not change the course of the war. French outlet Le Figaro reported on November 17 that France and the United Kingdom (UK) have authorized Ukrainian forces to use French and UK-provided SCALP/Storm Shadow missiles to strike within Russia. Le Figaro did not state if France and the UK had authorized Ukraine's SCALP/Storm Shadow usage only within Kursk Oblast. The partial lifting of restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western-provided long-range weapons against military objects within Kursk Oblast will not completely deprive Russian forces of their sanctuary in Russian territory, as hundreds of military objects remain within ATACMS range in other Russian border regions. ISW continues to assess that Russian forces will benefit from any partial sanctuary if Western states continue to impose restrictions on Ukraine's ability to defend itself and that the US should allow Ukraine to strike all legitimate military targets within Russia's operational and deep-rear within range of US-provided weapons – not just those in Kursk Oblast.

Russian forces damaged Ukrainian energy infrastructure during the largest missile and drone strike since August 2024 on the night of November 16 to 17. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched 90 Shahed and strike drones of an unspecified type (possibly referring to decoy drones) from Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai and Kursk and Oryol oblasts. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched 120 missiles, including one Zirkon 3M22 hypersonic cruise missile, eight Kh-47M2 Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles, 101 Kh-101 and Kalibr cruise missiles, one Iskander-M ballistic missile, four Kh-22/Kh-31P cruise/anti-radiation missiles, and five Kh-59/69 cruise missiles. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Ukrainian forces shot down 42 drones and one Zirkon, seven Kinzhal, 85 Kalibr and Kh-101, two Kh-22/31P, and five Kh-59/69 missiles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukrainian F-16 pilots shot down roughly 10 aerial targets during the strike. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that 41 drones were "lost" in Ukrainian airspace, likely due to Ukrainian electronic warfare (EW) interference, and that two drones flew into Russian and Russian-occupied Ukrainian airspace. The Ukrainian Air Force noted that air defense was active in almost all Ukrainian oblasts. Ukrainian state electricity transmission operator Ukrenergo stated that Russian strikes damaged energy facilities in several oblasts and noted that energy recovery work is ongoing in Odesa, Volyn, and Rivne oblasts. Ukrainian officials reported that a Russian missile strike caused a fire at an infrastructure facility in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, damaged critical infrastructure in Rivne Oblast, and targeted energy infrastructure in Odesa Oblast. Private Ukrainian energy enterprise DTEK stated that Russian strikes seriously damaged an unspecified DTEK thermal power plant (TPP) and noted that this was the eighth mass strike on a DTEK energy facility in 2024. Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko stated that the strikes caused power outages in many areas of Ukraine. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi stated that Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities forced Ukrainian authorities to reduce the energy production levels of several nuclear power plants (NPPs). Grossi reported that Russian strikes damaged several electrical substations that are connected to the Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, and Pivdennoukrainsk NPPs, although the strikes did not damage the NPPs themselves. Grossi stated that six out of the nine reactors at the Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, and Pivdennoukrainsk NPPs are currently operating at reduced capacity. Ukrainian state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia reported that Russian forces struck a railway depot in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and that Russian strikes de-energized sections of several railway lines in southern, western, and northeastern Ukraine. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian strikes also damaged civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Rivne, and Odesa oblasts.

Key Takeaways:

• The New York Times (NYT) and Washington Post reported that US President Joe Biden has authorized Ukrainian forces to use US-provided ATACMS in limited strikes against Russian and North Korean military targets within Kursk Oblast.

• Russian forces damaged Ukrainian energy infrastructure during the largest missile and drone strike since August 2024 on the night of November 16 to 17.

• Russian forces continue to innovate their long-range strike packages and likely included relatively ineffective sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles in the November 16 to 17 strike package as decoys to distract and exhaust Ukrainian air defenses.

• Ukrainian forces struck a defense industrial factory in the Udmurt Republic for the first time on the morning of November 17.

• North Korea reportedly continues to provide military support to Russia, including the provision of rocket and artillery systems and potential additional troop deployments, which is likely to impact Russia's military operations in the short term, but its long-term benefits likely remain limited.

• Russian forces will likely focus on seizing frontline Ukrainian towns and cities during Winter 2024-2025 through urban combat amid efforts to offset Ukrainian drone advantages and possible Russian armored vehicle constraints.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin's maximalist objectives demanding full Ukrainian capitulation remain unchanged, but a prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger appears to be trying to repackage longstanding Kremlin territorial claims to southern Ukraine as less severe "peace proposals" that would actually militarily threaten Ukraine, Moldova, and NATO.

• Abkhazian oppositionists continued protests on November 17 calling for the resignation of the de facto Abkhazian President Aslan Bzhania.

• Russian forces recently advanced near Kupyansk, Chasiv Yar, Kurakhove, and Vuhledar.

• Russian milbloggers continued to applaud their reported role in removing frontline 3rd Combined Arms Army (CAA, formerly 2nd Luhansk People's Republic Army Corps [LNR AC]) commanders after the commanders submitted false reports about Russian advances in the Siversk direction.

5. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 17, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 17, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-17-2024

The IDF killed the head of Hezbollah’s media office, Mohammad Afif, in central Beirut on November 17. The IDF conducted a strike targeting Afif in a residential building in Ras al Nabaa, a neighborhood in central Beirut. Hezbollah confirmed Afif’s death. Afif was reportedly visiting a Syrian Ba’ath Party in Lebanon branch office at the time of the strike, according to the office’s head. The Lebanese Health Ministry reported the strike killed one and injured three others.

Afif’s killing is a continuation of the IDF’s campaign to target senior Hezbollah leadership to further degrade Hezbollah’s command-and-control. The IDF said that Afif worked with senior Hezbollah officials to direct military operations, particularly after Israeli operations seriously disrupted Hezbollah‘s strategic- and operational-level military leadership. Afif had served as Hezbollah’s spokesperson since 2014 and facilitated Hezbollah’s news coverage and media relations. Afif managed Hezbollah’s attack claims and documentation related to attack claims and coordinated Hezbollah‘s messaging with Lebanese media. Afif played a role in Hezbollah’s October 19 drone attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's house in Caesarea. He was a close adviser to Nasrallah and had become the highest-ranking Hezbollah official to hold public conferences in Beirut over the past month. Afif’s killing is likely intended to further disrupt Hezbollah’s command-and-control structures and its attempts to rehabilitate those structures by having other officials step into previous commanders' roles.



Key Takeaways:



• Israeli Air Campaign in Lebanon: The IDF strike that killed Hezbollah media chief Mohammad Afif is a continuation of the IDF’s campaign to target senior Hezbollah leadership to further degrade Hezbollah’s command-and-control. The IDF said that Afif worked with senior Hezbollah officials to direct military operations, particularly after Israeli operations seriously disrupted Hezbollah‘s strategic- and operational-level military leadership.



• Israeli Ground Campaign in Lebanon: The IDF’s ground operation in Lebanon has enabled the IDF to begin taking steps to return Israelis to their homes. The IDF has removed all military checkpoints and roadblocks on roads near the Israel-Lebanon border that have been closed to civilians over the past year. The IDF’s re-opening of roads along the border indicates that the IDF has assessed that Israeli operations have significantly reduced the threat of anti-tank fire and other short-range munitions enough to allow civilians to return to previously targeted areas.

• UNIFIL: Likely Hezbollah fighters fired at UNIFIL peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on November 16. UNIFIL said that “likely non-state actors“ fired upon a patrol about 40 times. The only non-state armed groups operating in southern Lebanon are Hezbollah and groups that Hezbollah permits to operate in southern Lebanon.

• IDF Reserve Policies: The IDF is changing the length of time it activates reserve forces. This change appears designed to enable the IDF to sustain a longer war. The IDF is planning to standardize the service duration of IDF reserve brigades to one period of 70 consecutive days every year. The long and repeated call-ups to meet the needs of the IDF during the October 7 War has reportedly caused ”burnout” among IDF reservists.

• Hamas Moves to Turkey: Israeli media reported on November 17 that Hamas’ political leadership has relocated from Qatar to Turkey.

6. House GOP Moves to Ram Through Bill That Gives Trump Unilateral Power to Kill Nonprofits

House GOP Moves to Ram Through Bill That Gives Trump Unilateral Power to Kill Nonprofits

Dozens of Democrats still support the bill — giving the Republican-controlled House plenty of breathing room to pass it next week.

Noah Hurowitz

November 15 2024, 9:14 a.m.

The Intercept · by Noah Hurowitz · November 15, 2024

A controversial “nonprofit killer” bill is back on track after it was blocked earlier this week.

A majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives rejected the bill on Tuesday out of fear that it could grant President-elect Donald Trump the legal tools with which to target his ideological foes, but Republicans are swiftly pressing ahead.

The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would empower the secretary of the Treasury to designate any nonprofit as a “terrorist supporting organization” and revoke its tax-exempt status, is set to go before the Committee on Rules on Monday for a hearing that could tee up the bill for a new floor vote.

Related

Congress Is About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush His Political Enemies

The hearing was announced Thursday evening, just two days after 144 Democrats and one Republican voted against the bill as part of a fast-track parliamentary procedure that required a two-thirds majority.

The bill, also known as H.R. 9495, has come under withering criticism from a broad coalition of organizations that say its sponsors are pushing it as a means of cracking down on free speech — particularly speech in support of Palestine. In a joint statement earlier this week, a coalition of Arab American and Muslim organizations pledged to continue to fight the bill.

“This bill was designed to criminalize organizations and activists who oppose the U.S.’s unconditional support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and the slaughter of Lebanese civilians,” read the statement, which was signed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, American Muslims for Palestine, and others. “We will continue to stand firm in protecting all organizations’ freedom to speak and operate without fear of political retribution.”

Offices for the chair and ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, through which the bill must pass, did not respond to requests for comment.

With pro-Israel groups lobbying for the bill, it gained popularity among House Democrats, in part due to a provision providing tax relief to Americans held hostage abroad.

“Their rush to reconsider this bill is solely to offer Trump more and more power.”

The reelection of Trump, however, galvanized opponents, including Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who led the charge to reject the bill on Tuesday. Doggett doubled down on Thursday after learning of the newly scheduled Rules Committee hearing.

“In this mislabeled bill, House Republicans are hiding behind hostages,” Doggett said in a statement to The Intercept. “Their rush to reconsider this bill is solely to offer Trump more and more power, while Trump’s nominees for key national security posts this week indicate how he will be using it.”

Simple Majority to Pass

Doggett and fellow Democratic opponents of the bill face an uphill battle to halt the legislation for good. They were able to block it on Tuesday only because H.R. 9495 was put to a House vote under suspension of the rules, a maneuver allowing for legislation to be fast-tracked by limiting debate and barring the addition of new amendments in exchange for the requirement of a two-thirds majority to pass.

Ultimately, 144 Democrats voted no, along with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., barely meeting the threshold to block the bill from fast-track passage. Voting in favor were 204 Republicans and 52 Democrats. The narrow loss — with so many Democrats supporting the bill, opponents had no votes to spare — provoked outrage from supporters of the bill like Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., who had spoken in favor of it prior to the vote.

“This shameful partisan play only sets back efforts to halt the abuse of America’s tax code by terrorist organizations,” Smith said in a statement published Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee. “Going forward, I encourage our Democrat colleagues to put the defense of our nation and the needs of American taxpayers first.”

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Civil liberties groups that had long opposed the bill hailed the vote to block it as a victory, albeit a fleeting one.

The bill is slated for a hearing on Monday known as a markup session, in which committee members may briefly discuss the legislation and propose amendments. If a majority of committee members approve of the bill, whether in its original or amended form, it would move on to another vote on the House floor.

This time, it would likely be put to a simple majority vote. With Republicans in control of the chamber and around 52 Democratic lawmakers showing support by voting for it on Tuesday, the bill would almost certainly pass.

Doggett, however, remained determined: “We Democrats can either post a Yield Right of Way sign or push back to make every effort to protect civil society and our freedoms.”

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The Intercept · by Noah Hurowitz · November 15, 2024

7. President Xi Jinping Meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in Lima_Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China

Here is the PRC's public assessment of the Biden-Xi,

Xi's 7 points historical review below includes saying the Thucydides trap is not a historical inevitability.

After reading this I get the feeling that Xi thinks he's got us right where he wants us. That is just a feeling of mine of course. I have no evidence to back that up.

Excerpts:

The two Presidents believed that the two sides have had candid and constructive dialogue on AI. The two sides co-sponsored each other’s resolutions at the U.N. General Assembly on AI. They affirmed the need to enhance international cooperation and promote AI for good for all. The two Presidents stressed the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.

The two Presidents both believed that their meeting has been candid, profound and constructive. They expressed their willingness to stay in contact.

President Xi Jinping Meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in Lima_Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China

fmprc.gov.cn

On the afternoon of November 16 local time, President Xi Jinping met with U.S. President Joe Biden in Lima.

President Xi Jinping pointed out that over the past four years, China-U.S. relations have gone through ups and downs, but the two sides have also been engaged in dialogue and cooperation. The relationship has remained stable on the whole. Under the stewardship of the two Presidents, the two teams have worked out through consultations a number of guiding principles for China-U.S. relations. The two Presidents have jointly brought China-U.S. dialogue and cooperation back on track. More than 20 communication mechanisms have been restarted or established, and positive achievements have been made in such areas as diplomacy, security, economy, trade, fiscal affairs, finance, military, counternarcotics, law enforcement, agriculture, climate change, and people-to-people exchange.

President Xi underscored that it is worthwhile to review the experiences of the past four years and draw inspirations from them. He listed the following:

First, it is important to have a correct strategic perception. The Thucydides’s Trap is not a historical inevitability. A new Cold War should not be fought and cannot be won. Containing China is unwise, unacceptable and bound to fail.

Second, it is important to match words with actions. A man cannot establish himself without credibility. China has always honored its words. If the U.S. side always says one thing but does another, it will be detrimental to its own image, and undermine trust between China and the United States.

Third, it is important to treat each other as equals. As two major countries, neither China nor the United States should seek to remodel the other according to one’s own will, suppress the other from the so-called “position of strength,” or deprive the other of the legitimate right to development so as to maintain its leading status.

Fourth, it is important not to challenge red lines and paramount principles. Contradictions and differences between two major countries like China and the United States are unavoidable. But one side should not undermine the core interests of the other, let alone seek conflict or confrontation. The one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiqués are the political foundation of China-U.S. relations. They must be observed. The Taiwan question, democracy and human rights, China’s path and system, and China’s development right are four red lines for China. They must not be challenged. These are the most important guardrails and safety nets for China-U.S. relations.

Fifth, it is important to conduct more dialogue and cooperation. Under the current circumstances, common interests between China and the United States are expanding rather than shrinking. Their cooperation is crucial not only for the economy, trade, agriculture, counternarcotics, law enforcement and public health, but also for handling global challenges of climate change and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as addressing international hotspot issues. The two sides should expand the list of cooperation and make a bigger pie of cooperation to achieve a win-win result.

Sixth, it is important to respond to the expectations of the people. China-U.S. relations should always advance the well-being of the two peoples and bring them closer together. To facilitate personnel and cultural exchange, the two sides need to build bridges and roads, remove distractions and obstacles, and refrain from making any moves that have a chilling effect.

Seventh, it is important to step forward to shoulder the responsibilities of major countries. China and the United States should always keep in mind humanity’s future and their responsibilities for world peace, provide public good for the world, and act in a way conducive to global unity, including carrying out constructive interactions, refraining from mutual attrition, and not coercing other countries into taking sides.

President Xi stressed that the trajectory of China-U.S. relations has proved the validity of these experiences and inspirations from the past 45 years of diplomatic ties. When the two countries treat each other as partner and seek common ground while shelving differences, their relationship will make considerable progress. But if they regard each other as rival and pursue vicious competition, they will roil the relationship or even set it back. Humanity is faced with unprecedented challenges in this turbulent world suffering from frequent conflicts. Major-country competition should not be the underlying logic of the times; only solidarity and cooperation can help humanity overcome current difficulties. Neither decoupling nor supply-chain disruption is the solution; common development can only be achieved through mutually beneficial cooperation. “Small yard, high fences” is not what a major country should do; only openness and sharing can advance the well-being of humanity. A stable China-U.S. relationship is critical not only to the interests of the Chinese and American peoples, but also to the future and destiny of the entire humanity. China and the United States should keep exploring the right way for two major countries to get along well with each other, realize long-term, peaceful coexistence on this planet, and inject more certainty and positive energy into the world.

President Xi stressed that China’s goal of a stable, healthy and sustainable China-U.S. relationship remains unchanged. Its commitment to mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation as principles for handling China-U.S. relations remains unchanged. Its position of resolutely safeguarding China’s sovereignty, security and development interests remains unchanged. And its desire to carry forward the traditional friendship between the Chinese and American peoples remains unchanged. China is ready to engage in dialogue, expand cooperation, and manage differences with the United States so as to sustain the hard-won momentum toward stability in China-U.S. relations.

President Xi stated China’s positions on Taiwan, economic and trade ties, science and technology, cybersecurity, the South China Sea, the Ukraine crisis and the Korean Peninsula.

President Xi stressed that cross-Strait peace and stability and “Taiwan independence” separatist activities are irreconcilable as water and fire. If the U.S side cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai Ching-te and the DPP authorities in seeking “Taiwan independence,” handles the Taiwan question with extra prudence, unequivocally opposes “Taiwan independence,” and supports China’s peaceful reunification.

The Chinese people’s right to development is not to be deprived of or ignored. While all countries need to safeguard their national security, they should not overstretch the national security concept, still less use it as a pretext for malicious moves to constrain and contain other countries.

There is no evidence that supports the irrational claim of the so-called “cyberattacks from China.” China itself is a target of international cyberattacks, and consistently opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks.

China firmly upholds its territory, sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea. Dialogue and consultation between states concerned is always the best way to manage differences in the South China Sea. The United States should not get involved in bilateral disputes over the relevant islands and reefs of Nansha Qundao, nor should it aid or abet the impulsion to make provocations.

China’s position and actions on the Ukraine issue have always been fair and square. China conducts shuttle diplomacy and mediation to promote peace talks, makes every effort for peace, and strives for deescalation. China does not allow conflict and turmoil to happen on the Korean Peninsula. It will not sit idly by when its strategic security and core interests are under threat.

President Biden stated that the U.S.-China relationship is the most important relationship in the world, not just for the two peoples, but also for the future of the world. The two governments have a responsibility to the two peoples and the world to see that competition does not veer into conflict. In the past four years, the two sides worked together to rebuild channels of communication. The two diplomatic and security teams have often had strategic communications and had candid and in-depth dialogue, which helped the two sides to better understand each other. Particularly since the San Francisco meeting a year ago, the two sides have made tangible progress on mil-to-mil relations, counternarcotics, law enforcement, AI, climate change and people-to-people exchange. The two sides support each other’s bid for hosting the APEC and G20 meetings respectively in 2026. This demonstrates what we can do for the two peoples when we work together. The United States does not seek a new Cold War, it does not seek to change China’s system, its alliances are not targeted against China, it does not support “Taiwan independence,” it does not seek conflict with China, and it does not see its Taiwan policy as a way to compete with China. The U.S. side will stay committed to the one-China policy. The United States is prepared to enhance communication and dialogue with China during the transition period to have a better perception of each other and responsibly manage the differences.

The two Presidents reiterated the seven-point common understandings on the guiding principles for China-U.S. relations, namely treating each other with respect, finding a way to live alongside each other peacefully, maintaining open lines of communication, preventing conflict, upholding the United Nations Charter, cooperating in areas of shared interest, and responsibly managing competitive aspects of the relationship. The two sides are ready to uphold these principles, continue to stabilize China-U.S. relations, and ensure a smooth transition of the relationship.

The two Presidents spoke positively about the important role of China-U.S. strategic communication, regular contact between the diplomatic and security teams, and dialogue mechanisms on mil-to-mil relations, economic and trade ties, and financial issues. They agreed to maintain the momentum in communication and strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination. The two Presidents reviewed the important progress in dialogue and cooperation on counternarcotics, climate change, AI, and people-to-people exchanges since their San Francisco meeting.

The two Presidents believed that the two sides have had candid and constructive dialogue on AI. The two sides co-sponsored each other’s resolutions at the U.N. General Assembly on AI. They affirmed the need to enhance international cooperation and promote AI for good for all. The two Presidents stressed the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.

The two Presidents both believed that their meeting has been candid, profound and constructive. They expressed their willingness to stay in contact.

Cai Qi and Wang Yi attended the meeting.

fmprc.gov.cn

8. It is now more a question of can America defend Taiwan, not will it

A view from Australia.  

When I was in CGSC in 1994/95 and SAMS 1995/96, the three big discussions were over the "End of History" (Fukuyama), "The Coming Anarchy" (Kaplan), and "The Clash of Civilizations" (Huntington). I think those three works provide the best foundation for and can still help us understand why we are where we are today: Our misreading of history and our arrogance, the fights over resources (and impact on population migration) and ethno-cultural religious conflict (that also cause population migration). and of course the biggest failure of all is the lack of anticipation of a mutli-lateral Cold War 2.0 (because we thought history had ended and liberal democracy had won)

Final thoughts

Australia’s uncomfortable reality has always been dominated by its need to balance its position as a “loyal deputy”, whether to the British Empire or, more recently, with the United States, with its own national interests in remaining and maintaining its role and capacity as an “anchor nation” to maintain the regional balance of power and stability.

Regardless of whether we are in a “pre-war” or traditional “Cold War” environment, it is clear that successive generations of Australian leaders have let the country down, too entranced and seduced by the promise of “Peace Dividends” and the “End of History” to recognise the cold reality of the world, particularly developing concurrently with the “Clash of Civilisations” during the Global War on Terror.

Equally, many an academic, strategic thinker, and policymaker were seduced by the march of hyper-globalisation and the ultimate triumph of liberal democratic values that either naively overlooked the importance of historical context, religion, ethnic loyalty and rivalry and ideology that has left Australia dangerously exposed and unprepared for the challenges we now face.

As I have said many times before, it isn’t too late if we pivot now and accept the reality of the world and the region as it is, rather than how we would wish it to be, or as the US Marines say, “embrace the suck”.

Responding to the challenges arrayed won’t be easy and it will require the whole-of-nation effort to put its shoulder behind the effort, but if we can engage the Australian public and industry early and bring them along, I promise it will be worth it in the long run.

Because if we don’t, when it comes to paying the bill, the cost will be too devastating to comprehend.

It is now more a question of can America defend Taiwan, not will it

Geopolitics & Policy

18 November 2024

|

By: Stephen Kuper

America’s increasingly complex global commitments, particularly at flashpoints in the Middle East and Europe, are placing increasing strain on the finite resources of the overstretched superpower, prompting a prominent Australian historian to ask will the US defend Taiwan – overlooking the key question, can America defend Taiwan?

defenceconnect.com.au · by Stephen Kuper · November 18, 2024

It is not hyperbole to say that the United States dodged a bullet in the aftermath of the recent election – there was no major outbreak of civil unrest and no collapse of the American republic.

Equally, it is safe to say that the world dodged a bullet at the same time, as any potential US civil unrest would have had truly global ramifications, particularly for key geopolitical and strategic flashpoints like the Middle East and Eastern Europe, particularly holding their breath.

==============

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However, by far, the most pivotal flashpoint to impact the future peace, prosperity and stability of the global environment and most consequential for Australia’s own enduring peace and security is the Taiwanese flashpoint.

In recognising this, many policymakers, strategic thinkers and historians have raised major concerns about America’s resolve, particularly in the new Trump era, to defend the island democracy of Taiwan.

1

Most recently, Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey, in a piece for The Weekend Australian titled focused on the important question about the enduring US will in the new world.

Blainey began his analysis, stating, “China and the United States are said to be on the verge of another cold war which, this time, might boil over into a hot war. More likely – and such is the theme of a new book – is a lesser war fought around the island of Taiwan and rewarding a victorious China with virtual supremacy in the vastness of the western Pacific and its shores.”

This scene-setting statement may be a case of little new information for those of us who have been paying attention to the evolution of the regional and global geopolitical, economic and strategic order, bringing it closer to home, Blainey added, “Even Australia might find itself in this new Chinese sphere of influence, a sphere at present dominated by the US.”

VIEW ALL

For many, this statement may come as a shock, particularly given the overwhelming belief held by vast swathes of the Australian public that the capability of the United States to maintain the global and regional security, or the ’Pax Americana’ order is limitless.

Confronting a conflicting reality

The conflicting nature of reality versus public perception leaves Australia at immense risk of being unprepared and exposed to any major geopolitical shock that may erupt in our region, with America’s enduring commitment to defend Taiwan front and centre.

Blainey detailed the rapid transformation of Beijing as the main antagonist of this new era of great power competition, saying, “It was inconceivable, half a century ago, that China would become strong enough to threaten the US. In 1974, China was still weakened by the cultural revolution and the last years of stumbling Chairman Mao. It did not yet have a seat in the United Nations; its main foreign friend was little Albania; and though it was at last a nuclear power, its naval and air forces were relatively weak.”

Unpacking this evolution further, he stated, “Then came the Chinese miracle. With visible and invisible help from the US, it enjoyed one of the major transformations in the history of the world; and judged by that longtime indicator of industrial progress – the annual output of iron and steel – it raced far ahead of every rival. A similar military ‘rejuvenation’ – one of Xi’s favourite words – was also tackled vigorously by China.”

This reality, while well known, needs to be contrasted against the stagnant levels of defence spending in the United States and the broadly declining level of defence spending among its key allies across the globe, with Australia maintaining at or around the sacrosanct 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) mandated for NATO membership.

For many of America’s allies, this strategic weakness is further compounded by declining economic and industrial capacity and competitiveness and mounting domestic political division and polarisation exacerbated by a host of issues, including the declining job market, housing affordability, cost-of-living pressures and immigration.

These factors have only served to weaken the broader US alliance structure and its capability to defend the global, post-Second World War economic, political and strategic order, placing an increasingly disproportionate burden on the American purse and public, which are now showing their own signs of buckling under the strain.

However, Blainey doesn’t necessarily see it that way, saying, “The US is still the world’s wealthiest nation, and its standard of living is far above China’s. Defence, however, is not its high ­priority. In the era of President Ronald Reagan, when the Cold War was almost over, the US spent 6.8 per cent of its GDP on defence. Today it spends just over 3 per cent … In the past year, she explains, the US defence budget went backwards in real terms. Most of America’s major allies spend an even smaller percentage. What a boost to the confidence of President Xi – as if that all-powerful ruler needed one.”

This has only become more enticing for revisionist powers like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, seeking to capitalise on a sclerotic Western world too mired in its own political division, economic suicide and strategic negligence to materially push back.

In large part, this reality isn’t something new, with successive European administrations embracing this attitude, defaulting to the never-ending benevolence and will of the American people, not just their government to play the world’s policeman, that era is no more.

This reality now finds itself increasingly at odds with the perceived reality of both Australia’s own policymakers and those of our like-minded partners across Europe, in particular, with little more than an expectation that the US must step up its game and do more to carry the rest of the Western World, while Australia, Europe and others continue to contribute, boutique, brittle capabilities.

Bringing us to the Taiwan situation.

America’s resolve versus America’s capacity

While the preferred specific scenario that unfolds in and around Taiwan remains to be seen, the two most likely options to be pursued by Xi’s China firmly remains either a direct invasion via a combined amphibious and air assault, which would see increased international pressure and expectations that the United States to intervene, or a blockade which would limit America’s response.

In pursuing an invasion, Beijing would undoubtedly galvanise the Western World against its efforts, in a similar manner to the way in which the Western World has, at least rhetorically, supported Ukraine post the 2022 invasion by Russia.

Meanwhile, a blockade, while illegal under international law, would serve as a major provocation; it would be far below the threshold needed to prompt a US military intervention, nevertheless, we cannot understate the moral, economic, political and strategic importance of Taiwan in the global order.

Blainey explained, “Taiwan is just over half the size of Tasmania. The narrow seaway separating communist China from democratic Taiwan resembles our own Bass Strait, though our strait has rougher seas in a typical month. In calm weather, a small Chinese rowing boat can easily cross the strait to Taiwan...”

He explained further, “Small on the world map, it is not so by European standards: in area it is larger than Belgium and Macedonia. Nor is Taiwan’s population of 24 million so small by world standards: indeed it is almost equal to Australia’s. Notable too is Taiwan’s rising standard of living, now comparable to Japan’s. Above all, it is a young and thriving democracy.”

The plight of this seemingly similar nation places increased strain on Australia to step up its own game and avoid the pitfalls of wishful thinking that have come to dominate our national policy making, public thinking and preparedness, which has only become increasingly important in light of the shift in US domestic politics and it’s foreign policy.

Blainey builds on this, raising important questions, “Would the US negotiate or would it retaliate by launching missiles on the Chinese ports and industrial towns opposite Taiwan? Or would the American navy prove superior and quickly end a Chinese blockade or invasion? We are told the American attack submarines, each carrying more than 20 massive torpedoes, “are the foundation of US dominance in undersea ­warfare”.

However, while important questions remain about America’s resolve, Blainey misses the most important question, that being: Can America actually defend Taiwan if push comes to shove?

This question only becomes more important when one considers the increasingly distracted, dispersed and consuming nature of America’s global responsibilities, which leave it exposed to exploitation by a single or group of committed peer and near-peer competitors.

Final thoughts

Australia’s uncomfortable reality has always been dominated by its need to balance its position as a “loyal deputy”, whether to the British Empire or, more recently, with the United States, with its own national interests in remaining and maintaining its role and capacity as an “anchor nation” to maintain the regional balance of power and stability.

Regardless of whether we are in a “pre-war” or traditional “Cold War” environment, it is clear that successive generations of Australian leaders have let the country down, too entranced and seduced by the promise of “Peace Dividends” and the “End of History” to recognise the cold reality of the world, particularly developing concurrently with the “Clash of Civilisations” during the Global War on Terror.

Equally, many an academic, strategic thinker, and policymaker were seduced by the march of hyper-globalisation and the ultimate triumph of liberal democratic values that either naively overlooked the importance of historical context, religion, ethnic loyalty and rivalry and ideology that has left Australia dangerously exposed and unprepared for the challenges we now face.

As I have said many times before, it isn’t too late if we pivot now and accept the reality of the world and the region as it is, rather than how we would wish it to be, or as the US Marines say, “embrace the suck”.

Responding to the challenges arrayed won’t be easy and it will require the whole-of-nation effort to put its shoulder behind the effort, but if we can engage the Australian public and industry early and bring them along, I promise it will be worth it in the long run.

Because if we don’t, when it comes to paying the bill, the cost will be too devastating to comprehend.

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

defenceconnect.com.au · by Stephen Kuper · November 18, 2024

9. An Irregular Struggle: U.S. Search for an Irregular Warfare Strategy By Thomas A. Marks and David H. Ucko

The thought provoking 4 page essay that punches well above its weight can be downloaded at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K01CBAa-MAx_V4F5QZ4_CKqm_uPMo_k8/view

An Irregular Struggle: U.S. Search for an Irregular Warfare Strategy

By Thomas A. Marks and David H. Ucko

An excerpt for discussion and consideration (but read the entire essay please):

That irregular warfare is relevant to under- standing and countering the strategies of Beijing, Moscow, and other state actors is beyond doubt. Historically, China be- came closely associated with the political warfare of the Soviet Union soon after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and both helped spread the approach to a swath of would-be revolutionaries seeking both domestic power and to export the struggle internationally. But in applying the term irregular warfare to state actors and their inter-state efforts, three principles are proposed:

•     IW is inherently about intra-societal schisms.

•      Violence, or at least contention or co- ercion, is inherent to irregular warfare, as it distinguishes this type of approach from sharp-elbowed competition, such as that one may find even in democrat- ic party politics.

•      The chief definitional criterion of irregular warfare is its strategic intent: to erode or build legitimacy and influence. Methods and actors may vary over time, but the totality of the project is irregular if it is grounded in a struggle for legitimacy.

Given these parameters, state use of irregular warfare becomes something far more precise than a general sense of com- petition. Specifically, states use irregular warfare when they seek to accentuate (or mitigate) the schisms in targeted societ- ies, thereby to gain power and influence. Offensively, this type of approach might entail sponsoring terrorism and insurgency abroad, engaging in election interference to subvert democratic integrity or to stoke social conflict, or undermining the legitimacy of a state so that a rival actor can rise up. Defensively, the challenge lies in how to react and how to guard against such actions.

On this basis, IW can be used globally as a way of softening up and flipping states much as a domestic insurgent targets pockets of the population. It is possible to view Beijing as involved in such a global campaign of irregular warfare – a multi- faceted, international offensive that wea- ponizes all normal instruments of power, everything from diplomacy to economic levers, and integrates them with kinetic menace and direct application. From this vantage point, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is on a global quest to reshape international society much as it did with Chinese society during the civil war, and via strikingly similar means.

All this, it should be noted, is to some extent understood in the Washington cor- ridors of power. The dilemma is that since DoD is to deal with security, it is using

its existing organizations and stove-piped processes. What has thus resulted is that anything which is not major combat is be- ing lumped into competition and irregular warfare. For our foes, though, this bifurca- tion does not exist. They struggle – which we should be calling war, or even, politics by other means.

10. The DOGE Cheat Sheet

The one flawed assumption in all this is that you can combine government and efficiency. 

Can we have the efficiency we want and still conduct government within our constitutional principles. Remember that separation of powers and checks and balances create inefficiencies to protect our individual liberties and protect us from tyranny which was the basic principle of our constitution. Therefore inefficiency in government is baked in.

That said, I do believe there is plenty of room for cost cutting by putting our government on a fiscal diet (and of course it is Congress that controls spending and regulates commerce and raises an army and sustains a navy not the DOGE). But we must do it in accordance with our constitutional principles. And the goal may perhaps should not be less government (although that is a true conservative principle) but better government.

The DOGE Cheat Sheet

If all Ramaswamy and Musk can do is save a few billion dollars, it will be worth it.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-doge-cheat-sheet-elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-department-of-government-efficiency-1c231783?mod=hp_opin_pos_3#cxrecs_s

By Andy Kessler

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Nov. 17, 2024 2:17 pm ET

Elon Musk listens as President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House Republicans in Washington, Nov. 13. Photo: Allison Robbert - Pool via CNP/Zuma Press

It’s Elon time. Make no mistake, the 2024 election was decided on three i’s: inflation, indoctrination (woke smoke) and incompetence. Now comes the fourth—incisions. OK, that’s too nice. More like hacksaws cutting the government’s overgrowth.

Donald Trump has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to run a Department of Government Efficiency—an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. Mr. Musk thinks they can save $2 trillion. That’s a stretch, but go for it.

The Muskian-named DOGE is an inside joke based on Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that Mr. Musk hyped in May 2021, calling himself the “Dogefather” on “Saturday Night Live.” The price spiked roughly 1,000% in a month and then crashed about 70% over the next few months. That’s the perfect bar set for Mr. Musk—cut 70% of the government. Similar to what he did when dealing with Tesla’s Model 3 production problems, Mr. Musk could show his commitment by sleeping under the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office until the job is done.

Out with the woke mind virus and in with the “folk unwind virus” to attack bureaucracy. The federal government has around three million civilian employees, with an average salary of $106,000. Dr. Anthony Fauci made $481,000 in 2022. There’s room to cut. Mr. Trump has said he may close the Education Department and move its function to the states. Good start.

In tweet-length bites, here’s a handy cheat sheet with how Mr. Musk can toss, shrink or squeeze departments, commissions and agencies:

Federal Trade Commission: Toss. The current FTC under Lina Khan has a worse record than the Chicago White Sox. The FTC already splits antitrust cases with the Justice Department, so move a few pro-consumer-competition lawyers there and then shutter.

Federal Communications Commission: Toss. The FCC caused the dot-com boom and bust. Net neutrality killed broadband in Europe yet was still reinstated here under the Biden administration. Spectrum auctions are why we overpay for cell service. Three economists in a back room can create and maintain a set of rules to keep access competitive.

Securities and Exchange Commission: Toss. The SEC missed the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, allowed crypto and SPAC pump-and-dumps, and missed the FTX fiasco. Free trading requires setting and enforcing simple rules.

U.S. Department of Agriculture: Toss. This will finally end corn subsidies for Iowa. We can move food-stamp administrators and funding to states.

Federal Reserve: Shrink. The central bank missed Bidenflation. Dart throwers could do better than its 400 Ph.D.s. Cut its funding.

Defense Department: Squeeze. Reallocate spending to drones, ships and defense systems such as Patriot missiles. Antimissile defenses can be a giant export business.

U.S. Postal Service: Toss. End its monopoly on first- and third-class mail. Go private. Amazon trucks already come to most neighborhoods every day.

Others to toss: Fracking happened despite the Energy Department. Do we need it? Trump tariffs will curtail imports, so we can shrink the Export-Import Bank by at least half. Close the Small Business Administration. And what does the Commerce Department even do?

Even more to toss: Labor Department—union puppets. Transportation Department—its mileage and electric-vehicle mandates killed Detroit, although Mr. Musk may want to run the department himself. Environmental Protection Agency—reduce its carbon footprint. Housing and Urban Development—it isn’t the ’70s anymore. Interior—outsource parks to Disney. Veterans Affairs—can’t they use the same hospitals as the rest of us, no matter who pays?

I know people who have been fired by Mr. Musk. He’s ruthless. He often thinks he can do the job better himself. But it won’t be easy. Even Mr. Musk admitted in October to the existence of strong antibodies against change: “There will be immense opposition, obviously, to making government more efficient from entrenched interests that currently benefit from sucking away vast amounts of taxpayer money.”

You can’t just fire federal employees, except for cause. But DOGE could urge Congress to eliminate departments and then offer to relocate people who won’t leave their jobs. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggests Guam, at least for the Food and Drug Administration’s nutritional scientists. Most will quit.

Besides shrinking the bureaucracy, there are other things DOGE can do. Digitize the entire government so every citizen can interact with the government via smartphone. America could hire the entire country of Estonia to implement it.

Yes, a Department of Government Efficiency is probably a pipe dream and might end up as essential as Monty Python’s Department of Silly Walks. To make real spending cuts, Congress needs to reconfigure Social Security and Medicare, cut back payments to states and shrink foreign aid. But even if Mr. Musk’s DOGE simply trims some bloat and saves a few hundred billion, it will be worth it.

Write to kessler@wsj.com.

11. How Trump Can Help Ukraine Win

Excerpts:

A diplomatic effort bolstered by the threat of turning these Russian assets against Russia itself could help compel the Kremlin—already grappling with an economy strained by defense spending—into settling. Coupled with a threat to permit Ukraine to use missiles to strike deep into Russian territory, including targeting Moscow and its power grid, such a policy could drive the Kremlin to accept a settlement Mr. Trump proposes.

Any settlement that leaves 20% of Ukraine’s territory in Russia’s hands will be hard for Ukrainians to accept. But most war-ravaged Ukrainians are likely to accept one that enhances their country’s sovereignty through bilateral security guarantees and deters future Russian aggression with resources that let Ukraine strengthen its military capabilities and rebuild its cities.

How Trump Can Help Ukraine Win

He could sway Putin by mobilizing the $300 billion in Russian money frozen in Western banks.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-trump-can-help-ukraine-win-sanctions-putin-russia-foreign-policy-e2e15971?mod=hp_opin_pos_5#cxrecs_s

By Adrian Karatnycky

Nov. 17, 2024 4:34 pm ET

Illustration: David Gothard

Donald Trump’s most consequential foreign-policy priority will be Russia’s war on Ukraine. A conclusion to the conflict that preserves Ukraine’s long-term security will end widespread death and destruction and bolster America’s image as a force for good. A policy that leads to the collapse of Ukraine will cause needless loss of life, unleash a massive refugee crisis for America’s European allies, and embolden a loose alliance of tyrannies.

Mr. Trump’s promise to end the war heralds an ambitious, activist foreign policy. His pledge to do so in 24 hours is clearly an exaggeration but signals eagerness for a diplomatic solution to what will soon be a three-year war.

The terms of a Trump-led settlement, while not set in stone, have been discussed in the media. Such a deal is reported to include an end to hostilities, with European (and perhaps other) peacekeepers policing a line of separation between the two warring parties. It also would include a commitment by both sides not to use military means to capture or reclaim territory, Western support for a strong Ukrainian defense, and a 20-year moratorium on Ukrainian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Settling the war on these terms, however, will face formidable hurdles. The most important is Vladimir Putin’s opposition to any settlement that falls short of Ukraine’s capitulation. Mr. Putin’s conditions for the war’s end include cession of more territory in Ukraine’s eastern regions, Ukrainian neutrality, and Ukraine’s demilitarization. Taken together, these would mean a de facto end to Ukraine’s sovereignty.

The Trump administration must find new levers to move Mr. Putin from his intransigence. Among these are threats to increase the economic costs of sustaining the war and to increase the pain Russia and Russians bear for doing so. Mr. Trump has alluded to such an approach. As a strategy paper from the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute noted, a successful policy would require “enabling Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength” and developing “a long-term security architecture for Ukraine’s defense.” Yet Mr. Trump’s ability to press Mr. Putin into accepting a settlement could be undermined by the eager public declarations of many in Mr. Trump’s inner circle to curtail or cease U.S. spending on Ukraine.

There is another Trumpian path that could both finance Ukraine’s war effort and reduce U.S. contributions to it. This path requires mobilizing the $300 billion in Russian hard currency in Western banks, most of it at Euroclear, an international clearing and settlement service in Belgium. The Biden administration and European leaders have been reluctant to tap these assets, wrongly fearing such a course could undermine the dollar and the euro.

But today’s extraordinary conditions warrant seizure. Russia not only has invaded a sovereign country; it has annexed the internationally recognized territory of a sovereign state. Since the creation of the United Nations in 1948, there has been only one other such case: Iraq’s invading and annexing Kuwait. George H.W. Bush’s administration seized billions in Iraqi hard-currency reserves held in the U.S. and transferred them to Kuwait as compensation for the invasion.

Two veterans of several Republican administrations—former State Department counselor Philip Zelikow and Robert Zoellick, a former head of the World Bank—have invoked the Iraq precedent. Russia’s actions in Ukraine are so odious and violative of international norms, they argue, that Moscow has for the period of the war lost the right to the protection of these norms, including the right to its state assets in Western banks. These assets can be seized and used to buy U.S.-made and internationally manufactured weapons for Ukraine’s war effort and, if the war ends, to rebuild Ukraine.

A diplomatic effort bolstered by the threat of turning these Russian assets against Russia itself could help compel the Kremlin—already grappling with an economy strained by defense spending—into settling. Coupled with a threat to permit Ukraine to use missiles to strike deep into Russian territory, including targeting Moscow and its power grid, such a policy could drive the Kremlin to accept a settlement Mr. Trump proposes.

Any settlement that leaves 20% of Ukraine’s territory in Russia’s hands will be hard for Ukrainians to accept. But most war-ravaged Ukrainians are likely to accept one that enhances their country’s sovereignty through bilateral security guarantees and deters future Russian aggression with resources that let Ukraine strengthen its military capabilities and rebuild its cities.

Mr. Karatnycky is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia.”

WSJ Opinion: The Paradox Obscuring Our Political Debate

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WSJ Opinion: The Paradox Obscuring Our Political Debate

Play video: WSJ Opinion: The Paradox Obscuring Our Political Debate

Free Expression: By exaggerating our woes for partisan reasons, politicians on both sides of the aisle threaten to squander America's enduring global superiority. Photo: Shen Hong/Xinhua via ZUMA Press/AFP via Getty Images

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the November 18, 2024, print edition as 'How Trump Can Help Ukraine Win'.

12. ATACMS, Putin and Trump

This short editorial from the WSJ editorial board is a powerful critique of both Biden and Trump

Excerpt:

Donald Trump says he will try to end the war soon, though how he will do that is far from certain. But the ATACMS decision and military aid could help promote a settlement if it puts Ukraine in a stronger negotiating position.

ATACMS, Putin and Trump

Putin responds to the President-elect’s call for restraint with a missile barrage.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/atacms-putin-and-trump-foreign-policy-russia-ukraine-49b003c7?mod=latest_headlines

By The Editorial Board

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Nov. 17, 2024 5:24 pm ET

The U.S. Army conduct live fire tests of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Dec. 14, 2021. Photo: JOHN HAMILTON/DoD/AFP via Getty Images

It took nearly 1,000 days of war, but President Biden is finally letting Ukraine use U.S. long-range missiles to hit military targets inside Russia. U.S. officials leaked the news to the press on Sunday, after an especially brutal Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

The officials say the arrival of 10,000 North Korean troops in Russia changed Mr. Biden’s mind. The North Koreans will be used as cannon fodder to oust Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region. Ukraine has been relying on drones and its own missiles to hit positions inside Russia, but the U.S. ATACMS will let Ukraine hit targets deeper in the country that have been a sanctuary.

Left unsaid by the White House is that Mr. Biden is trying to strengthen Ukraine’s position before he leaves office. Mr. Biden would like to fortify Ukraine by delivering all of the munitions Congress approved in its most recent aid package. The tragedy is that Mr. Biden has hamstrung Ukraine on the delivery and use of advanced weapons for so long.

Donald Trump says he will try to end the war soon, though how he will do that is far from certain. But the ATACMS decision and military aid could help promote a settlement if it puts Ukraine in a stronger negotiating position.

The Trump camp leaked that, in a recent phone call, the former and future President had asked Vladimir Putin not to escalate in Ukraine. Mr. Putin’s blunt reply to that request is the North Korean troop deployment and the weekend missile barrage. The attempt to destroy Ukraine’s energy supply is especially cruel as winter nears. The Kremlin dictator also wants Ukrainian troops out of Russia to strengthen his position and not have to trade his control of portions of eastern Ukraine.

Mr. Putin is telling Mr. Trump that his settlement terms will be harsh. Mr. Trump will have to calculate his policy accordingly.

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Journal Editorial Report: Gavin Newsom says he'll Trump-proof California. Photo: Kent J. Edwards/Reuters/Gage Skidmore/Zuma Press

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the November 18, 2024, print edition as 'ATACMS, Putin and Trump'.

13. Here's a Look at the Number of Women in Military Combat Roles

So this issue may become a major one again. It is interesting to look at the numbers from both sides of the issue. Are the Services and SOF doing enough to allow women to serve in combat roles? Are they providing road blocks? Or are they spending too much time and too many resources opening combat jobs to women for the very low numbers that have become qualified to serve in those roles? What is the cause of the low numbers - roadblocks or is it just that not many women are choosing to serve in combat roles (and of course those who are advocates for women serving in combat roles will say women choose not to to try out for those jobs because of the roadblocks) Are tough standards a roadblock or should standards be adjusted to increase the number of women who can qualify? And have the low numbers of women had a positive or negative impact? Or not real impact? What problem is this effort trying to solve and if the problem has not been solved what is the impact of not solving it? So many questions.

Here's a Look at the Number of Women in Military Combat Roles

https://apnews.com/article/women-combat-hegseth-trump-c4ffcbd3de8a62fadb87d8c31ff59118

By  LOLITA C. BALDOR

Updated 2:59 AM GMT+9, November 19, 2024

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been outspoken about his opinion that women should not serve in combat roles.

Here’s a look at how many women are in such military roles, as of the 2024 budget year:

Women serving in special operations

— Navy Special Warfare combat crew: 2

— Air Force special operations: 3

— Green Berets: Fewer than 10

— Completed the Army Ranger course: more than 150

— Total serving in Army Special Operations Command as special forces, civil affairs, psychological operations and helicopter pilots, including in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment: 260 to 270

Artillery, infantry and armor units

Thousands of women have served or currently are in jobs that until 2015 were male-only.

MARINES:

— Officers in job categories previously restricted to men, including infantry, artillery and combat engineers: Nearly 192

— Enlisted Marine in those jobs: 410

That number has steadily increased since 2018.

ARMY:

— Serving in Army infantry, armor and artillery jobs: Nearly 4,800

— Field artillery roles: More than 2,020

— Infantry: More than 902

— Armor: 864

The number of women in those jobs also has increased over the years.

14. As Beijing Threatens, Taiwan Looks Nervously at Trump

Do we want to defend Taiwan more than the Taiwan government and people? I keep hearing comments that they are just not committing enough to their own defense and that their real strategy is simply to depend on the US coming to their defense.

Excerpts:

Some in Taiwan say its survival as a self-ruled democracy is at stake, that it can’t afford to spend what Trump demands on defense and that it would wither in the crossfire of a U.S.-China trade war. Beijing claims the island as its own and hasn’t ruled out using force to take it.

Taiwan’s leadership is emphasizing the positive.

“I’m confident that the longstanding partnership between Taiwan and the U.S. will keep being a key pillar of stability in the region,” President Lai Ching-te said Wednesday after a briefing on what to expect from the White House after Trump returns.

Washington is Taipei’s most important backer, selling it billions of dollars in weapons for the island’s self-defense. But while the U.S. is obligated by law to provide weapons, the U.S. maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity” about whether the U.S. military would intervene in the event of an invasion by China. 

...

To counter China, the U.S. is racing to upgrade remote airstrips in the Pacific Ocean. WSJ’s Niharika Mandhana traveled to Tinian Island, where the U.S. is reviving a vast World War II-era airfield. Photo: DVIDS

In Taiwan, said Sacks, “the Elon Musk thing looms large.” 

Nevertheless, government officials in Taipei are expressing confidence.

“The president who started it all is back on the job,” a Taiwanese security official said, referring to the U.S.-China trade conflict during the first Trump administration. “Truth be told, Beijing should be feeling way more pressure than we are.”

​As Beijing Threatens, Taiwan Looks Nervously at Trump

Taipei sets aside fears of Chinese invasion and trade-war crossfire to focus on potential cooperation with the new administration

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/taiwan-trump-security-china-us-7008b580?oref=d_brief_nl&utm

By Joyu Wang

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Updated Nov. 18, 2024 12:03 am ET

Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo, center, gestures during missile shooting exercises in Taiwan in August. Photo: ritchie b tongo/Shutterstock

TAIPEI—Donald Trump has given Taiwan more than a few reasons to be anxious. 

The president-elect pressed Taiwan during his election campaign to spend significantly more to defend against the growing threat of attack by China. He accused Taiwan’s chip makers—a lifeblood industry accounting for 15% of gross domestic product—of stealing American jobs. He brought into his inner circle the billionaire Elon Musk, who has mocked Taiwan’s determination to maintain its autonomy. And he suggested that his own reputation is enough to deter Chinese leader Xi Jinping from invading.

At the same time, Beijing launched menacing military exercises, raising a pressing question for the island: What would Trump do if China tried to invade Taiwan? 

Some in Taiwan say its survival as a self-ruled democracy is at stake, that it can’t afford to spend what Trump demands on defense and that it would wither in the crossfire of a U.S.-China trade war. Beijing claims the island as its own and hasn’t ruled out using force to take it.

Taiwan’s leadership is emphasizing the positive.

“I’m confident that the longstanding partnership between Taiwan and the U.S. will keep being a key pillar of stability in the region,” President Lai Ching-te said Wednesday after a briefing on what to expect from the White House after Trump returns.

Washington is Taipei’s most important backer, selling it billions of dollars in weapons for the island’s self-defense. But while the U.S. is obligated by law to provide weapons, the U.S. maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity” about whether the U.S. military would intervene in the event of an invasion by China. 

A television in a Taipei cafe broadcasting news updates about the U.S. presidential election on Election Day. Photo: Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

Lai, in a carefully plotted first trip as president, plans to visit Taipei’s official allies in the Pacific and is expected to pass through some U.S. territories, according to a person familiar with his travel plans. Taipei and Washington often frame these transits as routine; however, Beijing, which has previously used military drills to protest such visits by Taiwanese leaders, would see any trip to the U.S., even a stopover, as a provocation.

Taiwan officials have found solace in Trump’s initial appointments, as well as his White House record.

During the first Trump presidency, officials in Taiwan saw support from Washington reach new heights in arms sales and diplomacy. This time, the president-elect has already recruited China hawks Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Rep. Michael Waltz as national security adviser, two officials who have pushed for more robust defense against Beijing.

“We are optimistic about any plans or appointments for those who are supportive of Taiwan,” Defense Minister Wellington Koo said. 

Behind the scenes, senior Taiwan officials expressed uncertainty about how China might respond to a hawkish U.S. administration.

“There is an uncertainty about whether China will shift this pressure and step up its intimidation tactics toward Taiwan,” said Yeh Yao-yuan, a political scientist who teaches at University of St. Thomas in Texas and briefed the president this week in Taipei. “This is what the Lai administration is more worried about.”

Taiwan must brace for economic shock waves if Trump follows through with his threat of a 60% tariff on imports from China, said Chen Ming-chi, a former security adviser under the preceding president, Tsai Ing-wen. 

“We don’t need to be pessimistic, but there is no room for optimism either,” Chen said of Trump’s return. 

Trump told The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board in October that he would respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan by imposing tariffs or severing trade—and that using military force against a blockade wouldn’t be necessary.

Trump has also said that Taiwan should pay the U.S. for its defense. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything,” he said in a July interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. 

Taiwan should increase its military spending to at least 10% of GDP, he told the Washington Post, in an interview that sent ripples of concern through Taipei. Taiwan’s military spending is currently at 2.45% of GDP—a lower share than Singapore’s 2.8% and South Korea’s 2.7%, the latter of which benefits from a large U.S. military presence.

Officials in Taiwan say they have already made strides in improving Taiwan’s self-defense, citing increases in military spending over the past eight years and an extension last year of mandatory military service to one year from four months. Koo, the defense minister, says Taiwan will continue to steadily increase its defense budget.

That hasn’t shifted Trump’s focus. “There is a sense from Trump and people surrounding him that U.S. allies are not doing enough for their own defense and for their security,” said David Sacks, an Asia-focused fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “In Washington, the percent of GDP is really seen as a proxy for your seriousness,” he said. 

Even reaching the military spending level of 5% of GDP called for by some leading Republicans is unattainable in the short term, said Chieh Chung, assistant professor at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.

“This would have a serious crowding-out effect on spending for education, social welfare, transportation infrastructure, and economic development,” Chieh said.

For Lai, who took office in May, staying on Washington’s good side could be a matter of political survival. His Democratic Progressive Party has held on to power through three consecutive U.S. administrations—Obama, Trump, and Biden—in large part because of public support for its approach to Beijing: adamant about denying China’s claim to the island and remaining wary about getting too close. But the DPP lacks the legislative majority that would enable it to pass any budget it wishes.

As Trump’s new team began to take shape last week, Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai launched a task force to explore strategies for collaboration. “The new people coming in will, of course, bring new ways of doing things,” he said. “We will figure out how to strengthen cooperation in technology, trade, and other areas.”

The advent of Rubio and Waltz were taken as promising signs—even if Beijing was relieved not to see the return of Mike Pompeo, an earlier Trump secretary of state who was a staunch Taiwan supporter. In recent years, Pompeo has called for the U.S. to recognize Taiwan as an independent state, in what would be a reversal of the stance established under President Jimmy Carter in 1979, when the U.S. recognized the government in Beijing and cut official ties with Taipei.

Waltz visited Taiwan two years ago, meeting then-President Tsai. During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last year he argued for the accelerated delivery of delayed U.S. weapon systems to Taiwan, after U.S. officials said that Xi had instructed the Chinese military to be able to invade Taiwan by 2027. 

A series of U.S. weapons deliveries were due between 2027 and 2029, he said, adding, “From a deterrent standpoint, that’s too late.” 

Officials in Taiwan have been less certain about what to make of Musk’s role. The Tesla CEO’s business ties in China and his political views—he has described Taiwan as China’s equivalent of Hawaii—have raised concerns. His satellite internet provider, Starlink, has been unable to break into the Taiwan market, despite an urgent need on the island for secure connectivity.

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To counter China, the U.S. is racing to upgrade remote airstrips in the Pacific Ocean. WSJ’s Niharika Mandhana traveled to Tinian Island, where the U.S. is reviving a vast World War II-era airfield. Photo: DVIDS

In Taiwan, said Sacks, “the Elon Musk thing looms large.” 

Nevertheless, government officials in Taipei are expressing confidence.

“The president who started it all is back on the job,” a Taiwanese security official said, referring to the U.S.-China trade conflict during the first Trump administration. “Truth be told, Beijing should be feeling way more pressure than we are.”

Write to Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com

15. War and Peace in the Age of Artificial Intelligence By Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Craig Mundie ​

​Excerpts:

Since the beginning of civilization, as human units of organization have grown, they have simultaneously achieved new levels of cooperation. But today, perhaps because of the scale of planetary challenges as well as to the material inequalities evident among and within states, a backlash against this trend has surfaced. AI could prove commensurate to the demands of this still-grander scale of human governance, capable of seeing with granularity and fidelity not merely the imperatives of the country but also the interplay of the globe.

We harbor a hope that AI, deployed for political ends at home and abroad, might do more than just illuminate balanced tradeoffs. Ideally, it could provide new, globally optimal solutions, acting on a longer time horizon and with greater precision than humans are capable of, and thus bringing competing human interests into alignment. In the coming world, machine intelligences navigating conflict and negotiating peace might help clarify, or even surmount, traditional dilemmas.

However, if AI were indeed to fix problems that we should have hoped to solve ourselves, we could face a crisis of confidence—of both overconfidence and the lack of confidence. To the former, once we understand the limits of our own ability for self-correction, it may be difficult to admit that we have come to cede too much power to machines in handling existential issues of human conduct. To the latter, the realization that simply removing human agency from the handling of our affairs has been enough to solve our most intractable problems might reveal too explicitly the shortcomings of human design. If peace has always been but a simple voluntary choice, the price of human imperfection has been paid in the coin of perpetual war. To know that a solution has always existed but has never been conceived by us would be crushing to human pride.

In the case of security, unlike that of the displacement of people in scientific or other academic endeavors, we may more readily accept the impartiality of a mechanical third party as necessarily superior to the self-interestedness of a human—just as humans easily recognize the need for a mediator in a contentious divorce. Some of our worst traits will enable us to exhibit some of our best: that the human instinct toward self-interest, even at the expense of others, may prepare us for accepting AI’s transcendence of the self.

War and Peace in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

What It Will Mean for the World When Machines Shape Strategy and Statecraft

By Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Craig Mundie

​  November 18, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit · November 18, 2024

From the recalibration of military strategy to the reconstitution of diplomacy, artificial intelligence will become a key determinant of order in the world. Immune to fear and favor, AI introduces a new possibility of objectivity in strategic decision-making. But that objectivity, harnessed by both the warfighter and the peacemaker, should preserve human subjectivity, which is essential for the responsible exercise of force. AI in war will illuminate the best and worst expressions of humanity. It will serve as the means both to wage war and to end it.

Humanity’s long-standing struggle to constitute itself in ever-more complex arrangements, so that no state gains absolute mastery over others, has achieved the status of a continuous, uninterrupted law of nature. In a world where the major actors are still human—even if equipped with AI to inform, consult, and advise them—countries should still enjoy a degree of stability based on shared norms of conduct, subject to the tunings and adjustments of time.

But if AI emerges as a practically independent political, diplomatic, and military set of entities, that would force the exchange of the age-old balance of power for a new, uncharted disequilibrium. The international concert of nation-states—a tenuous and shifting equilibrium achieved in the last few centuries—has held in part because of the inherent equality of the players. A world of severe asymmetry—for instance, if some states adopted AI at the highest level more readily than others—would be far less predictable. In cases where some humans might face off militarily or diplomatically against a highly AI-enabled state, or against AI itself, humans could struggle to survive, much less compete. Such an intermediate order could witness an internal implosion of societies and an uncontrollable explosion of external conflicts.

Other possibilities abound. Beyond seeking security, humans have long fought wars in pursuit of triumph or in defense of honor. Machines—for now—lack any conception of either triumph or honor. They may never go to war, choosing instead, for instance, immediate, carefully divided transfers of territory based on complex calculations. Or they might—prizing an outcome and deprioritizing individual lives—take actions that spiral into bloody wars of human attrition. In one scenario, our species could emerge so transformed as to avoid entirely the brutality of human conduct. In another, we would become so subjugated by the technology that it would drive us back to a barbaric past.

THE AI SECURITY DILEMMA

Many countries are fixated on how to “win the AI race.” In part, that drive is understandable. Culture, history, communication, and perception have conspired to create among today’s major powers a diplomatic situation that fosters insecurity and suspicion on all sides. Leaders believe that an incremental tactical advantage could be decisive in any future conflict, and that AI could offer just that advantage.

If each country wished to maximize its position, then the conditions would be set for a psychological contest among rival military forces and intelligence agencies the likes of which humanity has never faced before. An existential security dilemma awaits. The logical first wish for any human actor coming into possession of superintelligent AI—that is, a hypothetical AI more intelligent than a human—might be to attempt to guarantee that nobody else gains this powerful version of the technology. Any such actor might also reasonably assume by default that its rival, dogged by the same uncertainties and facing the same stakes, would be pondering a similar move.

Short of war, a superintelligent AI could subvert, undermine, and block a competing program. For instance, AI promises both to strengthen conventional computer viruses with unprecedented potency and to disguise them thoroughly. Like the computer worm Stuxnet—the cyberweapon uncovered in 2010 that was thought to have ruined a fifth of Iran’s uranium centrifuges—an AI agent could sabotage a rival’s progress in ways that obfuscate its presence, thereby forcing enemy scientists to chase shadows. With its unique capacity for manipulation of weaknesses in human psychology, an AI could also hijack a rival nation’s media, producing a deluge of synthetic disinformation so alarming as to inspire mass opposition against further progress in that country’s AI capacities.

It will be hard for countries to get a clear sense of where they stand relative to others in the AI race. Already the largest AI models are being trained on secure networks disconnected from the rest of the internet. Some executives believe that AI development will itself sooner or later migrate to impenetrable bunkers whose supercomputers will be powered with nuclear reactors. Data centers are even now being built on the bottom of the ocean floor. Soon they could be sequestered in orbits around Earth. Corporations or countries might increasingly “go dark,” ceasing to publish AI research so as not only to avoid enabling malicious actors but also to obscure their own pace of development. To distort the true picture of their progress, others might even try deliberately publishing misleading research, with AI assisting in the creation of convincing fabrications.

AI in war will illuminate the best and worst expressions of humanity.

There is a precedent for such scientific subterfuge. In 1942, the Soviet physicist Georgy Flyorov correctly inferred that the United States was building a nuclear bomb after he noticed that the Americans and the British had suddenly stopped publishing scientific papers on atomic fission. Today, such a contest would be made all the more unpredictable given the complexity and ambiguity of measuring progress toward something so abstract as intelligence. Although some see advantage as commensurate with the size of the AI models in their possession, a larger model is not necessarily superior across all contexts and may not always prevail over smaller models deployed at scale. Smaller and more specialized AI machines might operate like a swarm of drones against an aircraft carrier—unable to destroy it, but sufficient to neutralize it.

An actor might be perceived to have an overall advantage were it to demonstrate achievement in a particular capability. The problem with this line of thinking, however, is that AI refers merely to a process of machine learning that is embedded not just in a single technology but also in a broad spectrum of technologies. Capability in any one area may thus be driven by factors entirely different from capability in another. In these senses, any “advantage” as ordinarily calculated may be illusory.

Moreover, as demonstrated by the exponential and unforeseen explosion of AI capability in recent years, the trajectory of progress is neither linear nor predictable. Even if one actor could be said to “lead” another by an approximate number of years or months, a sudden technical or theoretical breakthrough in a key area at a critical moment could invert the positions of all players.

In such a world, where no leaders could trust their most solid intelligence, their most primal instincts, or even the basis of reality itself, governments could not be blamed for acting from a position of maximum paranoia and suspicion. Leaders are no doubt already making decisions under the assumption that their endeavors are under surveillance or harbor distortions created by malign influence. Defaulting to worst-case scenarios, the strategic calculus of any actor at the frontier would be to prioritize speed and secrecy over safety. Human leaders could be gripped by the fear that there is no such thing as second place. Under pressure, they might prematurely accelerate the deployment of AI as deterrence against external disruption.

A NEW PARADIGM OF WAR

For almost all of human history, war has been fought in a defined space in which one could know with reasonable certainty the capability and position of hostile enemy forces. The combination of these two attributes offered each side a sense of psychological security and common consensus, allowing for the informed restraint of lethality. Only when enlightened leaders were unified in their basic understanding of how a war might be fought could opposing forces determine whether a war should be fought.

Speed and mobility have been among the most predictable factors underpinning the capability of any given piece of military equipment. An early illustration is the development of the cannon. For a millennium after their construction, the Theodosian Walls protected the great city of Constantinople from outside invaders. Then, in 1452, a Hungarian artillery engineer proposed to Emperor Constantine XI the construction of a giant cannon that, firing from behind the defensive walls, would pulverize attackers. But the complacent emperor, possessing neither the material means nor the foresight to recognize the technology’s significance, dismissed the proposal.

Unfortunately for him, the Hungarian engineer turned out to be a mercenary. Switching tactics (and sides), he updated his design to be more mobile—transportable by no fewer than 60 oxen and 400 men—and approached the emperor’s rival, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who was preparing to besiege the impermeable fortress. Winning the young sultan’s interest with his claim that this gun could “shatter the walls of Babylon itself,” the entrepreneurial Hungarian helped the Turkish forces to breach the ancient walls in only 55 days.

The contours of this fifteenth-century drama can be seen again and again throughout history. In the nineteenth century, speed and mobility transformed the fortunes first of France, as Napoleon’s army overwhelmed Europe, and then of Prussia, under the direction of Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder) and Albrecht von Roon, who capitalized on the newly developed railways to enable faster and more flexible maneuvering. Similarly, blitzkrieg—an evolution of the same German military principles—would be used against the Allies in World War II to great and terrible effect.

Examining an autonomous vehicle at a military convention in Washington, D.C., October 2024

Nathan Howard / Reuters

“Lightning war” has taken on new meaning—and ubiquity—in the era of digital warfare. Speeds are instantaneous. Attackers need not sacrifice lethality to sustain mobility, as geography is no longer a constraint. Although that combination has largely favored the offense in digital attacks, an AI era could see the increase of the velocity of response and allow cyberdefenses to match cyberoffenses.

In kinetic warfare, AI will provoke another leap forward. Drones, for instance, will be extremely quick and unimaginably mobile. Once AI is deployed not only to guide one drone but to direct fleets of them, clouds of drones will form and fly in sync as a single cohesive collective, perfect in their synchronicity. Future drone swarms will dissolve and reconstitute themselves effortlessly in units of every size, much as elite special-operations forces are built from scalable detachments, each of which is capable of sovereign command.

In addition, AI will provide similarly speedy and flexible defenses. Drone fleets are impractical if not impossible to shoot down with conventional projectiles. But AI-enabled guns firing rounds of photons and electrons (instead of ammunition) could re-create the same lethal disabling capacities as a solar storm that can fry the circuitry of exposed satellites.

AI-enabled weapons will be unprecedentedly exact. Limits to the knowledge of an antagonist’s geography have long constrained the capabilities and intentions of any warring party. But the alliance between science and war has come to ensure increasing accuracy in instruments, and AI can be expected to make more breakthroughs. AI will thus shrink the gap between original intent and ultimate outcome, including in the application of lethal force. Whether land-based drone swarms, machine corps deployed in the sea, or possibly interstellar fleets, machines will possess highly precise capabilities of killing humans with little degree of uncertainty and with limitless impact. The bounds of the potential destruction will hinge only on the will, and the restraint, of both human and machine.

In kinetic warfare, AI will provoke a huge leap forward.

That being so, the AI age of warfare will be reduced primarily to an assessment not of an adversary’s capabilities but rather of its intentions and their strategic applications. In the nuclear age, we have already entered such a phase—but its dynamics and significance will come into much sharper focus as AI proves its worth as a weapon of war.

With such valuable technology involved, humans may not even be the primary targets of AI-enabled war. AI could in fact remove humans as a proxy in warfare entirely, making war less deadly but potentially no less decisive. Similarly, territory alone seems unlikely to provoke AI aggression—but data centers and other critical digital infrastructure certainly could.

Surrender, then, will come not when the opponent’s numbers are diminished and its armory empty but when the survivors’ shield of silicon is rendered incapable of saving its technological assets—and finally its human deputies. War could evolve into a game of purely mechanical fatalities, the deciding factor being the psychological strength of the human (or AI) who must contest to risk, or forfeit to prevent, a breakthrough moment of total destruction.

Even the motives governing the new battlefield would be alien, to some extent. The English writer G. K. Chesterton once quipped that “the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” An AI war is unlikely to involve love or hate, let alone a concept of soldierly bravery. On the other hand, it may still incorporate ego, identity, and loyalty—although the nature of those identities and loyalties may not be consistent with those of today.

The calculation in warfare has always been relatively straightforward: whichever side first finds intolerable the pain of battle will likely be conquered. The consciousness of one’s own shortcomings has in the past produced restraint. Without such awareness, and with no sense for (and thus a great tolerance of) pain, one cannot but wonder what, if anything, would prompt restraint in an AI that has been introduced into warfare, and what would conclude the conflicts it wages. A chess-playing AI, if it had never been informed of the rules dictating the end of the game, could play to the very last pawn.

GEOPOLITICAL RESTRUCTURING

In every age of humanity, almost as if in obedience to some natural law, there has emerged, as one of us (Kissinger) once put it, a unit “with the power, the will, and the intellectual and moral impetus to shape the entire international system in accordance with its own values.” The most familiar arrangement of human civilizations is that of the Westphalian system as conventionally understood. The idea of the sovereign nation-state, however, is only a few centuries old, having emerged from treaties that are collectively known as the Peace of Westphalia in the mid-seventeenth century. It is not the preordained unit of social organization, and it may not be suited for the age of AI. Indeed, as mass disinformation and automated discrimination trigger a loss of faith in that arrangement, AI may pose an inherent challenge to the power of national governments. Alternatively, AI may well reset the relative positions of competitors within today’s system. If its powers are harnessed primarily by nation-states themselves, humanity could be forced toward a hegemonic stasis, or else toward a new equilibrium of AI-empowered nation-states. But the technology could also be the catalyst of an even more fundamental transition—a shift to an entirely new system, in which state governments would in turn be forced to abandon their central role in the global political infrastructure.

One possibility is that the companies that own and develop AI will accrue totalizing social, economic, military, and political power. Today’s governments are forced to contend with their difficult position both as cheerleaders for private corporations—lending their military power, diplomatic capital, and economic heft to promote these homegrown firms—and as supporters of the average citizen suspicious of monopolistic greed and secrecy. That may prove an untenable contradiction.

Meanwhile, corporations could form alliances to consolidate their already considerable strength. Those alliances might be built on complementary advantages and the profit of amalgamation or, alternatively, on a shared philosophy of development and deployment of AI systems. These corporate alliances might take on traditional nation-state functions, though rather than seeking to define and expand bounded territories, they would cultivate diffuse digital networks as their domains.

AI may pose an inherent challenge to the power of national governments.

And there is still another alternative. Uncontrolled, open-source diffusion could give rise to smaller gangs or tribes with substandard but substantial AI capacities, sufficient to administer to, provide for, and defend themselves within some limited scope. Among human groups that reject established authority in favor of decentralized finance, communication, and governance, such technology-enabled proto-anarchy could win out. Or such groupings might incorporate a religious dimension. After all, in terms of reach, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism have all been larger and longer-lasting than any state in history. In the age to come, religious denomination, more than national citizenship, might conceivably prove the more relevant framework for identity and loyalty.

In either future, whether dominated by corporate alliances or diffused into loose religious groupings, the new “territory” that each group would claim—and over which they would fight—would not be inches of land but a digital landscape, seeking the loyalties of individual users. Linkages between these users and any administration would subvert the traditional notion of citizenship, and agreements between the entities would be unlike ordinary alliances.

Historically, alliances have been forged by individual leaders and have served to augment a nation’s strength in case of war. By contrast, the prospect of citizenships and alliances—and perhaps conquests or crusades—structured around the opinions, beliefs, and subjective identities of ordinary people in times of peace would require a new (or very old) conception of empire. It would also force a reassessment of the obligations entailed in pledging allegiance and the cost of exit options, if indeed any were to exist in the AI-entangled future.

PEACE AND POWER

The foreign policies of nation-states have been built and then adjusted by balancing idealism and realism. The temporary balances struck by our leaders are seen in retrospect not as end-states but as only ephemeral (if necessary) strategies for their time. With each new age, this tension has produced a different expression of what constitutes political order. The dichotomy between the pursuit of interests and the pursuit of values—or between a particular nation-state’s advantage and the global good—has been part of this unending evolution. In the conduct of their diplomacy, leaders of smaller states historically have responded straightforwardly, prioritizing the necessities of their own survival. By contrast, those responsible for global empires, with the means to realize additional goals, have faced a more agonizing predicament.

Since the beginning of civilization, as human units of organization have grown, they have simultaneously achieved new levels of cooperation. But today, perhaps because of the scale of planetary challenges as well as to the material inequalities evident among and within states, a backlash against this trend has surfaced. AI could prove commensurate to the demands of this still-grander scale of human governance, capable of seeing with granularity and fidelity not merely the imperatives of the country but also the interplay of the globe.

We harbor a hope that AI, deployed for political ends at home and abroad, might do more than just illuminate balanced tradeoffs. Ideally, it could provide new, globally optimal solutions, acting on a longer time horizon and with greater precision than humans are capable of, and thus bringing competing human interests into alignment. In the coming world, machine intelligences navigating conflict and negotiating peace might help clarify, or even surmount, traditional dilemmas.

However, if AI were indeed to fix problems that we should have hoped to solve ourselves, we could face a crisis of confidence—of both overconfidence and the lack of confidence. To the former, once we understand the limits of our own ability for self-correction, it may be difficult to admit that we have come to cede too much power to machines in handling existential issues of human conduct. To the latter, the realization that simply removing human agency from the handling of our affairs has been enough to solve our most intractable problems might reveal too explicitly the shortcomings of human design. If peace has always been but a simple voluntary choice, the price of human imperfection has been paid in the coin of perpetual war. To know that a solution has always existed but has never been conceived by us would be crushing to human pride.

In the case of security, unlike that of the displacement of people in scientific or other academic endeavors, we may more readily accept the impartiality of a mechanical third party as necessarily superior to the self-interestedness of a human—just as humans easily recognize the need for a mediator in a contentious divorce. Some of our worst traits will enable us to exhibit some of our best: that the human instinct toward self-interest, even at the expense of others, may prepare us for accepting AI’s transcendence of the self.

• HENRY A. KISSINGER served as U.S. Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977 and as U.S. National Security Adviser from 1969 to 1975.
• ERIC SCHMIDT is Chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project and former CEO and Chair of Google.
• CRAIG MUNDIE is the Co-Founder of Alliant Computing Systems and the former Senior Adviser to the CEO at Microsoft.
• This essay is adapted from their book, Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit (Little, Brown and Company, 2024).

Foreign Affairs · by Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit · November 18, 2024

16. Rhodes Scholarship Recipients for 2025 Include 4 West Point Cadets

​Some of us spent last weekend with about 40 West Point Cadets and Annapolis Midshipmen at an event discussing INDOPACIFIC security.. I have not doubt about the academic excellence at our MIlitary Academies. Although not a graduate of these prestigious institutions myself, I fully support their continued existence and service to our nation.

Excerpt:

Four of the recipients are from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, the most selected from the service academy in one year since 1959.

Rhodes Scholarship Recipients for 2025 Include 4 West Point Cadets

military.com · November 17, 2024

A group of 32 students from the United States have been selected to attend the University of Oxford as part of the prestigious Rhodes scholar program in the coming year among an international class representing more than 70 nations, scholarship officials announced.

Nearly 3,000 U.S. students began the application process for the scholarship covering all expenses at the storied university in Oxford, England, to pursue graduate degrees beginning in October 2025, the Office of the American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust in McLean, Virginia, said in a statement early Sunday.

The 32 recipients include students from 19 states and the District of Columbia attending 20 U.S. colleges and universities. During the application process, 865 students were endorsed by 243 colleges and universities. Committees in 16 U.S. districts then selected 238 finalists for interviews.

Four of the recipients are from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, the most selected from the service academy in one year since 1959. Others include the first Rhodes scholars chosen from Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia and California's Pepperdine University.

Returning students to the program for the first time in decades, Coe College in Iowa had its first scholarship winner in more than 53 years and North Carolina's Davidson College placed a scholar after 25 years without the recognition.

The trust touted the wide-ranging interests of the scholarship winners: a DJ who uses AI in music and medicine, a religious studies major proficient in six languages, an amateur boxer and the youngest elected official in Missouri.

Ramona L. Doyle, American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, said in the statement that in addition to academic excellence, “a Rhodes Scholar should also have great ambition for social impact, and an uncommon ability to work with others to achieve one’s goals."

“They should be committed to make a strong difference for good in the world, be concerned for the welfare of others, and be acutely conscious of inequities,” Doyle said.

The sponsorships were created in 1902 by the will of Cecil Rhodes, a founder of the diamond mining and manufacturing company De Beers. The inaugural class entered Oxford in 1903 and the first U.S. Rhodes scholars arrived the next year. Scholars pursue advanced degrees in subjects ranging from social sciences and humanities to biological and physical sciences, according to the trust.

The Rhodes scholarship is “the oldest and best-known award for international study, and arguably the most famous academic award available to American college graduates," Doyle said.

Sunday's announcement brings the total number of Americans selected for Rhodes scholarships to 3,674 representing 329 colleges and universities, the trust said, noting 675 U.S. women have won the scholarship despite only having been eligible to apply since 1976.

The U.S. scholars chosen for the 2024 class were the first to take part in a screening process in person following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. During the previous three years, the selection process was conducted online.

The scholarships are typically for two to three years but may extend to four. The award covers all fees, a living expense stipend and transportation between England and the recipient’s location. The scholarship is valued at about $75,000 annually, reaching to about $250,000 for scholars who remain in their departments for four years.

military.com · November 17, 2024

17. Can the War in Gaza Be Won?

Can the War in Gaza Be Won?

Debating Israel’s Purpose and Progress

By Noura Erakat, Josh Paul, Charles O. Blaha, and Luigi Daniele; John Spencer

November 18, 2024Foreign Affairs · November 18, 2024

There Is No Victory in Gaza

Noura Erakat, Josh Paul, Charles O. Blaha, and Luigi Daniele

The current war in Gaza is not an isolated conflict that began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched an attack inside Israel. Framing the war this way, as John Spencer does in a recent article in Foreign Affairs (“Israel Is Winning,” August 21, 2024), invites many dubious assertions about Israel’s purported progress toward its war aims and its supposed efforts to protect civilians. And it accepts without question the Israeli government’s official position that “Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population,” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a speech in January. To simplify the conflict to a fight between Israel and Hamas is to ignore the on-the-ground realities that indicate Israel is waging an indiscriminate war on all Palestinians.

A more accurate understanding of the war must take its broader context into account. What is happening now in Gaza is one battle within the larger conflict that has shaped the Israeli-Palestinian relationship since the founding of Israel and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the new state’s territory in 1948. Today’s fight cannot be removed from that history and geography; gaining the upper hand in the current battle is not the same as winning the wider war. Spencer falls into this trap, miscasting Israel’s temporary tactical achievements as strategic victory and underestimating how Israel’s unwillingness to pursue a political resolution that recognizes the Palestinians’ right to self-determination will in the end diminish its chances of success.

In the war Spencer describes, Israel has three aims: “to recover all hostages, secure its borders, and destroy Hamas.” To win such a war, Israel would have had to focus on taking out Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. One might expect Israeli forces to launch precise strikes on Hamas military targets while Israeli diplomats lead an effort to isolate Hamas politically. Instead, Israel has conducted a campaign of broad devastation in Gaza, attacking the territory’s civilian population; demolishing its health, educational, and social infrastructure; and destroying its food production, shelter, and sources of potable water. There is a disconnect between these indiscriminate tactics and the discrete goals that Spencer identifies.

Israel’s actions suggest that its true goal is to terminate Palestinian aspirations for self-determination. As the fighting rages in Gaza, members of Israel’s far-right government, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have vowed to resettle the territory with Jewish Israelis. The minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has cleared the way for Israeli settlers to rampage through Palestinian villages across the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself has denied any possibility of Palestinian statehood, signaling that there is no Palestinian future, with or without Hamas. The Basic Law passed in 2018 by the Israeli legislature made this much clear, affirming that only Jews have a right to self-determination in the territory that includes the West Bank and Gaza. Most recently, the Knesset’s ban on the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA’s operations in the West Bank and Gaza not only ensures a deepening humanitarian crisis but also aims to delegitimize Palestinians’ refugee status and claims to their original homes and lands. Although it insists otherwise, the Israeli government has demonstrated over the past year that its ultimate target is not Hamas but the Palestinian will to resist occupation and subjugation. It is, in effect, applying a military solution to a political problem. Far from moving toward victory, Israel is becoming less secure in the region, less stable at home, and less likely to find a durable solution with the Palestinians.

FAILING STRATEGY

Even by the measures of success that Spencer and the Israeli government rely on, the war is not going well. On all three objectives—recovery of hostages, border security, and eliminating Hamas—Israel claims to have made significant progress, but the evidence suggests otherwise. What progress Israel has made, moreover, offers a troubling precedent for the lowering of moral standards in the pursuit of victory.

The vast majority of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7 who returned to Israel alive were recovered through diplomatic negotiations in November 2023. The Israeli government insists that military force compelled those concessions—a claim Spencer echoes. But Hamas’s expressed willingness to make a deal undercuts that assertion: in October 2023, Hamas issued a statement offering to return all civilian hostages in exchange for the release of all Palestinians held in Israel and an end to hostilities. Israel’s military operations, meanwhile, have killed more hostages than they have retrieved, and the ongoing campaign threatens the lives of those who remain in Gaza. In late August, Hamas killed six Israeli hostages shortly before Israeli troops could reach them, underscoring the need to negotiate rather than use military force to secure their release—an approach supported by the majority of Israelis.

It is true that Israel’s border with Gaza is more secure now than it was before the war, but that is only because the military operation inside Gaza is keeping a lid on cross-border threats. The underlying tensions connected to Israel’s pre–October 7 blockade of Gaza—the very tensions that fueled Hamas’s initial attack—have not been addressed. Limits on trade and humanitarian assistance entering (or leaving) Gaza are far stricter than they were before, and there is still no clear path to granting Palestinians self-determination and other political rights. Even now, Hamas militants have reemerged and attacked Israeli forces in parts of Gaza that the Israeli military had supposedly secured, and the group continues to launch rockets into Israel. As Spencer notes, Hamas has pledged to attack any other foreign security force that comes into Gaza. Thus, to hold its temporary gains, Israel appears stuck in a counterinsurgency campaign for the foreseeable future.

Israel’s actions suggest that its true goal is to terminate Palestinian aspirations for self-determination.

Israel’s other borders, meanwhile, have become less secure, not more. In May, two Egyptian soldiers died in a skirmish with Israeli forces across the border. Although Egypt remains committed to the two countries’ peace agreement, its ability to secure the Sinai border with Israel is increasingly tenuous. At Israel’s northern border, daily clashes between Israel and Hezbollah and other armed groups have displaced more than 80,000 Israeli civilians and a million Lebanese, have left portions of southern Lebanon with Gaza-like devastation, and have not stopped Hezbollah from launching rockets into Israel. Attacks on Israel are coming from farther afield, too, including from Iran and Houthi forces in Yemen.

Finally, as is obvious to most observers, Israel cannot kill its way out of the threat posed by Hamas and other armed Palestinian factions. Despite Israel’s claims, Hamas is not an Iranian proxy; it is a deeply rooted Palestinian movement that cannot be eliminated solely by wiping out its armed wing. As the political scientist Robert Pape argued in Foreign Affairs in June, Israel’s reliance on military tools, particularly airpower, makes Hamas “more popular and its appeal stronger than before October 7,” which in turn makes Israel’s eventual strategic failure more likely. And as CIA Director William Burns put it in September at a public event in London, “the only way you kill an idea is with a better idea.”

Spencer himself noted that after more than ten months of continuous Israeli bombardment, Hamas remained “the main political power” in Gaza. The group is now popular across the region, too: in a poll conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in 16 Arab countries a few months after the October 7 attack, nearly 70 percent of respondents expressed support for Hamas. Far from a political win, Israel’s campaign has earned it a deluge of criticism from scholars, jurists, and the UN International Court of Justice, all of which damages Israel’s geopolitical and economic standing.

What is more, events since the publication of Spencer’s article cast further doubt on the idea that Israel’s goals are limited to defeating Hamas and retrieving the hostages. Israel’s assassinations of the Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh and the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, ought to have provided a clear opportunity for Israel to negotiate favorable terms to end its campaign as the United States encouraged it to do. Instead, Israel has continued its relentless attacks and is still blocking aid deliveries in northern Gaza, where roughly 400,000 Palestinians remain, all of which suggest that Israel’s ultimate goal may be to depopulate the territory. And in the north, the fight with Hezbollah has escalated. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has displaced a million people and devastated portions of that country’s south, which will generate further instability, not security, for Israel.

WHAT KIND OF VICTORY?

The problem with the argument that Israel is winning the war is not just that the analysis is unsound. More important, and more dangerously, it encourages Israel to continue—and tempts others to support—an approach to warfare that causes massive civilian harm. The Gaza Health Ministry puts the death toll at over 43,000, which is roughly two percent of the territory’s population (a proportional figure in the United States would be over six million). The U.S. Agency for International Development reported in August that 96 percent of people in Gaza were at high risk of famine. In a letter published in The Lancet in July, researchers suggested that Israel’s operations in Gaza would end up being responsible for an estimated 180,000 deaths, factoring in not just direct violence but also the long-term effects of proliferating disease and the loss of access to resources.

Israeli forces are acting with systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law and engaging in recurrent attacks launched despite the foreseeable and disproportionate harm they cause civilians. The Israeli army is carrying out major military operations without prior warnings or safe quarter in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, and directly attacking civilians and the infrastructure that is indispensable for their survival.

Spencer calls for Israel to “secure new leadership in Gaza to replace Hamas.” But after having been subjected to the Israeli army’s onslaught, Palestinians in Gaza are highly unlikely to support any leadership “secured” by Israel. The only path out of this quagmire is one that includes an immediate cease-fire, the unfettered flow of humanitarian assistance, the release of Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian captives in Israeli custody (many of whom are held unlawfully, without charge or trial, and subject to abuse and torture), and steps toward a just and lasting political settlement that recognizes Palestinian aspirations for self-determination.

The journalist and former UN peacekeeper Philip Winslow titled his 2007 book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Victory for Us Is to See You Suffer. By this definition, perhaps Israel is indeed “winning.” But such a victory is not one that strategists or military analysts should endorse, nor one that the future historians will commend.

NOURA ERAKAT is a human rights attorney and a Professor at Rutgers University.

JOSH PAUL is a former Director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

CHARLES O. BLAHA is a former Director in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

LUIGI DANIELE is a Senior Lecturer in International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law at Nottingham Trent University.

Spencer Replies

It is hard to have an objective, fact-based debate about Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza when the debaters have no shared definition of war. It is also difficult to discuss goals and strategies in an armed conflict when the boundaries between participants’ actions and observers’ moral interpretations get blurred. Both challenges seem to be at play in Noura Erakat, Josh Paul, Charles Blaha, and Luigi Daniele’s response to my article in Foreign Affairs.

When I teach students about wars, I highlight that wars always have both underlying causes and triggering events. World War I and World War II, for example, had clear underlying causes, triggering events, and start and finish dates. But not all conflicts are so cut-and-dried; some can go on for decades, with multiple wars waged as underlying problems remain unresolved.

The current war between Israel and Hamas, the governing authority of Gaza and an internationally designated terrorist group, is one such example of a discrete war within a wider conflict. This war started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants led an invasion into sovereign Israeli territory and proceeded to murder, rape, mutilate, vandalize, and commit other inhumane acts. That was the triggering event; the underlying problems include a complex history over land ownership, sovereignty, and rights, as well as Hamas’s radical belief that Israel should not exist.

But there was no justification for Hamas’s actions. The day before, a cease-fire had been in place between Hamas and Israel. Hamas had agreed to the truce in May 2021 after an 11-day Israeli air campaign in Gaza that followed Hamas’s firing of 150 rockets into Israel, an opening barrage that killed two Israeli civilians and wounded dozens more. Nearly two and a half years later, Hamas broke that cease-fire.

The only way to break the cycle of violence is to remove Hamas from military and political power.

As for assessing the legality of the decisions of the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza since Hamas’s attack, the focus must be on the actions they took and what they knew or reasonably could have known at the time of those actions. Judging any military’s compliance with laws of armed conflict must be based on these measures, not on the results of a strike or an operation after the fact. This is not to say that the results are irrelevant but to emphasize that they are not definitive. Casualty counts, infrastructure damage, and other outcomes of combat cannot serve as the sole evidence of the IDF’s adherence to or violation of the law.

Basing an argument on these figures is also problematic considering that the civilian casualty numbers released by the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry are unverified and, according to some reports, statistically and methodologically unreliable. But even if the numbers were accurate, they could not provide conclusive evidence that Israeli forces broke the law by launching indiscriminate attacks or intentional attacks on civilians. Making such a case would require information about Israeli intelligence on concrete military targets, what Israeli forces knew about the presence of civilians before military actions began, how it made decisions to use certain weapons or tactics, and the precautions it took to reduce civilian harm.

I have visited Gaza three times since October 7. My analysis of the war is based on what I saw, not on Israeli statements, Hamas’s statements, or videos on social media. I observed both IDF operations and Hamas activities in Gaza firsthand. I witnessed the IDF taking extraordinary steps to mitigate civilian harm and imposing restraints on the use of force as it undertook what may be the greatest urban warfare challenge in modern history. I saw the IDF tracking the movement of civilians and handing out maps to facilitate localized evacuations, pausing the fighting every day for hours at a time to allow civilians to get out of harm’s way and humanitarian aid to be delivered, and in many cases not permitting operations in areas where civilians were present. I also saw Hamas’s cruel use of Gazans as human shields; the tunnels the group built under civilian homes, mosques, and schools; and the militants’ complete lack of care for civilian life.

For observers to project their own values and interests onto Hamas and its supporters is to fall into a dangerous trap. Hamas did not say it conducted the October 7 attacks to advance self-determination, human rights, or prosperity for the Palestinian people. The group’s stated goal was to destroy the nation of Israel and kill all the Jewish people within it, and none of its actions since suggest it has other objectives in mind. As one Hamas official said shortly after October 7, the group intends to continue carrying out attacks until it achieves its ultimate goal.

Hamas has been subjugating the Palestinian people in Gaza since it seized power in 2007. It started attacking Israel in 2008, and it is now the single greatest obstacle to a Palestinian government that would seek coexistence with Israel. In October 2023, Hamas started a war, and it is losing that war. The only way to break the cycle of violence and radicalization in Gaza is for Israel to continue, through legal and methodical means, to remove Hamas from military and political power.

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Foreign Affairs · November 18, 2024

18. Joe Biden's long-range missile call helps Donald Trump

​Excerpt:

A viable peace between Ukraine and Russia is possible, but only if it includes guardrails for Ukrainian sovereignty and mechanisms to prevent Moscow from simply using a deal to reconstitute its forces for a future attack. In that regard, Trump should thank Biden for what he has done here. By playing the hawk, the President has given his successor a chance to offer Putin a choice: does Russia want to face a good cop, or yet another bad cop?

Joe Biden's long-range missile call helps Donald Trump

unherd.com · by Tom Rogan

November 18, 2024 - 9:00am

President Joe Biden has approved Ukraine’s use of long-range US weapons for strikes against military targets inside Russia. It might seem contradictory, but this decision actually helps his successor Donald Trump’s looming effort to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.

Biden’s actions will mean Ukraine can use the ATACMS missile system to reach targets up to 190 miles inside Russia. The UK and France, which have been pushing the US President to make this decision for more than a year now, are highly likely to provide Ukraine with approval to use their own Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles against Russian targets. They were hesitant to do so without prior US approval, due to the risk of allowing Vladimir Putin to fragment Nato’s deterrent posture. But what does this development mean for the future of the war?

At the tactical level, the main benefit for Ukraine is that it can now damage far more key targets in Russia. What’s more, the very threat of these weapons will force Russian and North Korean military units of all kinds to take far greater precautions in concealing their whereabouts.

At the military-strategic level, however, the benefit for Ukraine is relatively limited, as these weapons can’t make up for Russia’s far greater supply of troops and munitions. Still, the weapons offer the incoming Trump administration new leverage to pressure Russia into accepting a peace deal compatible with Ukraine’s long-term sovereignty. When he enters office in January, Trump can now tell Putin that he will keep sending missiles to Ukraine until Russia makes concessions. The President-elect has already indicated that he is aware of the need to impose this pressure on the Kremlin. But by taking this decision now, Biden affords Trump leverage while ensuring that Putin’s anger falls on his outgoing presidency rather than the one set to replace it.

Critics of this decision will warn that it increases the risk of a direct US or Nato confrontation with Russia. Yet it is not Nato which has escalated this conflict. Russia has done just that with its deliberate attacks on apartment buildings and paediatric hospitals, its enjoining of North Korea into the conflict, and its broader campaign of sabotage, arson and act-of-war plots against the West.

These critics have also forgotten a key lesson from the Cold War. Namely, that while deference toward escalation concerns is always important, this must be measured against strategic realities rather than Kremlin rhetoric alone. Putin’s nuclear threats aside, Russia is not going to start a conflict with Nato over this decision for the same reason it did not start a conflict with Nato during the Cold War. Biden’s decision does not threaten Russia’s sovereign existence or Putin’s hold on power, and the Russian President knows he would badly lose both a conventional war and a nuclear war with Nato. To restrict aid to Ukraine simply because of Putin’s rhetoric would allow Russia to secure significant US concessions; in such a scenario, America would have practically no leverage.

A viable peace between Ukraine and Russia is possible, but only if it includes guardrails for Ukrainian sovereignty and mechanisms to prevent Moscow from simply using a deal to reconstitute its forces for a future attack. In that regard, Trump should thank Biden for what he has done here. By playing the hawk, the President has given his successor a chance to offer Putin a choice: does Russia want to face a good cop, or yet another bad cop?

Tom Rogan is a national security writer at the Washington Examiner

unherd.com · by Tom Rogan

​19. American Defense Planning in the Shadow of Protracted War

​Excerpts:

Laying the Foundation for a Long War

During the interwar period, when confronted with an increasingly difficult military situation, U.S. strategists revised their assumptions about the character of a future war with Imperial Japan. That meant letting go of earlier plans to rush to the defense of American possessions in the Western Pacific and devising ways to gradually wear down its potential opponent. Today, serious planning for protraction with China will require similar efforts to grapple with the sources of American success in a long conflict, even if doing so represents a sharp departure from the contemporary American way of war. Yet that will require tackling political and strategic issues that policymakers have so far been eager to avoid.

Undermining an adversary’s geopolitical and economic position is just as important in protracted war as destroying its frontline forces. The United States, therefore, will need to think bigger and deeper when it comes to cost imposition and punishment. For decades, defense officials have sought to keep conflicts geographically constrained and minimize the damage inflicted on non-military targets, even though global force projection — including the ability to strike any target, anywhere in the world — remains an enduring American military advantage. That arguably has left the U.S. military ill-prepared and ill-equipped to degrade a rival’s economic and industrial capacity in a long war. At a minimum, policymakers should consider the range of options to do so, including cost-imposition against targets on Chinese territory and abroad, and begin to search for the most effective way to perform this mission.

Retaining the ability to impose costs and inflict punishment over time means that force preservation becomes increasingly important in protracted war. Washington cannot, then, rush its all of its most valuable assets to the rescue of Taiwan. Of course, it cannot simply ignore the invasion threat that China poses to Taiwan. Not losing, therefore, means finding low-cost ways to prevent China from establishing a military presence in Taiwan, or perhaps imposing pain on any units that it emplaces on the island. It could even mean minimizing direct military intervention at the outset of a conflict so that U.S. forces can be employed later at a time and place of their choosing, if the local military balance swings even further in China’s favor. Policymakers, therefore, need to consider the range of plausible outcomes that exist in between the unlikely extremes of a quick Chinese capture of Taiwan and a quick U.S. defeat of China, and determine which of those outcomes are actually acceptable.

Ultimately, Washington may be due for a fundamental strategy rethink as it ramps up its competition with Beijing. A genuine victory in the most likely conflict scenario — a prolonged, grinding fight — looks quite different from current theories of victory. It leverages different advantages than the current American way of war and it requires far more than a revitalization of the defense-industrial base.

American Defense Planning in the Shadow of Protracted War

Evan Montgomery and Julian Ouellet

https://warontherocks.com/2024/11/american-defense-planning-in-the-shadow-of-protracted-war/

Is the United States headed for a “Suez moment” in a future confrontation with China? Despite the growing prospect of protracted war, U.S. defense strategy appears wedded to getting ready for decisive battle. But the high costs of an elusive short war could handicap Washington in a long fight.

In recent years, as U.S. defense officials have become increasingly concerned about what it would take to deter or defeat a Chinese assault on Taiwan, they increasingly have concentrated on developing the tools necessary to disrupt or degrade a People’s Liberation Army invasion force as it crosses the Taiwan Strait. That includes pursuing ambitious operational goals like inflicting enormous losses on an enemy fleet in a brief span of time. Beijing, it seems, has a strong preference for a short, sharp war that leverages its geographic proximity to the island and exploits Washington’s remoteness from the scene. Washington, therefore, must be able to fight a short, sharp war of its own to stop Beijing from executing a military fait accompli.

Each side might be pursuing rapid decisive battle, or something very close to it, but both sides cannot achieve rapid decisive battle. In war, no amount of mass, lethality, resolve, or luck would change the fact that at least one side, and perhaps both, would find their hopes dashed. Indeed, the historical record suggests that although many militaries plan to win big and win quickly, great-power conflicts are often protracted affairs characterized by gradual attrition. Seemingly decisive battles that do occur, moreover, can turn out to be just the first round of prolonged hostilities, not the precursor to a durable peace.

Consequently, despite the prevailing emphasis on stopping an invasion of Taiwan quickly, there are creeping doubts within the U.S. national security community about Washington’s quest for a swift, geographically contained, and clear-cut victory — and growing fears of a lengthy, global, and indeterminate war. To the extent that the United States is beginning to address these concerns, however, it is focused on mobilizing its defense-industrial base to carry out a lengthy fight if its initial campaign falls short of expectations, not on what the likelihood of a long war could mean for where, when, how, and to what ends the United States should fight from the very start.

Taking protracted warfare seriously means more than simply figuring out how the United States can carry on its preferred type of war over an extended time horizon. Rather, it entails reconciling the fundamental tensions that exist between the conflict that Washington envisions and the one that it is likely to face. A strategy that calls for smashing Chinese military forces in and around the Taiwan Strait might seem like it offers a straight line to victory, but it could leave the United States poorly positioned for a long fight. Preparing for a long fight, however, could require policymakers to make strategic choices that are deeply at odds with the contemporary American way of war, which emphasizes massing forces, responding quickly, and destroying the adversary’s frontline military forces in a limited conflict.

The Decisive Battle Bias

As most U.S. observers agree, China is the rightful pacing challenge for the United States due to its economic growth, military strength, and revisionist ambitions. Despite skepticism in some quarters, there is also an informal consensus that intervening to defeat an invasion of Taiwan should be the pacing scenario for Department of Defense planning given the island’s importance to China’s leadership, the potential strategic ramifications of its fall, and the belief among many defense planners that if the United States can develop the capabilities necessary for success in this contingency, it will be able to prevail in almost any other fight.

If China does opt for invasion, it has strong incentives to move as fast as possible and inflict as much damage on opposing forces as possible. Beijing would undoubtedly like to catch its adversaries off guard, before they disperse, hide, shelter, and fight back. In addition, it would want to take advantage of the time-distance problem that arises because many U.S. reinforcements will be thousands of miles away before rushing to the scene. It could also aim to exploit the nature of decision-making in democracies, which entails time-consuming deliberation and consensus-building, especially when it comes to matters as deadly serious as conflict with a nuclear-armed rival.

The need to turn back an invasion before losses mount and leaders lose their nerve limits U.S. defense strategy options. For instance, a rollback campaign to evict China from any seized territory would cede all or part of Taiwan from the outset, while a punishment campaign via maritime blockade would require so long to take effect that it probably would do the same. That seems to leave Washington with one remaining course of action: a defensively oriented, highly lethal denial campaign that would damage or destroy enough enemy forces to prevent China from gaining control over Taiwan in the first place. In short, if United States does not react quickly and forcefully, and if it does not inflict enormous losses on its opponent, Taiwan could fall, particularly as the military balance between the island and the mainland shifts further and further in the latter’s favor.

The reality for both sides is that decisive battle is historically rare, especially if both antagonists are unwilling or unable to inflict the level of destruction necessary to actually knock their opponent down for the count. Given that the United States and China appear to be preparing for limited war (not regime change or unconditional surrender), and have designed their kinetic forces for tailored attacks on military targets (not widespread attacks on war-related industry), a prospective conflict between them is unlikely to be the exception that proves the rule.

The United States, for example, would have a tough time inflicting attrition sufficient on the People’s Liberation Army to prevent an invasion of Taiwan, at least not without suffering significant losses of its own, due to its other military commitments, the geography of the theater, and the vulnerability of its own forces and posture. Even if it could, the theory of victory underpinning a successful campaign of denial does not explain how the destruction of China’s air and maritime forces would be anything other than the first round of a longer fight against a revanchist rival whose military-industrial capacity would remain untouched. For its part, China might be able to exploit vulnerabilities in U.S. forces and posture to impose a heavy toll on the United States, which could enable it to put forces on the island, depending on how well it fights and how long Taiwan can hold out. But it is highly unlikely that Washington would take these losses lying down, rather than gearing up for round two. And it is equally unlikely, for the time being at least, that Beijing could or would do enough damage to prevent the United States from rearming and reattacking eventually.

The reality, therefore, is that a collision between the United States and China would most likely be a drawn-out affair in which neither side is able to gain a decisive advantage quickly, or in which one side gains a temporary advantage that turns out to be the beginning of a much longer fight. That could lead to one of several possible scenarios: a protracted war over the disposition of Taiwan if China is unable to establish control over the island but is unwilling to stop trying; a protracted war to free Taiwan if the United States fails to stop an invasion but decides that it must restore the island’s independence; or a protracted war between the United States and China in which Taiwan, whatever its status, becomes a secondary consideration. Any of these outcomes seem more plausible than the military fait accompli that many U.S. strategists fear China will achieve or the massive defeat they hope the United States can inflict.

Strategies, Plans, and Assumptions

The bottom line is that U.S. defense strategy toward China is built on a highly questionable assumption that a historically aberrant outcome is a plausible end state for a future great-power war, and therefore that Washington can and should set its sights on a quick and decisive victory in a conflict with China over Taiwan. If rapid decisive battle is unlikely to be in the cards, though, why does it exert such a strong pull on defense planners?

The appeal of a pivotal clash is understandable: No-one wants to fight a long and costly war if a short and successful one could be possible. Nor do policymakers in the United States, or perhaps even China, seem willing to tolerate the enormous losses of blood and treasure that likely would be required to comprehensively defeat their adversary. There are, moreover, a variety of strategic, organizational, bureaucratic, and even psychological factors that can contribute to the conviction that rapid decisive battle is both necessary and achievable.

In the American case, formative historical experiences can shape the views of key leaders. Although it is now more than three decades in the past, the swift drubbing of Iraqi conventional forces during the First Gulf War still looms large in American strategic thought and stands out as the modern apex of American military achievement in a period of maximal American power. By contrast, the long and indecisive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the modern nadir.

In this context, the strategic demands associated with confronting multiple rivals in multiple regions exert a heavy influence on defense planners. If the United States no longer has the ability to successfully fight two wars at once, then keeping adversaries in a box might require winning the first war big and winning it fast, so that potential opportunists will remain on guard and on the sidelines.

At the same time, military organizations have incentives to focus on short wars. This is not necessarily because these organizations have a bias for offense over defense, but because planning scenarios used for strategy are often simultaneously used for constraining service budgets — all else being equal, shorter wars should be cheaper than longer wars. Bureaucratically, the assumption that wars will be relatively short also makes the planning and programming process a comparatively easy one because it privileges quantifiable and easy-to-measure issues such as force flows, exchange ratios, and attrition rates. Long wars, by contrast, turn as much — if not more — on qualitative and hard-to-measures topics such as adversary will and resolve, which gives planners added reason to avoid them. This privileges strategic efficiency over operational effectiveness.

Notwithstanding these factors that can drive policymakers and planners to embrace the goal of rapid decisive battle, concerns about the probability of protracted war are starting to rise within the U.S. national security establishment for a number of reasons, from analysis that highlights the costs both sides are likely to absorb in a Sino-American clash, to the grinding war of attrition still unfolding between a major power and its much smaller and weaker neighbor on the other side of the world. These developments have catalyzed new efforts to revitalize the American defense-industrial base so that it can eventually produce the quantities of materiel necessary to sustain a longer-than-expected war.

Although rectifying shortfalls in production rates, ramping up munitions stockpiles, and improving the ability to reconstitute forces lost in combat are important, these efforts do not address the underlying strategies that may demand more or less war materiel over time. Put differently, the sudden focus on defense-industrial base mobilization amounts to approaching protracted war from back to front — that is, treating it like a short war campaign conducted on a longer timeline when things go wrong, and therefore requiring added supplies to sustain operations beyond the point when they would otherwise run out. Policymakers, it seems, are unwilling or unable to approach protracted war from front to back — that is, reconsidering the objectives of a war and the outlines of a military campaign given the expectation, at the start, that it will extend far into the future.

How to Start a Protracted War and How to Finish It

Approaching protraction as a problem of strategy, not simply as an issue of materiel, entails confronting an uncomfortable dilemma: The tenets of rapid decisive battle, which have influenced American military planning for decades and continue to shape how the U.S. military manages the China problem, are directly at odds with the sources of success in a long war.

For instance, rapid decisive battle generally calls for mobilizing military assets in a theater of conflict, and doing so almost immediately, to set the stage for a showdown and stop an adversary from achieving its operational objectives. Victory is achieved, moreover, mainly by targeting an adversary’s frontline forces to degrade their cohesion and disrupt their ability to maneuver, not by expanding a conflict into peripheral theaters or through targeting a rival’s economy. Policymakers anticipating a protracted war need to make a very different set of calculations, however, both when a conflict begins and while it unfolds.

For instance, as a number of scholars have noted, the first principle of protracted war is to survive the initial fight. So long as the conflict continues and forces remain available, opportunities exist to impose costs on an opponent that might cause them to concede, or to wear down that opponent to a point that it can no longer continue. The quest for rapid decisive battle often goes hand-in-hand with the risk of decisive losses, however, especially when going up against an opponent like China that has designed its forces and operational concepts to cope with a potential U.S. military invention in a regional contingency. Even if Beijing were unable to achieve its objectives despite inflicting such heavy losses, Washington would be poorly positioned to break any stalemate and continue the fight. In a protracted war, therefore, force preservation is just as important, if not more important, than force responsiveness, especially when keeping an eye on having enough forces available over as many years as the war may last.

Meanwhile, making the leap from surviving to winning requires using those remaining forces, along with other military and non-military tools, to put the opponent in a much worse geopolitical and economic position, both in absolute and relative terms. Success in a long war does not come solely from decrementing an opponent’s military power, which can be reconstituted over time, particularly if that opponent has enormous economic and military-industrial capacity, as China does. Rather, success means degrading the sources of an opponent’s military power, including its economic and military-industrial capacity, both at home and abroad. Any strategy that focuses on inflicting materiel losses on military forces and personnel but does not impose significant costs on an opponent’s economic wealth and geopolitical position is unlikely to create the conditions for a meaningful victory. This clashes with the imperative to target frontline forces, especially within a small geographic box like the Taiwan Strait, in pursuit of decisive battle against an opposing military alone.

In the end, the United States appears to be pursuing a strategy, and designing a force, for a low probability scenario: an invasion of Taiwan that can be halted quickly at the point of attack, and at an acceptable cost, through the destruction of adversary frontline units. This fits well with the American military’s preference for a swift response, overwhelming force, and escalation management, even when it does not play to American strengths. By putting its forces at risk and keeping coercive options off the table, however, those decisions could leave Washington disadvantaged in the type of scenario it is more likely to confront, namely an indecisive conflict that drags on over time and extends far beyond the narrow confines of the Taiwan Strait.

Laying the Foundation for a Long War

During the interwar period, when confronted with an increasingly difficult military situation, U.S. strategists revised their assumptions about the character of a future war with Imperial Japan. That meant letting go of earlier plans to rush to the defense of American possessions in the Western Pacific and devising ways to gradually wear down its potential opponent. Today, serious planning for protraction with China will require similar efforts to grapple with the sources of American success in a long conflict, even if doing so represents a sharp departure from the contemporary American way of war. Yet that will require tackling political and strategic issues that policymakers have so far been eager to avoid.

Undermining an adversary’s geopolitical and economic position is just as important in protracted war as destroying its frontline forces. The United States, therefore, will need to think bigger and deeper when it comes to cost imposition and punishment. For decades, defense officials have sought to keep conflicts geographically constrained and minimize the damage inflicted on non-military targets, even though global force projection — including the ability to strike any target, anywhere in the world — remains an enduring American military advantage. That arguably has left the U.S. military ill-prepared and ill-equipped to degrade a rival’s economic and industrial capacity in a long war. At a minimum, policymakers should consider the range of options to do so, including cost-imposition against targets on Chinese territory and abroad, and begin to search for the most effective way to perform this mission.

Retaining the ability to impose costs and inflict punishment over time means that force preservation becomes increasingly important in protracted war. Washington cannot, then, rush its all of its most valuable assets to the rescue of Taiwan. Of course, it cannot simply ignore the invasion threat that China poses to Taiwan. Not losing, therefore, means finding low-cost ways to prevent China from establishing a military presence in Taiwan, or perhaps imposing pain on any units that it emplaces on the island. It could even mean minimizing direct military intervention at the outset of a conflict so that U.S. forces can be employed later at a time and place of their choosing, if the local military balance swings even further in China’s favor. Policymakers, therefore, need to consider the range of plausible outcomes that exist in between the unlikely extremes of a quick Chinese capture of Taiwan and a quick U.S. defeat of China, and determine which of those outcomes are actually acceptable.

Ultimately, Washington may be due for a fundamental strategy rethink as it ramps up its competition with Beijing. A genuine victory in the most likely conflict scenario — a prolonged, grinding fight — looks quite different from current theories of victory. It leverages different advantages than the current American way of war and it requires far more than a revitalization of the defense-industrial base.

Evan Montgomery is a senior fellow and the director of research and studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He previously served as special advisor to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Julian Ouellet is a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He previously served as vice director for Joint Force Development and Design Integration on the Joint Staff.

Image: Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Andre T. Richard via The Department of Defense

20. 5 Questions with Dave Dilegge on Small Wars and COIN Cocktails

​An excellent blast from the past (2014) from Ryan Evans at War on the Rocks and his interview with the alte Dave Dilegge and his vision and philosophy of Small Wars Journal. Arizona State University and the Future Security Initiative have launched a SWJ 2.0 and are honoring the vision and legacy of Dave Dilegge and taking SWJ to the next level.

5 Questions with Dave Dilegge on Small Wars and COIN Cocktails

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/11/18/5-questions-with-dave-dilegge-on-small-wars-and-coin-cocktails/

by Ryan Evans

|

11.18.2024 at 02:41pm

(Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint from a War on the Rocks article published in May 2014. This is article captures a conversation between Dave Dilegge, the founder of Small Wars Journal, and War on the Rocks’ Ryan Evans. Thanks to Ryan Evans and War on the Rocks for allowing Small Wars Journal to republish this article).

This is the latest installment of our 5 Questions series, in which we feature an expert, practitioner, or leader answering — you guessed it — five questions on a topic of current relevance in the world of defense, security, and foreign policy. Well, four of the questions are topical. The fifth is about booze. We are War on the Rocks, after all.

This week I spoke with Dave Dilegge, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Small Wars Journal. Dave also serves as a Director at Small Wars Foundation. He is a retired USMCR Intelligence and Counterintelligence/HUMINT officer, and former USMC civilian intelligence analyst, as well as a defense consultant in the private sector.

1. Dave, thanks so much for doing this. Could you tell us about the origins of Small Wars Journal? Did you ever anticipate it would grow to become one of the more influential online forums in the defense world?

It’s my pleasure to be interviewed by War on the Rocks. You have a great site with outstanding contributors. It is most certainly a must read.

As for SWJ’s origins, here is the Reader’s Digest version: In the mid and late ‘90s I was working urban operations issues for the Marine Corps to include supporting concept development, experimentation, and development of tactics, techniques and procedures. Most of what we required had to be open source (unclassified). I did a lot of online research and began to get numerous requests for what I found. In 1998, tired of sending out laundry lists of web addresses, I created what I called my electronic file cabinet — The MOUT (Military Operations on Urban Terrain) Homepage on Geocities and it quickly became a must-read site for Joint, Marine and Army personnel working urban operations issues. This effort morphed into the Urban Operations Journal, my private open-to-anyone site and an official-use-only version funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

In 2003, I became a project officer for the Marine Corps-Joint Forces Command’s Joint Urban Warrior program that included seminars, workshops and an annual war-game and was lucky enough to be assigned an office that I shared with then Marine Major Bill Nagle. Bill and I often chewed the fat over the terms MOUT and urban operations — on how they had a “last 300 yards” kicking down doors and clearing rooms feel about them thus diverting attention away from the larger issues associated with why we were in cities and villages in the first place and what we needed to be seriously thinking about. We thought “Small Wars” or “Irregular Warfare” was more inclusive in describing what we were then doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a likely future operating environment. Being Marines, and in deference to the USMC’s 1940 Small Wars Manual, we decided to rebrand the Urban Operations Journal as the Small Wars Journal. SWJ was launched in February of 2005.

As far as Small Wars Journal’s influence, no, I did not fully anticipate how influential we would become — only that we might influence those “niche” groups working or participating in Small Wars-related issues and operations. That said, if I had to define one event that exposed us to a much larger and wider audience it would be when, in 2007 and 2008, Dr. David Kilcullen in his role as the Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) blogged for SWJ concerning counterinsurgency and “The Surge.” His participation in an open forum — and most importantly, one that allowed for reader participation — provided an “insider account” of what MNF-I was doing and intended to do during a critical period of the war.

But I think, for the most part, our influence and popularity was incremental over time and due, for the most part, to our dedication in maintaining a clearinghouse of resources and a springboard for discussion and collaboration across traditional boundaries. In short — a serious, professional, open source, unclassified, inclusive, unofficial community of interest and practice.

There are two SWJ-related issues that keep me awake at night. The first is keeping Small Wars Journal relevant and responsive. It’s been a long and sometimes grueling haul, both professionally and personally (and not just for me — for all our volunteers and contributors). Right now I’m the only one running the day-to-day operations for the site, excluding our Council moderators, and there are certain things I need to improve on now that I’ve got my second wind. My first order of business is to be timelier in responding to all the article contributors and to back away from publishing the longer thesis and thesis-like contributions — while good, not an easy edit or read. There is more, but I’ll leave it at that.

2. What role has SWJ served as a forum for the development of and debate over counterinsurgency and how has that changed over the years? What made SWJ the go-to forum for key thinkers and practitioners alike?

I think our biggest role here was, and is, SWJ’s big tent philosophy and our official neutral position on COIN issues (though I have chimed in here and there with my personal views). This has not really changed over the years.

In keeping with the centrality and importance of the whole of government (interagency) aspect of Small Wars our community of interest and practice includes U.S. and international military, government civilians and contractors, non-governmental organizations, academia, and the news media. This is critically important as we don’t often get this right in Washington or in the field.

Our Journal articles and Blog posts represent a range of professional “levels” — from senior civil servants and generals to junior officers, civilians, and non-commissioned officers. General officers and senior civilians have remarked that they use SWJ as a way to stay abreast of what junior personnel think is important and care enough to write about it. (As an aside, there are at least 10 new “must read” sites recently launched, many by junior officers. War on the Rocks is one of these and it’s great to see so many SWJ alumni keeping the intellectual and innovation flame lit.)

Concerning SWJ’s neutral position, at the height of the Iraq counterinsurgency debate we were called Attila the Hun warmongers one day and counterinsurgency-loving tree-huggers the next. So I guess we were doing something right.

3. To what degree as counterinsurgency over-dominated our discussion and understanding of small wars, which encompass more than just counterinsurgency?

The second SWJ-related concern that keeps me up at night is this issue. Frankly, I believe the over-domination was a good thing — COIN was the issue of the day. What worries me now is that we will throw out the baby with the bath water. Insurgents aren’t going away anytime soon, we will most likely just “fight” them differently. The U.S. should avoid taking a counterinsurgency leadership role in a foreign country. While this was likely not possible in Afghanistan and Iraq where counterterrorism and conventional operations morphed over time (for various reasons, some not very good) into actively opposing insurgent threats, counterinsurgencies should be led by the host nation with U.S. and allied civilian and military organizations in support. With enough foresight and political will other Small Wars-related activities such as foreign internal defense and stability and reconstruction could mitigate the need for U.S.-led counterinsurgency operations.

Despite the calls for “no-more Iraqs and Afghanistans” that echo U.S. post-Vietnam War sentiments, the capability to understand and conduct Small Wars in the current and future security environment remains central to protecting and advancing U.S. interests. We can’t just wish them away and build the force we want to fight the war we want.

Here’s as good a place as any to address what the hell is a Small War? We get asked this quite a bit. So here is a history capsule:

Colonel C. E. Callwell, a British Army officer who was one of the first to write extensively on Small Wars (Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, 1896), admitted that it was difficult to define such operations. He explained that the term had no particular connection with the scale on which any campaign may be carried out; rather, it was used to describe operations of regular armies against irregular forces and required modifications to the art of war to suit the circumstances of each particular Small War.

The Small Wars Manual defined Small Wars as “a vague name for any one of a great variety of military operations. As applied to the United States, small wars are operations undertaken under executive authority, wherein military force is combined with diplomatic pressure in the internal or external affairs of another state whose government is unstable, inadequate, or unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and of such interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation.”

David Galula (Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, 1967), a French military counterinsurgency expert, best described the non-military component of Small Wars as “the soldier must… be prepared to become a propagandist, a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a boy scout. But only for as long as he cannot be replaced, for it is better to entrust civilian tasks to civilians…to let the military direct the entire process…is so dangerous that it must be resisted at all costs” [emphasis mine].

The Small Wars Journal describes Small Wars as an imperfect term used to describe a broad spectrum of politics by other means. Today the term encompasses or overlaps with a number of familiar terms such as counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, support and stability operations, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and many flavors of intervention. Operations such as noncombatant evacuation, disaster relief, and humanitarian assistance are also often either a part of a Small War, or have a Small Wars feel to them. Small Wars involve a wide spectrum of specialized tactical, technical, social, and cultural skills and expertise, requiring great ingenuity from their practitioners.

WTF, why the history lesson? Because SWJ is much more than a “counterinsurgency site” (a common misperception).

4. With the release of the new Army/USMC manual on insurgency and counterinsurgency, how do you anticipate the debate will change? How would you like to see it change? Is there any chance we will move beyond the often bitter debates over what we should or should not have done in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or is that an important debate to continue?

Right now, from my perch, I see the current debate over insurgency and counterinsurgency as hashing over the same old issues by the same corners. This will change over time and SWJ will be there — though I am concerned that the current big debate over force structure, capabilities as well as roles and missions is not looking kindly at anything that smells remotely like a Small War.

As for the present, a copy of the soon to be published Army and Marine Corps doctrine manual Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies has been provided to Small Wars Journal by the Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Division. Small Wars Journal has arranged for at least seven reviews of the manual — five have already been published [Editor’s note: See below for links to this series of reviews].

In a nutshell, SWJ’s role is to keep the intellectual capital flame lit through all this, keep the forum open, and push important issues into the forefront when we can.

5. The counterinsurgency debate is famously (and perhaps not helpfully) divided between so-called COINdinistas and COINtras. If you had to guess the favorite drink of each camp, what would they be?

Concerning the drinks for the COIN camps, I suspect the drink of choice for the COINdinistas is the Tartan Day Rob Roy [scotch, vermouth, bitters, lemon twist] and for the COINtras the Queens Park Swizzle [rum, simple syrup, lime juice, bitters]. Both are bitter drinks.

About The Author

• 
  
• Ryan Evans
• Ryan Evans Ryan Evans is the CEO of Metamorphic Media, the founder of War on the Rocks, and the publisher of the Texas National Security Review. When he was young and didn't know any better, he worked at various think tanks in Washington and London. He also worked as a deployed U.S. Army civilian in Afghanistan. He enjoys reading good writing, talking with interesting people, and single-malt scotch.

21. SOF’s Role in Conflict

​A 51 minute Podcast that focuses on SOF in support of LSCO.

(I am looking forward to the next podcast in two weeks with Sean McFate and Ed Croots on wars in the Pacific.)

https://irregularwarfare.org/podcasts/sofs-role-in-conflict/

SOF’s Role in Conflict

November 15, 2024 by Don Edwards Leave a Comment

Episode 118 focuses on SOF in Conflict. The podcast falls within the SOF Special Project. Contact Director SOF Adam Darnley-Stuart to join the team. 

Episode 118 of the Irregular Warfare podcast explores the definitions of conflict and SOFs value proposition to the joint force. Our guests discuss the unique capabilities and humans required to build a capable and credible Special Operations Force to prepare the theater and set the conditions if conflict arises. Finally, our guests offer insights into the need to focus on permissions, mandates and authorities to enable full employment of the Special Operations Force. 

The Honorable Chris Maier is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. Chris oversees and advocates for Special Operations and Irregular Warfare throughout the Department of Defense to ensure these capabilities are resourced, ready, and properly employed in accordance with the National Defense Strategy. 

Colonel Patrick Nelson is the Commander of the 7th Special Forces Group. His command assignments include: 24 months as Commander, Special Forces Operational Detachment- Alpha 726, deploying to Ecuador, Paraguay, and Afghanistan. He also spent 12 months in support of Operation Enduring Freedom/ Afghanistan; 24 months as commander, 2nd Battalion where he deployed twice to Afghanistan in support of Operation Freedom Sentinel.

Frank Struzinski and Don Edwards are the hosts for this episode. Please reach out to Frank and Don with any questions about this episode or the Irregular Warfare Podcast.

The Irregular Warfare Podcast is a production of the Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI). We are a team of volunteers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners in the field of irregular warfare. IWI generates written and audio content, coordinates events for the IW community, and hosts critical thinkers in the field of irregular warfare as IWI fellows. You can follow and engage with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn.

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter for access to our written content, upcoming community events, and other resources.

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