Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."

– David Hume

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist”

– James Baldwin

“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”

– Thomas Mann

1. Irregular Warfare: Back to Basics

2. Actions create consequences: reiterating “tell me how it ends" – the case for explicit articulation

3. Can Trump get a deal on Ukraine? by Sir Lwarence Freedman

4. "De Oppresso Liber": What Trump's national security advisor pick means for Ukraine

5. The Ten Commandments for DC - Guidance for the New and Wanna Be Swamp Denizen. (Slightly revised for 2025.)

6. Addressing 4th, 5th Generation, and Hybrid Warfare Threats to the United States: The War Has Started

7. A makeshift memorial grows in Ukraine’s capital after 1,000 days of war

8. 1000 Days of War by Mick Ryan

9. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 18, 2024

10. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 18, 2024

11. US signs long-sought intelligence sharing deal with the Philippines

12. Ukraine Is Now a Proxy War for Asian Powers

13. Can Trump’s Hardball Tactics on China Ease America’s Fentanyl Crisis?

14. AUKUS alliance seals plans for collaboration on hypersonics testing

15. Water Can Be a Global Security Issue. This New Tool Will Help The Military Plan

16. Former Preschool Teacher Downs Russian Cruise Missile with Her First “Live” Shoot

17. How Trump Can Build on Biden’s Successes in Asia

18. Was Attack on Ammo Depot in Russia’s Bryansk Region First Cross-Border ATACMS Strike? Russia Says Yes

19. How Ukraine's use of longer-range U.S. missiles might affect course of the war

1. Irregular Warfare: Back to Basics

While SOF focuses on relevance and specifically support to the joint force in LSCO, we should keep in mind the best way to support the joint force and US national security writ large across the spectrum of conflict is to be proficient in the following areas:

1) Irregular warfare

2) Unconventional warfare

3) Support to political warfare

SOF must be able to apply its comparative advantages across the spectrum of conflict:

1) influence

2) governance

3) support to indigenous forces and populations

These are the two SOF trinities: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2021/01/06/two-special-operations-trinities/

Irregular Warfare: Back to Basics

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/11/19/irregular-warfare-back-to-basics/

by Renee Novakoff

11.19.2024 at 06:01am

The US successfully learned the lessons of using irregular warfare (IW) at the tactical level against terrorist groups following 9/11, however, it seems to have forgotten some of the lessons it learned during that period and during the Soviet era as it debates how to use IW against strategic adversaries. To successfully compete against our adversaries in the non–kinetic space, we must focus on irregular warfare supporting capabilities to include creativity, regional expertise, and IW intelligence specialists.

As the US competes for global influence against its adversaries and positions itself to avoid a kinetic fight, we are debating on how to employ irregular warfare (IW). For the purposes of this commentary, IW involves activities short of conventional and nuclear warfare that are designed to expand a country’s influence and legitimacy and weaken or deter its adversaries.

The U.S. focus on IW has been erratic. In 1962, President Kennedy challenged West Point graduates to understand: “another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin, that would require a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, forces which are too unconventional to be called conventional forces…“ In 1987, Congress passed the Nunn-Cohen Amendment that established Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the Defense Department’s Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) office. Both concepts that remain in the growing phase despite major irregular warfare successes in counterterrorism activities. A GAO report published in March 2024 highlighted an ongoing issue that makes solidifying the SO/LIC role difficult. SO/LIC has a deficit of some 30 plus hires (a good third of its proposed workforce).

The goal to use the irregular warfare concept as a consistent, strategic tool is not a new one for the U.S. Then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in 2008 that “DoD needed “ to display a mastery of irregular warfare comparable to that which we possess in conventional combat.” In 2010, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen said, “We must not look upon the use of military forces only as a last resort, but as potentially the best, first option.” However, in December 2022, a RAND commentary pointed out that the US military failed to master irregular warfare above the tactical level. Even after twenty years of best practices of irregular warfare in the counter terrorism area, the 2020 Irregular Warfare Annex to the National Defense Strategy emphasized the need to institutionalize irregular warfare “as a core competency with sufficient, enduring capabilities to advance national security objectives across the spectrum of competition and conflict.”

Adversaries Ahead of Us

U.S. adversaries are experts at IW and do not have many of the legal or oversight hurdles that US IW specialists have. Chinese military writings highlight the PRC’s use of what we would call irregular warfare in the three warfares. This involves using public opinion, legal warfare, and psychological operations to spread positive views of China and influence foreign governments in ways favorable to China. General Wang Haijiang, commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Western Theatre Command, wrote in an official People’s Republic of China (PRC) newspaper. The PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative and Digital Silk Road are prime examples of using economic coercion as irregular warfare. Their Confucius Center underscore how they are trying to influence foreign populations through language and cultural training.

Russia uses IW to attempt to ensure the battle is won before military operations begin and to enhance its conventional forces. Russia calls this hybrid war and we saw this with the use of “little green men” going into Crimea in 2014 and the use of the paramilitary Wagner forces around the world. Russia also has waged a disinformation campaign against the US on digital platforms and even conducted assassinations and sabotage on foreign soil as ways to mold the battle space toward their goals.

What Is Needed

A reason for the US’ slow road to getting irregular warfare against peer competitors right is not enough focus on the support structures for irregular warfare. The US architects of IW seem to primarily focus on oversight structures and budget, and less on how to develop the enduring capability. In the 2023 and 2024 National Defense Authorization Acts, Congress gave the Department of Defense direction on the organization of SO/LIC and on funding SOCOM, with little direction on the development of support capabilities. In February 2023, Seth Jones, senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Congress that the US is still too heavily weighted toward preparing for conventional war. He highlighted military education and wargames as focused on this direction and not for training or informing irregular warfare. He also underscored the focus of Special Operations Forces (SOF) on direct action capabilities but not on such activities as information operations and other unconventional warfare.

Over the past twenty or so years, through the counterterrorism fight, the US learned how to use on-the-ground specialists, develop relationships at tribal levels, understand cultures to influence the population, and when needed, buy its way into influence. The US has the tools and the lessons learned that would enable a more level playing field against its adversaries who routinely use irregular warfare but it is ignoring those lessons and focusing on conventional weapons and technology to counter adversaries. A key to the way forward is to develop SOF personnel and commensurate intelligence professionals to support the SOF community who understand the people, the geography, and the societies they are trying to influence and affect.

Success in irregular warfare requires approaches that are informed by knowledge of a people’s attitudes, beliefs, frustrations, and geopolitical culture. In 2013, Army Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno, Marine Corps Commandant James Amos, and U.S. Special Operations Commander William McRaven observed that the Pentagon’s concept of competition does not reflect the fundamental reality that “competition and conflict are about people.” They concluded that the “growing problem in linking military action to achieving national objectives” was in significant part because the Pentagon tends to “focus on the clash and lose sight of the will” of the population.” They forecasted that our ability to shape a peaceful and prosperous global environment would rest more and more on our ability to understand, influence, and exercise control within the human domain.

The Department of Defense and the intelligence community have flirted with the need for expertise in the human domain or social cultural sphere for years. The Army once had its Human Terrain Teams. The Department of Defense put millions of dollars into socio cultural work in the 2015-time frame. This focus went away as we started concentrating more and more on near peer competition. Instead, we focused on technology as a way to compete with these adversaries—better weapons and more complex collection platforms. We even looked to cut Human Intelligence (HUMINT) to move toward what some call a lower risk approach to collection—using technology instead of humans. Meanwhile, Shane Shorter, senior enlisted leader for SOCOM recently warned, “you can’t surge relationships, you can’t surge trust. It’s constantly deploying to that same area. It’s understanding the culture. It’s drinking the cups of tea, eating the dinners, singing the karaoke.“ Meanwhile, a recent GAO report claims that less than half of SOF personnel have completed any foreign language training.

SOF personnel are considered the military’s most creative members. They are chosen for their ability to adapt, blend in, and think outside the box. This ingenuity needs to be encouraged. Shorter recently underscored this. He said “…creative thinking humans with the ability to interact with our partners and allies will make the difference.” We need a mindful balancing of oversight without stifling that uniqueness that makes irregular warfare so successful. The 2023 NDAA authorized the establishment of a Center for Security Studies in Irregular Warfare for developing IW concepts and doctrine. While some of this creativity may come naturally, we need to ensure that we put in place training that speaks to inventiveness, that pulls out these members’ ability to think through the impossible. Focused military classes across the services as well as the Irregular Warfare Center must build on latest practices for underscoring creativity and out of the box thinking. This entrepreneurial approach is not typically rewarded in a military that is focused on planning, rehearsals, and more planning, so how do we ensure that creative operatives are rewarded?

Focusing on Intelligence and Irregular Warfare

The other important part of the equation for irregular warfare is intelligence. This foundation for irregular warfare work is often left out in the examination of what is needed for the US to move IW forward. Intelligence officers who support IW need to have the same creative mindset as the operators. They also need to be experts in their regional areas—just like the SOF personnel.

The intelligence community’s approach to personnel over the past twenty or so years works against support for irregular warfare. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the intelligence community has moved from an expertise-based system to one that is more focused on processes. Once we had deep experts on all aspects of the adversary—analysts or collectors who had spent years focused on knowing everything about one foreign leader or one aspect of a country’s industry and with a deep knowledge of the language and culture of that country. With many more adversaries and with collection platforms that are much more expensive than those developed in the early days of the intelligence community, we cannot afford the detailed expert of yore anymore. The current premise is that if you know the processes for writing a good analytical piece or for being a good case officer, the community can plug and play you in any context. This means, we have put a premium on process while neglecting expertise. As with all things—we need to balance these two important aspects of intelligence work. In an address to a West Point graduating class in 2011, then Secretary of Defense Gates warned of the intelligence community’s turn from expertise driven analyst to process driven. Having started his career as an analyst, he understood the need for expertise and even in 2011 call for more emphasis on language skills and culture studies.

Even the latest Army cuts, some 4,000 Army SOF forces, show the emphasis on technology and the lack of understanding that we need both technology specialists and regional experts.

No doubt, a process-based approach to intelligence disciplines allows for greater flexibility. With this approach, we do not have to focus on creating a group of China experts, a similar group of Russia experts, and another group of counter terrorism (CT) experts who spend their careers on one problem set. The theory is that we can surge these analytical or HUMINT whiz kids to any problem and within a short period of time, they will be able to perform at high capacity because they know the basics. This approach also fits with what we are being told our new, younger workforce wants—the ability to try different things. This approach, however, puts irregular warfare at a disadvantage. In irregular warfare, precise and actionable intelligence becomes the linchpin of effective operations. We need to understand how the enemy thinks to be able to provide that precision to the operator. This insight comes only after years of studying the adversary.

To truly understand and use irregular warfare, we need to develop expert regional analysts and human intelligence personnel. Those individuals who understand the human domain that they are studying. We need to reward those experts and celebrate them just as much as we do the adaptable plug and play analyst or human intelligence personnel. Individuals who speak and understand the nuances of the languages of our adversaries, who understand the cultures and patterns of life are the SOF member’s best tool for advancing competition in irregular warfare. Developing this workforce must be a first thought, not an afterthought in the development of our irregular warfare doctrine.

CIA Director William Casey testified before Congress in 1981: The wrong picture is not worth a thousand words. No photo, no electronic impulse can substitute for direct on the scene knowledge of the key factors in a given country or region. No matter how spectacular a photo may be it cannot reveal enough about plans, intentions, internal political dynamics, economics, etc. Technical collection is of little help in the most difficult problem of all—political intentions. This is where clandestine human intelligence can make a difference.

Not only are analytical experts important in support of irregular warfare but so are HUMINT experts. We have focused on technology to fill intelligence gaps to the detriment of human intelligence. The Defense Intelligence enterprise has looked for ways to cut its HUMINT capability when we should be increasing our use of HUMINT collection and HUMINT enabled intelligence activities. In 2020, Defense One reported on a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) plan to cut US defense attaches in several West African countries and downgrade the ranks of others in eight countries. Many advocate for taking humans out of the loop as much as possible. This, the theory is, lowers the risk for human capture or leaks. As any regional expert will tell you, while satellites and drones can provide an incredible amount of intelligence from pictures to bits of conversation, what they cannot provide is the context for those pictures or snippets of conversation. As Director Casey inferred, it is only the expert who has lived on the ground, among the people he/she is reporting on who can truly grasp nuances, understanding local contexts, allegiances, and sentiments.

Even the latest Army cuts, some 4,000 Army SOF forces, show the emphasis on technology and the lack of understanding that we need both technology specialists and regional experts. Army SOF units are slated to decrease but they will get engineers and software specialists. While it is important to continue to upgrade technology and have specialists who fly drones and perform other data functions, those functions must be fused with human understanding of the adversary and the terrain. While algorithms can sift through vast amounts of data, human operatives and analysts ensure the contextual relevance of this data. Technologies are not sophisticated enough to read and report on the nuances of feelings and emotions. The regional experts equip SOF operators with the nuanced understanding required to navigate the complexities that make up the “prior to bang” playing field.

Conclusion

While methodologies and tools evolve with time, the need for contextual, human-centric understanding for being able to develop plans and operations in the realm of irregular warfare remains a constant. Those who try to make warfare or intelligence into a science miss the truth, that to be proficient in either, art is a must. We need the expertise to be able to decipher the stories, motives, and aspirations that make irregular warfare unique. Regional intelligence experts discern the patterns, motives and vulnerabilities of adversaries; key needs for developing irregular warfare campaigns. We need seasoned human intelligence personnel, targeteers, and analyst’s expert on the adversary to be able to do this. We also need to develop and reward the creativity that is so needed in the IW world.

The cost of all of this is but a rounding error when compared to the development of new technical intelligence platforms and the platforms’ massive infrastructure. Yet, this rounding error is a key lynchpin for irregular warfare and irregular warfare is our most likely avenue for avoiding a kinetic war. Human operatives, out of the box thinking, and expert analysts and human intelligence personnel are the needed bridges that connect data into actionable insights to allow our SOF community to practice the type of irregular warfare we have proven historically that the US. can provide.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Tags: irregular warfare, small wars

About The Author

Renee Novakoff
Renee Novakoff is a forty-year veteran of the intelligence community. She currently serves as the Deputy Director for Intelligence for Sensitive Activities and Special Programs in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense of Intelligence and Security in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Ms. Novakoff has authored numerous articles and is a noted speaker on intelligence matters. She has served at the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, US SOUTHCOM, Defense Intelligence Agency, Joint Staff, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence where she was Acting National Intelligence Manager for Western Hemisphere and Deputy National Intelligence Manager for Russia, Europe, and Eurasia.

2. Actions create consequences: reiterating “tell me how it ends" – the case for explicit articulation

Thought provoking insights from one of my mentors.

Dr. Watson was one of the great speakers who spoke to our forum with the USMA and USNA cadets and midshipmen last Saturday at our Global Future Leaders Initiative of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy.

She offers wise advice for all national security professionals.

Actions create consequences

reiterating “tell me how it ends"

the case for explicit articulation

https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/p/reiterating-tell-me-how-it-ends?utm

Cynthia Watson

Nov 19, 2024

My husband, a veteran who served proudly for three decades, and I participated in a forum on the Asia Pacific Saturday with thirty current Midshipmen and an equal number of Cadets from the Military Academy. Three panels of practitioners (and me) discussed issues relating to the Korean peninsula, China, the interplay of nations within the Indo-Pacific, and other topics these kids (and some of them looked so young) will confront for the duration of their military careers, whether the minimum obligation of five years or forty-five. It was a satisfying day for which I sincerely thank the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, our hosts.

As we drove home, my husband quietly observed we introduced an utterly essential concept to these officers-in-training: the value of articulating explicitly what we expect as a result of our actions. General David Petraeus famously used a shorthand twenty years ago to explain our policy choices in the Middle East: tell me how this ends. The expression of our desired endstate, not merely a “win or lose” binary, is vital to our goals around the world. Focusing on the desired endstate opens the door to obviating our tendency to fall in love with a single instrument of statecraft while blinding us to its limitations. By considering how results, we have the option to seek the widest array of tools and means to accomplish a clear cut set of conditions.

Yet, we seem to do this so rarely. In particular, following the Cold War (perhaps because of how we explain the end of that struggle to ourselves?), Americans rely overwhelmingly on a single tool as we approach the world—the military. It most definitely is the world’s finest, best educated cadre of men and women who took an oath to defend the Constitution. But we over-rely on it, probably because we know how many resources (nearing $1 trillion annually depending on how we categorize some programs) we allocate to the armed forces.

Do not misunderstand as I am proud of those who serve honorably in uniform. I am honored I had the privilege to work with them for thirty years. I know that service members and their families sacrifice a great deal to serve in an All Volunteer Force. But, I am also proud of those who serve our nation in other national security capacities. National security service is not a zero sum game but an integrated team if we are going to succeed.

I see a couple of difficulties with relying so heavily on one instrument. First, in our democracy, civilians bear ultimate responsibility for choosing policies yet we turn so often to only a small portion of the country. Military officers thus play an outsized role in conceptualizing what our policy endstate should be. There is nothing wrong with that but they, like any of us, use their training as the lens by which to view the world. The old phrase “if all you use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

In Iraq after toppling Saddam in April 2003, the military became the body to whom we asked so much in rebuilding civil society that we intended to be non-military. There were a lot of reasons things went wrong but putting civil enterprises in the armed forces’s tasks was certainly one. The military was not the right bunch of folks to help Iraq establish a post-Baathist society.

The general and flag officers of our All Volunteer Force feel a profound obligation to execute tasks assigned to them and to achieve any outcome asked of them, even if that task or endstate is unachievable. These are “can do” folks. Coming off kick ass success in a 96 hour campaign against Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1991, the country and certainly the Force assumed the military could defeat all future adversaries and accomplish any obligation yet that confidence was hubristic. The more recent missions have neither been Iraq 1991 or ending the Cold War against a decrepit Soviet Red Army redux.

More importantly, we refuse to recognize that our ability to create overall outcomes is more limited than we assume. International affairs are dynamic rather than static under a single player. Ronald Reagan’s threats influenced Mikhail Gorbachev’s thinking after the latter assumed power in 1986 but the collapse of the Soviet Union was largely under the weight of their rigid, economically untenable system—precisely as George Kennan predicted in his 1946 Long Telegram.

I heard a retired ambassador argue only last week that our greatest strength is to influence policies of others in ways that advance our national interests rather than assuming we have a mandate to fix others. Both Iraq and Afghanistan were monumental failures across the board because we tried using instruments, especially our armed forces, to remake the two societies without recognizing what that would look like as an endstate—laying democracy over first a deeply divided Sunni-governed country with a vast Shi’ite population and second a geographically challenged region replete with various competing Islamic clans. Was our objective ever achievable in either place within a time period that U.S. taxpayers were going to sustain? Seriously?

Nor was Vietnam ever going to be a participatory democracy with harmony among the various subgroups any more than any other country might replicate our democracy with its peculiarities and strengths. Others may embrace democracy but no other country is composed as we are, has experienced our history, or has the same strategic culture. In far too many of these places, the armed forces are at the root of menacing popular security so having our military as the visible implementers or supporters of key solutions is risky at best.

National security can’t be merely the realm of the civilian and military leaders; it must have public support or it is guaranteed to fail—anywhere. Wishful thinking or planes full of cash won’t eradicate that reality.

But assuring the “experts” and the public are discussing the same explicit endstate strikes me as an unavoidable first step. If we all know what we seek to see with some specificity in the end, then more analysis by a range of sources may—no guarantee but it’s worth trying—create more fruitful discussion of alternate or additive instruments to achieve the goal. As it is right now, we are far too often expecting the military, even with the vast resources we provide, to accomplish things that are clearly not their strength or focus—and too often create conditions that make the endstate harder to reach because of unexpected consequences.

We had these same conversations thirty years ago, by the way, when I heard many military officers rue being tasked as peacekeepers rather than warfighters. Yes, the armed forces of this country are talented, well-trained, well-resourced (relative to anyone else on the planet) but they are also asked to do many things that are not their specialties.

Civilians are wrong to ask the military to do everything. Senior officers are put in an uncomfortable position to do what the civilian chain of command requires even if it is an unachievable military objective. Therein lies a great deal of our problem with how we imagine outcomes. We seem to operate as a society with the belief that the military can, against all odds, do everything because we know they bloody well will try. But, we sadly haven’t looked at the ending, figuring it will magically appear and we will all embrace it. We also just assume the country or group we seek to “fix” will know we do it because we are noble, good, and have their interests in mind. Sadly, we haven’t figured out that other countries have interests which often diverge from ours regardless of how much we tell them we respect them as sovereign states. Plus, so many of our desired endings simply are not unachievable in a time or manner we are willing to bear, if at all.

In short, more accurate, honest explication of “telling me how it ends” is vital for our success as a nation—for domestic and international reasons. We may not like hearing we cannot accomplish everything satisfactorily but that provides us options to look to alternative visions that get us where we want to end within the constraints we face.it also can likely save many lives and perhaps even some bucks.

Is my humble suggestion guaranteed to create success? Nope. I wish I could say it was though I most definitely can say that what we have been practicing for thirty-five years this month since the Berlin Wall came down is not working to support our interests unless we define those interests as a world without a repeat use of a nuclear device against an adversary (that is what we have done which is no insignificant matter, by the way). We have also facilitated an unimaginable increase in the standard of living for billions of people but we don’t see that as how the story ends as we see other threats on the horizon.

Some of you will assume this is solely the business of security professionals but I cannot disagree more strongly. These are matters for each and every one of us so please do not hesitate to send some thoughts to us all! I don’t have all the answers so you may convince me I am completely off base. Do weigh in, please.

Thank you for your time reading Actions. Today’s topic calls to mind the long-term consequences of our actions over the last three quarters of century. I appreciate your time and I especially laid the subscribers who offer me financial resources to read so many different sources. Have you considered becoming a subscriber this year?

It was a stunning morning, replete with what appeared a watercolor landscape.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Linda Robinson, Tell Me How this Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs, 2008.

3. Can Trump get a deal on Ukraine? by Sir Lwarence Freedman

Two $64K questions.

A sobering conclusion (that offers a glimmer of hope in the face of stronger pessimism):

It is always unwise to be dogmatic about what may happen next, although I remain pessimistic that even with a determined push by the new administration to find a deal one will be found. Putin needs more than Trump can deliver. Without a clear victory there are more risks for Putin in ending the war than continuing with it. He can still hope that at some point Ukraine will succumb to the constant attacks on land and from the air. If Russia expects the US to cut its support irrespective of what has happened in any negotiations, then it will to be able to take even more territory. But he also has to be aware that if Trump does decide that Putin has let him down and that Zelensky has been more faithful, then the new administration might pile on the pressure. The diplomatic game that is about to begin is therefore one that will be played for very high stakes. It is being talked up as the endgame, and it is possible that it will lead to the end of this dreadful war, with all its loss and suffering. It is, unfortunately, as likely that it will turn out to be just another stage in the middle game.

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Can Trump get a deal on Ukraine?

And will he continue to support Ukraine if he fails to do so?

https://samf.substack.com/p/can-trump-get-a-deal-on-ukraine?utm

Lawrence Freedman

Nov 19, 2024

∙ Paid

An ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) of the type that Ukraine will now be able to use to strike targets within Russia.

Since Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election questions have been asked about whether he will push Ukraine into an unjust and unstable peace that will give Vladimir Putin all he wants, or that, even worse, he might just abandon Ukraine and leave it to cope as best it can without any help from the US. These questions matter enormously to Europe. Anxious discussions are already underway about whether and how Ukraine can be supported without the US, as it continues to resist Russian aggression. In the event of it being asked to accept an unsatisfactory deal, one precluding NATO membership, are there ways to give Ukraine confidence in its long-term security while it seeks to rebuild its economy and repair its cities?

We do not know the policies Trump will adopt on the war after 20 January and, in all probability, neither does he. This is not only because of his famed unpredictability, or the uncertainties surrounding the fighting, but also because Ukraine is nothing like as important to him as it is to Europeans. He has not appointed people to senior positions in his government with a Ukraine policy in mind. He has appointed them above all for their loyalty, to repay favours, and to demonstrate as sharp a break as possible with the liberal mainstream and the Biden administration. In the case of the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and the FBI his aim is to purge them of his actual and perceived enemies to prevent them thwarting his every move, which is what he believes they did during his first term in the White House.

He does have priorities but Ukraine is not high on the list. More or less in order these are: stopping migration into the US and deporting as many as possible of those who have entered illegally; tax cuts and deregulation; tariffs on China and possibly everyone else as an alternative source of revenue; rowing back on the green agenda; gearing up more generally to confront China; backing Israel in whatever it intends to do to conclude its wars; and then, down the list, to somehow end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

His priorities, in practice, may look different. They will be determined by events and the immediate challenges he faces and the speed with which he can get his nominees confirmed. Because neither the deportations nor tariffs require Congressional votes and can be directed from the White House this is where he will start. Soon these will be dominating the headlines. Once the plans begin to be implemented they will cause immediate uproar. On immigration, there is already a fight building up between the maximalists, expecting to deport hundreds of thousands of people as quickly as possible, and minimalists who worry about questions of costs and practicality and also the loss of the agricultural sector’s workforce. The same tension can be expected on tariffs, with the maximalists ready to add to the costs of all imports to encourage domestic producers and the minimalists fearful of the inflationary impact of going too far and the possibilities of all-out trade wars.

His stated policy on Ukraine is to end the war with a deal. The first question is therefore can he get a deal and the second is if he cannot how much does he then support Ukraine. To explore these question I first look at Trump’s appointments and how these will affect decision-making on Ukraine. I then note President Zelensky’s efforts to get close to Trump and President Putin’s determination to carry on as before, offering no hint of concessions or inclination to de-escalate. After considering what the Biden administration can do in its last two months, and assessing the impact of the belated decision to ease the restrictions on the use of long-range systems against targets in Russia, I then identify the steps Europeans can take to influence the new administration’s policy.

Appointments

Trump is demanding that all his appointments, however questionable, are approved quickly by the Senate, preferably through the arcane device of recess appointments. Early indications are that Senators will not relinquish readily one of their key powers. If Trump had appointed remotely qualified or competent individuals to all key roles then things might have been expected to run smoothly, but he did not and so it won’t. The process can be brutal for those unprepared and without good stories to tell. Even if they get through, weeks might pass before they can take up their positions.

Matt Gaetz for Attorney General is the most vulnerable to scrutiny, because of allegations of sexual abuse and because he is despised by many Republicans. Two others are especially relevant to the Ukraine question. For Fox-News host Peter Hegseth, nominated to be Secretary of Defense, the main enemy appears to be a ‘woke’ culture (very broadly defined). He combines a modest military career with far-right views and no executive experience. Tulsi Gabbard, nominated to be Director of National Intelligence, is the least sympathetic to Ukraine of all nominees. She has a penchant for conspiracy theories, and a record of supporting Bashar al-Assad in Syria and of parroting Russian propaganda points. She has no background in intelligence. Both these figures may not survive the nominations process. If the nominations process is circumvented then in both cases they will struggle to get a grip on organisations that they will find unresponsive.

The two key figures on Ukraine policy, however, will have no trouble. Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor does not need Senate confirmation, and Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State should get through the process unscathed. It is worth noting that Rubio, as someone who has spent a lot of his time in the Senate on the rest of the Americas may well find himself dealing with the fallout from the deportation push and extra tariffs. So we can assume that Waltz will be leading on Ukraine policy. Waltz has questioned US aid packages to Ukraine and demanded that Europeans do more. He has followed Trump in urging diplomatic moves to end the war but he has also not ruled out stepping up support for Ukraine if Putin appears uncooperative. These were his comments from the day before the election.

‘Well, [Trump’s] very focused on ending the war rather than perpetuating it and - you know, and really crafting a strategy to get both sides to the table. I think it's perfectly reasonable that this is going to come to some type of diplomatic resolution.’

‘And first and foremost, you would enforce the actual energy sanctions on Russia. Russia is essentially a gas station with nukes. Putin is selling more oil and gas now than he did prewar through China and Russia. And you couple that with unleashing our energy, lifting our LNG ban, and his economy and his war machine will dry up very quickly. I just spoke with the speaker of the Parliament of Lithuania. She buys 85% of their oil and gas from Texas and Louisiana. She said, what do you want me to do? Go back to buying from Russia? - because we've constrained our energy supplies.’

‘So I think that will get Putin to the table. We have leverage, like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well. And then, of course, I think we have plenty of leverage with Zelensky too.’

It is also worth recalling Trump’s own description of his approach from last July:

‘I know Zelensky very well, and I know Putin very well, even better. And I had a good relationship, very good with both of them. I would tell Zelensky, no more. You got to make a deal. I would tell Putin, if you don't make a deal, we're going to give him a lot. We're going to [give Ukraine] more than they ever got if we have to. I will have the deal done in one day. One day.’

I have addressed the problems surrounding any peace negotiations many times, most recently here. In their comments since the election neither Zelensky nor Putin have indicated any new flexibility on their negotiating positions. But that would not be expected in advance of a new diplomatic round.

The Ukrainian government was well aware of the possibility of a Trump victory and has been doing its best to get as close as possible to the president-elect and those around him for some time. Zelensky was quick to congratulate him on his victory and has embraced the idea of an early push for a diplomatic settlement. He remarked on 16 November:

‘It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens.’

Zelensky added that Ukraine ‘must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means.’ He has given Trump no reason to ditch him.

Putin’s Inflexibility

Meanwhile Putin has made no obvious effort to ingratiate himself with the president-elect. After the election there was a report that the two had spoken and that Trump had urged Putin not to escalate (a request which if made has gone unheeded). But then the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that a conversation had taken place. Putin later congratulated Trump on his victory and described him as ‘manly’ for the way he dealt with the assassination attempt.

What we know of Putin’s current views, which are no different from his previous views, comes from his call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz on 15 November. Scholtz has been much criticised for re-opening conversations with Putin without serious coordination with either Zelensky, who expressed concerns that it weakened Russia’s isolation, or other European leaders. It is best understood in the context of the coming German election. It might empower others to try their hand at some unilateral diplomacy but Scholtz did not emerge with much to show for his efforts.

On his account he gave Putin a ticking off for invading in the first place but got no new guidance on a way out. According to the Kremlin’s readout ‘Putin explained the root causes of the conflict to Scholz and said that Moscow remains open to resuming the talks that Kiev broke off.’ He was reported as stating that:

‘Russia’s terms are “well known,” as outlined back in June. He demands that Ukraine adopt a neutral status, remain nuclear-free, and undergo demilitarization and denazification. Additionally, the Russian leader insists on protecting the rights of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine and recognizing Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions as part of Russia, along with the removal of all Western sanctions.

As Sam Greene notes in an excellent analysis,

‘the biggest problem Trump creates for Putin is that Putin is no longer the most unpredictable player in the game. As the structurally weaker party in relations with the West, Putin has long relied on unpredictability as a strategic asset. By manufacturing and manipulating uncertainty, he has been able to ameliorate his own weaknesses while minimizing his opponents’ advantages, as they struggle to understand his objectives and to formulate their own responses. Playing the game that way, however, is difficult to do if you’re not the only unpredictable contestant.’

Sam assesses Putin’s most likely response to a diplomatic initiative is ‘to keep going, while maintaining the illusion of an opportunity for peace.’

There is currently ferocious fighting everywhere along the front line with two sectors of particular importance - Kursk in Russia and Donetsk in Ukraine. In both Russia is trying to take territory held by Ukrainian forces and in both Russian forces are advancing. Donetsk is important because Putin wants at a minimum to have control of all the Donbas, made up of the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, and there is still some way to go with Donetsk. For the past year Russian forces have been getting closer to Pokrovsk, with what are referred to routinely as ‘staggeringly’ high casualties of between 1,000 to 2,000 a day killed and wounded and the associated loss of equipment. Ukrainian tactics, for want of anything better, have largely been to inflict as much attrition as possible on Russian units in the open before withdrawing when their positions became untenable and they risked being surrounded.

In Kursk Russia is having to retake its own territory, seized by Ukraine in a surprise offensive over the summer. A common assumption was that Putin would prioritise the Donbas over Kursk, leading to the observation that Ukraine was unwise not to do the same. While territory held by Ukraine is tiny compared to the size of Russia, and to the Ukrainian territory held by Russia, the fact that it holds any at all is becoming an embarrassment. If there is any chance of negotiations Putin does not want Zelensky to have any bargaining chips. With past deadlines for the recapture of Kursk missed – at first set for 1 October and then election day of 5 November – now Putin wants the Ukrainians pushed back by 20 January. To that end a force of some 50,000 troops has been assembled, including some 10,000 North Koreans, and the counter-offensive has begun.

On 17 November Russia mounted a massive attack, expected for some time, on Ukraine’s energy supplies, aiming to worsen what is already a very difficult situation for Ukraine now that winter is setting in.

One interpretation is that Putin is hoping that a campaign of maximum pressure now will put Ukraine in a weak position so that it will be unable to resist a demand from Trump to agree to the sort of deal that Putin could sell as a victory, or else, in the absence of a deal, it just buckle under the onslaught. The issue is not whether Putin is prepared to negotiate - he is not going to refuse to talk - but what sort of an agreement he has in mind. This can only be guess work but I suspect at the moment he believes that a simple cease-fire serves Ukraine’s interests, given that militarily it is currently on the back foot, and would like time to sort out its manpower issues and replenish its arsenal. That view may change if in two months Russia’s progress has been limited and its daily losses remain high when a cease-fire might appear attractive to Moscow for similar reasons. But if we concentrate on what he has said, he will only agree to a deal that is definitive in transferring territory to Russia, preventing Ukraine from becoming part of the West and not just of NATO, keeping it economically and militarily weak, and ending sanctions on Russia.

Final Efforts from Biden Administration

The Biden administration is trying to strengthen Ukraine’s position before Trump arrives. Over this year its approach has been frustrating in its caution. The issue of giving Kyiv permission to use long-range systems to attack well inside Russia has involved fine distinctions about targets which if attacked risk escalation, as if these distinctions really mattered in a war in which Ukraine is fighting for its existence against an enemy that aggresses, subverts and strikes with impunity. The time when long-range strikes would have made most difference was some months ago before Russian moved its air bases central to attacks on Ukraine out of range of the US ATACMS and the UK Storm Shadow. The dithering meant an opportunity was lost. Now Biden has relented because Russia has escalated by recruiting North Korea as an ally. It is not wholly clear but it would seem that the new dispensation only applies to targets in Kursk where the North Koreans have been deployed. It is these sort of incremental and tardy shifts that have exasperated Kyiv and led the government to wonder whether Trump with his shock treatment might be better.

More positively, the Biden administration is also making other efforts over its last couple of months to get more weapons and ammunition into Ukraine. It has available some $5.5 billion in presidential drawdown authority, and possibly more. This enables the US to surge out of its own stockpiles - munitions for artillery, HIMARS, F-16s, air defences and so on. The problem is that in the US - and also in Europe - the stockpiles are depleted and new production has been slow to get going. Part of the Trumpian critique is that support of Ukraine has undermined US readiness for war elsewhere. So even with best efforts this last minute surge may be disappointing. The only new possibility may be if the well-stocked South Korea is persuaded to respond to the North’s support for Russia by raising its support for Ukraine.

The European response

Europe need be an alarmed spectator to all of this. It will have opportunities to influence Trump’s early decisions. Unfortunately Germany will be hors de combat once the election campaign is underway, and French President Macron is not wholly in command of his own government. The UK therefore will have a role, especially given its good relations with NATO’s northern tier countries who have been the most robust on supporting Ukraine.

There are six potential elements of European policy.

First, recognise that for better or worse the US will be taking the lead on any negotiations. Trump needs to test his proposition that there is a deal to be done and Putin is only really interested in talking to the US. He continues to show contempt for the government in Kyiv which he dismisses as a US puppet. He wants to rewrite European security arrangements and will hope that Trump’s expressed scepticism about NATO can be turned to his advantage. Exactly how and at what level the US begins to engage with Russia remains to be seen – there has been talk of Trump appointing an envoy to explore what is possible before the two leaders engage. I would be surprised if Waltz would advise a summit unless he was very sure of a positive result. This will require evidence of genuine flexibility in Russia’s position away from its maximalist demands. Whatever happens will not be done in ‘a day’.

Second, demonstrate to Trump that there will be fewer costs backing Ukraine than abandoning Ukraine. In terms of backing Ukraine, and easing the US defence burden in NATO, European countries need to demonstrate that they are ready to sustain and extend the recent rises in defence spending. For the UK this might mean giving a definite date when defence spending will reach 2.5% of GDP – say 2028 - and setting a new target of 3% for the early 2030s, as well as making a larger financial commitment to Ukraine. If Ukraine faces collapse, or indeed does collapse, then the impact on Europe will not only be destabilising but also very expensive.

Third, make it clear to the new administration that they will back Zelensky if he rejects an attempt to impose an unacceptable deal on Ukraine. Ukrainians know that holding on to US support and getting a cease-fire is worth some concessions, including territorial, but there are limits. Acknowledging current realities, for example, is not the same as being obliged to make a formal concession of territory to Russia. Most importantly they want some credible guarantees of their security, and if that can’t be from NATO membership then it needs to be something else. One idea is to deploy a multi-national force inside Ukraine that can raise the stakes for Russia should it break the conditions of a cease-fire, or a wider settlement, and renew its aggression. A senior Ukrainian official, quoted by the New York Times, explained:

‘The territorial question is extremely important, but it’s still the second question. The first question is security guarantees.’

The same official was quoted pointing out the need to ensure any cease-fire line would not stifle economic recovery after the war. The conditions need to suit investment. As noted above for the same reasons Putin may have little interest in a simple cease-fire.

Fourth, while recognising the many challenges facing Ukraine, it is important not to succumb to the idea that Russia can keep this war going indefinitely at the current level of intensity. The Russian economy is showing signs of creaking under the strain of the war – with high inflation, yet to be reduced through high interest rates, and insufficient resources to sustain the civilian sector and infrastructure. This is about cumulative pressure rather than any sudden collapse. We have limited knowledge of internal Kremlin debates but there have been indications of anxiety about the long-term effects of keeping the country on a war footing in this way.

Fifth, reinforce Waltz’s suggestion that there are measures, including strengthening sanctions, that could add to these pressures on Russia.

Sixth, stress the importance of viewing Ukraine in the wider context of US foreign policy. An outcome widely seen as a victory for Russia would also be seen as a victory for all those who have supported Russia – notably China, Iran, and North Korea (and, given Rubio’s interests, Venezuela). It would be inconsistent with one of the core themes of Trumpian foreign policy – the need to demonstrate strength to adversaries – to deliver to this group what would be seen internationally as a defeat for the West. It would be a victory for Beijing as well as Moscow.

It is always unwise to be dogmatic about what may happen next, although I remain pessimistic that even with a determined push by the new administration to find a deal one will be found. Putin needs more than Trump can deliver. Without a clear victory there are more risks for Putin in ending the war than continuing with it. He can still hope that at some point Ukraine will succumb to the constant attacks on land and from the air. If Russia expects the US to cut its support irrespective of what has happened in any negotiations, then it will to be able to take even more territory. But he also has to be aware that if Trump does decide that Putin has let him down and that Zelensky has been more faithful, then the new administration might pile on the pressure. The diplomatic game that is about to begin is therefore one that will be played for very high stakes. It is being talked up as the endgame, and it is possible that it will lead to the end of this dreadful war, with all its loss and suffering. It is, unfortunately, as likely that it will turn out to be just another stage in the middle game.

4. "De Oppresso Liber": What Trump's national security advisor pick means for Ukraine

Excerpts:

The 10th Group Special Forces, founded in 1952 and dedicated to defending Europe for 72 years, was pulled out of Ukraine just weeks prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion. These soldiers wanted to stay and fight alongside Ukraine Armed Forces. It was a political decision by the U.S. President’s team, most likely, as I understand, by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

There is much debate in Washington, DC and Brussels that the fear of escalation has led to the slow “drip- drip-drip” approvals of both weapons systems, aircraft, and ammunition for Ukraine. Even when the Department of Defense and Congress were unanimous on certain supplies, it is said that at the choke point stood Jake Sullivan. The latter has neither any military background nor training in weapons systems to make those judgments. Sullivan decides, not advises. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and former President Dmitry Medvedev have continued to threaten escalation, they have thus had the U.S. National Security Advisor hold back defense capabilities for Kyiv. Now, with Mike Waltz, the role of the National Security Advisor will be restored to “advising”, and President Trump will make all major decisions.

In my opinion, Ukraine should be very hopeful of the change. Former Special Forces officer Mike Waltz is not taking the job with the plan to abandon the oppressed Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories. I believe he is to promote “De Oppresso Liber” as per his nature and values. And I believe President Trump has a plan to bring all the resources of the United States to bear to end the war, by liberating Ukraine, and making NATO pay for the permanent international force along the new DMZ between the 1991 borders of Ukraine and Russia.

"De Oppresso Liber": What Trump's national security advisor pick means for Ukraine

by Dan Rice

11.14.24

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/3926980-de-oppresso-liber-what-trumps-national-security-advisor-pick-means-for-ukraine.html?utm

"De Oppresso Liber": What Trump's national security advisor pick means for Ukraine

14.11.2024 20:20

The National Security Advisor is one of the most important American positions that impact Ukraine.

Last week I was honored to speak at the Kyiv Economic Forum about the U.S. elections, after President Trump had won. As we all know, U.S. support is critical for the future of Ukraine to defeat Russia and many in Kyiv are concerned whether this assistance would remain in place. Prior to the election, considerable uncertainty was about to who would be president. Now that this uncertainty has ended, there is now more uncertainty as to how Donald Trump and his administration will lead in relation to Ukraine. I suggested to the audience at the Forum and wrote in a column for Ukrinform to watch the four most important Trump appointees to help determine the future U.S. support. The four positions are the National Security Advisor (in the Biden administration it’s Jake Sullivan), the Secretary of Defense (currently Secretary Lloyd Austin), Secretary of State (currently Antony Blinken), and CIA Director (Currently Bill Burns). I spoke at length about the most important, in my opinion, of these four key positions with regards to Ukraine. And that’s the National Security Advisor.

This week the appointments have been announced but, again, there’s uncertainty as to what they will do once they are in the role on January 20. CIA Director will be John Ratcliffe, the former Director of National Intelligence during Donald Trump’s previous term. The Secretary of State will be Marco Rubio, a Senator from Florida. The Secretary of Defense will be Pete Hegseth. And the National Security Advisor will be Congressman Mike Waltz. All four are perceived as “hawks” against Russia, China, and Iran.

There are some clear differences between President Trump’s first term appointees and those picked for the second term. The Trump team during his previous presidency included several very prominent personalities and retired general officers. That didn’t go too well. The clashes between generals Mattis, Kelly, Milley and McMaster vs. President Trump are well known and widely documented. This cabinet will not be a ’team of rivals’. All these people are loyal to Donald Trump. Opponents raise concerns of a “dictatorship” buildup because everyone on the team firmly sticks to a general line, which poses a risk of a rigid “group think”. Supporters say this is a natural development of an overwhelming election win and a mandate to implement President Trump’s vision. Regardless, we all await the reveal of President Trump’s policies, but they might not be announced until he takes office on January 20, 2025.

It is also important to note that after the election, both House and Senate are now firmly in control of the Republican Party. Under Trump, the Republicans will control the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. What this means is that they control the agenda, the bills that go forward, and the amount of funding for all major subjects including Ukraine. That puts even more power in the President’s hands than normal wherever competing interests might arise within Congress.

For Ukraine there were three options with the new administration, and the first two were Bad to Worse.

1. Do more of the same (Bad)

2. Do less of the same (Worse)

3. Do more of something different (Best).

President Trump now has incredible authority, more so than normal such as when a divided Congress held up the Supplemental for six months that expectedly turned out really damaging to Ukraine. Now is the time for him to wield incredible power to achieve the best interests of the United States National Security objectives.

It is inconceivable that President Trump will abandon Ukraine. This is not “another Afghanistan”. NATO is firmly and unanimously behind Ukraine, too. The United States House and Senate are 80% behind Ukraine. By abandoning Ukraine, would lose the support of the majority in Congress that he needs to pass his domestic agenda. Notwithstanding it goes against 100 years of American international leadership to support freedom-loving people.

With regards to President Trump saying he could solve the war in “one day”, while that seems infeasible it is his intent, he has tremendous powers that have not been utilized by the United States against Russia in economic, political, and military terms. He has been President before and he knows the enormous powers at his disposal. Ukraine should see Trump having so much power with both houses of Congress as a tremendous strength in their country’s favor.

The historical parallel would be the worst international crisis in the past 50 years for the United States – the Iranian hostage crisis that started November 3, 1979, and lasted until Ronald Reagan’s inauguration on January 20, 1981. Twenty minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the hostages were released from Iran, and an aircraft lifted off the Tehran Airport with 52 previously held hostages. Reagan is credited by his supporters as having solved a 444-day hostage crisis on his first day in office. So the precedent has been set to solve a major international crisis on Inaugural Day with a new administration taking over the White House. Reagan’s supporters claim the Iranians were terrified of the incoming president and released those people out of fear. The supporters of outgoing President Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, claimed that the Iranians merely held the hostages until Carter was out of office, and would have let them go no matter who was the new president. But the precedent was set anyway. President Trump was 34 years old on that day, and remembers those dramatic developments well.

Many Ukrainians are currently oppressed in occupied territories. I believe the Trump administration will make it a priority to liberate the oppressed and it comes down to the character of the new National Security Advisor, Colonel Mike Waltz.

December 2022: Rice, Chairman McCaul, General Milley, Representative Waltz, and former Attorney General Barr, discussing the need for cluster munitions for Ukraine.

Many have written about his background as a three-term Member of Congress, former U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret), generally referring to him as a hawk. But very few have mentioned Waltz’s values and those of the organization (U.S. Special Forces) that he represents in Congress. He is not only an SF officer, he is the first one in history to become a Member of Congress. The U.S. Army Special Forces is the most highly trained of the Special Operations soldiers that the United States has in the two million-strong military. All U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) undergo an intense two-year training program. They all have to speak foreign languages because they are trained in unconventional warfare. Their motto is “De Oppresso Liber”, or “To Free the Oppressed”.

The 10th Group Special Forces, founded in 1952 and dedicated to defending Europe for 72 years, was pulled out of Ukraine just weeks prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion. These soldiers wanted to stay and fight alongside Ukraine Armed Forces. It was a political decision by the U.S. President’s team, most likely, as I understand, by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

There is much debate in Washington, DC and Brussels that the fear of escalation has led to the slow “drip- drip-drip” approvals of both weapons systems, aircraft, and ammunition for Ukraine. Even when the Department of Defense and Congress were unanimous on certain supplies, it is said that at the choke point stood Jake Sullivan. The latter has neither any military background nor training in weapons systems to make those judgments. Sullivan decides, not advises. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and former President Dmitry Medvedev have continued to threaten escalation, they have thus had the U.S. National Security Advisor hold back defense capabilities for Kyiv. Now, with Mike Waltz, the role of the National Security Advisor will be restored to “advising”, and President Trump will make all major decisions.

In my opinion, Ukraine should be very hopeful of the change. Former Special Forces officer Mike Waltz is not taking the job with the plan to abandon the oppressed Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories. I believe he is to promote “De Oppresso Liber” as per his nature and values. And I believe President Trump has a plan to bring all the resources of the United States to bear to end the war, by liberating Ukraine, and making NATO pay for the permanent international force along the new DMZ between the 1991 borders of Ukraine and Russia.

Dan Rice, President of American University Kyiv, graduate of U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and combat veteran

*Author's opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Ukrinform's editorial board

5. The Ten Commandments for DC - Guidance for the New and Wanna Be Swamp Denizen. (Slightly revised for 2025.)

Please go to the link to view the 8 pages. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7264338332434755587/?utm

The Ten Commandments for DC - Guidance for the New and Wanna Be Swamp Denizen. (Slightly revised for 2025.)

Ronald A. Marks III

• 1st

Visiting Prof, George Mason U, Schar School|Former CIA Official and Capitol Hill Staffer|Member, Council on Foreign Relations|Managing Partner, ZPN Strategies|National Security Lecturer

15h •

15 hours ago

6. Addressing 4th, 5th Generation, and Hybrid Warfare Threats to the United States: The War Has Started

Excerpt:

Conclusion

The United States must act decisively to counter the evolving threats posed by hybrid, fourth, and fifth-generation warfare. The adversarial strategy of exploiting critical vulnerabilities, particularly undersea infrastructure, demands a proactive and multifaceted response. By aligning strategic, operational, and tactical measures with a renewed focus on peace through strength, the U.S. can protect its interests, deter aggression, and uphold global stability in the face of unprecedented challenges.

Addressing 4th, 5th Generation, and Hybrid Warfare Threats to the United States: The War Has Started

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/addressing-4th-5th-generation-hybrid-warfare-threats-united-robinson-lpkwc/?trackingId=kWyUbubYldiFKKXxq16JEA%3D%3D

Ken Robinson

National Security, Counter Terrorism, Cyber Security, and Multi-Media Entertainment Professional

November 19, 2024

By: Ken Robinson

Problem Statement

The United States faces an unprecedented array of threats stemming from the rapid evolution of modern warfare. Fourth and fifth-generation warfare, alongside hybrid tactics, are being weaponized by adversarial states and non-state actors to undermine U.S. security, global stability, and the rules-based international order.

Central to this threat matrix is the targeting of critical infrastructure, including undersea communication cables, which could severely disrupt command, control, communication, and intelligence (C3I) capabilities.

This jeopardizes strategic awareness and operational readiness, particularly as tensions escalate with Russia's recent deployment of 10,000 North Korean troops to the Kursk region and Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles within Russian territory.

Failure to address these threats effectively risks severe strategic surprise, undermining the ability of the United States and its allies to respond to aggression, maintain peace, and protect national sovereignty.

Discussion

Background: The Last Six Months

Undersea Infrastructure Sabotage:

· Multiple incidents of physical damage to critical undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, including the Finland-Germany C-Lion1 cable and the Lithuania-Sweden link. Both were confirmed to have sustained physical damage likely caused by external interference.

· The severing of cables has highlighted vulnerabilities in global communication and economic systems, as these cables carry 97% of the world’s internet traffic and $10 trillion in daily financial transactions.

Russian and Allied Activities:

· Increased Russian military activity around key undersea infrastructure in Northern Europe.

· Deployment of North Korean troops to Russian territory signals a deepening alignment of adversarial states willing to challenge U.S. influence and escalate regional conflicts.

· Hybrid tactics, including disinformation, cyberattacks, and economic coercion, have been systematically employed to destabilize NATO-aligned countries.

Hybrid Warfare Escalation:

· Reports of coordinated espionage, sabotage, and disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining democratic institutions and fostering internal divisions within the West.

· Continued exploitation of commercial and scientific vessels by Russia for military intelligence gathering, complicating attribution and response efforts.

Technological and Strategic Vulnerabilities:

· Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), cyber capabilities, and autonomous systems are being weaponized, creating an omnipresent battlefield where information and perception warfare dominate.

· The integration of kinetic and non-kinetic operations has blurred the lines between traditional war and peacetime, making it difficult to establish thresholds for retaliation.

Primary Threats to U.S. National Security

Undersea Infrastructure Sabotage:

· Disruption of global communication networks critical to military and civilian operations.

· Potential cascading effects on financial markets, trade, and emergency response systems.

Cyber and Information Warfare:

· Targeted disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining trust in government institutions.

· Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, including energy grids, transportation systems, and electoral processes.

Military Escalation in Eastern Europe:

· Russia's integration of foreign troops (e.g., North Koreans) increases the complexity of regional conflicts and challenges NATO's deterrence posture.

Collaboration Among Adversaries:

· Strengthened ties between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, facilitating the sharing of technology, intelligence, and hybrid warfare strategies.

Erosion of Democratic Norms:

· Exploitation of societal divisions in the U.S. and allied nations to weaken collective resolve and cohesion.

Strategic, Operational, and Tactical Conclusions

Strategic:

· Draft a comprehensive National Security Strategy (NSS) that explicitly addresses hybrid, fourth, and fifth-generation warfare threats, emphasizing deterrence through strength.

· Prioritize the defense and redundancy of critical infrastructure, including undersea cables and pipelines, in collaboration with NATO and private-sector partners.

Operational:

· Enhance joint intelligence-sharing mechanisms within NATO to identify and respond to hybrid threats rapidly.

· Deploy sensor networks and AI-driven monitoring systems to protect undersea infrastructure and detect potential sabotage activities.

Tactical:

· Expand maritime patrols and naval exercises in vulnerable regions, such as the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic.

· Integrate cyber defense units into every level of military planning and operations.

Recommendations

Immediate Drafting of National Strategies:

· A revised National Security Strategy (NSS) and National Military Strategy (NMS) must be drafted [NOW] to account for the multidimensional threats posed by hybrid, 4th, and 5th-generation warfare.

Enhanced Deterrence Posture:

· Deploy visible deterrence assets, such as naval task forces and undersea drones, to signal resolve and readiness to respond to aggression.

· Invest in offensive cyber capabilities to counteract and pre-empt adversarial actions, untie the hands of Cyber Command, and NSA (TMO) [NOW].

Public-Private Partnerships:

· Develop stronger ties with private-sector stakeholders responsible for critical infrastructure to ensure coordinated responses to sabotage and cyberattacks, integrate Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), like SHERLOCK, at Caltech JPL., we require action at a billions of rules per-second.

Diplomatic Initiatives:

· Engage allies and adversaries in high-stakes negotiations to manage escalation risks, while maintaining a credible threat of military and economic consequences.

Resilience Building:

· Strengthen domestic infrastructure and societal resilience to reduce vulnerabilities to disinformation and economic coercion. Educate the American public that pain is coming, war is already here.

Conclusion

7. A makeshift memorial grows in Ukraine’s capital after 1,000 days of war

Please go to this link to view the 26 powerful photographs.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-memorial-flags-825f56c9c80c0906b3dc7d0cc3eba959?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru

A makeshift memorial grows in Ukraine’s capital after 1,000 days of war

AP · November 18, 2024

World News

HANNA ARHIROVA

Arhirova is an Associated Press reporter covering Ukraine. She is based in Kyiv.

AP · November 18, 2024

8. 1000 Days of War by Mick Ryan

1000 Days of War

Reflecting on one thousand days since the 2022 Russian large-scale invasion, and some thoughts on the trajectory of the war into 2025

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/1000-days-of-war?utm

Mick Ryan

Nov 19, 2024

Soldiers of the Ukrainian 22nd Mechanised Brigade. Source: @DefenceU

What do we hear today? It's not just rocket explosions, battles, the roar of aircraft. It is the sound of a new Iron Curtain lowering and closing Russia away from the civilized world. President Zelenskyy, 24 February 2022

Today, the war in Ukraine – or at least the time since the large-scale Russian invasion of 2022 – reaches the 1000-day mark.

At this point in the U.S. Civil War, the Union had gone through three commanders-in-chief and was on the cusp of launching the coordinated eastern and western campaigns under U.S. Grant. And at the 1000-day mark after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, coalition forces were at a low ebb as insurgent bombings plagued urban areas, and the President Bush admitted the invasion was based on faulty intelligence.

At the thousand-day mark of this phase of the war begun by Russia in 2014, Ukraine has suffered tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties, lost and regained large swathes of territory, and seen civilian infrastructure and priceless cultural artifacts destroyed. But it has also developed world-leading drone tactics and an entirely new strategic strike complex, employed extraordinarily effective strategic influence activities, re-invigorated its defence industry, and has become the first country to invade Russia in nearly a century.

And it has inspired us all with the courage and resilience of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers alike.

Besides reflecting on the tremendous sacrifices of the Ukrainian people since February 2022, the thousand-day point since that awful February 2022 day should also permit a certain amount of taking stock.

In 2024, the Ukrainian military sought a way to halt the rolling Russian offensive that was steadily gaining ground in eastern Ukraine and influencing the decision-making of Ukraine’s supporters. In the wake of the failed 2023 counteroffensive, and the Russian eastern offensive that followed, Ukraine needed to change the direction and narrative of the war.

Thus, was born the idea for the Kursk offensive, which was designed to change the trajectory of the war, hold Russian territory at risk, change Western perceptions of how the war was progressing for Ukraine, and force a military and political response from Putin. By and large, the Kursk offensive has (unfortunately) not achieved these objectives.

But even though the situation for Ukraine at the 1000-day mark of the Russian large-scale invasion is indeed forbidding, the trajectory of this war is not cast in steel. The Ukrainians have surprised us in the past and could do so again. But to prevent continued Russian gains on the battlefield and in the infosphere, and to delay any U.S. attempt at forcing Ukraine to the negotiate under unfavourable terms, what changes might be required from the Zelenskyy government?

Perhaps the first and most important issue is for Ukraine to conduct an honest and ruthless re-assessment of its military strategy. In February this year, when President Zelenskyy appointed General Syrskyi as commander-in-chief, he tasked him with developing a revised Ukrainian military strategy for the war, which he described as follows: A realistic, detailed action plan for the Armed Forces of Ukraine for 2024 must be presented. It must take into account the real situation on the battlefield now and the prospects.

The resulting strategy implemented under General Syrskyi has seen Russia seize the strategic initiative, Ukraine lose its eastern territory at an accelerating rate, a Ukrainian offensive into Russia which has not achieved its objectives and probably drawn valuable resources from defending eastern Ukraine, and the decline in Ukrainian strategic influence among its supporters. New ideas (and perhaps new leadership) will be required for an evolved military strategy moving forward into winter and 2025.

Next, the Ukrainian government must resolve the personnel challenges currently being confronted by the Ukrainian armed forces. The formation of new brigades, many without sufficient equipment, has seen a dearth of replacements for more experienced combat formations on the frontline. This is less a problem of quantity than one of internal institutional priorities. These can be solved with difficult yet necessary leadership decisions. And ultimately, the Ukrainian government may have to make even tougher decisions about the age at which people can be conscripted. While Ukraine faces difficult demography issues, which shaped the debate on mobilization, it may have to override these concerns if it wishes to have a sovereign nation that is able to ponder such challenges in the future.

President Zelenskyy addresses his people on the first day of the Russian large-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. Source: Official site, President of Ukraine.

Third, Ukraine needs to continue to work on communicating the impacts of any potential Russian victory on Europe, America and Asia. It is fair to assert that, apart from the Baltic nations, Poland, and Finland, many national leaders in Europe and beyond cannot envisage the full implications of a potential Russian victory in Ukraine. Even an agreement that saw Putin keep the territory that he currently illegally occupies would be a victory for Russia. The profound cost that would be borne by those in occupied Russian territory can already be foreseen, while the Ukrainian population would be embittered by the West’s strategy of providing Ukraine with just enough support for it to tread water for a time, but not enough for it to swim to safety. In the coming weeks, the Ukrainian government must somehow make western politicians more afraid of Russian victory than a Russian loss.

A good recent article on this topic, from Mykola Bielieskov, can be read here.

Finally, Ukraine will need to review and revitalise Ukraine’s strategic narrative to change western perceptions about Ukraine’s prospects in this war. It must not only be winning the war, but it must also be seen to be doing so. This requires it to win the story of the war. But to do this, the substantive changes to strategy and resource allocation described above must be implemented. And the Ukrainian government will need to convince western governments, the incoming Trump administration first and foremost, that this war is not inherently evil. It is a war, thrust upon the Ukrainian people, but worth fighting that is seeking to prevent a much greater evil perpetrated by Putin and his cronies.

Ukraine’s prospects in this war, while shaped by their own narratives, rest on continued support – and a reset in strategy – from its supporters in Europe, America and beyond. The path ahead cannot be laid entirely at the feet of the Ukrainian government and people. They have fought harder and sacrificed more for their nation, and for the existing global order, than any modern democracy since the Second World War. They have earned our ongoing, and indeed increased, support.

It will be very difficult for Ukraine to secure favourable terms in any war termination without the ongoing support of Europe and the United States. The strategy of NATO in the past 1000 days, to support for Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’, is not a strategy but a slogan. Biden, Scholz and others who have feared a Russian defeat more than a Ukrainian defeat have demonstrated an immense failure of imagination. They can’t imagine just how bad a Russian victory would be for Ukraine, Europe and the West more generally.

They must do so. And urgently.

These politicians, and their advisors, must be able to imagine the immense strategic and moral benefits of a Ukrainian victory. That victory, at a bare minimum, must be an agreement that deters future Russian aggression, and ensures the future security and prosperity of a sovereign Ukrainian state. But reparations, justice for war crimes and Ukrainian reconstruction are also crucial.

The Ukrainian president recently noted that “for some, ‘victory’ has become an uncomfortable word.” That is a shame, because it is a vital posture and strategic mindset for the leaders of Western nations if they are to successfully deter or defeat the increasingly aggressive forces of the techno-authoritarian powers. If nations in the West no longer believe in stamping out such abhorrent strategic predation by authoritarians, the decades ahead will be extraordinarily grim for Ukraine - and the rest of us.

9. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 18, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 18, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-18-2024

Russian officials continued to use threatening rhetoric as part of efforts to deter the United States from publicly authorizing Ukraine's use of US-provided ATACMS in limited strikes against Russian and North Korean military targets in Kursk Oblast. This US authorization, if officially confirmed, would notably be a mild response to Russia's escalatory introduction of North Korean troops as active combatants in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed on November 18 that the United States is "adding fuel to the fire" and that the US authorization of Ukrainian ATACMS strikes against Russian military targets would be a "qualitatively new round of tension" and a "qualitative" change in US participation in the war. Peskov reiterated Russian President Vladimir Putin's September 12 claims that Ukrainian strikes against Russia using Western-provided weapons would represent an escalation and directly involve Western countries in the war. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova also reiterated Putin's September statements and further claimed that Ukrainian long-range missile strikes on Russia would be a "radical change in the essence and nature" of the war and that the Russian response would be "adequate and tangible." Russian State Duma and Federation Council deputies made similar threats, claiming that Russia would be "forced" to respond to this "escalation," including with strikes against Ukraine using unspecified "new" weapons systems, and that Russia's new nuclear doctrine will outline the consequences of this US decision. Russia has not previously escalated militarily against any perceived Western violations of Russia's "red lines" — as ISW has repeatedly observed.

Select Russian officials and propagandists heavily emphasized that US officials have not yet formally confirmed the ATACMS strike authorization, likely in an attempt to convince the United States to back out of the decision and deny the media reports of the authorization. Zakharova stated that it is unclear if Western media outlets reporting on the US authorization are citing official sources, and Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov similarly questioned the credibility of the US media reports.

Neither Ukrainian nor US officials have confirmed reports of the US authorization of Ukrainian ATACMS strikes, but US officials noted that Russia escalated the war with the deployment of North Korean forces alongside Russian forces on the battlefield. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not directly confirm media reports of the US authorization of limited ATACMS strikes, but stated on November 17 that "strikes are not carried out with words" and "such things are not announced," but that "the missiles will speak for themselves." US Deputy National Security Advisor Jonathan Finer also did not confirm the US strike authorization but noted that Russia escalated the war with the deployment of North Korean forces to the battlefield and the massive drone and missile strike series against Ukrainian energy infrastructure on the night of November 16 to 17. Finer directly responded to Peskov, stating that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine "lit the fire." US outlet Axios reported on November 17 that a source with knowledge of the matter stated that the Biden administration granted Ukraine permission to use ATACMS in order to deter North Korea from sending more troops to Russia for the war. Axios reported that US officials hope that North Korea might reconsider its decision to deploy military personnel to Russia if Ukrainian forces strike North Korean forces in Kursk Oblast.

Key Takeaways:

Russian officials continued to use threatening rhetoric as part of efforts to deter the United States from publicly authorizing Ukraine's use of US-provided ATACMS in limited strikes against Russian and North Korean military targets in Kursk Oblast. This US authorization, if officially confirmed, would notably be a mild response to Russia's escalatory introduction of North Korean troops as active combatants in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Putin's introduction of North Korea as a new belligerent in his invasion of Ukraine was a major escalation. Allowing Ukraine to use US missiles against legitimate military targets in Russian territory in accord with all international laws and laws of armed conflict is a very limited response and cannot reasonably be characterized as an escalation in itself.

French and British sources clarified on November 18 that the reported US permissions regarding Ukraine's ability to use ATACMS for limited strikes within Russia do not inherently extend to Ukraine's ability to use French and UK-provided SCALP and Storm Shadow missiles for long-range strikes in Russia.

The Kremlin continues to state its unwillingness to accept any compromises, including those that would "freeze" the conflict along the current frontline – further demonstrating the Kremlin's insistence on complete Ukraine capitulation.

Russian forces recently advanced in the main Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast, in Kupyansk, west of Kreminna, and in the Siversk, Pokrovsk, and Vuhledar directions.

The Kremlin is continuing to militarize different levels of the Russian government by expanding the "Time of Heroes" program that aims to place veterans of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in positions in local, regional, and federal governments.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) illegally conscripted Ukrainian youth in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts as part of Russia's Fall 2024 conscription cycle.

10. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 18, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 18, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/israel%E2%80%93hamas-war-iran-updates

The continued looting of humanitarian aid trucks demonstrates that Hamas’ internal control remains limited and severely weakened. Armed groups looted 98 of 109 humanitarian aid trucks that entered the southern Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom border crossing on November 16. It is unclear if these armed groups are affiliated with any Palestinian militia group, but the armed men were likely part of organized criminal groups that have replaced Hamas’ police forces in much of the Strip. Hamas claimed that it conducted a joint operation with local family groups in which Hamas and locals killed 20 individuals who had looted the vehicles. The fact that Hamas had to cooperate with these local groups indicates that Hamas’ control over the Gaza Strip remains weak. Hamas has long fought local families and organized criminal groups for control over the Gaza Strip. The UNRWA spokesperson said that the aid convoys are not allowed to maintain any armed guards and that they usually attempt to drive fast to avoid ambushes by armed groups. The IDF has recently taken several steps to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, including plans to reopen the Kissufim border crossing and facilitate the transfer of aid trucks into the northern Gaza Strip. CTP-ISW has not observed the IDF escorting any aid itself, however.

Key Takeaways:

Hamas Control in the Gaza Strip: The continued looting of humanitarian aid trucks demonstrates that Hamas’ internal control remains limited and severely weakened. Armed men, likely part of criminal organizations, looted 98 of 109 humanitarian aid trucks that entered the southern Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom border crossing on November 16.

Gaza Strip Ceasefire: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that he would reject any ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that requires a full IDF withdrawal. Netanyahu reiterated this position after a meeting with his security chiefs in which the chiefs argued in support of a ceasefire.

Hamas Relocation: Hamas denied that it has relocated from Qatar to Turkey. An unspecified Turkish diplomat also rejected claims that Hamas’ political leadership has relocated from Qatar to Turkey.

Lebanon Ceasefire: Hezbollah responded to a US-proposed ceasefire draft to end Hezbollah’s war with Israel.

Israeli Interdiction of Hamas Supplies: Israel has continued air interdiction operations in the Qusayr area of Syria that are designed to disrupt Hezbollah supply lines. Satellite imagery confirms that Israeli airstrikes have destroyed 15 bridges along the Syria-Lebanon border. These 15 bridges are important to Hezbollah’s ground line of communication that transports weapons and fighters from Syria and Iraq.

11. US signs long-sought intelligence sharing deal with the Philippines

Effective Information and intelligence sharing is a critical capability among allies.

US signs long-sought intelligence sharing deal with the Philippines

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · November 18, 2024

MANILA, Philippines — The U.S. and the Philippines finished an agreement on how to share classified information, firming the foundation for their militaries to operate together.

The deal, known as the General Security of Military Information Agreement, or GSOMIA, is in essence a leveling floor. It enforces a basic set of standards for how the two countries handle classified information, making it easier for America to share such data in times of need.

“We see the Philippines as a full partner now,” a U.S. defense official said.

Washington and Manila have been negotiating the deal for more than two years, as part of a larger effort to make their militaries closer partners. Until a few years ago, the Philippines had been drifting toward China, concerned that the U.S. was a haphazard ally.

That changed in 2022 with the election of Ferdinand Marcos jr, the Philippines’ current, pro-American president. During his term Manila has granted the U.S. military access to new sites in the country’s north, expanded their yearly exercises and agreed to host equipment like Typhon, a missile launcher that’s caught the attention, and ire, of China.

One on one with US Army Pacific Command chief Gen. Charles Flynn

The Army's top commander in the Pacific discusses the service's new long-range strike arsenal and building roads with local engineers.

In return, the U.S. has invested in the Philippines’ economy and military, most recently sending $500 million in long-term military aid. With that funding, Manila is buying equipment that will help it monitor its waterways, in particular those in the South China Sea where China has been harassing Filipino sailors and ships resupplying outposts.

That equipment will start to be delivered in a matter of months, U.S. defense officials told reporters traveling here with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The nascent intelligence sharing deal will make it easier for the Philippines to buy more sensitive American-made weapons.

The Philippines has started an overall renewal of its military, agreeing to spend some $35 billion in the next 10 years, including on a list of weapons already coordinated with Washington. Along with larger exercises, the spending will help prepare its force for larger threats, such as defending the homeland rather than fighting terrorism.

Aside from signing the intelligence sharing agreement Monday, America’s defense secretary watched the groundbreaking for a planning center at Camp Aguinaldo, a military headquarters in Manila. The U.S. Embassy has a growing military presence working out of the base to help the Philippines order equipment, but the new center will help them plan larger exercises together, U.S. officials said.

About Noah Robertson

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

12. Ukraine Is Now a Proxy War for Asian Powers

Excerpts:

Granted, the level of support we currently see from the East Asian powers will likely be a function of how committed the United States and Russia remain in the months and years ahead. Trump’s return to the White House could result in changes on the battlefield—but not necessarily in the nature of Indo-Pacific involvement. Trump has already said he could end the war in a day but has not provided details. If he can—and both sides accept the outcome—then the proxy war ends. If he cannot and the conflict continues in some manner, so does the proxy war, but the level of commitment may change. In a situation where the United States stops supporting Ukraine but European NATO members step up, it is likely that Japan and South Korea would also continue their support; their interest in pushing back against aggressors would be unchanged. However, their support could be reduced, since some of their activities have come as a request by their U.S. ally.

It is hard to see China and North Korea reducing their involvement, given that their support could help Russia succeed and advance their strategic goal of destroying the existing order. Short of a mutually acceptable end to the war, changes in the degree of U.S. involvement under a second Trump administration will not alter the fundamental proxy war constellation: All four East Asian powers are supporting a third party to undermine their competitor’s ability to undermine their national interests.

While this indicates that the security challenges in East Asia have, in part, been exported to Europe, the more concerning element is the fact that their participation adds an element of uncertainty and potential escalation to the conflict in Ukraine. Beijing, Pyongyang, Seoul, and Tokyo are supporting their respective partners on European soil in order to wage a much broader struggle over the future of the international order. This, in turn, indicates the extent to which the war has become global—and has set a new precedent for how Asian nations compete for their interests in other parts of the world.

Ukraine Is Now a Proxy War for Asian Powers

Judging by growing East Asian involvement, Putin’s war has already gone global.

By Jeffrey W. Hornung, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation.

Foreign Policy · by Jeffrey W. Hornung

November 18, 2024, 11:24 AM

Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict two years on.

Can Trump’s Hardball Tactics on China Ease America’s Fentanyl Crisis?

President-elect says he will punish China if it doesn’t choke off the flow of ingredients, but Beijing could balk if relations sour

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-trump-fentanyl-drug-crackdown-4eb4e058?mod=hp_lead_pos9

By Brian Spegele

Updated Nov. 19, 2024 12:07 am ET

More than 107,000 people were estimated to have died from drug overdoses in the U.S. last year, most from fentanyl or similar drugs. Photo: Jenny Kane/Associated Press

BEIJING—Three days after Donald Trump won the presidency, China announced that, working with intelligence provided by the U.S., it had arrested a suspected longtime producer of chemicals used to make fentanyl. It was a modest gesture of goodwill by Beijing after intense pressure from Washington to crack down.

For the incoming administration, it was likely too little, too late.

When Trump takes office in January, he promises to take a combative position with China over its role in the fentanyl crisis, ditching the Biden administration’s efforts at diplomacy and compromise. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed “to tariff the hell out of” China unless it helps to stop the flow of illicit drugs into the U.S.

The threat raises the stakes for China to shut down a supply chain that is enabling the underground production of fentanyl and other narcotics. But it also risks backfiring for the U.S. if China’s leader Xi Jinping concludes he can’t be seen as caving to pressure from Washington.

Beijing’s thinking: “If we give in to the Americans on this, what will Donald Trump threaten us over with tariffs next?” said Scott Harold, a senior political scientist at the think tank Rand. “Xi Jinping doesn’t want to be shown to be weak.”

The Biden administration got Beijing to impose restrictions over the production and sale of three key chemicals used to make fentanyl. Photo: Cliff Owen/Associated Press

Getting the strategy right carries big consequences for the new administration. More than 107,000 people were estimated to have died from drug overdoses in the U.S. last year, most from fentanyl or similar drugs known as synthetic opioids. That number has started to come down recently, and U.S. officials say that moves by China to more strictly regulate chemicals used to make such drugs would help further drive down fatalities.

Under Biden, U.S. officials have routinely fed intelligence to China about suspected precursor producers. As Biden and Xi sought warmer ties, U.S. officials urged Beijing to use the intelligence to go out and make arrests as a way to prove it was serious about cooperating.

U.S. and Chinese officials have been using this nascent diplomatic channel focused on counternarcotics as a way to try to build more political trust between the two global powers.

The Biden administration’s diplomatic approach has achieved some success through its efforts to engage China, including getting Beijing to impose restrictions over the production and sale of three key chemicals used to make fentanyl this year after pushing hard for China to do so.

Trump’s election will force Beijing to adjust to a sharper-edged posture. In this view, almost any action by China is part of an effort to undermine the U.S., and China’s role as one of the biggest producers of chemicals used to produce fentanyl is an act of sabotage, rather than the result of shoddy regulation.

“Our biggest adversaries—China, Iran, even ISIS—are working with the cartels to infiltrate the U.S.,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.), Trump’s incoming national security adviser, wrote on X in October.

President Biden with China’s leader Xi Jinping in California last year. Photo: Associated Press

The recent announcement of arrests is one way Beijing is preparing for the fight ahead with Trump, sending a signal that it takes its counternarcotics responsibilities seriously. But Beijing has said American politicians want to make China a scapegoat for the U.S.’s own failings to treat the root causes of the drug crisis, and the threat of tariffs is unlikely to change that position.

China’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Trump’s threat of tariffs. But it said bilateral cooperation to date on counternarcotics hadn’t come easily, and that it hoped the U.S. would be willing to continue working with China to maintain momentum on the issue.

The Trump transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In a meeting between Xi and Biden over the weekend, Xi said China wanted to cooperate with the U.S., including on counternarcotics, but that it would also stand firm in defending its interests.

In many ways, Trump’s strategy of linking fentanyl to tariffs seeks to replicate some of the success he achieved on the issue in his first term.

When Donald Trump takes office in January, he promises to take a combative position with China over its role in the fentanyl crisis. Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press

In 2018, while negotiating over the countries’ trade battle, Trump got Xi to agree to impose stricter domestic regulations on fentanyl. Since then, Chinese-made fentanyl has largely dropped out of the illicit drug market, with production shifting to Mexico and other countries.

The problem has been that Chinese companies have continued producing the chemicals used to make the drug. Many such precursor chemicals haven’t been well regulated in China, with Beijing reluctant to impose onerous restrictions on domestic firms, especially when the country doesn’t have anywhere near the levels of fentanyl abuse seen in the U.S.

Chinese companies such as Hubei Aoks Bio-Tech began openly advertising online the chemicals to make fentanyl, U.S. prosecutors said in an indictment, selling their goods to customers in the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere.

One of the customers turned out to be an undercover U.S. agent.

The Justice Department said this month that the company’s founder Gao Xuening and several others working with it had been arrested in China. Chinese state media reported on Nov. 8 that intelligence sharing with the U.S. had helped crack the case.

China’s Ministry of Public Security didn’t respond to a request for comment and Gao couldn’t be reached for comment.

China was likely sending a signal to the U.S. that “we could do more of these if you play ball with us,” said Harold, the Rand expert. “We could do more of what you care about if you don’t start us off on the wrong foot and make it a hostile relationship.”

Negotiations on the drug issue could prove trickier for Trump this time than in 2018. If China concludes that the new president intends to levy tariffs regardless of whether it helps the U.S. on fentanyl, Beijing will be less likely to help the U.S. by tightening precursor restrictions.

An early test of Trump’s approach will come from how his administration handles a pending petition to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative by families of fentanyl victims. They propose to collect $50 billion of new revenues for the U.S. from tariffs on Chinese imports, in addition to other measures that respond to China’s role in the crisis.

“The Chinese government will do what is in its best interests,” said Nazak Nikakhtar, a former assistant secretary in the Commerce Department during the first Trump administration who is representing the families. “Asking them to change behavior is not going to work unless we have economic countermeasures.”

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said the petition is under review. If it moves ahead, a final determination would come during the Trump administration, potentially crossing the desk of Robert Lighthizer, an advocate of limiting China’s access to the U.S. market. Trump allies say he wants Lighthizer to serve as trade czar, an appointment that would advance Trump’s strategy of using tariffs against China and other countries.

Adding fuel to the fire: Some prominent Democrats have signed on in support of the families’ petition, getting on board with linking fentanyl cooperation to tariffs against China.

“Despite the U.S. government’s best efforts through diplomatic channels, it has become obvious that the PRC will not voluntarily crack down on its fentanyl producers and exports,” Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) wrote in a recent letter.

Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com

Appeared in the November 19, 2024, print edition as 'Trump Will Press Beijing On Fentanyl'.

14. AUKUS alliance seals plans for collaboration on hypersonics testing

AUKUS alliance seals plans for collaboration on hypersonics testing

Under the Hypersonic Flight Test and Experimentation (HyFliTE) project arrangement, the three AUKUS nations will conduct up to six flight test campaigns by 2028.

Mikayla Easley

November 18, 2024

defensescoop.com · by measley · November 18, 2024

The United States, Australia and the United Kingdom signed a new agreement Monday that will see the three nations share each other’s testing facilities for hypersonic weapons.

Signed under Pillar 2 of the AUKUS trilateral security pact, the so-called Hypersonic Flight Test and Experimentation (HyFliTE) project arrangement includes plans to conduct at least six flight test campaigns by 2028, according to a news release from the Pentagon. A funding pool worth $252 million will be used to finance the efforts, the release noted.

“We are increasing our collective ability to develop and deliver offensive and defensive hypersonic technologies through a robust series of trilateral tests and experiments that will accelerate the development of hypersonic concepts and critical enabling technologies,” U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu said in a statement.

As one of Shyu’s 14 critical technology areas, hypersonic weapons are a key development effort at the Defense Department. The missiles are able to fly and maneuver through the atmosphere at speeds of at least Mach 5 — or five times the speed of sound — making them difficult to intercept and defeat.

The U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy have each invested significant time and money into developing their own hypersonic missiles, but individual efforts have faced hurdles during their testing campaigns that have stalled final acquisition and fielding decisions. Those challenges, in part, have been attributed to a limited number of testing facilities and ranges within the United States.

Through HyFliTE, the three AUKUS nations are looking to ramp up the pace of hypersonic weapons testing through collaboration on resources, experience and test facilities.

“Collaborative efforts are accelerating the development of underpinning enabling technologies, such as high temperature materials, advanced propulsion systems, and guidance and control,” Shyu said. “Each of these technologies is integral to the performance of hypersonic weapon systems and provides enhanced operational capability.”

Australia has previously partnered with the United States on hypersonics through the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE) effort. The nation is also home to the Woomera Range Complex, a large and highly specialized testing center that could be leveraged for live flight testing of these types of systems.

“This agreement will accelerate Australia’s sovereign ability to develop and deliver offensive and defensive hypersonic technologies — through a robust testing and experimentation campaign under AUKUS Pillar II,” Tanya Monro, Australia’s chief defense scientist, said in a statement.

According to a news release from the United Kingdom, the HyFliTE project is also expected to foster deep collaboration between the three allies’ industrial bases in order to break down acquisition barriers and strengthen supply chains.

The U.K. has also sourced domestic industry support for hypersonic weapons development through its Hypersonic Technologies and Capability Development Framework, including more than 90 suppliers and a commercial headroom of up to 1 billion British pounds, the news release added.

“This landmark arrangement with our US and Australian partners demonstrates the commitment of AUKUS partners to staying at the forefront of battle-winning defence technology,” United Kingdom Secretary of State for Defence John Healey said in a statement. “This work will keep us ahead of our adversaries on the battlefield, enhance our collective security and contribute to maintaining peace and stability in an increasingly complex and dangerous world.”

Written by Mikayla Easley

Mikayla Easley reports on the Pentagon’s acquisition and use of emerging technologies. Prior to joining DefenseScoop, she covered national security and the defense industry for National Defense Magazine. She received a BA in Russian language and literature from the University of Michigan and a MA in journalism from the University of Missouri. You can follow her on Twitter @MikaylaEasley

defensescoop.com · by measley · November 18, 2024

15. Water Can Be a Global Security Issue. This New Tool Will Help The Military Plan

I recommend re-reading Robert Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/304670/

Water Can Be a Global Security Issue. This New Tool Will Help The Military Plan

airandspaceforces.com · by David Roza · November 19, 2024

Nov. 18, 2024 | By David Roza

From flooding in North Carolina to droughts in East Africa, changing water cycles exacerbated by climate change are driving instability around the world. Even in peacetime, mud or rain can slow troop movements, cancel sorties, and generally make life more difficult for U.S. military leaders.

But a new tool launched late last month aims to give leaders across the government better information at a faster tempo to predict and manage water-related risks when planning military operations, disaster response, environmental monitoring, resource management, and more.

The Global Hydro-Intelligence (GHI) system takes information from a wide range of sources, including satellites, ground-based sensors, and climate models, to give planners a “comprehensive picture of global water dynamics,” Lt. Col. Mickey Kirschenbaum, a public affairs officer for weather force management at Air Force Headquarters, told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

If it gets wet, it’ll likely be in the GHI system, which aims to provide accurate and timely information on soil moisture, snow cover, vegetation health, precipitation, and many things in between, both in the short term and the long run.

“GHI-based products and services will, for the first time, establish a routinely available source of global water assessments spanning near-real-time analyses to future projections,” Col. Patrick Williams, director of weather at Air Force Headquarters, said in a Nov. 15 press release. “This will arm warfighters, planners, and decision makers with assessments of surface hydrology features and their potential effects across time scales.”

U.S. Air Force and NASA officials hold a ceremony to celebrate their collaboration and the initial operational capability of Global Hydro-Intelligence at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., Oct. 30, 2024. GHI is a strategic tool designed to predict and manage water-related risks for military leaders. (U.S. Air Force photo by Chad Trujillo)

Current systems combine three main approaches, Kirschenbaum explained:

traditional hydrological models, which analyze historical data and statistics to forecast floods and droughts but are limited by ground-based data quality
Satellite-based observations that provide global water cycle data but are not ideal for real-time military decisions
Regional forecasting systems that integrate local ground observations, and meteorological models to assess water-related risks in specific geographical areas

The problem is that none of those three approaches were designed with military operations in mind. GHI aims to bring in data from many sources, then use “real-time data processing and analytics” to produce timely information for commanders.

The system will also use machine learning and advanced modeling techniques to make more accurate predictions of future floods, droughts, and other water events. And it’s all designed to be user-friendly for non-experts.

“Unlike many regional systems, GHI offers global coverage across all time-scales, making it a valuable tool for military operations that span multiple countries and regions,” Kirschenbaum said.

It’s a team effort: representatives from the Air Force, NASA, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers all took part in an Oct. 30 ceremony at the Pentagon celebrating GHI’s initial operational capability. The Navy, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory also contributed to the project.

Each agency has something to offer: for example, NASA’s Land Information System plays a key role assimilating data to create terrestrial hydrology models. Dr. Jerry Wegiel, NASA’s principal investigator for GHI, said the new system will give the government a first-of-its-kind trusted information set about the movement of water, according to the press release.

A maintenance team works on a A-10 Thunderbolt II during a snowstorm Dec. 29, 2013, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Capt. Brian Wagner)

GHI comes at a key moment as the Air Force aims to bring weather forecasting back into operations planning, a muscle group that atrophied during the Global War on Terror.

“The way weather is used today, we’re an obstacle,” Williams told Air & Space Forces Magazine in July. “Before the pilot takes off, we’ll tell them what conditions they’ll see, which impacts how much fuel they need, how many bombs they can carry, and how to get back safely. [But] we can do so much more than that.

“We can purposely force the adversary into situations that they don’t want to be in where they have to pick between a bad choice and a worse choice,” he said.

That could mean sending U.S. bombers in behind a storm to attack an enemy airfield, or predicting when atmospheric conditions limit the radar systems used to guide enemy surface-to-air missiles.

Like any weapon system, it pays to have a better weather knowledge system than the other guy. The textbook example is D-Day in 1944, when Allied planners took advantage of a break in the storm that German forecasters missed. But weather forecasting requires powerful computers, talented operators, and quality data, the last of which is particularly tough as only two of the military’s 60-year-old weather satellites are currently operational.

“Not having weather satellites up there is a huge, huge problem,” Williams said.

New satellites for the Pentagon’s secure use would be the ideal solution, but GHI helps close the gap by integrating with other government agencies and making their water data available more quickly.

“We are extremely excited for the role that GHI is going to play in future operational planning and the enhanced situational awareness it’s going to bring to the fight,” Maj. Gen. John Klein Jr., Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, said in the press release.

Mr. John M. Schnittker (front), agricultural advisor, Kirkuk Provincial Reconstruction Team, U.S. Department of State, evaluates a wheat field after hearing local resident’s concerns of water shortages, Hawijah, Iraq, April 26, 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Michael Alberts)

Faster data in greater quantities is important when climate change is disrupting weather patterns, which in turn disrupts human patterns. Drought is one example: in a March report, the United Nations said water deficits can be linked to 10 percent of the increase in migration worldwide.

“This displacement can, in turn, contribute to water insecurity by placing added strain on water systems and resources in settlement locations, thereby fueling social tensions,” the UN report states. “This water scarcity can increase the risk of conflict.”

Better, faster information could help generate policies to mitigate that risk, “allowing decision-makers and diplomacy to have a greater effect before crisis turns to violence and the armed forces are called,” the press release explained.

Still, GHI is designed to address a wide range of applications beyond anticipating water-induced conflicts or humanitarian crises, Kirschenbaum said. Other areas include environmental monitoring and resource management.

“The system’s ability to integrate diverse data sources and provide real-time analytics makes it a versatile tool for various stakeholders, including government agencies, environmental organizations, and international bodies, to make informed decisions across multiple domains,” he said.

National Security

airandspaceforces.com · by David Roza · November 19, 2024

16. Former Preschool Teacher Downs Russian Cruise Missile with Her First “Live” Shoot

Powerful photos at the link.

Former Preschool Teacher Downs Russian Cruise Missile with Her First “Live” Shoot

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/42390?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic/world

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · November 18, 202

Three years ago, Natalia Hrabarchuk was a preschool teacher but on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 17 she took out a Kh-101 missile with an “Igla” MANPADS missile.

by Kyiv Post | November 18, 2024, 8:16 am

Screenshot from video of the downing of a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile with an “Igla” MANPADS that captures her delight and disbelief at what she has achieved.

A video, posted on the Facebook page of Ukraine’s Western Air Command on Sunday, showed Natalia Hrabarchuk, a former kindergarten teacher now a volunteer member of the command’s air defense forces, using a 9K38 Igla (NATO: SA-18 Grouse) Man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) launcher to bring down an incoming Russian cruise missile.

On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 17 Russian forces launched a massive 120-missile and 90-Shahed attack drone assault on Ukraine, one of the largest since the 2022 full-scale invasion according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

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The Ukraine Air Force reported it had shot down 102 of just about every type of missile Moscow has in its inventory along with 42 drones with another 41 “lost” – which is generally interpreted as meaning they were disrupted by electronic warfare systems.

Of those shoot downs, the Western Air Command claimed its forces had hit 31 missiles and one Shahed; with one of those missiles being the Kh-101 (NATO: AS-23 Kodiak) engaged by Hrabarchuk.

The Facebook video shows the former teacher standing on the flat roof of a building in an unidentified location with the Soviet-made MANPADS on her shoulder. She takes aim at a distant target then, after tracking the incoming target, she fires, and both she and the video briefly track the missile in flight.

Hrabarchuk kneels and places the missile launcher on the ground as if praying for a successful hit. A voice from behind the camera can be heard saying, “Hit it, hit it, Natasha, hit it.” The sound of a loud explosion in the distance shows that she has made the one-in-a-million shot, the look of disbelief on her face underlines just what she has achieved.

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In civilian life, Hrabarchuk was a preschool teacher before volunteering to become an artillery gunner in the anti-aircraft missile unit of the “Halych-Volyn” radio-technical brigade of the Western Air Command.

This was her first combat launch but its triumph was down to more than five months of intensive training she had undergone on the full range of portable anti-aircraft missiles held by Ukrainian forces which, in her words, included “hundreds” of training launches on simulators.

Hrabarchuk said of the shoot, “When the enemy missile came into the impact zone, I had to throw aside all emotions and feelings of excitement.”

She went on to say that she fell back on all she had learned during her rigorous training but even so, she added, “It wasn’t easy - to shoot down a winged missile. My launcher weighs about 18 kilograms (40 pounds) with the weight of responsibility to get a good result.

“I am so happy to have been able to do this. Only then could I give freedom to my emotions a little. There are several female members in our mobile fire group and, I assure you, all of us give everything we can to protect our native land from air strikes.”

By any measure this successful downing of the Kh-101 by the Igla, which was developed more than 40 years ago, albeit having undergone several upgrades to enhance its sensors and its resistance to countermeasures, was remarkable. The Igla uses an infrared homing head to zero in on the heat emitted by the exhaust gases of its target.

The air-launched Kh-101 subsonic cruise missile was designed in the 1990s and entered service in the 2010s. It is a highly sophisticated and advanced weapon designed for strategic strikes using a 400 kilogram (880 pound) high-explosive, penetrating, or cluster warhead with a range of around 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles). The Tu-95MS strategic bomber, from which the missiles used in Sunday’s attacks were launched can carry eight of the weapons on under-wing pylons.

During its cruise phase the missile flies at around 10,000 meters (32,000 feet) which would be beyond the normal operating altitude of the Igla, which is around 3,500 meters (11,000 feet). It seems likely the Kh-101 must have been in its terminal phase as it neared its intended target. Even so it has a fairly low-level heat signature which would have tested the ability of the Igla to acquire it.

Hrabarchuk undoubtedly showed great skill in achieving the hit, but a number of factors also contributed to the success of her mission – and it wasn’t the only time it has happened. As Kyiv Post previously reported a National Guard trooper also brought down a Kh-101, using an Igla, in May 2023 near Bucha in the Kyiv region - when once again all the elements aligned in his favor.

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · November 18, 2024

17. How Trump Can Build on Biden’s Successes in Asia

The Biden administration's singular accomplishment (and what should be a gift to the President-elect) is strong American alliances and. a vast "silk web" of relationships that are key to both deterrence and to winning strategic competition. I hope the President-elect will sustain and build on these rather than just punt them because that is perceived as only the previous administration's project.

Excerps:

Finally, the Trump administration will have to recognize that achieving deterrence and stability in Asia depends in part on its actions elsewhere. Some prominent figures, including Vice-President-elect J. D. Vance, have argued that the United States needs to step back from Europe to deal with China. Trump has flirted with the unrealistic idea that if the United States makes nice with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it can turn Russia against China. Both factions underestimate the intractability of Sino-Russian alignment and the importance of Europe. The war in Ukraine affects security in Asia: U.S. allies there do not want Washington to make concessions to Moscow for fear that it could embolden China to act more aggressively in their region. And although NATO may not have a large military presence in Asia, Europe is an economic and diplomatic power that Beijing will not want to alienate in a confrontation with the United States and its Asian allies. For the United States, therefore, demonstrating strength in Ukraine and nurturing its ties with European partners will be critical to maintaining security in Asia. Europe today matters more, not less.

In an increasingly multipolar era, U.S. leadership in Asia will depend not just on the United States’ own capabilities but also on the technological, military, diplomatic, and geographical advantages its allies bring to the table. These countries understand their own roles, but they also understand the vital importance of the United States. U.S. alliances are overwhelmingly popular, with polls conducted between 2019 and 2024 showing they enjoy about 90 percent approval in Japan and South Korea, and similarly high favorability in Australia and the Philippines. People in the region recognize that what is happening in Ukraine will happen in Asia without U.S. leadership. Given the perils of the years ahead, now is not the time for the Trump administration to shirk that responsibility.

How Trump Can Build on Biden’s Successes in Asia

Merely Taking a Harder Line on China Won’t Be Enough

By Michael J. Green

November 19, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Michael J. Green · November 19, 2024

U.S. Asia policy over the last 40 years has been a success. There have been no major interstate wars in East Asia since 1979. The United States has built a dense and increasingly collaborative network of alliances and partnerships that enjoys bipartisan support. American private sector investment in Asian countries with the region’s largest economies dwarfs that of any other country, and the United States is the primary destination for foreign direct investment from all major economies in Asia (except China). Even as democracy erodes elsewhere, many countries in the region remain vibrant democracies. And thanks to a strong basis of bipartisan agreement, U.S. policymaking in the region can often rise above the gridlock and polarization in Washington.

With his victory in the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump will inherit a formidable Asia policy that has been passed down through Republican and Democratic administrations. President Joe Biden built his impressive record in the region around this consensus. The diplomatic partnership among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States known as the Quad, or Quadrilateral Dialogue, which Biden elevated from a ministerial-level forum to a leaders’ summit, began under George W. Bush’s administration as a joint task force to rescue victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and was revived by the Trump administration as a regular meeting of the members’ foreign ministers. (Biden acknowledged the Quad’s bipartisan lineage at the first summit held during his presidency.) Biden’s initiatives on U.S. military force posture, semiconductor technology controls, and trilateral relations with Japan and Korea all have roots in the Bush, Obama, or Trump administrations. And the new components his presidency added, such as AUKUS (the submarine and defense technology partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), enjoy broad support in Congress and will likely endure for administrations to come. Once in office, Trump will not lack for potential avenues for engagement in Asia.

Yet as the United States learned from 1919 to 1941, successful strategies work until they don’t. Taken in its parts, American interwar statecraft, driven by the assumption that economic interdependence and multilateral diplomacy could keep the peace, was more proactive and innovative than it had ever been. But it was not enough to stave off global conflict. With catastrophic consequences, experts failed to appreciate the danger of Japan’s navy surpassing U.S. capabilities in the Pacific, the growing appeal of Japan’s anti-Western narratives, or the hollowness of European imperial power in the region.

The incoming Trump administration would be wise to remember this history. The stakes today are familiar: if China had its way, it would force Japan out of the East China Sea, overwhelm the Philippines and other countries in the South China Sea, coerce Taiwan into accepting Beijing’s authority and severing any meaningful connections to the United States and Japan, and establish a military base structure throughout the region that would corner India and Australia and control the sea lanes that account for half or more of U.S. allies’ imports. China is pursuing the most revisionist strategy of any state since the end of the Cold War and the most dangerous since 1945, and the U.S. alliance system is the only thing keeping it in check. As China’s rising military power chips away at U.S. dominance, the United States has dwindling margin for error.

The Trump administration does not need to invent a new Asia strategy out of whole cloth. But it does need to determine what is working and what is not, and it should shore up the weaknesses in the United States’ current approach. It must revive American economic influence in the region, accelerate efforts for collective defense, make disciplined and consistent outreach to countries that may tilt toward China, and clarify the long-term goals of competition with Beijing. The new president will have a strong foundation to build from, but the scale of the threat means there is much more work to be done.

MUTUAL FUNDS

Although U.S. market power in Asia remains strong, American economic statecraft has atrophied. In 2018, the Lowy Institute’s annual Asia Power Index lowered the U.S. ranking for economic influence in the region after the first Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that was meant to bind Asia’s more open economies, including Australia, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore, together to gain leverage against China. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, the Biden administration’s 2022 initiative to effectively replace the TPP, has made little headway. As a result, China is much better positioned than before to rewrite the rules for trade, infrastructure, and investment in key parts of Asia. The Trump administration now needs to get serious about shaping regional and global conventions around digital trade, anticorruption, and intellectual property rights to counter Beijing’s efforts to bend weaker states to its will and obstruct U.S. economic access.

Trump, for his part, has criticized both the TPP and IPEF, arguing that traditional trade agreements take jobs from American workers. Instead, he has threatened to impose 60 percent tariffs on Chinese goods and a universal ten percent tariff on imports. In addition to exacerbating inflation at home, these strongly protectionist measures would push other countries closer to China and obstruct U.S. cooperation with like-minded states such as Australia and Japan. Last week, at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru, Chinese leader Xi Jinping took a slew of meetings with trade partners and condemned efforts to “[hinder] economic cooperation” as “reversing the course of history,” effectively positioning Beijing as the standard-bearer of the international economic order. The Trump administration will need to recognize that the United States cannot compete with China while threatening tariffs that target the very partners it needs to thwart Beijing’s attempts to change established international economic rules.

The United States will also need to improve its military readiness in the region. Here, the interwar years offer a lesson. U.S. advances in amphibious warfare strategies, replenishment of ships at sea, and submarine and aircraft carrier operations in the 1920s later helped the Allies win in World War II, but they did not stop the conflict from breaking out in the first place. American innovation today, such as the Pentagon’s Replicator program to rapidly field new high-tech weapons, is equally impressive—and equally insufficient. The United States and its allies will have to step up their defense production if they are to deter China, whose force buildup is outpacing their own. The U.S. and allied militaries also desperately need more munitions and reliable access to critical minerals such as germanium, 70 percent of which is mined in China and Russia, to build advanced systems such as thermal detectors for missiles and fighter aircraft. Trump should press Congress to approve multiyear defense contracts; work with U.S. partners to expand access to critical minerals; loosen some export control rules so that the United States can better integrate its defense production with that of its allies; and push for procurement reform that breaks the hold of legacy platforms on access to Pentagon funding and makes investment in newer, more innovative equipment possible.

Working with key allies such as Australia and Japan to bolster deterrence will require urgent effort.

The United States’ partners in Asia must do the same. Unlike in Europe, key U.S. allies in the region are already spending more than the equivalent of two percent of their GDP on defense or are on pace to do so soon. But the Biden administration has not done enough to encourage them to keep their spending on track. Australia’s defense spending exceeds the two-percent threshold and the country has big increases planned for the future, but defense experts in Australia have warned that these increases are all scheduled several years from now, which may be too late to deter Chinese belligerence in the near term. Japan’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, is struggling to hold on to power and will face political headwinds reaching the two-percent mark that his predecessor, Fumio Kishida, promised. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s military remains fixated on advanced fighters and ships when it should be focusing on stockpiling missiles and hardening its defenses to keep Beijing from thinking an invasion would succeed.

The Trump administration should also redouble collective defense efforts, taking cues from Ishiba’s admittedly far-fetched proposal to create an Asian version of NATO. U.S. allies and partners are already conducting more joint exercises than ever before: Australia, Japan, and New Zealand sent warships through the Taiwan Strait, and Japanese and South Korean forces train regularly in northern Australia. But better coordination and connectivity among each country’s command-and-control structures and greater intelligence sharing will be necessary before allies and partners can operate together in real battlefield conditions. Washington must also lead the way in better connecting NATO with U.S. allies in Asia, a task made all the more urgent by the presence of North Korean troops in Ukraine and Russian assistance to the Houthis’ targeting of oil shipments bound for Asia.

China has continually surprised the United States and its allies with unexpected military maneuvers and new weapons systems. When used effectively, surprise can shake an adversary’s confidence in its military plans and reinforce deterrence. Trump is famous for using unpredictability as a weapon. In his first term, however, Trump’s surprise actions were often counterproductive, as they threw not just U.S. adversaries but U.S. allies off balance—unsettling the same partners the United States needs to take on more risk by standing alongside it in a crisis. Biden’s unexpected convening of AUKUS, which reinforced U.S. allies’ advantage in undersea warfare, offers a better model for the kinds of policies the Trump administration can introduce to seize initiative back from China. Beijing was deeply unhappy with the formation of AUKUS and used diplomacy to try to undermine it, a clear indication of its success.

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

Working with key allies such as Australia and Japan to bolster deterrence will require urgent effort. But other parts of U.S. strategy in Asia, particularly its outreach in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, will require patience and discipline. Historically, the United States has paid attention to those regions only intermittently, usually only insofar as they relate to higher-priority challenges such as communism, Japanese postwar economic expansion, and terrorism. This trend is likely to continue, as competition with China drives U.S. engagement with countries such as Indonesia. But the Trump administration should try to move away from defining U.S. policy toward these countries purely in competitive terms. And it certainly should not make pulling them away from China its sole objective, since doing so will only make those governments more wary of American engagement.

Such a policy has a poor track record. In the 1950s, during Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles pushed newly constituted postcolonial states to resist overtures from the Soviet Union and join the West, but most shunned both powers, instead forming the defiant Non-Aligned Movement. The administration of Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, recognized that it was more important that those states be independent and resilient than fervent ideological allies of the United States—a smart, if short-lived, approach to the struggle for global supremacy. Resilience should once again form the basis for U.S. engagement. The United States should help countries in the region bolster their defense capabilities, provide technical and diplomatic support for regional organizations such as the Pacific Islands Forum, and expand trade and investment relationships across Asia.

The Trump administration will also need to combat anti-Western propaganda and disinformation, especially in the wake of the war in Gaza, which has badly damaged the United States’ image in Southeast Asia and reinforced Beijing and Moscow’s narrative that the United States provides cover for colonial oppressors, whereas China and Russia stand for the world’s oppressed. The U.S. government is adept at sharing intelligence with allies about Beijing’s and Moscow’s information campaigns but does very little to coordinate a response. In this war of narratives, the Trump administration must do more to support free media, rebut disinformation, and encourage credible proxies in the region to do the same.

None of these efforts should come at the expense of the United States’ commitment to promoting democratic values. Authoritarian rivals of the United States thrive in countries where governance, transparency, and accountability are weak, making support for democracy all the more important. Indeed, key allies such as Japan and South Korea now emphasize support for democracy in their own strategies, and surveys conducted by the U.S. Studies Centre in Sydney in 2024 indicate that Australians are even more likely than Americans to want their government to promote democracy and human rights in the region. Of course, all U.S. policies, such as advancing democratic values and negotiating investment deals, become much more difficult to implement if U.S. diplomatic offices sit vacant. The Trump administration should therefore work with Congress to expedite confirmation of qualified ambassadors to posts in the Pacific and across South Asia.

NEW MAN, NEW PLAN?

Neither Trump in his first term nor Biden today resolved the all-important question of the United States’ long-term objectives in Asia. Even as Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea build up their defense capacity and resist Chinese coercion, they all aim to eventually return to more productive relationships with Beijing. In contrast, the Biden administration seems to take a more pessimistic view, paying lip service to the idea, referenced in the 2022 National Security Strategy, that “it is possible for the United States and PRC to coexist peacefully.” The Trump administration will likely take a harder line, pursuing an objective reminiscent of President Ronald Reagan’s famous prediction about how the Cold War would end: “We win, they lose.”

This approach does correctly assess the urgent need for an updated Asia strategy. But it is deeply uncomfortable for U.S. allies that remain economically dependent on China and are at greater risk of harm because of their proximity to China’s massive missile inventory. Core U.S. allies will almost certainly be at the center of any confrontation with China. Planning for potential conflict—not to mention decision-making in the heat of a crisis—will be more challenging if Canberra, Tokyo, and Seoul question American intent or self-restraint. The Trump administration will not necessarily need a clever new way to placate China, which could make allies such as Japan worry that the United States has gone too soft, but it should avoid espousing triumphalist theories of victory. For now, instead of channeling Reagan, Trump’s team is better off following Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Finally, the Trump administration will have to recognize that achieving deterrence and stability in Asia depends in part on its actions elsewhere. Some prominent figures, including Vice-President-elect J. D. Vance, have argued that the United States needs to step back from Europe to deal with China. Trump has flirted with the unrealistic idea that if the United States makes nice with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it can turn Russia against China. Both factions underestimate the intractability of Sino-Russian alignment and the importance of Europe. The war in Ukraine affects security in Asia: U.S. allies there do not want Washington to make concessions to Moscow for fear that it could embolden China to act more aggressively in their region. And although NATO may not have a large military presence in Asia, Europe is an economic and diplomatic power that Beijing will not want to alienate in a confrontation with the United States and its Asian allies. For the United States, therefore, demonstrating strength in Ukraine and nurturing its ties with European partners will be critical to maintaining security in Asia. Europe today matters more, not less.

In an increasingly multipolar era, U.S. leadership in Asia will depend not just on the United States’ own capabilities but also on the technological, military, diplomatic, and geographical advantages its allies bring to the table. These countries understand their own roles, but they also understand the vital importance of the United States. U.S. alliances are overwhelmingly popular, with polls conducted between 2019 and 2024 showing they enjoy about 90 percent approval in Japan and South Korea, and similarly high favorability in Australia and the Philippines. People in the region recognize that what is happening in Ukraine will happen in Asia without U.S. leadership. Given the perils of the years ahead, now is not the time for the Trump administration to shirk that responsibility.

MICHAEL J. GREEN is CEO of the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Michael J. Green · November 19, 2024

18.Was Attack on Ammo Depot in Russia’s Bryansk Region First Cross-Border ATACMS Strike? Russia Says Yes

Was Attack on Ammo Depot in Russia’s Bryansk Region First Cross-Border ATACMS Strike? Russia Says Yes

kyivpost.com · by Julia Struck · November 19, 2024

Bryansk ATACMS Kinzhal

Reports suggest Ukraine may have used US-made ATACMS missiles for the first time to strike a military facility in Russia, after Biden gave the go-ahead for long-range strikes.

by Julia Struck | November 19, 2024, 12:43 pm

Photo:General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU)

[UPDATES] As of 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 19, Russian state news agency TASS, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, reported that at 03:25 Moscow time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a strike on a facility in the Bryansk region using six ATACMS ballistic missiles.

“The Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed the use of American-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles,” TASS wrote.

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According to the ministry, air defense systems intercepted five of the missiles over the Bryansk region, while one missile was damaged.

The Russian Defense Ministry stated that fragments of an ATACMS missile fell within the technical territory of a military facility in the Bryansk region, causing a fire that has since been extinguished.

The ministry further claimed that there were no casualties or significant damage resulting from the strike with ATACMS missiles.

The 67th arsenal of the Main Directorate of the Missile and Artillery Directorate of Russia, located near the town of Karachev in Russia’s Bryansk region, was reportedly struck with US-made ATACMS missiles on Tuesday, Nov. 19.

Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, confirmed the strike had been carried out without indicating which weapons had been used while adding that this storage site had previously been targeted by Ukrainian drones.

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According to him, the depot reportedly stored artillery ammunition, with guided bombs, anti-aircraft missiles, and munitions for multiple launch rocket systems, much of which had been supplied by North Korea.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) also reported that early on Nov. 19, Ukrainian forces, in cooperation with other Defense Forces units, carried out the attack.

“By 2:30 a.m. 12 secondary explosions and detonations at the target site were recorded,” the statement said. “Destroying ammunition depots belonging to the army of the Russian occupiers supporting Russian aggression will continue.”

Russian media sources, including residents on social networks, reported explosions coming from within the Karachev district, and suggesting that a “military base” was being attacked. The Russian Astra Telegram channel shared videos of the incident, while local reports said that there had been strikes on this arsenal in late 2023 and again in June and October this year.

The Russian Telegram channel “Military Informant” speculated that Ukraine might have used a combination of drones and Western missiles, possibly ATACMS or Storm Shadow.

Ukrainian military journalist Yuriy Butusov claimed, citing sources, that the strike marked the first-ever use of US-made ATACMS missiles on Russian territory following U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent authorization.

Previously, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to strike NATO forces if Ukraine conducted long-range attacks on Russian territory.

“Now the world waits to see if Putin will respond,” Butusov wrote.

While acknowledging that long-range strikes would not immediately affect the outcome of the war, Butusov said it would deal significant blows to facilities to the rear of the Russian army, complicate its maneuvers and logistics in border areas, and force it to stretch its air defenses further.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Telegram channels suggested the missile flew over 140 kilometers (87 miles) to hit its target, contradicting earlier Western media reports that the US had insisted that strikes would be confined to Russia’s Kursk region.

“This attack also demonstrated that Russia’s air defense will have huge problems with our ballistics,” the message said.

Kyiv Post has yet to confirm the use of ATACMS missiles but is seeking clarification from sources within Ukraine’s Defense Forces.

The 24 Channel outlet reached out to the Armed Forces of Ukraine's General Staff for a comment on whether the strike was conducted with ATACMS missiles. However, they responded that they did not have such information.

On Nov. 17, Western outlets reported that Biden’s administration had authorized Ukraine to use American long-range missiles on Russian territory.

Reuters indicated these weapons could soon be deployed, with The New York Times suggesting their use would initially focus on defending Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region against Russian and North Korean troops.

Meanwhile, Axios reported that US authorization was specifically limited to the Kursk region, aimed at deterring North Korea from deploying additional troops to Russia.

Previously, Western allies were hesitant to permit strikes deep into Russian territory, citing fears of escalation. However, reports of Ukraine receiving such permissions emerged on the same day Russia launched its most extensive missile assault on Ukrainian cities in months.

On Sunday, Russia fired 120 missiles and 90 drones at Ukraine, with Ukrainian forces successfully intercepting over 140 of them, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky described the assault as a massive coordinated strike across all regions of Ukraine. He said that Russian forces deployed various types of drones, including Shaheds UAVs alongside cruise, ballistic, and aeroballistic missiles including the Tsirkon, Iskanders and Kinzhal types.

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Julia Struck

Julia Struck is a news writer and Kyiv Post correspondent who has previously worked as a parliamentary editor, journalist, and news editor. She has specialized in covering the work of Ukrainian parliament, government, and law enforcement agencies.

19. How Ukraine's use of longer-range U.S. missiles might affect course of the war

Voices Nov. 19, 2024 / 9:22 AM

How Ukraine's use of longer-range U.S. missiles might affect course of the war

https://www.upi.com/Voices/2024/11/19/ukraine-longer-range-us-missiles-Russia-war/6631732024658/

By Benjamin Jensen, American University School of International Service

President Joe Biden (R) meets with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., in September. File Photo by Al Drago/UPI | License Photo

The outgoing Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles to strike deeper into Russian territory, according to reports citing White House officials.

The move comes amid concern in the West that Moscow -- aided by the influx of thousands of North Korean fighters -- might be preparing a major counteroffensive to regain lost territory in the Kursk region of Russia.

But how big a deal is the Biden decision? And could it change the trajectory of the conflict in Eastern Europe? The Conversation U.S. turned to Benjamin Jensen, a professor at American University and the Marine Corps University School of Advanced Warfighting, for answers.

What are the missiles the United States authorized Ukraine to use?

The Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, are short-range ballistic missiles that can travel a lot farther than the weapons previously at Kyiv's disposal.

We aren't talking about new technology. ATACMS have been around as a concept since the late 1970s and 1980s and first came into production toward the end of the Reagan era, around 1986. By the mid-1990s they were in service, being first deployed by the United States in 1991 as part of Operation Desert Storm.

ATACMS have a range of approximately 190 miles. That distance is longer than British-supplied Storm Shadow and French-supplied Scalp cruise missiles, which have a range of 155 miles.

Not only do ATACMS go a lot farther, they also travel very fast -- at Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, making them harder to intercept. Depending on where they are fired from, ATACMS can be difficult for radar systems to detect.

The other benefit, in this regard, is that ATACMS are not reliant on GPS positioning. Moscow has had success in jamming and blunting the effectiveness of other weapons that depend on GPS. But ATACMS can switch to an inertia guidance system, based on gyroscopes, to avoid GPS jamming tactics.

The newly authorized missiles also can carry a heavy payload of up to 500 pounds -- enough to create a huge crater on impact.

ATACMS' range, terminal velocity and size of warhead could potentially make a huge difference in the current conflict. It means that Ukraine would have the capability to conduct deep strikes on Russian territory.

In addition, U.S. authorization of their use by Ukraine in Russia would, in theory, also make it easier for other allies to transfer ATACMS to Kyiv. Nearby Poland and Romania have them, as do South Korea and Australia. Authorization by the Biden administration could give those governments the green light to supply the missiles to Ukraine, too.

Why was this longer-range weapon approved now?

Washington's decision comes as Russian troop numbers are being swelled by North Korean fighters -- the 10,000 North Koreans reportedly in Russia at present is likely just a first wave.

This has coincided with a build up of 50,000 Russian troops near Kursk -- the key Russian territory taken by Ukraine earlier this year. Over the past few days, there have been what I would call "probing attacks" by Russia in the area in preparation for what could be a much larger assault to recapture the territory.

In advance of that counter-push, North Korean and Russian troops will need to marshal together before moving to the front -- and they will be doing so in assembly areas deeper within Russia.

The military thinking is, if you can hit troops in those deep areas, you can seriously disrupt Moscow's operational reach. And ATACMS are perfect for attacks on tactical assembly areas -- their size, speed and range makes them harder to intercept.

Certainly if I were advising the Ukrainian military, I would be looking to use ATACMS to hit both assembly areas, ammunition sites and airfields.

What appears to be the thinking in Washington?

If I had to bet, I'd say there are still deep concerns of escalation but growing acknowledgment that we are entering a transition phase in the conflict.

President-elect Donald Trump has signaled that he wants to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. I assess that authorizing ATACMS now suggests the Biden administration is trying to give Ukraine a better hand during those negotiations.

Alternatively, the current White House may have looked at the growing pro-Moscow support of North Korea and concluded that allowing Ukraine to hit North Korean troops before they can be deployed to the front is the only way to offset the advantage this gives Russia. Besides troops, Pyongyang has sent more artillery shells to Russia than the European Union has to Ukraine.

These rationales are not mutually exclusive. It also appears that to the Biden administration, the imperatives outweigh any perceived risks of the United States getting drawn further into the conflict or of an escalatory response from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

What does this signal about the state of the war?

My reading of the conflict -- and you are getting a sense of this through recent statements from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky -- is that Ukraine may only have until the end of the next campaign season, that is spring to summer 2025, to maintain its position. This is due to the ongoing cost that fighting is having on Ukraine. Kyiv is experiencing problems mobilizing sufficient troops -- it has had to increasingly turn to conscription, something Ukraine had tried to avoid.

This isn't to say that Ukraine has run completely out of steam. But it will struggle to take more Russian-controlled territory. Capturing territory in Kursk was a major achievement, but it was a one-off, high-risk gamble. And fighting in parts of Ukraine's east occupied by Russia is proving difficult.

So is this about helping Ukraine keep control of Kursk?

The reporting around Biden's authorization of ATACMS suggests that Washington is telling Ukraine that the missiles can't be deployed everywhere, just in Kursk.

If Trump does have the ability to force people to talk, as he says he does, that will not stop the fighting. Fighting will continue until the parties agree to a cease-fire, and even after that, it could flare up at anytime.

For these reasons, I think you will see Russia throw everything at Kursk, militarily. And Ukraine will do everything it can to keep control of territory there -- Kyiv knows that Kursk would be its biggest bargaining chip should it come to negotiations.

Did Trump's victory play a role in Biden's thinking?

I really think that the decision to authorize ATACMS was more about the reality on the ground in Ukraine than politics in the United States. That said, the president-elect's stated push for negotiations as a way to settle the Ukraine-Russia conflict may well have escalated the decision.

Benjamin Jensen is a professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps University School of Advanced Warfighting and a scholar-in-residence at American University School of International Service.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

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Adversaries Ahead of Us

What Is Needed

Focusing on Intelligence and Irregular Warfare

Conclusion

About The Author

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Comment is Freed

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Addressing 4th, 5th Generation, and Hybrid Warfare Threats to the United States: The War Has Started

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Problem Statement

Discussion

Background: The Last Six Months

Primary Threats to U.S. National Security

Strategic, Operational, and Tactical Conclusions

Recommendations

Conclusion

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