Quotes of the Day:

“As Sam Sarkisian, John Collins, and Max Boot, among others, have sought to remind us, the United States has a rich and extensive history of experience with irregular enemies. Moreover, that experience was by no means entirely negative. The trouble was and, until very recently, has remained, that such varied experience of irregular warfare was never embraced and adopted by the Army as the basis for the development of doctrine for a core competency. Rephrased, the Army improvised and waged irregular warfare, sometimes just regular war against the irregulars, when it had to. But that task was always here officially as a regrettable diversion from preparation for ‘real war.’” 

- Colin Gray

Secretary of the Army Elvis J. Stahr, Jr., defined "special warfare" in 1962 as "a term used by the Army to embrace all military and paramilitary measures and activities related to unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, and psychological warfare." Unconventional warfare primarily encompassed guerrilla operations and subversion to be carried out within enemy or enemy-controlled territory by indigenous personnel, sup­ported and directed by US forces. Counterinsurgency, on the other hand, included all actions, military and political, taken by the forces of the United States alone or in conjunction with a legal government to prevent or eliminate subversive insurgency. Psychological warfare encompassed those activities planned and conducted to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of the enemy, the indigenous population, and neutral or friendly foreign groups to help support US objectives. Unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, and psychological warfare, then, comprised the key elements of special warfare, which according to Secretary Stahr included the capability to fight "as guerrillas as well as against guerrillas and also involves the employment of psychological devices to undermine the enemy's will to resist."

Secretary Stahr's words came from the early 1960's when special warfare, then symbolized by the Special Forces "Green Berets," enjoyed its zenith under the Kennedy administration. During the next decade, the goals of special warfare changed somewhat in form and emphasis, and the concept receded in importance within the Army. The special warfare historian might be excused for noting that that more recent period is reminiscent of the 1950's, when the idea of special warfare struggled for survival. The story of special warfare, then, is a story of the Army, hesitantly and reluctantly groping with concepts of an "unconventional" nature.

- Colonel Al Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare: Its Origins Psychological and Unconventional Warfare, 1941-1952

 “We must display a mastery of irregular warfare comparable to that which we possess in conventional combat…”

- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, 2008 

​1. Green Beret’s tribute to JFK continues

2. A Phase Shift in the Ukraine War: The Winter Campaign of 2023 Has Commenced by Mick Ryan

3. Female IDF tank crews ran down dozens of Hamas terrorists on October 7

4. Rebel Offensive in Myanmar Drives Junta Into Retreat

5. Why directed-energy weapons are the next big bet for the US militar

6. Growing Numbers of Chinese Migrants Are Crossing the Southern Border

7. U.S. Troops Still Train on Weapons With Known Risk of Brain Injury

8. Secret Warnings About Wuhan Research Predated the Pandemic

9. Americans think the American dream is dying

10. Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History

11. Rural America has lost its soul

12. Gaza shrinks for Palestinians seeking refuge. 4 stories offer a glimpse into a diminished world

13. Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the US. A legacy law gives him few guardrails

14. Singing the CCP’s tune: foreign influencers and China’s propaganda strategy

15. China’s Path to Power Runs Through the World’s Cities

16. Netanyahu Open to Extending Hamas Truce, but Pledges to Continue War at ‘Full Power’ Once Ceasefire Ends

17. New beginning or dismal end for the Belt and Road?

18. Thousands leave behind American lives to join Israel’s war in Gaza

19. Special Operations News - Nov 27, 2023 | SOF News

20. However Difficult, The United States Should Still Pursue Israeli-Palestinian Peace

21. The Pentagon’s new opportunity to boost readiness among female troops

22. Concern about military toxic exposure injuries remains high among vets

23. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 26, 2023

24. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 26, 2023

1. Green Beret’s tribute to JFK continues

What a great story about a great Green Beret. There is nothing like a Green Beret Sergeant Major.

Green Beret’s tribute to JFK continues

readingeagle.com · by Borys Krawczeniuk · November 26, 2023

In the heartfelt drop of a hat, Francis J. Ruddy Jr. said a historic thank you and goodbye.

The North Scranton native’s farewell gesture occurred 60 years ago Saturday, on Nov. 25, 1963, the day the nation buried President John F. Kennedy.

Overcome by emotion, Ruddy, an Army Green Beret who specialized in planning missions in great detail, reacted impulsively.

Moments after the assassinated president’s casket descended into the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery, Ruddy, part of the Green Beret attachment assigned to the funeral, removed his beret.

He placed it on the grave.

The Green Beret laid by SGM Francis J. Ruddy in 1963, made publicly available by the JFK Presidential Library and Museum (NARA).

The gesture was “completely spontaneous, not premeditated,” Ruddy told a New York Times reporter 14 months later.

“It was pretty much a reflex,” Ruddy said. “I stood there with a feeling of complete helplessness. I felt we lost a truly great person.”

By then, Ruddy had seen a lot of death.

Born in 1924, he grew up poor, the son of Francis J. Ruddy Sr. and his wife, Belinda, in the city’s High Works neighborhood. After leaving Scranton Technical High School, Ruddy fought in World War II.

In 1945, he earned a Bronze Star for gallantry in France as an Army paratrooper. He left the Army, but reenlisted two years later and fought in the Korean War. In 1952, his division chose him as outstanding soldier. In 1957, as a Special Forces soldier, he served as one of the first American military advisers in South Vietnam, training mountain people to form militias to counter the Viet Cong, the enemy North Vietnamese military.

He was so far away, so isolated, when his mother died in February 1958, he found out three months later.

In a 1962 visit home to Scranton, Ruddy told his brother, Jerry, what he felt after learning their mother died, according to a story in The Scranton Times.

“He said, ‘Death to me is not what it is to you. I’ve seen so many men (die), scraped a little hole thrown them in. It doesn’t mean anything,'” Ruddy told his brother.

Link to Kennedys

A year later, on that November day 60 years ago, Francis J. Ruddy Jr. clearly felt differently about death.

He felt the nation’s loss and the loss of a friend.

Long before the funeral, unknown to his own family, Ruddy grew close to the Kennedys, the country’s most famous political family and later its most tragic.

The connection had its roots in the Green Berets.

The U.S. Army Special Forces, known commonly as the Green Berets, started in 1952. It’s unclear exactly when Ruddy joined, but by 1957 he was secretly in Vietnam. President Dwight Eisenhower sent about 700 military personnel into South Vietnam as part of an effort known as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, formed in 1955 to prevent the spread of communism from North Vietnam, according to a post on the John F. Kennedy presidential library website.

Kennedy, inaugurated president in January 1961, turned into the Green Berets’ biggest champion. He visited Fort Bragg in North Carolina in October 1961 and ordered the Special Forces to begin wearing berets. Presumably, Kennedy and Ruddy met there.

Over the next two years, Green Berets paid a few visits to Hickory Hill, Kennedy’s “satellite White House” in McLean, Va., presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in his 2018 book, “American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family.”

“My favorite days were when (Sgt.) Major Francis Ruddy’s Green Berets brought small units of the elite Army special force to Hickory Hill,” RFK Jr. wrote. “They fired grappling hooks onto our roof, and rappelled down our home’s five-story north face, wearing camouflage fatigues and black greasepaint.”

After her husband’s assassination, the Kennedy family asked the Green Berets to join the honor guard at his funeral because of their “special bond with the slain president,” according to the History Channel.

“During Mass, I snuck glances at those warriors standing at attention with the hulking giant (Sgt.) Maj. Francis Ruddy, whom all of us children knew well, behind the coffin and along the wall,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in his book. “Some of Ruddy’s men had teary eyes.”

The funeral happened on John F. Kennedy Jr.’s third birthday and the family coped after the burial “as best we could,” Kennedy wrote.

Then, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. drove first lady Jacqueline Kennedy back to Arlington National Cemetery at midnight “where they found Major Ruddy’s beret on the pine boughs upon Jack’s grave,” he wrote.

“He gave the beret to us,” Ruddy told The Associated Press days after the funeral. “We considered it appropriate that it be given back to him.”

The beret remains on display at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

In January 1968, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., by then a U.S. senator representing New York, visited Fort Braggf. A Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer story referred to Ruddy as a personal friend of Sen. Kennedy.

In June 1968, Francis J. Ruddy Jr. escorts Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy to a memorial Mass in New York City for her husband. Ruddy, who was in the honor guard at President John F. Kennedy’s grave, was asked by the Kennedy family to be in the honor guard for the late senator. (Sunday Times file photo)

Only five months later, three days after the June 4, 1968, assassination of Sen. Kennedy, the Kennedy family asked Ruddy to accompany Ethel Kennedy, RFK Sr.’s wife, to a memorial Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. A photograph shows them holding hands before entering.

Few visits home

Ruddy apparently spent less time with his own family than with the Kennedys. His 1962 visit home was one of only three, his brother, Jerry, could remember, according to an April 1988 Scranton Times story.

“There’s no doubt about it,” said Mary Kay Ruddy, 63, Jerry Ruddy’s daughter, in a recent interview.

Family members surmise the secret nature of Francis Ruddy’s work led to the distance from his family, Ruddy said.

His 1962 visit included a peek into the Green Berets’ secrecy. His luggage included a double-locked briefcase, according to the Scranton Times story.

Ruddy said her uncle and his wife, Rilla, visited and he had the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Her uncle asked if the family had a bedroom with a door that locked. They didn’t, so Francis Ruddy hid the briefcase in a bedroom closet and pushed the bed in front of the closet door, she said.

“I just remember he was very impressive,” Ruddy said. “Like a very impressive figure. And we were all waiting to see Uncle Fran. And he brought his wife and they had a big German shepherd named Sheba. And I thought he (Francis Ruddy) looked like my dad.”

Ruddy did three tours of duty in Vietnam, returning to the U.S. in 1972, but never saw his Scranton family again. He was stationed in Brooklyn, N.Y., until 1975, which Jerry Ruddy never knew.

Francis Ruddy died of cancer in February 1985 at age 60. Family members attributed the cancer to exposure to Agent Orange, the herbicide the military sprayed widely in Vietnam to control vegetation and prevent the enemy from hiding.

Tradition

A tradition survives him.

For years, Ruddy and/or other Green Berets returned to John F. Kennedy’s grave and ceremonially left a beret. The tradition lasted until 1989, said Jared Tracy, deputy command historian at the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Liberty, N.C., formerly Fort Bragg.

The military reestablished the ceremony in 2011, and it has continued every November since with the latest reenactment on Nov. 8.

Mary Kay Ruddy said her uncle risked consequences for removing and leaving behind his beret.

“I think he just was so devoted, and his respect for that man, that day he just wasn’t afraid of the consequences,” she said. “My uncle, he will always be remembered, which is great thing, because I mean, what does anybody want?

“To be remembered.”

readingeagle.com · by Borys Krawczeniuk · November 26, 2023

2. A Phase Shift in the Ukraine War: The Winter Campaign of 2023 Has Commenced by Mick Ryan

The key question we must ask and answer (correctly):

Now is the time for Ukraine’s supporters to decide. Do they want Ukraine to just survive and tread water through years of Positional Warfare, or do they want Russia defeated?

It is an important question, with implications well beyond Ukraine, and it must be resolved soon.

A Phase Shift in the Ukraine War

The Winter Campaign of 2023 Has Commenced

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/a-phase-shift-in-the-ukraine-war?

MICK RYAN

NOV 26, 2023

∙ PAID

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Source: @DefenceU

The recent first snows and rains, the winding down of Ukrainian offensive operations (but not their cessation) as well as the latest surge in Russian air and missile attacks, highlight a change in phase that is taking place in Ukraine. The war has now shifted into the Winter 2023-2024 campaign.

Forecasts for winter this year indicate that this winter will have similar temperatures and precipitation levels as last year. There will be some cold weather, some wet weather, some overcast weather and some mud. All of these have an impact on the planning for, and execution of, military operations as well as humanitarian support to displaced Ukrainian citizens.

But climatic conditions are only one consideration for the Ukrainian and Russian high commands as they enter the third winter of the war since the large-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022. Political and diplomatic considerations, the war in Gaza, Chinese aggression in the West Pacific and the U.S. 2024 Presidential campaign are all shaping the thinking of Ukrainian and Russian leaders and strategists as the winter campaigns of 2023 commence.

But, before looking at the respective strategies of each country for this winter, what are the key differences in the war as we enter the winter of 2023 compared to this time last year?

The Differences from Winter 2022

The Russians entered winter last year reeling from their defeats in Kharkiv and Kherson. Under then overall commander, General Surovikin, the Russian forces shifted to a defensive strategy in order to preserve their remaining combat forces while absorbing mobilised troops and preparing for 2023 operations. This was abruptly upended halfway through the winter when General Gerasimov was appointed overall commander and shifted onto the offensive very quickly. This year, unless there is a drastic reversal in fortunes for the Russians (and probably not even then), there will be continuity in the overall leadership of Russia’s invading forces.

A second difference is that this year, Ukraine has a greatly expanded operational and strategic strike capacity. Since 2022, Ukraine has continued to improve its capacity to undertake operational and strategic strike campaigns. The operational strike campaign, seeking to interdict Russian logistics, reinforcements and battlefield command and control, is utilising long range missiles, including HIMARS, Storm Shadow and SCALP air-launched missiles.

While strikes on Russia’s Crimean military infrastructure – the Black Sea Fleet docks and HQ, air defence and logistics nodes – have been important, these are yet to degrade Russia’s Dnipro and Southern Grouping of Forces to the degree where a Ukrainian breakthrough is possible. And improved Russian electronic warfare is decreasing the effectiveness of many Ukrainian longer range strike munitions.

Perhaps a more important difference is the Ukrainian strategic strike capacity. Using an array of new aerial and maritime uncrewed systems, the Ukrainians have created a new export corridor at sea, pushed back missile-launching Russian naval vessels, and hit industry and military targets inside Russia itself. This campaign will be enduring and potentially able to be stepped up over winter now that land campaigns will reduce in tempo.

A third difference is that Ukraine has continued to enhance its air, missile and drone defensive network. The Ukrainian air defence network has received additional western air defence systems since last year, and therefore the defence of some Ukrainian cities over winter will be enhanced. Recent developments in the Ukrainian air defence capability include the testing of Western RIM-7 air defence missiles being launched from Soviet-era BUK launchers, in a program some have described as Franken-SAM.

In the last few weeks, additional NASAMshave arrived and Germany has announced the provision of more IRIS-T and Patriot air defence systems. At the same time, numerous new mobile anti-drone units have also been established to counter the increasing number of Iranian drones being employed by the Russians.

Notwithstanding these upgrades in the ability of the Ukrainians to defend their airspace and critical infrastructure, it is not possible to defend every potential target. Therefore, we should expect that the Russians will exploit any gaps in air defence coverage to place pressure on the Ukrainian government and to make life as hard as possible for the Ukrainian people.

Ukrainian mobile anti-drone unit (Source: @DefenceU)

A fourth difference is the level of optimism in Western capitals about the war. This time last year, the great tank debate was finally winding down with the decision by the British to provide Challenger 2 tanks, shortly thereafter followed by announcements by the German and American governments about the provision of Leopard 2 and M1 tanks for Ukraine. This was against the background of a triumphant Zelensky visit to Washington DC just before Christmas, and a level of optimism about the potential for Ukraine’s expected offensives in Spring 2023.

Unfortunately, some of that optimism has now dissipated in the wake of a Ukrainian southern offensive that has not achieved the territorial liberation that many had planned (and hoped) for. The Ukrainians have however inflicted significant attrition on the Russians, but in the long term unless Western aid significantly increases, the Russians are better placed to absorb such attrition. The recent Time article on President Zelensky, and article in The Economist where General Zaluzhnyy mentioned the heretofore avoided ‘stalemate’ word, have contributed to this mood of strategic gloominess going into Winter 2023. This grim outlook in Western capitals is heightened by the situation in Gaza.

Lawrence Freedman describes this sense of gloom in his recent piece at Comment is Freed:

The starting point for the gloom is that Ukraine’s offensive operations, though not yet abandoned, have yielded only limited territorial gains, and as the winter mud makes movement difficult there are unlikely to be any major advances until the ground hardens next spring. The Russians have shown themselves to be adept at defensive operations and have improved their use of drones and electronic warfare capabilities.  

Finally, the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the end of 2023 is a very different institution from that which existed in 2022. While many of the senior leaders may be the same, the experiences of late 2022 and throughout 2023 have led to a much larger military institution. It has evolved its thinking on modern warfare, including the balance of crewed and uncrewed systems, the balance of new versus old soldiers and leaders, the continuing transition to a NATO-style institution, the increased use of electronic warfare, changes in doctrine and the systemic learning of lessons, and improved training regimes.

Like all large, intense and long wars, the institutions that fight them evolve significantly as the war progresses. The Ukrainian Armed Forces that exist now have changed in how they develop and employ the physical, moral and intellectual aspects of fighting power compared to the institution that existed in February 2022.

Unfortunately, some of the same can be said for the Russians. They have learned and adapted over the past year. What might there Winter campaign look like as a result?

The Russian Winter Campaign

For the Russians, winter will be a mix of holding their lines in the south and along the Dnipro, continuing their offensives in Luhansk and around Avidiivka. This is a different strategy to that planned by General Surovikin this time last year. He probably had a much better grasp on Russian offensive capacity that Gerasimov and Shoigu do at present. A key driver for Russian offensive operations over winter will be Putin’s desire to deliver positive battlefield news to Russian citizens in the lead up to the March 2024 Russian elections. As Freedman notes:

The best evidence of Putin’s determination to see some serious military progress is the massive offensives launched by Russia in early October, almost as soon as he was convinced that the Ukrainian offensive had run its course. It may also be the case that Putin is thinking more about his own presidential election on 17 March than the American election in November. In the West this election is barely taken seriously as the result is hardly in doubt, but Putin does worry about questions of turnout and expressions of popular enthusiasm. An early military victory would give him something to boast about.

So, the Russian Winter Campaign will attempt to keep their offensives rolling while also planning and finalising their likely 2024 offensive campaigns. The Russians will need to balance the use of their munitions and other supplies now with stockpiling stores and ammunition for use in 2024.

While conducting his ongoing ground offensives, and planning for his 2024 campaigns, General Gerasimov has also shown the initial indications of conducting another widescale winter strike campaign against Ukraine. Just as his predecessor did in 2022, Gerasimov will seek to destroy civilian infrastructure, especially power and heating. Degradation of Ukrainian morale remains an objective of Putin in order to decrease the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, reduce its ability to function as an independent state and to add further impetus to those in the West who believe that a ceasefire and negotiations should occur in 2024.

Over Winter, the Russians will be attempting to find and destroy Ukrainian supply depots, storage locations for western equipment and troop concentrations. Russia will want to minimize Ukraine’s ability to conduct a winter strike campaign while also reducing the war materiel available for the any Ukrainian offensive operations on the Dnipro and in the south over winter, as well as any potential Ukrainian 2024 offensives.

Russian adaptation is going to continue over the winter months. While a slow starter, Russian adaptation has gathered pace. The Russian Army, with its centralised command philosophy and the widespread fear of reporting failure, does not learn and share lessons well from the bottom up.

However, the centralised command philosophy does mean that when a decision to change is made – such as the widespread use of anti-drone cages, wider employment of drones and EW, and development of deep defensive lines in the south – they do have better systemic and industrial capacity to force that adaptation on their institution. Where the Ukrainians are much better at bottom-up adaptation, the Russians are starting to demonstrate that they may be generating an advantage in strategic, top-down adaptation.

The most important Winter battleground for the Russians will be the strategic influence battle. In particular, they will continue their operations to delegitimise support for Ukraine among western citizens, elites and politicians. The recent Ukrainian statement of support for Israel will be used by Russia – an open supporter of Hamas and its atrocious behaviour – to attempt to further degrade support for Ukraine particularly in what is now described as the Global South. And while Ukraine is keen to have as many supporters as possible from nations around the world, a quick glance at the recent Kiel Institute Ukraine Support Tracker (below) shows that it would be difficult for nations in the Middle East and the ‘Global South’ to provide less support to Ukraine than they already do.

Source: Kiel Institute

The Winter Campaign by the Ukrainians

Ukraine will possess very different winter campaign objectives from Russia. Ukraine will want to sustain some operational momentum with their ground campaigns. The tempo of ground operations will reduce due to the rains and exhaustion. But the Dnipro cross river attack and defensive battles in Luhansk, Bakhmut, Avidiivka and southern Ukraine remain crucial. Ukraine may not gain much ground in these, however it cannot afford to cede territory over Winter. And, it does not want the Russians to be able to seize the initiative – or for the perception to take hold that it has.

Ukraine’s strategic strike campaign using air and naval weapons will probably accelerate. It is a crucial mechanism that the Ukrainians can employ to degrade Russia’s operational capacity in occupied Ukraine, and to undertake spectacular attacks that generate media – and support – for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Another Ukrainian winter objective will be to reconstitute units battered by offensive operations in the south and east, and where possible, provide a rest for exhausted troops. Part of this will be retraining in new tactics for low-signature battlefield operations and minefield breaching. Accompanying these strategic force reconstitution and realignment actions is likely to be more training in combined arms and combined arms planning, as well as the raising of additional units for 2024 offensives. There are already reports of Ukraine raising five new mechanized brigades for operations after this winter.

Ukraine will be taking those actions to safeguard its citizens and ensure they able to endure the winter conditions. Humanitarian assistance and emergency services for the citizens of Ukraine will be crucial elements of Ukraine’s winter campaign. Ukraine has also spent time preparing its electricity grid for any Russian attacks to ensure it is more resilient. Ukraine has invested in improving its grid since last year, and Ukrainian business and citizens have also taken measures to improve their ability to deal with any blackouts due to Russian drone and missile strikes over winter.

Similar to the Russians, a critical Winter battleground for the Ukrainians is the strategic influence battle. For Ukraine, key strategic messages will be that they have used Western support effectively in 2023, and that more support - and strategic patience - is an important defeat mechanism to overcome Putin’s ‘long war’ theory of victory. The principal target will be the U.S. Congress, although sustaining support from European nations as well as key supporters like Canada and Japan will also be vital. Because of this, the Winter strike campaign conducted by the Ukrainians will need to demonstrate the ability to strike back and hurt the Russians without generating negative perceptions through civilian casualties.

Preparing for 2024

Ukraine and Russia are engaged in a large, long, and intense war. Both will be seeing the Winter 2023 campaign as an opportunity to reconstitute, exploit opportunities on the battlefield, undertake operational and strategic strike while also conducting essential strategic influence operations.

Both sides are likely to continue smaller scale attacks throughout winter, with the Russians and Ukrainians eyeing opportunities for larger scale offensives in 2024. While both sides have a degraded material capacity to do so, compared to the beginning of 2023, Russia and Ukraine have strategic reasons to seek some form of tactical and operational breakthrough in the first few months of 2023.

For Putin, as Lawrence Freedman notes, the imperative is to not have a ‘not lose’ approach shift to a perception of ‘losing’ among Russian people and his key supporters. 

For President Zelensky, the imperative will be to lead the Ukrainian people through another winter of Russian attacks, hold ground, take territory where possible – and most importantly secure more military and financial assistance through the U.S. Congress. At the same time, Ukraine’s leaders will be concerned that the ongoing war in Gaza will draw on the time, attention and resources of NATO and the United States.

As I wrote in my November campaign update, the West faces a turning point in its support for support to Ukraine:

There is something that will be much tougher to deal with than a decision to defeat Russia. It is this: a Russia that emerges in 2024 and 2025 in a world where the West is unwilling to decisively confront its atrocious behaviour. It will be a world where predatory authoritarians feel they can prey on their neighbours without decisive intervention from outside. In this world, the Russia-China-Iran tripartite alignment can only get more powerful.

Now is the time for Ukraine’s supporters to decide. Do they want Ukraine to just survive and tread water through years of Positional Warfare, or do they want Russia defeated?

It is an important question, with implications well beyond Ukraine, and it must be resolved soon.

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3. Female IDF tank crews ran down dozens of Hamas terrorists on October 7

BZ to these soldiers. 

Single tanks fighting terrorists, guarding the breaches and more. Amazing stories.

At first, they discovered breaches along the border with Gaza, along with dozens of terrorists. Leaving a tank there to protect the border and prevent more Gazans from flooding into Israel, they headed to Kibbutz Holit, while also sending a tank to battle Hamas terrorists at Kibbutz Sufa.

Another of the armored crew commanders, Karni, spoke of the devastation they witnessed on the approach to Kibbutz Holit: “We realized we’re at war.”

“They told me there were terrorists in all the trees around me, so we just started firing. We started firing bunker busters at the terrorists that were up close, and then mortar shells at those further away,” Michal, another officer in the unit, said in the Channel 12 report.

“I could see the hits, I saw [the terrorists] fall down,” she added.

...

Another commander, also called Michal, described her experience at one of the border breaches at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. “As we continued we realized that those 50 terrorists — that was just the beginning. Then we started getting eyewitness reports from Kibbutz Holit, so I left a tank at the border, told [the operator] she had permission to fire at will, and then set out for Holit.”

Photos and video at the link: https://www.timesofisrael.com/female-idf-tank-crews-ran-down-dozens-of-hamas-terrorists-on-october-7/

Female IDF tank crews ran down dozens of Hamas terrorists on October 7

Channel 12 interviews soldiers from all-woman company within mixed-gender battalion who say there was no time for fear or hesitation, battled terrorists for 17 hours

https://www.timesofisrael.com/female-idf-tank-crews-ran-down-dozens-of-hamas-terrorists-on-october-7/

By TOI STAFF

26 November 2023, 1:03 am   30

A female IDF combat soldier inside a tank (screenshot: Channel 12, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

When a group of young Israeli women were woken up at 6:30 a.m. on October 7, they had no idea they would be making history as the first female armored crews in Israel, and perhaps the world, to participate in active battle.

In an interview with Channel 12 this week, the combat soldiers spoke of thundering along main roads to get to some of the 20 southern Israeli communities that came under massive assault that morning, running down terrorists, and securing breaches on the border with the Gaza Strip.

One of the officers in the unit, identified as Hagar, told Channel 12: “[My commander] comes into our room at 6:30 a.m., wakes me up and tells us that there’s a terrorist infiltration. We didn’t really understand the enormity of the event.”

00:00

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The soldiers are part of a company of all-women tank operators, which was made permanent in the Israel Defense Forces in 2022 after a two-year pilot program. The company, in the Caracal mixed-gender light infantry battalion, usually operates along the Egyptian border — not in wars or in fighting behind enemy lines.

On the morning of October 7, they left their base at Nitzana, on the Egyptian border, and drove north as fast as they could, in tanks and an armored Humvee. In one of a number of highly irregular decisions IDF commanders were forced to make that day, the tanks were given the okay to drive on civilian roads — at speeds far higher than recommended.

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At first, they discovered breaches along the border with Gaza, along with dozens of terrorists. Leaving a tank there to protect the border and prevent more Gazans from flooding into Israel, they headed to Kibbutz Holit, while also sending a tank to battle Hamas terrorists at Kibbutz Sufa.

Another of the armored crew commanders, Karni, spoke of the devastation they witnessed on the approach to Kibbutz Holit: “We realized we’re at war.”

“They told me there were terrorists in all the trees around me, so we just started firing. We started firing bunker busters at the terrorists that were up close, and then mortar shells at those further away,” Michal, another officer in the unit, said in the Channel 12 report.

“I could see the hits, I saw [the terrorists] fall down,” she added.

Soldiers from the Caracal mixed-gender light infantry battalion (Screenshot: Channel 12, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Hila, also a commander, told Channel 12 that none of them had been trained on the weapons system installed on the armored Humvee. “Within 10 minutes, we’d all become experts: how to run it, how to fire, how to slam the brakes,” she said.

“We approached the border and saw burned bodies of terrorists hiding in the trees. We were still firing as we went through to make sure we got everyone,” Michal said.

Another commander, also called Michal, described her experience at one of the border breaches at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. “As we continued we realized that those 50 terrorists — that was just the beginning. Then we started getting eyewitness reports from Kibbutz Holit, so I left a tank at the border, told [the operator] she had permission to fire at will, and then set out for Holit.”

This picture taken on October 26, 2023 shows a view of a burnt kitchen in one of the houses attacked by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in Kibbutz Holit in Israel’s southern district. (YURI CORTEZ / AFP)

“We saw terrorists everywhere, and I told the driver — just run them down… We get there and the gate is closed, a shell-shocked soldier runs out shouting “terrorists, terrorists!… So we smashed through the gate,” she said.

Asked about their first time shooting at terrorists, the soldiers were stoic.

“I feel like it’s exactly what we trained for. We were really prepared for everything,” a commander identified as Tamar told Channel 12. “We just did what our brains and our hands knew how to do.”

“In the moment you don’t think, ‘Am I saving that person, or that home?’ You understand — there’s a terrorist and I have to kill him before he gets into one of the border communities,” she added.

The newly appointed commander of the Paran Brigade, Col. Shemer Raviv, couldn’t be prouder of his female armored crews, who battled terrorists for some 17 hours straight on that day.

“When the tanks arrived, they broke up the battles,” Raviv told Channel 12. “Once they took those two positions… the terrorists understood they could either run or they would die. And the girls in those tanks, the warriors, with three tanks at that point in the attack, they fought in a most impressive way. They operated in such a way that they were seemingly not trained for. They fired inside Israeli communities, drove on main roads, and I believe that thanks to their actions in that area, we prevented the attack from moving further south.”

A female IDF combat soldier operates a Merkava IV tank (Screenshot: Channel 12, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

But these soldiers weren’t quick to accept accolades for their “historic” battle.

“So what? What does it matter? Did the terrorist know there were girls in the tanks? No. You think they saw Michal’s hair sticking out of the helmet? No. Boys, girls — what does it matter?” Hila said.

Tamar agreed. “You keep saying ‘heroines’ and ‘historic’… I don’t feel like a hero. I feel like I’m a soldier that was given a job, and I did my job. I think anyone would have done that.”

“This was not a battle with human beings. There was no humanity here, and my aim is to protect people. Their aim was to kill people,” Hila added.

For her part, Hagar said that there was no time to be scared. “You think about the civilians trapped in their homes and the people that needed us. You understand that there was no room for fear.”

Female soldiers operate a tank in the Negev desert in an undated photograph. (Israel Defense Forces)

Critics of gender integration in the military often decry it as a dangerous social experiment with potential ramifications for national security, while defenders generally trumpet it as a long-needed measure, one that has already been implemented in many Western countries.

Detractors note that some requirements for female combat soldiers have been lowered — which they say is a sign that effectiveness is being sacrificed — and that servicewomen suffer stress injuries at a higher rate.

The army insists that it is allowing more women to serve in combat positions out of practical considerations, not due to a social agenda, saying it requires all the woman- and manpower available to it.

For Raviv, the battle was proof that female combat soldiers are in the IDF to stay.

4. Rebel Offensive in Myanmar Drives Junta Into Retreat

Long live the resistance. I hope we are learning from this.

People like Dave Eubank, Tim Heninemann, and Kristine Gould, among others need to be thoroughly debriefed on their work in Burma over many years after the conflict ends.

DEFENSE/SECURITY

Rebel Offensive in Myanmar Drives Junta Into Retreat

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/rebel-offensive-myanmar-drives-junta-retreat?utm

Ethnic Armies shock Tatmadaw

NOV 26, 2023

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By: Nava Thakuria

Photo from The Irrawaddy

Myanmar, whose agony has slipped from the world’s front pages as violence in other regions has caught attention, has witnessed a flare-up as many armed ethnic groups have begun a massive offensive against the Burmese military junta starting in the last week of October, with the current conflict differing because ethnic armies are no longer on the defensive perhaps for the first time.

By now, some parts of the nation have come under the control of pro-democracy and anti-junta rebels vowing to throw out the military dictators from the administrative capital Naypyidaw. The intense fighting has continued, lately expanding into new, densely-populated areas. From the states of Shan, Kayah (formerly Karenni), Mandalay & Sagaing divisions, battles against the junta forces, known as the Tatmadaw, have expanded into Rakhine and Chin States.

Amazingly, public demonstrators in Yangon recently dared retribution to chant slogans against China, a major source of arms and other support to the junta, assembling in front of the Chinese Embassy on November 19. The agitators, understood to be pro-junta, claimed that Beijing is behind the recent offensive against the military regime and is supporting the people’s defense forces (PDF), the armed wing of the National Unity Government. Speculation is now being raised that Beijing has had enough of the current batch of Burmese military dictators, who are enormously unpopular across the country.

The odds that the rebels could bring down the government are slim, however. Both Russia and China are supplying the Tatmadaw, or military, and as far as can be determined there is no major arms supplier to the rebels, who nonetheless have made major arms seizures from fleeing government troops. Singapore is also alleged by rebels to be a major arms supplier. No Western democracy has formally recognized the shadow National Unity Government as Myanmar’s legitimate government, although none has recognized the junta either.

The country had enjoyed some progress toward normality following the 2011 cession of some of the military’s power to civilian rule and the creation of a semi-democratic government under the 2008 constitution. More than 27 million Burmese of a population of 55 million participated in November 2020 polls that humiliated the junta, with NLD nominees winning more than 920 of 1,117 available constituencies. The military-supported Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) succeeded in only 71 seats.

The junta alleged vote fraud although domestic and international observers found the polling to be free and fair, ousting the democratically elected government under the leadership of Nobel peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD) in February 2021. The country slipped into conflict soon after the military, led by Min Aung Hlaing, the chairman of the State Administration Council, took over.

When outraged citizens responded with huge rallies, banging pots and pans to signal their displeasure, the military responded with overwhelming force. Suu Kyi was detained and later imprisoned by the military-controlled courts for many years on trumped-up charges alleging her involvement in electoral corruption. Along with Suu Kyi, who had functioned as state counselor in the previous government, President U Win Myint and many NLD officials and elected ministers were booked as well.

Some 141 elected NLD lawmakers, both in parliament and various states, and more than 1,900 NLD activists were arrested after the coup, with half of them still behind bars. Many elected representatives fled the country and at least 18 have died of illnesses from inadequate medical care during the days in hiding. The military rulers seized properties belonging to 182 elected representatives. The junta shocked the world by executing former lawmaker Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw following trials in the military courts.

According to Progressive Voice, a participatory rights-based policy research and advocacy organization, at least 2,940 civilians were killed by the military authorities within 1,000 days of the coup. More than 17,550 people were arrested from different localities across Myanmar. At least 150 journalists and media personnel were also detained by the military council, with 25 still inside various jails. At least three journalists died from injuries in military atrocities in separate incidents. The Geneva-based global media safety and rights body Press Emblem Campaign expressed serious concern over the imprisonment of working journalists in Myanmar and urged the authorities to ensure fair trials for them.

A recent statement issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees revealed that more than 333,000 civilians have been rendered homeless in the ongoing fighting between the junta forces and ethnic armed organizations along with the people’s defense force (PDF). More than two million have been displaced across the country since the last military takeover.

The recent wave of fighting broke out on October 27, when three ethnic minority groups, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and Arakan Army (AA) coordinated an offensive in the northern Shan locality, which is adjacent to China. Named ‘Operation 1027’, the offensive had cost the Tatmadaw nearly 200 military camps and nine towns by the third week of November. The AA rebels recently launched an offensive in Rakhine State, many junta soldiers and even forcing some to surrender with arms and ammunition.

A Burmese political activist who asked to remain nameless told Asia Sentinel the Rakhine region has descended into a full-blown civil war, with junta soldiers indiscriminately shelling, delivering air strikes, and blocking humanitarian assistance to people in distress. Khin Ohmar of Progressive Voice said that although the junta authorities continue laying landmines in various parts of Rakhine and using airstrikes on populous villages, lately the soldiers have been forced to retreat from various strategic points to avoid the AA offensives.

The UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs recently stated that the fresh clashes in Rakhine localities displaced over 26,000 people. The AA forces continue to press demands for the restoration of democracy with a collective desire to safeguard the lives of civilians, assert rights for self-defense, and maintain territorial integrity. The UN office asked that individual soldiers be treated with humanity when they are captured.

The troubles in various western Myanmar localities have increased the influx of refugees into Mizoram in northeast India. Even many Burmese soldiers have deserted, crossing the porous boundary to arrive in the state but were later sent back by the Indian agencies. The government in Aizawl has extended necessary support to the refugees. The hilly state is now giving shelter to thousands of Burmese asylum seekers, mostly Chin refugees, who enjoy ethnic proximity to Mizo people. Many of their children have enrolled in the government-run schools.

New Delhi has recently directed Indian nationals in Myanmar to register their names with the embassy in Yangon and to avoid non-essential travel in view of the evolving security situation. Earlier India, which shares a 1,643 km land border and a 725 km maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal with Myanmar called for cessation of fighting between the junta forces and rebel groups near the international border. It maintained the call for the return of peace and stability as well as democracy in the country.

5. Why directed-energy weapons are the next big bet for the US military

Why directed-energy weapons are the next big bet for the US military

The Week · by Justin Klawans, The Week US · November 26, 2023

Directed-energy devices have been in development for decades but are only recently becoming battlefield-ready

(Image credit: TRW/Getty Images)

published 26 November 2023

As warfare becomes continually dictated by emerging technologies, the United States military has increasingly been developing new tools to use on the battlefield. One such category is directed-energy weaponry, often described as the beginning of war's next generation.

According to various reports throughout 2023, the Pentagon is working on directed-energy weapons as one of its top priorities. While reports indicate that the military is facing hitches in development, billions of dollars are still being poured into directed-energy technology. What do these weapons do, and why is the Pentagon working so diligently to develop them?

What are directed-energy weapons?

These are electromagnetic weapons "capable of converting chemical or electrical energy to radiated energy and focusing it on a target," according to the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR). These weapons can cause physical damage that "degrades, neutralizes, defeats or destroys an adversarial capability," the ONR reported.

Directed-energy devices include weapons that can fire laser beams, microwaves or other types of light particles. Unlike standard weapons, directed-energy technology doesn't use traditional projectiles, but rather energy itself. Experts say this can provide opportunities on the battlefield that were previously unattainable.

While a standard weapon is limited by the number of rounds it can fire, a directed-energy weapon "gives you essentially an infinite magazine of interception opportunities," Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told CNBC. This is because "the laser — as long as you've got electricity — will continue to recharge, [and] continue to shoot down incoming weapons."

What is the Pentagon's plan for these weapons?

The U.S. military is looking into directed-energy weaponry as the next big advancement on the battlefield. Their development has been turbo-charged in recent years, as the Department of Defense has called directed-energy weapons "a technology critical to enabling the 2018 National Defense Strategy," according to a report released this year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

American forces have been testing directed-energy weapons since at least 2014, the GAO reported, and the Pentagon is "spending about $1 billion annually for the last 3 years on research and development" of these devices. However, the United States' history with directed-energy weapons goes back even further, the GAO noted, as research into battlefield applications "has been ongoing for decades ... and is currently experiencing a surge."

This uptick in directed-energy development "stems in part from advances in technology and a desire to maintain competitiveness on the battlefield." The GAO pointed out that the average military four-wheeled ATV "can now hold a high energy laser powerful enough to damage drones," something that vehicles of the past were unable to do.

And while this development remains a tightly guarded military secret, there have been some indications that directed-energy weapons are already being deployed in certain capacities. During a recent press conference, Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder was asked if directed-energy weapons were being used to defend U.S. bases in the Middle East.

"I don't want to go into the specific capabilities that we're using to protect our forces, other than to say we have a wide variety which does include directed energy capabilities," Ryder replied. When asked for clarification, Ryder said there was "a wide variety in our inventory of the U.S. military that includes directed energy weapons."

What are the challenges with these weapons?

Since they don't use standard ammunition, directed-energy weapons "have a shorter range than more conventional weapons systems," Business Insider reported. In addition, their laser-tracking technology can often be "negatively impacted by weather conditions such as fog or storms," the outlet added.

There are also challenges surrounding the heavy financial burden that these weapons could continue to exact. Defense officials are questioning how to "affordably manufacture the high-tech capability and sustain it on the battlefield," according to military trade website Defense News. Part of the concern is that teaching soldiers how to properly use directed-energy weapons will likely be a difficult task.

When it came to conventional weapons, the Pentagon "knew what those capabilities were and trained the soldiers how to use it. We had a plan doctrinally," Lt. Gen. Rob Rasch told Defense News. "Directed-energy is an area that we didn’t know as much, not just from how to make them but how we’re going to employ them," Rasch said.

So while the military knows how to develop directed-energy weapons, what they're less certain of "is how to fight [with] them," Rasch added.

Justin Klawans, The Week US

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Justin Klawans has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022. He began his career covering local news before joining Newsweek as a breaking news reporter, where he wrote about politics, national and global affairs, business, crime, sports, film, television and other Hollywood news. Justin has also freelanced for outlets including Collider and United Press International.

6. Growing Numbers of Chinese Migrants Are Crossing the Southern Border

Infiltration? (for subversion)

Human Trafficking?

Profit potential for brokers?

Dissatisfaction with the PRC/CCP causing people to flee to pursue the American dream?

Likely a combination of all of the above.

How do we vet them?

Growing Numbers of Chinese Migrants Are Crossing the Southern Border

The New York Times · by Eileen Sullivan · November 24, 2023

By Eileen Sullivan

Reporting from Washington

Nov. 24, 2023

More than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined.

A family of migrants from China in Texas after surrendering to Border Patrol in April.Credit...Reuters

The surge of migrants entering the United States across the southern border increasingly includes people from a surprising place: China.

Despite the distances involved and the difficulties of the journey, more than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined, according to government data.

They typically fly into Ecuador, where they do not need a visa. Then, like hundreds of thousands of other migrants from Central and South America and more distant locations, they pay smugglers to guide their travel through the dangerous jungle between Colombia and Panama en route to the United States. Once there, they turn themselves in to border officials and many seek asylum.

And most succeed, in turn fueling further attempts. Chinese citizens are more successful than people from other countries with their asylum claims in immigration court. And those who are not end up staying anyway because China usually will not take them back.

In the polarizing debate over immigration, it is a little-discussed wrinkle in the U.S. system: American officials cannot force countries to take back their own citizens. For the most part, this is not an issue. But about a dozen countries are not terribly cooperative, and China is the worst offender.

Of the 1.3 million people in the United States with final orders to be deported, about 100,000 are Chinese, according to an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal data.

Most of the Chinese migrants who have come to the United States in the past year were middle-class adults.Credit...Reuters

The migrants are part of an exodus of citizens who have grown frustrated with harsh restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic and the direction of Xi Jinping’s authoritarian government. The trend has been coined the “run philosophy,” with citizens escaping to Japan, Europe and the United States.

“The largest reason for me is the political environment,” Mark Xu, 35, a Chinese elementary and middle school English teacher, said in February, as he waited to board a boat in Necoclí, Colombia, a beach town in the north. China was so stifling, he added, it had become “difficult to breathe.”

He was among about 100 Chinese migrants setting off that morning to start the journey through the treacherous Darién Gap, the only land route to the United States from South America. Mr. Xu said he learned about the trek from YouTube and through Google searches, including “how to get outside of China” and “how to escape.”

In the last two years, the area has been one of the most difficult portions of a desperate journey for large numbers of migrants seeking to go north. So far, 481,000 people have crossed through the jungle this year, compared with 248,000 last year, according to Panamanian officials.

Most of the migrants have been Venezuelans, Ecuadoreans and Haitians fleeing crises at home, including economic and security problems. But this year, more and more Chinese have embarked on the journey.

So many have crossed that Chinese citizens are now the fourth-largest group traversing the jungle.

Many fly to Turkey before heading to Ecuador and making their way to the United States.

More than 24,000 came to the United States during the 2023 fiscal year, according to government data. Over the previous 10 years, fewer than 15,000 Chinese migrants were caught crossing the southern border illegally.

The historic levels of migration across the southern border are a major political problem in the United States, where President Biden faces fierce pressure to curb the flow; the Chinese migrants are a small fraction.

Most who have come to the United States in the past year were middle-class adults who have headed to New York after being released from custody.

New York has been a prime destination for migrants from other nations as well, particularly Venezuelans, who rely on the city’s resources, including its shelters. But few of the Chinese migrants are staying in the shelters. Instead, they are going where Chinese citizens have gone for generations: Flushing, Queens. Or to some, the Chinese Manhattan.

“New York is a self-sufficient Chinese immigrants community,” said the Rev. Mike Chan, the executive director of the Chinese Christian Herald Crusade, a faith-based group in the neighborhood. Newcomers do not have to speak English because so many speak Mandarin or Cantonese, he added, making it easier to find a job as well. That kind of network helps people find immigration lawyers, housing and other basic needs.

Their route to Flushing through a South American jungle is what makes the most recent arrivals different. In the past, most Chinese asylum seekers have come on a visa and then applied once they were in the United States. The last time such an influx of Chinese migrants entered illegally, they came by sea in the 1990s. But the current volume is much higher.

“America is the greatest power in the world, isn’t it?” a 29-year-old Chinese migrant who would identify himself only by his nickname and surname, Little Xu, said recently outside a Taiwanese tea shop in Flushing. Mr. Xu was taking a break from his job as a messenger and asked that his full name not be used out of fear of retribution.

He left China, he said, to find work. “I’ve lost hope where I lived,” he said, describing his job as a jewelry salesman in central Hubei Province and how his boss had stopped paying him. Mr. Xu arrived in Flushing in August after a two-month journey from China, which included hiking through the jungle in rain so heavy that his shoes ripped open.

Of the 1.3 million people in the United States with final orders to be deported, about 100,000 are Chinese.Credit...Reuters

Migrants seeking asylum have to wait about six months after they file their application to get permission to work legally. More recent arrivals will wait years for their cases to wind through the system.

In general, Chinese asylum seekers are more successful in immigration court than most. About 67 percent of applicants from China were granted asylum from 2001 to 2021, according to data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

And those who are ordered removed are not likely to be deported.

Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said as long as that happened, the migration trend would continue.

“If you make it to the U.S., then you’re more likely than not to be able to stay,” he said. “So it’s absolutely worth the chance of taking that risk.”

Still, the exodus of Chinese citizens, particularly those of working age, to the United States and elsewhere presents a challenge to China in the long run, according to Carl Minzner, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

For the first time in 60 years, China’s population is shrinking, with fewer births than deaths. And its economy is growing at its slowest rate in 40 years.

With other countries that have refused to take back their citizens, the United States has withheld aid money or used similar leverage to gain cooperation. It also has the ability to restrict access to certain visas, as it did in 2017 with Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

But those have not been compelling arguments for China, which receives little U.S. aid. And as its relations with the United States have deteriorated over the years, the issue has not appeared to be a priority.

When Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi met last week during an international summit in San Francisco, for instance, immigration was absent in their discussion. Instead, they talked about fentanyl, American business investment in China and export controls, among other topics.

In the past, American diplomats have tried to work with the Chinese government to persuade it to repatriate its citizens, and the response has tended to be the same.

“They would just plain refuse to acknowledge the person was Chinese,” said Michele Thoren Bond, a former assistant secretary of state who worked on these issues.

“It is not credible that a country that documents and monitors its citizens as closely as China does not have photos of every citizen,” Ms. Bond added.

Reporting was contributed by Mable Chan and Li Yuan in New York, Julie Turkewitz in Necoclí, Colombia and Federico Rios in Medellín, Colombia.

Eileen Sullivan writes about the Department of Homeland Security with a focus on immigration and law enforcement. More about Eileen Sullivan

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Chinese Join Migrant Crush On U.S. Border

The New York Times · by Eileen Sullivan · November 24, 2023

7. U.S. Troops Still Train on Weapons With Known Risk of Brain Injury

What alternatives do we have?

Photos at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-rocket-launcher.html

I recall back around 2007-2010, USASOC Psychologist Dr. (COL) Robert Forsten devised a brain tracking protocol to track soldiers exposure to blasts and measure cognitive changes from the time they entered the service until the ETSd or retired. The medical community rejected it.

U.S. Troops Still Train on Weapons With Known Risk of Brain Injury

Pentagon researchers say weapons like shoulder-fired rockets expose troops who fire them to blast waves far above safety limits, but they remain in wide use.

By Dave PhilippsPhotographs by Kenny Holston

Reporting from Fort Chaffee, Ark.

• Nov. 26, 2023
• Updated 11:38 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Dave Philipps · November 26, 2023

Special Operations troops trained with rocket launchers in Fort Chaffee, Ark.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Pentagon researchers say weapons like shoulder-fired rockets expose troops who fire them to blast waves far above safety limits, but they remain in wide use.

Special Operations troops trained with rocket launchers in Fort Chaffee, Ark.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

A blast shattered the stillness of a meadow in the Ozark Mountains on an autumn afternoon. Then another, and another, and another, until the whole meadow was in flames.

Special Operations troops were training with rocket launchers again.

Each operator held a launch tube on his shoulder, a few inches from his head, then took aim and sent a rocket flying at 500 miles an hour. And each launch sent a shock wave whipping through every cell in the operator’s brain.

For generations, the military assumed that this kind of blast exposure was safe, even as evidence mounted that repetitive blasts may do serious and lasting harm.

In recent years, Congress, pressed by veterans who were exposed to these shock waves, has ordered the military to set safety limits and start tracking troops’ exposure. In response, the Pentagon created a sprawling Warfighter Brain Health Initiative to study the issue, gather data and propose corrective strategies. And last year, for the first time, it set a threshold above which a weapon blast is considered hazardous.

Despite the order, though, things have hardly changed on the ground. Training continues largely as it did before. Troops say they see little being done to limit or track blast exposure. And weapons like shoulder-fired rockets that are known to deliver a shock wave well above the safety threshold are still in wide use.

The disconnect fits a pattern that has repeated for more than a decade: Top leaders talk of the importance of protecting troops’ brains, but the military fails to take practical steps to ensure safety.

Dr. Michael Roy collected data from sensors on the operators’ helmets and body armor.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Special Operations Command said it now makes operators stand back to protect them from blasts, but none were doing so on a recent visit.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Paul Scharre, a former Army Ranger and a policy expert at the Center for a New American Security who published a report in 2018, funded by the Defense Department, about the dangers of repeated blasts from firing weapons. “We’ve known for years that these weapons are dangerous. There are simple things we can do to protect people. And we’re not doing them.”

Nowhere is that disconnect more clear than on the firing range at the military training center in the Ozarks, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas.

With flames still leaping from the meadow, a few of the Special Operations troops walked to a pair of air-conditioned trailers just behind the firing line, where a research team drew blood samples, strapped sensors to their heads and ran tests, searching for evidence of brain injuries.

Measurements taken by the team from scores of troops over three years showed that in the days after firing rockets, they had worse memories and reaction times, worse coordination, lower cognitive and executive function, and elevated levels of proteins in their blood that are markers of brain injury.

Sensors placed on the operators’ helmets and body armor showed that the rocket launcher they were firing — the Carl Gustaf M3 — delivers a blast that is often twice the recommended safety threshold.

But when the research team finished running tests, the operators walked right back out and started firing again.

Dr. Michael Roy, the lead researcher, said he designed the five-year study to deliver the kind of empirical data that could help the military make better decisions.

“The question is, does this affect performance?” he said. “We are seeing it does.” He added, “If you are on a mission and you can’t remember things and your balance is off, that could be a real problem.”

Days after firing rockets, some troops had worse memories and reaction times, worse coordination, lower cognitive and executive function, according to measurements taken by researchers.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Rocket launchers can deliver a blast that is often twice the recommended safety threshold.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Research by his team and others suggests that troops appear to recover after a few days or weeks, just as people recover from concussions. But, as with concussions, there is growing concern that repeated exposure may lead to permanent brain damage and serious long-term consequences for mental health.

A 2021 Navy study of the records of 138,000 service members found that those in career fields with more blast exposure had an increased risk of developing anxiety disorders, depression, migraines, substance abuse problems, dementia and a number of psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia. And an investigation by The New York Times found that many soldiers and Marines who were exposed to blast waves from firing heavy artillery in Syria and Iraq came home with life-shattering mental and physical problems.

Special Operations Command said in response to questions from The New York Times that it plans to keep using the Carl Gustaf rocket launcher, but sparingly, because of its “potential negative effects.” But the command has taken steps to reduce blast exposure for instructors and assistant gunners, it said, and now requires them to stand farther away when a gunner fires.

During the recent training observed by The Times, none of those safety steps could be seen.

“It’s really negligent, given everything the Pentagon knows, that they haven’t taken action,” said David Borkholder, a professor of engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology.

In 2010, at the request of the military, Mr. Borkholder and a team from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency developed a small, wearable gauge to measure blast exposure.

Small, wearable blast gauges measure blast exposure.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Some Special Operations troops underwent testing while training, during which a research team drew blood samples and strapped sensors to their heads, searching for evidence of brain injuries.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

The agency fielded the blast gauge on about 10,000 troops sent to Afghanistan in 2011, intending to measure blast exposure from roadside bombs. But researchers analyzing the data instead found that 75 percent of the troops’ exposure was coming from their own weapons.

“It was hugely, hugely surprising,” Mr. Borkholder said. “The danger was us. We were doing it to ourselves.”

At the same time, other studies were showing that these kinds of blasts were strong enough to cause brain injuries — even though they packed just a fraction of the punch of an enemy bomb.

One 2009 study by the Swedish military used pigs to assess brain damage from blast exposure, and found that ones placed in the firing position of the Carl Gustaf and exposed to the blasts from three shots developed large numbers of tiny brain hemorrhages. Subsequent studies in military personnel going through explosives and sniper training found evidence of temporary negative effects on brain function.

Rather than expand the blast gauge program, though, the Army quietly shelved it in 2016. The Army said at the time that it did so because the gauges did not provide consistent and reliable data.

Mr. Borkholder, who founded a company that makes blast gauges but left in 2021 and now has no financial stake, said he thought the gauges were shelved because the data told leaders something they didn’t want to hear.

For two years, he pressed the Army surgeon general and members of Congress to revive the program. Without real-time monitoring, he argued, the military was blind to the risks. He said he made no progress.

Merely issuing the gauges to service members might reduce exposure significantly, several researchers said. Time and again in recent studies that equipped troops with gauges and let them see their exposure, the troops have changed their behavior on their own to avoid blasts.

“The enlisted folks are smart,” Mr. Borkholder said. “Give them the tools, often they can solve the problem.”

That has yet to happen. Though a congressional mandate passed in 2018 requires monitoring of blast exposure, the Pentagon is still studying how to go about it. Special Operations Command said in 2019 that it would start issuing gauges to all its operators, but four years later, only those taking part in research studies have them.

Special Operations Command told The Times that its blast gauge program was in the “final development stage.”

Frank Larkin with a photograph of his son, Ryan, at his home in Annapolis, Md. Mr. Larkin lobbied lawmakers to create a congressional mandate that requires monitoring of blast exposure.Credit...Matthew Callahan for The New York Times

In the field, troops say they see things changing, but not enough.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Frank Larkin, a former Navy SEAL and Secret Service agent who lobbied lawmakers to create the congressional mandate, said in an interview that blast exposure “is an insidious threat that is absolutely affecting our force, and we have to act.”

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Larkin worked on a Pentagon team assigned to figure out how to counter the threat of roadside bombs. He realized only years later, he said, that he had missed a major threat.

His son Ryan Larkin was a SEAL deployed in combat at that time. He was in a number of firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan and was decorated for valor, but, as his father later realized, almost all of the blasts in his career came from his own weapons: Carl Gustafs, sniper rifles and explosives used to blow holes in walls.

“We think 80 percent of the blasts he experienced happened in training,” Frank Larkin said.

After 10 years of service, his father said, Ryan Larkin had been exposed to so many blasts that he could barely function. He couldn’t sleep and had panic attacks, headaches, memory problems and a growing dependence on alcohol.

The Navy gave him a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and treated his symptoms with a host of strong medications. No brain injury was diagnosed.

“He kept saying there was something wrong with his head, but no one was listening,” his father recalled.

Ryan Larkin grew increasingly erratic, and was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital after making threats against an officer. Soon after that, he left the Navy when his enlistment ended.

A few months later, in 2017, he died by suicide.

“It is my greatest burden,” Frank Larkin said as he recalled his son’s death. “I spent a career trying to protect people, and couldn’t protect my own son.”

Frank Larkin gave his son’s brain to a Defense Department brain tissue bank set up to study traumatic brain injuries. Researchers found that Ryan Larkin’s brain showed a distinct pattern of damage unique to people exposed to blast waves.

Frank Larkin pushed to get mandates into military appropriations bills that now require the military to create safety standards, to track and document individual troops’ blast exposure and to put that data in the troops’ medical records. But he said the military has resisted.

“There is a battle against how we have always done things,” he said.

In the field, troops say they see things changing, but not enough.

Cory McEvoy was a Special Operations medic who left the Army in August. While in uniform, he pressed for better tracking of blast exposure so that when career special operators started to fall apart, the military might recognize their conditions as an injury caused by their service.

He said in a recent interview that he was disappointed that there was still no system in place.

“At a policy level, they are talking about all this incredible stuff,” he said. “But at my level, I never saw any of it. And if I’m not seeing it, you can be sure a regular infantry platoon isn’t seeing it.”

Dave Philipps writes about war, the military and veterans and covers The Pentagon. More about Dave Philipps

The New York Times · by Dave Philipps · November 26, 2023

8. Secret Warnings About Wuhan Research Predated the Pandemic

From Vanity Fair.

Excerpts:

Despite vocal opposition from scientists, the NIH is now requiring overseas collaborators to share their lab notebooks and raw data with principal grant recipients at least once a year. The requirement is an “insult” to foreign collaborators and will “diminish collaboration with the US,” says Robert Gallo, cofounder and emeritus director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We’ll look like the jackasses of the world.”

An NIH spokesperson said that the agency has a long-standing policy of requiring principal grant recipients to have access to collaborators’ records.

Perhaps most notably, in July the US Department of Health and Human Services blocked the WIV from receiving federal funds for a decade. The letter announcing the decision cited an NIH-funded experiment there that created a coronavirus with enhanced virulence. Although the coronaviruses known to have been used in the research were too distant to have caused the pandemic, the letter states that the experiment nevertheless violated federal policies and “possibly did lead or could lead to health issues or other unacceptable outcomes.”

In October 2020, VF has learned, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told Fauci that DOE scientists had found evidence suggesting that the pandemic had originated at the WIV.

The letter concludes that, due to the WIV’s failure to provide records, there is a risk that the lab “not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the NIH on biosafety.”

The impact of the distrust has been a loss for science, says James LeDuc, former director of the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, which helped train several of the WIV scientists. “Unfortunately, we’ve had a blackout on all communications, and that’s a tragedy. The politics have made it very, very difficult.”

But current politics may account for only part of a larger shift in how science calibrates risk. This “feels very 1930s to me, when atomic science was reaching a point of sufficient sophistication as to become perilous,” says Amir Attaran, the University of Ottawa biologist and lawyer. An array of governments “all understood perfectly well that the nature of the research they were undertaking was weaponizable.” But they encouraged collaboration anyway, even with German scientists who had joined the Nazi Party, “in the interests of collecting knowledge. The folly of that became quickly, clearly known.”

To Attaran, this helps explain what happened at the WIV in the run-up to the pandemic. “The French had a stake. The US had a stake,” as did the Canadians. “They felt the benefits of global collaboration were sufficient—until suddenly they were not.”

Secret Warnings About Wuhan Research Predated the Pandemic

A series of previously unreported alarms and clashes over US-funded research in China reveal long-standing friction between two groups of government scientists: those who prioritize international collaboration, and those who are kept up at night by the idea that cutting-edge technologies could end up in the wrong hands.

BY 

ILLUSTRATION BY 

NOVEMBER 21, 2023

Vanity Fair · by Condé Nast · November 21, 2023

“Delete That Comment”

In late October 2017, a US health official from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) arrived at the Wuhan Institute of Virology for a glimpse of an eagerly anticipated work in progress. The WIV, a leading research institute, was putting the finishing touches on China’s first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory. Operating with the highest safeguards, the lab would enable scientists to study some of the world’s most lethal pathogens.

The project had support from Western governments seeking a more robust partnership with China’s top scientists. France had helped design the facility. Canada, before long, would send virus samples. And in the US, NIAID was channeling grant dollars through an American organization called EcoHealth Alliance to help fund the WIV’s cutting-edge coronavirus research.

That funding allowed the NIAID official, who worked out of the US embassy in Beijing, to become one of the first Americans to tour the lab. Her goal was to facilitate cooperation between American and Chinese scientists. Nevertheless, says Asha M. George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, a nonprofit that advises the US government on biodefense policy, “If you want to know what’s going on in a closed country, one of the things the US has done is give them grant money.”

In emails obtained by Vanity Fair, the NIAID official told her superiors what she’d gleaned from the technician who’d served as her guide. The lab, which was not yet fully operational, was struggling to develop enough expertise among its staff—a concern in a setting that had no tolerance for errors. “According to [the technician], being the first P4 [or BSL-4] lab in the country, they have to learn everything from zero,” she wrote. “They rely on those scientists who have worked in P4 labs outside China to train the other scientists how to operate.”

She’d also learned something else “alarming” from the technician, she wrote. Researchers at the WIV intended to study Ebola, but Chinese government restrictions prevented them from importing samples. As a result, they were considering using a technique called reverse genetics to engineer Ebola in the lab. Anticipating that this information would set off alarm bells in the US, the official cautioned, “I don’t want the information particularly using reverse genetics to create viruses to get out, which would affect the ability for our future information gain,” meaning it would impair the collaboration between NIAID and the WIV.

“I was shocked to hear what he said [about reverse engineering Ebola]. I also worry the reaction of people in Washington when they read this.”

There was good reason to fear that such a revelation could derail the fledgling partnership. One year earlier, the US Department of Energy had warned other agencies, including NIAID’s parent entity, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), that advanced genetic engineering techniques could be misused for malign ends. The Energy Department had developed a classified proposal, reported on here for the first time, to ramp up safeguards against that possibility and develop tools to better detect evidence of genetic engineering. The proposal, which was not implemented in its suggested form, prompted a heated interagency battle, six people with knowledge of the debate tell Vanity Fair.

On January 10, 2018, as the NIAID official prepared her official trip report for the US embassy in Beijing, she wrote to colleagues, “I was shocked to hear what he said [about reverse engineering Ebola]. I also worry the reaction of people in Washington when they read this. The technician is only a worker, not a decision maker nor a [principal investigator]. So how much we should believe what he said?” She concluded, “I don’t feel comfortable for broader audience within the government circle. It could be very sensitive.”

Among the recipients of that email was F. Gray Handley, then NIAID’s associate director for international research affairs. Handley agreed with the official’s assessment and advised her: “As we discussed. Delete that comment.”

On January 19, the US embassy in Beijing issued a sensitive but unclassified cable that included concerning details from the NIAID official’s tour. It said that WIV scientists themselves had noted the “serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate” the lab, according to an unredacted copy obtained by Vanity Fair. But the cable did not include the information that her NIAID colleagues apparently found most worrying.

For synthetic biologists, the idea of engineering Ebola isn’t seen as particularly unusual. Reverse genetics, using the CRISPR gene editing technology developed roughly a decade ago, is now a widely used laboratory technique. And the WIV’s BSL-4 laboratory was designed to safely research Ebola, be it natural or man-made. Some scientists argue that, for research purposes, it can be safer to make a deadly pathogen in-house than to risk transporting it.

But the NIAID official feared that the WIV’s training and staffing challenges, combined with its apparent interest in reverse engineering Ebola, would spark alarm, she recently told congressional investigators. The fatality rate in some Ebola outbreaks has reached well over 50%. “When it comes to headlines, and people spouting blood from every orifice, Ebola is about as bad as it gets,” says Kevin Esvelt, an MIT biologist. (In the past few years, several Ebola vaccines have been approved.)

According to Stanford microbiologist David Relman, the risks of the WIV producing something new or unknown may have driven the government’s concern. “When you are reverse engineering Ebola, you have now established a platform from which you can do 1 million different things with Ebola, or something that you call Ebola,” he says. “It means you can now make any variant or construct that is Ebola-like at will.”

Any effort to shield the technician’s Ebola remarks from wider scrutiny within the federal government would be “a dereliction of responsibility,” says Gerald Parker, former commander of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

VF has agreed not to name the NIAID official at the request of an NIH spokesperson, who raised concerns for her safety. The spokesperson said that the visiting official “took appropriate steps to ensure that officials at NIAID, HHS, and US Embassy Beijing were aware of the technician’s comment via her report on the visit.” When asked, however, the spokesperson was unable to provide evidence that the internal report describing the Ebola remarks was shared with the embassy. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Some view ongoing questions about biosafety at the WIV as part of a Republican campaign to discredit Anthony Fauci, who led NIAID for 38 years, and to attack science more broadly. But US government warnings about scientific collaborations in autocratic countries predate the pandemic and cut across partisan lines. Concerns flagged in the Obama administration persisted through the Trump administration and are being examined today. “The administration is actively engaged in a process, incorporating input from all relevant federal agencies” to “evaluate and update biosafety and biosecurity policies,” an official in President Joe Biden’s White House told Vanity Fair.

“There’s a dark side” to certain research, says Jason Paragas. “Just because you’re doing it to publish a paper doesn’t mean no one is going to do anything bad.”

A six-month investigation by VF has found an almost decade-long trail of warnings issued by the Department of Energy to other government agencies, including the NIH, concerning the risk that US-funded biology research could be misused by overseas partners. In mid-2019, an Energy Department official went so far as to issue a specific warning to NIAID about the coronavirus research the agency was funding at the WIV.

“Serious Security Concerns”

Operating out of a sprawling 300-acre campus in Bethesda, Maryland, the National Institutes of Health describes itself as “the federal focal point for health research.” Each year it makes more than 50,000 grants, distributing the majority of its $48 billion budget to researchers in the US and around the world. Among its 27 institutes and centers is NIAID, which distributed $5.3 billion in the 2023 fiscal year alone.

For the NIH and its grantees, global collaboration and transparent data sharing are synonymous with scientific progress. Even a trickle of grant money to a foreign lab can pay dividends. It can give US researchers access to new environments and viruses, and help build trust that may elude bickering governments. “It is almost always beneficial to exchange ideas and samples with other countries, particularly those with different climates than our own,” says Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “I don’t see why science funding should be reserved for friendly countries.”

But within the federal government, there is a different world of scientists: those tasked with anticipating threats to national security. In the open exchange of cutting-edge research with scientists in autocratic countries, they see the risk that science that serves the public good could be misappropriated to cause harm—a phenomenon known as dual-use research of concern. Worries about dual-use research have only grown with the easy accessibility of DNA-editing tools. Those technologies have opened the door to miraculous treatments, such as using gene editing to reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. But “there’s a dark side” to certain research, says Jason Paragas, former director of innovation at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. “Just because you’re doing it to publish a paper doesn’t mean no one is going to do anything bad.”

Lawrence Livermore is one of 17 national laboratories overseen by the Department of Energy, a science and technology agency with strong intelligence capabilities, a number of whose scientists regularly review classified threats. “They spend their time in a dark world, faced with the nastiness of what could go on,” says Diane DiEuliis, a distinguished research fellow at National Defense University. Sometimes they flag concerns for scientists who, given their focus on open research, are “not willing to even contemplate what they’re talking about.”

Vanity Fair’s investigation reveals that in the months and years leading up to the pandemic, officials at the NIH and the DOE repeatedly locked horns over issues related to global scientific collaboration. DOE officials warned their NIH counterparts about national security risks posed by gene editing and its possible uses by hostile foreign adversaries, including China.

DOE officials issued their most specific warning in mid-2019, just months before the pandemic began, Vanity Fair has learned. Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette alerted a top Fauci adviser that the coronavirus research the US was helping to fund at the WIV risked being misappropriated for military purposes. Based on classified threat assessments, and concerns raised by DOE scientists, Brouillette urged NIAID to use caution in its collaborations with Chinese government scientists. His warning should have served as a red flag for any research the agency was conducting with China, say two sources with knowledge of the exchange.

A spokesperson for NIAID said, “We are not aware of this interaction.” A spokesperson for Fauci, who has advised seven presidents on infectious disease policy and championed expanded treatment options for HIV and AIDS, said he was unavailable to respond to questions.

Vanity Fair interviewed more than 60 people for this account. The Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which has been holding hearings and issuing subpoenas as part of its investigation into COVID-19’s origins, provided the emails between the visiting NIAID representative and her agency colleagues. VF obtained dozens of previously undisclosed government records from other sources.

Though the DOE and the NIH have partnered on historic endeavors, from the Human Genome Project to the Cancer Moonshot, they’ve also battled over what restrictions, if any, should be placed on technologies that allow scientists to synthesize and edit DNA. “We came at it from the point of view, ‘There are serious security concerns,’” Ernest Moniz, who served as DOE secretary under Barack Obama, tells Vanity Fair. “Our view was always, ‘We have to address them in ways that do not unduly restrict basic science.’ But what is the meaning of ‘unduly’? There lies the entire matter.” In meetings during the final months of the Obama administration, the longtime head of the NIH, Francis Collins, dismissed such risks as “science fiction,” according to several people present.

In the last days of the Obama administration, NIH director Francis Collins said at a contentious White House meeting that a DOE threat assessment “reads like a movie script.”Illustration by Isabel Seliger.

The clash between these two scientific worldviews—and related debates over how to collaborate with an advanced institute like the WIV, in an autocratic country hostile to Western interests—is hardly contained to the US. In Canada, a government lab’s decision to ship Ebola samples to the WIV set off a scandal that resounded all the way to the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and played a role in the dissolution of parliament in the fall of 2021.

This history of conflict helps explain why the debate over COVID-19’s origins, which remains unresolved, has been so fiercely argued among scientists. If you’ve spent your career collaborating with foreign scientists to identify animal viruses that could spill over to humans, the lessons of the pandemic likely look very different from how they would if you’d been kept awake by visions of lab-generated superviruses.

In response to detailed questions, a DOE spokesperson said the agency “leverages its national laboratory capabilities to analyze emerging and disruptive technologies, including foreign applications of biotechnology…that may impact our national security.” She described the DOE’s mission as “vastly different” from that of the NIH, but also noted its complementary nature. “DOE brings capabilities in technology that enable advances in NIH’s mission, and NIH’s needs spark innovations in DOE’s capabilities.” The spokesperson did not respond to questions about warnings issued by the DOE, or any of its officials, prior to the pandemic.

In June, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a declassified report that provided a snapshot of perspectives on the COVID-19 origins question across America’s intelligence agencies. According to the report, the DOE and the FBI believe the pandemic is most likely to have originated with a lab leak. The National Intelligence Council and four other agencies say the virus most likely spilled over from a natural host, and two others, including the CIA, say there isn’t enough evidence to support one conclusion over the other.

All the intelligence agencies agree that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a bioweapon, the report said, and “almost all” agree it “was not genetically engineered.” Three sources tell VF that DOE scientists, using an array of advanced tools and working out of several different labs, including Lawrence Livermore, Argonne, and Oak Ridge, could not rule out the possibility that the virus’s sequence had been engineered.

The ODNI report also found that People’s Liberation Army scientists sometimes worked out of WIV labs, and collaborated with its civilian scientists on biosecurity projects and coronavirus research to address public health needs.

The Chinese government encourages such intermingling with a policy called military-civil fusion, which aims to harness civilian scientific innovation to advance military goals.

The fundamental uncertainty over how the pandemic began has further inflamed a long-standing debate over what guardrails, if any, should be imposed on open science, and who should set them. Some scientists say these very questions endanger them at a time when expertise of all kinds is under attack and a rising tide of far-right hate has fueled a dangerous anti-vaccine movement.

These scientists argue that, with another pandemic likely in the near future due to climate change and human incursion into wild spaces, imposing restrictions on science could forestall crucial advances. “We should be accelerating our capacity for virological research,” says Peter Hotez, codirector of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. “Instead, there is this sense that we have to contain the virologists, not the viruses. That’s misguided, that’s dangerous. If you want to revisit biosafety, that’s totally reasonable. But put the virologists in charge.”

In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, however, there is a growing call for stricter oversight of research deemed risky. “We put guardrails on nuclear science, and we did so after World War II,” says a former Biden administration official who worked on biosecurity issues. But today, “if you have access to a $50,000 DNA synthesizer, you could produce a weapon that is as powerful as a hydrogen bomb.”

“This Reads Like a Movie Script”

In 2011, a Dutch virologist named Ron Fouchier announced at a scientific conference that he’d genetically engineered what he’d later describe as “probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make.” He had altered the H5N1 avian influenza strain to make it transmissible among ferrets, which are genetically closer to humans than mice are. The experiment had been funded, in part, by the NIH.

Fouchier’s announcement triggered an uproar over what’s known today as gain-of-function research of concern—lab work that enhances the virulence or transmissibility of pathogens to help assess their threat to humans and develop countermeasures. Though the NIH has advocated for such research, others in the scientific community organized against it, arguing that creating pathogens that don’t exist in nature runs the risk of unleashing them. The Dutch government initially blocked Fouchier from publishing his findings, for fear that they could serve as a how-to manual for bioterrorists.

Amid the controversy, the NIH assembled a high-level group, nicknamed the “ferrets committee,” to advise it on the risks of funding such research. As one member of the advisory group recalled, “We were worried we could be in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.”

From 2009 to 2021, the NIH was led by the renowned geneticist Francis Collins, whose many achievements include discovering the gene that causes cystic fibrosis. In March 2012, Collins wrote an email to members of the ferrets committee in which he acknowledged, “I am not familiar with the Biologic and Toxic Weapons Convention. Can our crack legal staff offer any opinions on this question?” The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, enforced since 1975, is the most significant treaty that governs the development and use of biological agents.

In response, a staffer emailed her supervisor: “I can’t believe he doesn’t know what the BWC is???!!! yikes.” The supervisor replied, “It shows you how different our worlds are.”

According to one attendee, NIH director Francis Collins was decidedly unimpressed with the DOE’s threat assessment, and exclaimed with derision, “You got this out of a movie.”

An NIH spokesperson, responding on behalf of Collins, said it was “inaccurate” to suggest that his email indicated “a total lack of knowledge of an issue.” Officials have “different areas of expertise, and the point of meeting is to learn from each other to avoid blind spots in policy decisions.”

The NIH revolutionized science through its work on the Human Genome Project, which sought to fully sequence the human genome. That landmark achievement, launched initially by the DOE in 1990 and completed in 2003 by an international consortium under Collins’s leadership, committed the NIH to global collaboration and transparent data sharing. “Science goes faster, and the power of genomics is maximized, when you get larger and larger studies,” says Eric Green, director of the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute. “Share, share, share. That is the ethos of the genomic-research community.”

By contrast, the Department of Energy has always been steeped in a world of threats. Born out of the top secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during World War II, it is responsible for designing and maintaining the US nuclear stockpile, and for using science and technology to address energy and environmental challenges. The DOE was also responsible for significant parts of the nation’s biosecurity until after 9/11, when much of that mission was handed off to the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

As DOE scientists spent decades studying the impact of radiation on the human genome, they also developed advanced expertise in gene editing technology and its potential risks. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory houses the Biodefense Knowledge Center, an analysis hub that serves the federal government’s national security community, and the Z Division, an intelligence unit whose specialties include biosecurity.

“Having come through the nuclear world, everything is born classified, and you understand the dual-use nature” of technology immediately, says Dimitri Kusnezov, who joined the DOE two days before 9/11 and served for 10 years as chief scientist of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees all of the agency’s nuclear weapons work.

In 2014, Lawrence Livermore scientists began raising concerns with Kusnezov and other DOE leaders about the national security threats posed by gene editing platforms such as CRISPR. Among the issues they raised was the possibility that a foreign government could tailor biological agents to target specific ethnic groups.

Kusnezov, who is now the Department of Homeland Security’s under secretary for science and technology, says of the concerns: “Now we have a technology platform that can potentially create things we have never seen before, splice things, have effects that could be new.”

The US government closely monitors an evolving list of dangerous pathogens and their use in research, but the DOE was warning of a not-so-distant future in which dangerous pathogens might not be tracked because they’ve been enhanced or cooked up altogether in a lab, or a garage, or a trailer. In February 2016, that concern led the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to add genomic editing to its list of potential weapons of mass destruction, surprising a number of government scientists. As warnings resounded, the National Security Council convened meetings on countering biological threats.

Things came to a head at a contentious White House meeting in October 2016. The Department of Energy had followed up its threat assessment with a wide-ranging proposal to closely monitor the sale of genetic components and better detect evidence of genetic engineering. According to one attendee, the NIH’s Collins was decidedly unimpressed, and exclaimed with derision, “You got this out of a movie. This reads like a movie script.”

“Nobody really liked that,” the attendee says.

Another attendee says Collins exhibited a “shocking” disregard for the national security experts in the room.

“There is this sense that we have to contain the virologists, not the viruses,” says Peter Hotez. “That’s misguided, that’s dangerous.”

An NIH spokesperson said, “As a noted expert in human genome research, Dr. Collins was called upon to respond to certain scenarios of concern and expressed the view that some of them seemed overblown.” She added, “Disagreeing on an opinion is not equivalent to dismissing it.”

To skeptics in the health, science, and intelligence agencies, it looked like the DOE had painted an unrealistic doomsday scenario that, conveniently, would expand its own budget and turf. “It was more like you were reading a tale of fiction versus an intel product,” recalls one former federal health official. “‘They have access to this sequence, therefore they could…’ With no evidence that was being done. They created the problem by writing the intelligence assessment [and then said,] ‘We can solve this.’”

Part of the skepticism came from the DOE’s unusual structure. Going all the way back to the Manhattan Project, DOE laboratories have operated on the government-owned, contractor-operated—or GOCO—model. Under that structure, the government owns the labs and sets their priorities, but outside contractors employ the scientists. The system helps protect the researchers’ political independence, but it also means the labs operate as freelancers that pitch themselves to other government agencies for new missions. Their quest for relevance and funding makes them the “ambulance chasers of our community,” says a former US government official who worked on biosecurity policy.

The DOE plan was almost approved in the final days of the Obama administration, says Kusnezov, but then the Trump administration came in and “we lost momentum.” Nevertheless, the work continued in modified form, and has been funded by Congress since 2019.

“I Have Some Concerns Here”

On the afternoon of March 31, 2019, Canadian health bureaucrats watched nervously as Air Canada flight AC031 took off from Toronto Pearson International Airport, headed to Beijing.

The passengers on board had no way of knowing about the plane’s hazardous payload: a box with 24 vials of Ebola virus from 12 different strains, and six vials of highly lethal Henipaviruses, nestled amid 33 pounds of dry ice. The samples had come from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada’s only BSL-4 facility, and were bound for the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The following day, Canadian officials received a grateful email from a WIV scientist: “DEAR ALL, the package has just arrived in Wuhan safely. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to you all for the continuous support…. Looking forward to our further cooperation in the future.”

If Canadian officials breathed a sigh of relief, the feeling would not last. Within a year, members of Canada’s parliament and the press would scrutinize their every decision, with questions swirling about a national security breakdown at Canada’s top secret lab and emails surfacing in response to public record requests.

On the day of the flight carrying Ebola samples, hazmat teams were on standby at the Toronto airport. Meanwhile, “people on Air Canada are not eating peanuts because that is too dangerous.”

The trouble could be traced back to the same phenomenon that had so alarmed the visiting NIAID official in Wuhan: the WIV’s fitful struggle to launch its Ebola research program. Stanford microbiologist David Relman had encountered the issue firsthand during one of his trips to China, when a WIV scientist told him they had not yet been able to obtain Ebola samples. “I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ They said, ‘It’s our own government. They’re being overly cautious or bureaucratic.’”

By May 2018, however, WIV scientists had settled on a path forward. One had reached out to a frequent collaborator at the Winnipeg lab, Xiangguo Qiu, to see if she could facilitate the sharing of samples. Originally from China, Qiu was a world-class Ebola researcher who had worked since 2003 at the lab’s special pathogens program and had come to head its Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies section. That month, she and the former head of the Winnipeg lab, Gary Kobinger, had received a prestigious Canadian award for their development of an Ebola treatment called ZMapp.

Qiu’s request to share Ebola samples bumped through the sleepy Canadian health bureaucracy, subject to oversight that was arbitrary at best. Even the Public Health Agency of Canada’s director of biorisk and occupational safety services seemed bewildered when she explained to colleagues that, “when we try to get an export permit, we are told we don’t need one.”

Instead of demanding proof that the WIV was a certified BSL-4 lab, accredited to research Ebola, the presiding bureaucrats accepted a letter from a WIV official attesting to it. “I trust the lab and would be personally fine to sign off,” one offered. But the Winnipeg lab’s scientific director general responded, “I have some concerns here. No certifications are provided, they simply cite they have them. What is the nature of the work, and why are our materials required.” He added, “Good to know that you trust this group. How did we get connected with them?”

As the transfer of samples proceeded, Canadian officials contending with arduous safety procedures in Toronto expressed hope the viruses would be routed through Vancouver instead. “Fingers crossed,” one wrote to another. On the day of the flight, hazmat teams were on standby at the Toronto airport. Meanwhile, says Amir Attaran, a biologist and lawyer at the University of Ottawa who represented opposition members of parliament seeking answers, “people on Air Canada are not eating peanuts because that is too dangerous.” (Attaran is a member of Biosafety Now, a group working to increase oversight of gain-of-function research of concern.)

A spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada said, “There is no international accreditation for containment level 4 facilities.” Because of that, PHAC “reviews each request it receives” and will accept “an attestation from a biosafety officer” that a facility meets the necessary containment level. The spokesperson also said that the Winnipeg lab “followed the process as laid out in legislation and regulations.” Air Canada did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The first inkling of trouble came four months later. On July 5, 2019, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrived at the lab. Qiu, her scientist husband, and several students from China working with them were marched out and had their security clearances revoked.

The RCMP had acted on a tip from a foreign intelligence service, it was later reported. What exactly that tip was, and whom it came from, remain unclear. At the time, however, the FBI was investigating the Chinese government’s use of talent recruitment programs to obtain intellectual property and other sensitive data from Western labs.

In October 2017, a NIAID official who visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology was told about safety concerns and a possible plan to engineer Ebola in the lab.Illustration by Isabel Seliger.

In late May of that year, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was arrested after he lied about taking grant money from China’s Thousand Talents program. Weeks later, the DOE issued a directive prohibiting lab employees and contractors from participating in, or taking money from, foreign talent programs. According to a former DOE official, officials there had grown concerned that the Chinese government was using information drawn from US labs to bolster its efforts to develop biological weapons.

Once COVID-19 struck, questions about what had transpired at the Winnipeg lab erupted in parliament and the Canadian press. Troubling reports emerged: that two Chinese military scientists had received security clearances and accessed the lab, in violation of rules that restricted access to only citizens of Canada and its close allies; and that Qiu, a frequent visitor to the WIV, had collaborated with a top scientist from the People’s Liberation Army, Major General Chen Wei. It was also reported that the RCMP was investigating whether plasmid DNA from the Winnipeg lab, typically used to help create viruses or vaccines, had been shared with the WIV without authorization.

Vanity Fair has obtained records indicating that the RCMP is probing whether sensitive lab materials, including the plasmid DNA molecules, were sent to the WIV as emergency after-hours shipments, in a manner that circumvented the Winnipeg lab’s official records system. Other records indicate that a number of foreign students assisting with research at the University of Manitoba were granted access to even the most restricted parts of the lab, despite not being eligible for full security clearances.

An RCMP spokesperson said its investigation is “ongoing,” adding, “National security criminal investigations are often complex, multijurisdictional, and resource intensive, and can take several years to complete.”

Why did the WIV need so many different Ebola samples, asks Attaran, and what was it researching? “If your goal is to perform Shakespeare, all you need is a copy of Taming of the Shrew,” he says. “If your goal is to be Shakespeare, you better have all the plays and the sonnets too. This was China acquiring every last sonnet Winnipeg had created. It’s undoubtedly genetics research,” he continues. “What’s the ultimate reason? I don’t know.”

More Reporting by Katherine Eban

Investigation

“This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy

By Katherine Eban

VIRAL INFLECTION

The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins

By Katherine Eban

Coronavirus

“That’s Their Problem”: How Jared Kushner Let the Markets Decide America’s COVID-19 Fate

By Katherine Eban

As opposition parties in parliament, from Conservatives to the far left, demanded answers, the Trudeau government defied a House of Commons order to produce documents. Instead, it took the unprecedented step of suing the House Speaker to block disclosures, claiming that national security was in jeopardy. It then dissolved parliament and called for new elections, thereby voiding the order and forcing opposition parties to start again. Today, under a compromise, four members of parliament are reviewing documents related to the case under the supervision of a three-judge panel.

“It’s clear there were major national security breaches at the government’s top-level lab in Winnipeg, and the Trudeau government has gone to extraordinary lengths to try and hide what happened,” says Michael Chong, a prominent Conservative lawmaker who himself was a target of a disinformation campaign by the Chinese government.

Responding on behalf of Trudeau, the minister of health’s office wrote, “All opposition parties, including the Conservatives, have full and unredacted access to all documents pertaining to the Winnipeg Lab.”

Today, Qiu is listed as a “mentor” at the University of Science and Technology in the city of Hefei in eastern China. She is also listed as a co-inventor on two patent applications submitted by the WIV this June, for Nipah virus antibodies. She has not been charged with any crime by Canadian officials. In China, the Global Times, a state media outlet, attributed her dismissal from the lab to geopolitical score-settling. Numerous efforts to reach Qiu by email and phone were unsuccessful.

“Unacceptable Outcomes”

After the first SARS outbreak, in China in 2002, the country experienced a surge of scientific goodwill. Though governmental relations may have been rocky, scientists from numerous countries worked together on coronavirus research.

“Everyone knew China was a dictatorship, but we thought it looked like they revamped their disease-reporting system. Finally we have a meaningful way to collaborate,” says Gerald Epstein, who served as assistant director for biosecurity and emerging technologies at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Obama. “But all that evaporated.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Chinese government suppressed early-case data, muzzled its own scientists, and limited international fact-finding missions into its origins.

Today, that conduct, along with the dispute over COVID-19’s origins, has forced a broader reckoning. “As scientists, we all collaborate, but that Leave It to Beaver ’50s stuff isn’t true anymore,” says Phil Ferro, who served as the director for countering biological threats at the National Security Council under Trump. “We need policies in place to protect the interests of this country.”

In October 2020, VF has learned, Dan Brouillette told Fauci that DOE scientists had found evidence suggesting that the pandemic had originated at the WIV. By then, Brouillette had risen from deputy secretary to secretary of the DOE, and he offered to share his department’s laboratory resources and computing capacity with the NIH.

Brouillette was later found to have violated the Hatch Act after saying on a Fox News radio program that then candidate Biden, whom he did not name, was likely to restrict oil and gas drilling on federal lands. But he was also credited with helping to stabilize oil markets early in the pandemic, and he promised a “smooth transition” to the Biden administration in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.

In early 2023, it was reported that the DOE had formally changed its view on the pandemic’s origins from undecided to assessing, with low confidence, that the virus had originated from a lab. A source with knowledge of the DOE’s investigation tells VF that the agency had long been more confident in its scientific analysis, and only later became more comfortable with the intelligence supporting it.

According to CNN, the change was prompted by new intelligence related to a coronavirus variant being studied by China’s Center for Disease Control in Wuhan. It’s unclear whether the Chinese CDC’s research is linked to the WIV.

In early 2021, the Biden administration embarked on a broad review of biosecurity safeguards. According to the former Biden staffer who worked on these issues, White House officials have grown “deeply skeptical” that the current approach to evaluating certain scientific research risks has been sufficient. “The destructive potential of biology is deserving of more careful risk assessment,” the former staffer says.

There is heated debate over what rules should govern gain-of-function research, and whether existing guidelines are sufficient or adequately followed. Since 2017, federal rules have required certain research involving the genetic modification of viruses to undergo a special agency review. The Biden administration found that the risk assessments were largely being performed by the institutes seeking the grants themselves, according to documents reviewed by Vanity Fair.

In the last six years, only three research projects have passed through a Health and Human Services (HHS) review committee. One was a proposal by University of Wisconsin–Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka to infect ferrets with a genetically modified strain of the deadly H5N1 bird flu. A risk-benefit analysis by a University of Wisconsin–Madison committee, obtained by Vanity Fair, acknowledged the risks bluntly: “Influenza does not discriminate so that the risks of a pandemic would not discriminate…. This type of research has the potential for significantly greater risk if someone were to misuse the published information, there was a laboratory accident, or a deliberate release of agent.”

Nevertheless, the university committee concluded that the benefits outweighed the risks, and an HHS review committee approved the research in March 2019. “There was no authority given to me or my organization to demand a more rigorous review,” says Robert Kadlec, who ran the HHS review committee for several years. The grant applicants “grade [their] own homework, literally.”

Nine months after the grant was approved, there was a close call at Kawaoka’s lab, with a trainee’s airflow hose being briefly disconnected during an experiment involving ferrets exposed to the virus.

The incident was first reported in a recent book, Pandora’s Gamble. A spokesperson for the University of Wisconsin–Madison said after it was published that the lab has a “stellar safety record and history of strong accountability.” Reached for comment, another spokesperson told VF that, after performing important work that “improved how lifesaving flu vaccines are produced,” the lab has now shifted its focus away from H5N1.

Even some scientists who advocate for unrestricted global collaborations argue that research to enhance risky pathogens should be more closely regulated. “In the long run, public support for science will deservedly suffer if scientists are taking risks without commensurate benefit,” says the epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch.

In January, a report issued by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity advised the NIH to strengthen and broaden its oversight of research that could be risky or subject to misuse. That report, coupled with the ongoing White House review and scrutiny by Republicans in Congress, has led to a recalibration across a number of federal agencies.

In late June, the Department of Defense issued new guidelines to prevent the research it funds from being “misappropriated” overseas. The guidelines call for “risk-based security reviews” of proposed research that involves “foreign countries of concern,” including China and Russia. The DOD also warns against engaging with researchers or institutions with military links, including China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and its subsidiaries.

In July, USAID, a federal agency that works to promote global health, canceled a $125 million program called DEEP VZN, which planned to sample wildlife in remote locations and identify viruses that could pose a pandemic threat. According to another former Biden administration official, the program was nixed because such research “poses objective risks” that are not offset by its benefits.

Despite vocal opposition from scientists, the NIH is now requiring overseas collaborators to share their lab notebooks and raw data with principal grant recipients at least once a year. The requirement is an “insult” to foreign collaborators and will “diminish collaboration with the US,” says Robert Gallo, cofounder and emeritus director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We’ll look like the jackasses of the world.”

An NIH spokesperson said that the agency has a long-standing policy of requiring principal grant recipients to have access to collaborators’ records.

Perhaps most notably, in July the US Department of Health and Human Services blocked the WIV from receiving federal funds for a decade. The letter announcing the decision cited an NIH-funded experiment there that created a coronavirus with enhanced virulence. Although the coronaviruses known to have been used in the research were too distant to have caused the pandemic, the letter states that the experiment nevertheless violated federal policies and “possibly did lead or could lead to health issues or other unacceptable outcomes.”

In October 2020, VF has learned, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette told Fauci that DOE scientists had found evidence suggesting that the pandemic had originated at the WIV.

The letter concludes that, due to the WIV’s failure to provide records, there is a risk that the lab “not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the NIH on biosafety.”

The impact of the distrust has been a loss for science, says James LeDuc, former director of the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, which helped train several of the WIV scientists. “Unfortunately, we’ve had a blackout on all communications, and that’s a tragedy. The politics have made it very, very difficult.”

But current politics may account for only part of a larger shift in how science calibrates risk. This “feels very 1930s to me, when atomic science was reaching a point of sufficient sophistication as to become perilous,” says Amir Attaran, the University of Ottawa biologist and lawyer. An array of governments “all understood perfectly well that the nature of the research they were undertaking was weaponizable.” But they encouraged collaboration anyway, even with German scientists who had joined the Nazi Party, “in the interests of collecting knowledge. The folly of that became quickly, clearly known.”

To Attaran, this helps explain what happened at the WIV in the run-up to the pandemic. “The French had a stake. The US had a stake,” as did the Canadians. “They felt the benefits of global collaboration were sufficient—until suddenly they were not.”

Additional reporting by Katherine Li and research by Stan Friedman.

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Vanity Fair · by Condé Nast · November 21, 2023

9. Americans think the American dream is dying

But the American Dream is what Americans make it to be. It is not something handed to us. We have to make it. We have to work for it. Is this an indication of changing American culture and values? Do people think the American Dream is something that should be provided to them? What would de Tocqueville say if he were traveling across America observing American politics and culture?

​Excerpt:

Between the lines: America's enormous wealth gap is often cited as a reason for the decline in faith in the American dream.

Nov 25, 2023 -

Economy

Americans think the American dream is dying

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/25/american-dream-poll-wealth-inequality?utm

• Dave Lawler

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Americans are increasingly unlikely to believe that those who work hard will get ahead and that their children will be better off than they are, according to two recent polls.

Why it matters: The polls reflect concerns that the American dream is dimming — or already extinguished.

Driving the news: The WSJ asked respondents whether they believe "the American Dream — that if you work hard you'll get ahead — still holds true."

• Just 36% said it does hold true vs. 18% who said it never held true and 45% who said it once held true, but not anymore.
• Compare that to surveys in 2012 and 2016, when 53% and 48% respectively said the American dream held true. Those polls were taken by a different pollster, PRRI, with different methodology, but the downward trend is clear.

Zoom in: Women were more pessimistic about the state of the American dream than men, according to the WSJ poll, while younger people were much more pessimistic than people over 65.

• Compared to the previous polls, the percentage of people who believe the American dream was never a reality more than doubled.
• Yes, but: An Axios-Ipsos Latino Poll last year found that 61% of Latinos believe that if they work hard they can achieve the American dream.

Between the lines: America's enormous wealth gap is often cited as a reason for the decline in faith in the American dream.

• A 2022 Brookings analysis suggests America is now less of a meritocracy than some other wealthy countries. "Wealth inequality is high. And wealth status is sticky," the authors write.
• Yes, but: Other scholars note that Americans over the generations have tended to be better off than their parents, another metric by which the American dream could be measured.

What to watch: Americans are increasingly worried that trend won't hold going forward.

• In a recent NBC poll, a record-low 19% of respondents said they were confident their children's generation would be better off than their own.

Go deeper: America's homebuyers are getting older

10. Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History

I guess this is evidence on why Americans feel the American dream is out of reach.

Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History

Was the country’s turn toward free-market fundamentalism driven by race, class, or something else? Yes.

By Rogé Karma

The Atlantic · by Rogé Karma · November 25, 2023

If there is one statistic that best captures the transformation of the American economy over the past half century, it may be this: Of Americans born in 1940, 92 percent went on to earn more than their parents; among those born in 1980, just 50 percent did. Over the course of a few decades, the chances of achieving the American dream went from a near-guarantee to a coin flip.

What happened?

One answer is that American voters abandoned the system that worked for their grandparents. From the 1940s through the ’70s, sometimes called the New Deal era, U.S. law and policy were engineered to ensure strong unions, high taxes on the rich, huge public investments, and an expanding social safety net. Inequality shrank as the economy boomed. But by the end of that period, the economy was faltering, and voters turned against the postwar consensus. Ronald Reagan took office promising to restore growth by paring back government, slashing taxes on the rich and corporations, and gutting business regulations and antitrust enforcement. The idea, famously, was that a rising tide would lift all boats. Instead, inequality soared while living standards stagnated and life expectancy fell behind that of peer countries. No other advanced economy pivoted quite as sharply to free-market economics as the United States, and none experienced as sharp a reversal in income, mobility, and public-health trends as America did. Today, a child born in Norway or the United Kingdom has a far better chance of outearning their parents than one born in the U.S.

This story has been extensively documented. But a nagging puzzle remains. Why did America abandon the New Deal so decisively? And why did so many voters and politicians embrace the free-market consensus that replaced it?

Since 2016, policy makers, scholars, and journalists have been scrambling to answer those questions as they seek to make sense of the rise of Donald Trump—who declared, in 2015, “The American dream is dead”—and the seething discontent in American life. Three main theories have emerged, each with its own account of how we got here and what it might take to change course. One theory holds that the story is fundamentally about the white backlash to civil-rights legislation. Another pins more blame on the Democratic Party’s cultural elitism. And the third focuses on the role of global crises beyond any political party’s control. Each theory is incomplete on its own. Taken together, they go a long way toward making sense of the political and economic uncertainty we’re living through.

“The American landscape was once graced with resplendent public swimming pools, some big enough to hold thousands of swimmers at a time,” writes Heather McGee, the former president of the think tank Demos, in her 2021 book, The Sum of Us. In many places, however, the pools were also whites-only. Then came desegregation. Rather than open up the pools to their Black neighbors, white communities decided to simply close them for everyone. For McGhee, that is a microcosm of the changes to America’s political economy over the past half century: White Americans were willing to make their own lives materially worse rather than share public goods with Black Americans.

From the 1930s until the late ’60s, Democrats dominated national politics. They used their power to pass sweeping progressive legislation that transformed the American economy. But their coalition, which included southern Dixiecrats as well as northern liberals, fractured after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” exploited that rift and changed the electoral map. Since then, no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote.

Crucially, the civil-rights revolution also changed white Americans’ economic attitudes. In 1956, 65 percent of white people said they believed the government ought to guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one and to provide a minimum standard of living. By 1964, that number had sunk to 35 percent. Ronald Reagan eventually channeled that backlash into a free-market message by casting high taxes and generous social programs as funneling money from hardworking (white) Americans to undeserving (Black) “welfare queens.” In this telling, which has become popular on the left, Democrats are the tragic heroes. The mid-century economy was built on racial suppression and torn apart by racial progress. Economic inequality was the price liberals paid to do what was right on race.

The New York Times writer David Leonhardt is less inclined to let liberals off the hook. His new book, Ours Was the Shining Future, contends that the fracturing of the New Deal coalition was about more than race. Through the ’50s, the left was rooted in a broad working-class movement focused on material interests. But at the turn of the ’60s, a New Left emerged that was dominated by well-off college students. These activists were less concerned with economic demands than issues like nuclear disarmament, women’s rights, and the war in Vietnam. Their methods were not those of institutional politics but civil disobedience and protest. The rise of the New Left, Leonhardt argues, accelerated the exodus of white working-class voters from the Democratic coalition.

David Leonhardt: The hard truth about immigration

Robert F. Kennedy emerges as an unlikely hero in this telling. Although Kennedy was a committed supporter of civil rights, he recognized that Democrats were alienating their working-class base. As a primary candidate in 1968, he emphasized the need to restore “law and order” and took shots at the New Left, opposing draft exemptions for college students. As a result of these and other centrist stances, Kennedy was criticized by the liberal press—even as he won key primary victories on the strength of his support from both white and Black working-class voters.

But Kennedy was assassinated in June that year, and the political path he represented died with him. That November, Nixon, a Republican, narrowly won the White House. In the process, he reached the same conclusion that Kennedy had: The Democrats had lost touch with the working class, leaving millions of voters up for grabs. In the 1972 election, Nixon portrayed his opponent, George McGovern, as the candidate of the “three A’s”—acid, abortion, and amnesty (the latter referring to draft dodgers). He went after Democrats for being soft on crime and unpatriotic. On Election Day, he won the largest landslide since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. For Leonhardt, that was the moment when the New Deal coalition shattered. From then on, as the Democratic Party continued to reflect the views of college graduates and professionals, it would lose more and more working-class voters.

McGhee’s and Leonhardt’s accounts might appear to be in tension, echoing the “race versus class” debate that followed Trump’s victory in 2016. In fact, they’re complementary. As the economist Thomas Piketty has shown, since the’60s, left-leaning parties in most Western countries, not just the U.S., have become dominated by college-educated voters and lost working-class support. But nowhere in Europe was the backlash quite as immediate and intense as it was in the U.S. A major difference, of course, is the country’s unique racial history.

The 1972 election might have fractured the Democratic coalition, but that still doesn’t explain the rise of free-market conservatism. The new Republican majority did not arrive with a radically new economic agenda. Nixon combined social conservatism with a version of New Deal economics. His administration increased funding for Social Security and food stamps, raised the capital-gains tax, and created the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, laissez-faire economics remained unpopular. Polls from the ’70s found that most Republicans believed that taxes and benefits should remain at present levels, and anti-tax ballot initiatives failed in several states by wide margins. Even Reagan largely avoided talking about tax cuts during his failed 1976 presidential campaign. The story of America’s economic pivot still has a missing piece.

According to the economic historian Gary Gerstle’s 2022 book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, that piece is the severe economic crisis of the mid-’70s. The 1973 Arab oil embargo sent inflation spiraling out of control. Not long afterward, the economy plunged into recession. Median family income was significantly lower in 1979 than it had been at the beginning of the decade, adjusting for inflation. “These changing economic circumstances, coming on the heels of the divisions over race and Vietnam, broke apart the New Deal order,” Gerstle writes. (Leonhardt also discusses the economic shocks of the ’70s, but they play a less central role in his analysis.)

Free-market ideas had been circulating among a small cadre of academics and business leaders for decades—most notably the University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. The ’70s crisis provided a perfect opening to translate them into public policy, and Reagan was the perfect messenger. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” he declared in his 1981 inaugural address. “Government is the problem.”

Part of Reagan’s genius was that the message meant different things to different constituencies. For southern whites, government was forcing school desegregation. For the religious right, government was licensing abortion and preventing prayer in schools. And for working-class voters who bought Reagan’s pitch, a bloated federal government was behind their plummeting economic fortunes. At the same time, Reagan’s message tapped into genuine shortcomings with the economic status quo. The Johnson administration’s heavy spending had helped ignite inflation, and Nixon’s attempt at price controls had failed to quell it. The generous contracts won by auto unions made it hard for American manufacturers to compete with nonunionized Japanese ones. After a decade of pain, most Americans now favored cutting taxes. The public was ready for something different.

Eric Posner: Milton Friedman was wrong

They got it. The top marginal income-tax rate was 70 percent when Reagan took office and 28 percent when he left. Union membership shriveled. Deregulation led to an explosion of the financial sector, and Reagan’s Supreme Court appointments set the stage for decades of consequential pro-business rulings. None of this, Gerstle argues, was preordained. The political tumult of the ’60s helped crack the Democrats’ electoral coalition, but it took the unusual confluence of a major economic crisis and a talented political communicator to create a new consensus. By the ’90s, Democrats had accommodated themselves to the core tenets of the Reagan revolution. President Bill Clinton further deregulated the financial sector, pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement, and signed a bill designed to “end welfare as we know it.” Echoing Reagan, in his 1996 State of the Union address, Clinton conceded: “The era of big government is over.”

Today, we seem to be living through another inflection point in American politics—one that in some ways resembles the ’60s and ’70s. Then and now, previously durable coalitions collapsed, new issues surged to the fore, and policies once considered radical became mainstream. Political leaders in both parties no longer feel the same need to bow at the altar of free markets and small government. But, also like the ’70s, the current moment is defined by a sense of unresolved contestation. Although many old ideas have lost their hold, they have yet to be replaced by a new economic consensus. The old order is crumbling, but a new one has yet to be born.

The Biden administration and its allies are trying to change that. Since taking office, President Joe Biden has pursued an ambitious policy agenda designed to transform the U.S. economy and taken overt shots at Reagan’s legacy. “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore,” Biden quipped in 2020. Yet an economic paradigm is only as strong as the political coalition that backs it. Unlike Nixon, Biden has not figured out how to cleave apart his opponents’ coalition. And unlike Reagan, he hasn’t hit upon the kind of grand political narrative needed to forge a new one. Current polling suggests that he may struggle to win reelection.

Franklin Foer: The new Washington consensus

Meanwhile, the Republican Party struggles to muster any coherent economic agenda. A handful of Republican senators, including J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Josh Hawley, have embraced economic populism to some degree, but they remain a minority within their party.

The path out of our chaotic present to a new political-economic consensus is hard to imagine. But that has always been true of moments of transition. In the early ’70s, no one could have predicted that a combination of social upheaval, economic crisis, and political talent was about to usher in a brand-new economic era. Perhaps the same is true today. The Reagan revolution is never coming back. Neither is the New Deal order that came before it. Whatever comes next will be something new.

The Rise And Fall Of The Neoliberal Order

By Gary Gerstle

Ours Was The Shining Future - The Story Of The American Dream

By David Leonhardt

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

The Atlantic · by Rogé Karma · November 25, 2023

11. Rural America has lost its soul

Again, what would de Tocgueville write today?

Excerpts:

That distance between myth and reality is also, I believe, at the root of the increasingly conservative, increasingly angry politics found in some (but certainly not all) rural areas. Of course, measured against the pastoral myth, with all of its redeeming and moral power, any reality is bound to come up short. But a sense of disappointment has become acute in economically distressed rural areas and in the small towns that once served as the social and economic centres of agrarian hinterlands. Drive through these places and you’re likely to find nothing but a bar and a pizza shop left on the Main Street, as other shops are put out of business by a ginormous Walmart 10 miles away. Much of rural and small-town America can be seen by those who live there as landscapes of loss. In these places and under those circumstances, who wouldn’t yearn to make America great again?

But as the Farm Aid website suggests, the Jeffersonian myth persists. Many Americans continue to believe that the small-scale “family farm” is at the heart of American agriculture, and even more politicians parrot that rhetoric. This celebration of the family-farm fantasy is one of the few remaining tropes shared by both political parties.

The Farm Bill, a vast, sprawling, and expensive piece of legislation, is up for renewal during this legislative session. Whatever its final details, it will undoubtedly provide an almost bottomless grab-bag of subsidies and other goodies for industrial-scale agricultural producers, as it has for the last 50 years. I’m guessing, however, that the elected officials who will shape the legislation will sing the song of the American family farm yet again, and voters will cheer in genuflection. This is a myth that will not die.

Rural America has lost its soul

Jefferson's vision of the family farm is a myth that won't die

BY STEVEN CONN

unherd.com · by Steven Conn · November 27, 2023

Pity the poor American farmer. Since the 18th century, he has been freighted not simply with growing crops or raising animals, but with carrying the virtue of the American republic. Thomas Jefferson said so himself, writing that: “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.”

He believed that independent yeoman farmers were the only Americans capable of preserving the new nation’s morals and keeping it from “corruption”. Since then, the American family farm has always stood for a way of life — the best way of life, in fact — and it has been venerated almost religiously. A heavy burden indeed.

That the aristocratic Jefferson never once harnessed up a plow and instead relied on slave labour to do all his farming for him was, at one level, a fitting irony. The small family farmer Jefferson conjured was always more myth than reality and became more so over the decades. Along the way, the myth has woven itself into the national DNA. According to a 2018 survey by Gallup, more than a quarter of Americans wish they could live on a farm. Fewer than 1.5% of us actually do.

In fact, farmers tend to be a minority in rural areas. Roughly 25% of America’s population is classed as rural, which means that most rural people are doing something other than farming. They drive long-haul trucks; they are members (or retired) members of the military; they work for local or state government; they work in manufacturing plants which have emerged in farm fields since the Sixties. These folks, however, have not become part of our rural mythos.

Jefferson’s myth of the yeoman farmer was turned into national policy in 1862 when Congress passed the Homestead Act, which offered any American 160 acres of land for free, provided the land was farmed for five years. Between 1862 and 1890 an area larger than Great Britain came under cultivation as white settlers gobbled up land that had been cleared by the U.S. Army of its original inhabitants.

But as they rushed to take advantage of this giveaway, farmers did not behave the way Jefferson rhapsodised that they would. Far from being “independent”, American farmers relied on the Federal government in all sorts of ways, particularly to provide them with water through big dam and irrigation projects in the West. Nor was self-sufficiency their goal. They farmed to make as much money as they could, and from the outset they were tied to national and international commodities markets. By the 1880s, more than 30% of those homestead farmers had mortgaged their land to raise more capital. Far from standing in some virtuous opposition to Big City financiers, farmers helped to pioneer the instruments of modern finance capitalism.

Perhaps more than anything else, however, the family farm industrialised rapidly and dramatically. The Jeffersonian fantasy pitted the pastoral as the opposite of the industrial — but American farmers saw no such distinction. They eagerly purchased the latest industrial devices to make farming easier. The John Deere corporation, maker of all sorts of farm equipment, was founded in 1837, and its last reported revenue statement (2022) topped $52 billion. In 1865, when the Civil War ended, it took 61 hours of labour to produce an acre of wheat; by 1900 that time had dropped to three hours thanks to labour-saving technology. In the Twenties, International Harvester — another vast farm machinery producer — ran an ad campaign around the theme “Every Farm a Factory”.

The industrialisation of farming, made possible by its financialisation, has had two predictable results: farming itself required less and less labour, and farms got bigger and bigger in a quest for efficiencies of scale. As early as 1910, the US Census reported significant population loss from farming areas in the middle of the country, and that exodus of people continued across the 20th century. The 1960 Census, to take another example, reported that of the 1,520 counties in the 18 states that roughly constitute the national midsection, from Mississippi and Louisiana to North Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota, 61% lost population during the previous decade; this figure rose to 92% in the counties of Arkansas.

Industrialisation has also led to the consolidation of farms. The number of farming operations peaked in 1935 at about seven million. Now the figure stands at two million. As a result, the average size of an American farm is 445 acres, roughly twice the size of the average in the UK (215 acres). But even that figure is a bit misleading because of the way farms are counted in the first place. If we look at individual states in the nation’s farm belt, the numbers get much bigger: in Kansas, the average is now 780 acres; Nebraska, 1,000 acres; in Montana, over 2,100 acres. A farmer in part of rural Ohio told me a few years ago that, if you wanted to make a full-time living here, you need at least 2,000 acres. “Get big or get out!” Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon, liked to tell farmers, and one wonders what Jefferson would have made of him.

That’s partly why I’m not sure we ought to even use the word “farm” anymore. It’s an old word, which elides as much as it describes. The kind of set-up it describes — with a homestead at its centre, animals raised for family consumption in the barn, crops grown for market — disappeared more than half a century ago at least. As one Illinois farmer described it: “General farming belongs to our past. . .When I was a child, of course we had pigs, and put down the pork in brine for the winter, and of course we had chickens, and cows. . . . Orchards [were] plowed under to make room for more beans. That’s what we grow now, soy beans and corn.” That was in 1957.

Farming, as it is practised in the United States today, is more aptly described as industrial calorie production. To call 1,500 acres of corn, genetically modified to withstand harsh chemical pesticides and intended for a high-fructose corn syrup plant, a “farm” is a bit like calling a highly automated Ford factory a “workshop”.

The distance between the myth of the family farm and the realities of American agriculture explains why we often speak of a farm “crisis” in the United States, and we have done so for over a century. Farmers became charity cases in 1985. Inspired by the Live-Aid rock festival to benefit Ethiopian famine victims, Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp organised Farm Aid to raise money for families losing their farms. The Farm-Aid fundraising project continues to this day, and its website boasts: “Farm Aid has raised more than $78 million to promote a strong and resilient family farm system of agriculture.”

That distance between myth and reality is also, I believe, at the root of the increasingly conservative, increasingly angry politics found in some (but certainly not all) rural areas. Of course, measured against the pastoral myth, with all of its redeeming and moral power, any reality is bound to come up short. But a sense of disappointment has become acute in economically distressed rural areas and in the small towns that once served as the social and economic centres of agrarian hinterlands. Drive through these places and you’re likely to find nothing but a bar and a pizza shop left on the Main Street, as other shops are put out of business by a ginormous Walmart 10 miles away. Much of rural and small-town America can be seen by those who live there as landscapes of loss. In these places and under those circumstances, who wouldn’t yearn to make America great again?

But as the Farm Aid website suggests, the Jeffersonian myth persists. Many Americans continue to believe that the small-scale “family farm” is at the heart of American agriculture, and even more politicians parrot that rhetoric. This celebration of the family-farm fantasy is one of the few remaining tropes shared by both political parties.

The Farm Bill, a vast, sprawling, and expensive piece of legislation, is up for renewal during this legislative session. Whatever its final details, it will undoubtedly provide an almost bottomless grab-bag of subsidies and other goodies for industrial-scale agricultural producers, as it has for the last 50 years. I’m guessing, however, that the elected officials who will shape the legislation will sing the song of the American family farm yet again, and voters will cheer in genuflection. This is a myth that will not die.

Steven Conn is the W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In addition to The Lies of the Land he is the author of six other books including Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools (2019). He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

unherd.com · by Steven Conn · November 27, 2023

12. Gaza shrinks for Palestinians seeking refuge. 4 stories offer a glimpse into a diminished world

Excertps:

While most civilians have been able to flee the combat zone in other wars like Ukraine, Palestinians in Gaza have no escape.

All four people followed by the AP are part of its fragile professional class, living in central areas of Gaza City which has largely been spared in past conflicts but is at the heart of this one. AP contacted eight Gaza residents and these four were able to maintain the connection, despite evacuation, multiple hits on their areas and communication blackouts.

They now are nowhere near each other, but they chronicle the despair of the same shattered, anguished world that is closing in on them.

Gaza shrinks for Palestinians seeking refuge. 4 stories offer a glimpse into a diminished world

AP · November 24, 2023

BEIRUT (AP) — Gaza has always been a small, crowded space with hardly any exits. Now the world for Palestinians there has shrunk to the size of whatever refuge they can find: a jammed shelter, a car, the walls of a shared apartment, or floors and benches in hospital corridors.

The strip is 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by some 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide, and Israeli troops are spread throughout the northern third. More than 2 million people, the majority of Gaza’s population, cram into what’s left.

Beginning in mid-October, The Associated Press has followed four people trying to survive and communicate from that diminished world, using texts, voice messages and video clips and the rare phone call from a balky 2G network whose fate also hangs in the balance. Explosions and the buzz of drones pierce some of nearly 80 recordings.

One lawyer, determined to stay in Gaza City, carries her paralyzed father from place to place to escape bombs. A U.N. worker shelters with tens of thousands of displaced, retreating to his car for a sliver of privacy. A writer is trapped between four walls and is urged by his family to stop documenting the war for their safety.

Israel says it is dismantling Hamas, the group that unleashed a surprise attack on Oct. 7 that killed around 1,200 people in Israel. Weeks of Israeli bombardment have killed more than 13,000 Palestinians, 70% of them women and children. That’s more than the number of civilians killed in 18 months of war in Ukraine.

While most civilians have been able to flee the combat zone in other wars like Ukraine, Palestinians in Gaza have no escape.

All four people followed by the AP are part of its fragile professional class, living in central areas of Gaza City which has largely been spared in past conflicts but is at the heart of this one. AP contacted eight Gaza residents and these four were able to maintain the connection, despite evacuation, multiple hits on their areas and communication blackouts.

They now are nowhere near each other, but they chronicle the despair of the same shattered, anguished world that is closing in on them.

This photo provided by Hosein Owda dated Sunday, Oct. 15, 2023 shows him with his wife, Wafa, and 1-year-old son Zein at the shelter in Khan Younis. (Hosein Owda via AP)

HOSEIN OWDA, U.N. WORKER

Moving day was scheduled for Oct. 7 for the Owda family. The windows were in place and the last pieces of furniture were due to arrive.

Hosein Owda had spent two years and most of his savings getting the apartment ready.

It helps to have a long timeframe for home construction in Gaza, which has been under economic blockade since 2006. It also helps to have one of Gaza’s most coveted jobs, working for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, which assists more than three-quarters of the Strip’s population, all of them refugees.

When he woke that morning to the barrage of Hamas rockets, Owda knew Israeli retaliation would be swift. His first thought was that the move would have to be postponed.

In a matter of days, his world fell apart with dizzying speed. Owda’s new apartment was gone in one airstrike and one of his best friends killed in another. He still agonizes over ignoring pleas for help from a neighbor trying to find a daughter thrown out of a window in an Israeli strike. He was busy evacuating his own family to safety.

At left, this photo provided by Hosein Owda shows an explosion crater near his home in Gaza city on Oct. 7, 2023. At right, this photo provided by Hosein Owda shows damage to his home in Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023 hostilities between Hamas and Israel. (Hosein Owda via AP)

On Oct. 13, he and his extended family of 15 people crammed into two cars, one with a broken windshield.

They were now among 22,000 people sheltering at a U.N. vocational center in Khan Younis. There are 24 bathrooms — more than 900 people per toilet — but no beds, mattresses or running water. The numbers continue to swell.

His wife, three children and six other relatives shared a 3-by-3-yard (meter) classroom. Owda slept in the car.

“It is a struggle with life for the most basic, simple things. If you want to take a shower, this is a faraway dream,” he said.

On Oct. 29, Owda learned an Israeli strike had hit Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza city. It took him hours to confirm what he feared: Nine members of his family were killed, including his uncle, aunt and two of their three adult children. A few days later, the third died of his wounds.

Gaza has always been a small, crowded space with no exits. Now the world for Palestinians there has shrunk to the size of whatever refuge they can find. The Associated Press has followed a Gaza aid worker trying to survive and communicate from that diminished world. (Nov. 24) (AP production Marshall Ritzel/Mark Vancleave)

Two of his cousin’s daughters survived, but Owda couldn’t do anything for them. The 15 miles (25 kilometers) that separated them were insurmountable.

“They are in one place, all alone, and we are far,” he said. A fighter jet roared in the background of the recording.

Almost immediately after, another strike killed a friend who had been his companion on evening walks. Also killed were the man’s parents, sisters and their families.

Everyone he knew had lost someone. Finding bodies was barely possible. Proper burials were out of the question.

“There is no space to grieve,” he said. “Only our vital signs show we are alive. We breathe, but other than that we have lost all other signs of life.”

Owda felt trapped by all the things he couldn’t say: He wouldn’t tell his children, ages 9, 6 and 1, that they no longer have a home, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell his father about the relatives dead in the airstrike.

At least 108 of Owda’s U.N. colleagues have been killed, and he said fear is spreading among the rest, who number about 13,000.

Owda had made his living trying to help Palestinian refugees. Now he lives among them in a shelter. The despair he witnessed all around consumed him. He lost 20 kilograms (44 pounds) in about a month. His gentle sense of humor vanished, replaced with the hollow voice of a drained man. He left the shelter only twice, to search for medicines for his father, but needed to hire a donkey cart because there wasn’t fuel for a car.

FILE - A U.N. provided tent camp for Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip is seen in Khan Younis, Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. Since the the fighting began, around 22,000 people have taken shelter there. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair, File)

Usually in charge of documenting the positive impact of aid on people’s lives, now Owda found himself in charge of managing outbursts of anger and recording accounts of survival. One man tried to take his own life in the shelter. Children talked about seeing a chicken pecking at lifeless bodies on the road from Gaza City, and he was grateful his own children were relatively unaware of the upheaval back home.

His text messages grew more somber. Deaths among the displaced are becoming grimly routine, even in the so-called “safe zones” proclaimed by Israel. Gaza’s health ministry’s ability to count the dead in the north has collapsed.

“What is really shocking to me also is that the ceiling of my expectations has become so low,” he said in a recording Nov. 20. “To tame an animal, you make them hungry, they will obey and that way they do what you want.”

Image taken from Oct. 11, 2023 video provided by Asaad Alaadin, Asaad Alaadin ties his boots as he prepares to flee an office in central Gaza city after bombs began to fall all around him. (Asaad Alaadin via AP)

ASAAD ALAADIN, WRITER

Asaad Alaadin’s home near the Israeli border ended up on the wrong side of the front line almost as soon as the first bombs fell.

He took shelter in central Gaza City, usually the safest spot in previous wars. On Oct. 11, he was trapped alone in a downtown office by the acrid smoke of Israeli bombs. Alaadin turned on his phone camera and breathlessly described the scene. He feared those moments could be his last.

By the next morning, it was calm enough to venture to his grandfather’s house, also in central Gaza City, joining his immediate family, in-laws, and seven families of cousins. They huddled together as missiles screeched overhead.

A 33-year-old writer, Alaadin contributed to various publications, including an Arabic website aimed at Palestinians inside Israel, covering the arts, literature, protest movements and Gaza’s social dynamics. His wife was in Canada for her studies, which, for a moment, seemed like a relief.

The family debated: Stay or go? They prayed together. His mother’s argument won out. Time to split up. If something happens to one of us, she reasoned, “someone survives and keeps going.”

They set out at 7 a.m. on Oct. 13, the day Israel’s military ordered 1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate. His father went to central Gaza; one sister stayed in Gaza City. He, his mother and a sister headed to Rafah, the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, near the border with Egypt.

FILE - Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are seen between tents at a U.N. displacement camp in Khan Younis, Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. Since the the fighting began, around 22,000 people have taken shelter there. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair, File)

Traffic was sparse at first, a car with a mattress tied to the roof and some people trudging through the smell of gunpowder and munitions with their belongings in their arms.

Hours after the Alaadins passed, the road was jammed. Explosions hit a group of trucks filled with families, leaving the ground strewn with dozens of bodies. Israel and Hamas blamed each other. The road emptied again afterwards.

They couldn’t stay long in Rafah. Their hosts asked them to leave because they feared Alaadin’s filming the war put them in danger.

The last core of his family broke apart. His mother and sister went to Khan Younis, a few miles (kilometers) north. Alaadin moved in with his in-laws near the border with Egypt. They, too, asked him to stop filming.

He agreed but kept sending out voice messages, which included the background rumble of warplanes. When more relatives arrived, he and his in-laws left the airy home with its garden and olive trees for a tiny apartment to make room. It was Day 10 of the war.

Their focus turned to day-to-day survival, finding water and food, securing fuel for the generator that keeps their phones charged.

In this photo provided by UNRWA, people charge their mobile devices at a shelter in southern Gaza on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. (Hosein Owda/UNRWA via AP)

Sunset brought the day’s only meal — mainly pasta, beans or lentils. He treated it like a fast: to save food, build resolve and be closer to God. They listened to the radio for news, read a Kindle, and most of all, searched for network to get news from friends and family.

It was not Hamas that he felt trapped by, he said, even if the group had tried at first and failed to stop people moving south. People didn’t want this bloodshed, “but the reality is our killer is not Hamas. It is the Israeli army,” Alaadin said.

His mind raced down dark passages. Finding food was hard, but easier than having a strike crush you to death under your own home. Even worse was to be injured: Hospitals have run out of supplies, including anesthesia.

But the darkest passages of all were communication blackouts such as the one Israel imposed on Oct. 27. Everything beyond the walls of his in-laws’ house went black. The worst imaginings filled the void.

His wife Jenin, far away in Canada, “went mad,” he said.

When the internet came back on after 36 hours, it was “like the return of the soul to the body.” He broke down in tears at the sound of each voice: his father, his siblings, his mother, his wife. He had feared the worst for his sister in Gaza City, and when they spoke, she wept from the stress of the bombing around her but still refused to leave.

FILE - A UNDP-provided tent camp for Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip is seen in Khan Younis on Oct. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair, File)

Communication “is more important than food and drink,” he said. “It tells us all the details that we need … who is dead and who is still around.”

The communication blackout marked the beginning of the Israeli ground assault into northern Gaza. Israeli troops have since moved into Gaza City and now threaten to advance south.

His sister and her children finally made it out of Gaza City by Nov. 7. He joined them and their mother in Khan Younis.

Communications cuts became routine. The only way to get a signal was through Israeli or Egyptian e-SIM cards or to wait for brief moments when local providers came online. Alaadin’s voice recordings arrived sporadically, sometimes taking days to land. His voice croaked and grew fainter.

“We feel the danger getting closer. Gaza is shrinking,” he said. “Every war, no matter how destructive, they (Israelis) never changed the features of the city. Now they have.”

Salem Elrayyes poses inside Khan Younis Medical complex Oct. 29, 2023, in Khan Younis, Gaza. (Salem Elrayyes via AP)

SALEM ELRAYYES, JOURNALIST

Salem Elrayyes considers himself a student of Gaza’s urban landscape and how its growing population adapts to being hemmed in by the sea, Israel and Egypt.

Just before Oct. 7, the journalist was working on a podcast about how Gaza grows vertically — apartment towers replacing old villas, crowded shantytowns and farmland.

His 13-year-old daughter’s screams at the sound of hundreds of outgoing rockets woke him early Oct. 7, alerting him to events over the fence.

“It was madness, one after the other, phsst, phsst, phsst,” Elrayyes recalled.

At first, he thought it was rockets from Palestinian factions responding to an Israeli attack. Tension was in the air before Oct. 7.

The reality was harder to fathom.

FILE - Rockets are fired toward Israel from Gaza, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. Israeli forces are now spread throughout the northern third of the Gaza Strip. More than 2 million people, the majority of the Strip’s population, cram into what’s left. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair, File)

A border breach, paragliders, the storming of Israeli communities. Israeli jeeps taken by Palestinians raced through Gaza’s streets.

For hours, Palestinian militants controlled several Israeli communities, including villages and towns of the ancestors of current residents of Gaza before Israel’s creation in 1948.

“For me it was the stuff of imagination ... I never thought that could happen,” Elrayyes said.

He thought Gaza might expand for the first time, even if just by a bit. But when the Israeli retaliation came, the opposite happened.

FILE - Fire and smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair, File)

Deaths spiraled over the following weeks. “Each strike on a building would level it. Roads were closed with rubble. Movement became hard for us and for ambulances.”

The 37-year-old journalist, who had covered all of Gaza’s wars since 2008, had never felt the need to even stockpile supplies in the past. Calm and grounded, he was always confident that living in central Gaza was security enough.

But a week into the war, Elrayyes and his wife decided that it was time to evacuate from their modern apartment and the roof garden his father had cared for meticulously.

His parents, who lived in the same building, took more convincing. His mother needed dialysis three times a week. He explained that Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, the largest in the Strip, was already overwhelmed.

On Oct. 13, he packed clothes, passports and IDs, and drove his wife and children to an apartment in Khan Younis. He came back for his parents, taking them to a refugee camp in central Gaza near a medical center that offered dialysis.

Then he based himself at the hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest, where he documented bombings and the deluge of killed and wounded.

He had two daily drives: One to Gaza City to check on the apartment, have a cup of coffee alone and water the plants, and the other, inside Khan Younis, to see his children. The distances weren’t far — about 20 miles (35 kilometers) total.

His last trip to Gaza City was on Nov. 1. He made himself coffee at home but can’t remember if he watered the plants.

Elrayyes’ calm began to fray. He reminisced about quiet nights listening to music and playing with his kids or visiting friends. He dreamed of home-cooked meals.

“Not only the physical space is tightening. My private space is eroding,” Elrayyes said in a long, ranting voice message.

He slept in his car outside the hospital and filed reports and photos from a tent for journalists or an emergency staircase.

At least 46 journalists and media staff have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international organization that documents threats to the media. Four were Elrayyes’ friends.

By Day 17, like many in Gaza, Elrayyes had the flu. Water was scarce. Irrigation water was used for showers, and some people washed in the Mediterranean to avoid contamination. Eleven bakeries had been bombed, and only nine were left to provide for the hundreds of thousands displaced in the south.

A stale piece of bread was Elrayyes’ only meal on a recent day and he wondered whether he could keep going. “We are not eating well. We are not sleeping well. We get sick easily, not to mention the rockets and whatever else they are lobbing at us,” he said.

In this image provided by UNRWA, people use irrigation water to wash their feet at a shelter in southern Gaza on Monday Oct. 16, 2023. (Hosein Owda/UNRWA via AP)

He has seen his mother twice since they evacuated. Her dialysis had been cut to twice a week, and she was growing frail.

His communications through WhatsApp with AP were a cherished connection with the outside world.

On Nov. 6, he and his wife were in the car when the dust and smoke of an explosion darkened the air around the shelter housing their children. Fearing the worst, he hit the accelerator. It took just a couple of minutes of frenzied driving behind ambulances to realize the shelter was intact.

Elrayyes couldn’t bear to see the children so soon after envisioning his worst nightmare. He dropped his wife and continued to follow the ambulances.

Fears for his children haunt him. If anything happens to them “it will kill any relation between me and Gaza even after the war.”

On Nov. 20, Elrayyes was called into the morgue of the hospital where he’d camped out to see four of his cousins, including an 18-month-old. They were killed in a nearby airstrike.

FILE - Israeli soldiers stand outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano, File)

AYAH AL-WAKEEL, LAWYER

Ayah al-Wakeel has made a career campaigning for better rights for women. The Gaza City lawyer is used to uphill battles in a conservative society whose religious courts often side with men.

When the war broke out, she stayed focused on the right to a dignified life, raising funds to provide necessities for the thousands who followed Israeli orders to evacuate northern Gaza. But she and her family were determined not to be among them.

They, like many, feared Israel was repeating the 1948 “Nakba,” — the catastrophe — when some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from homes in what is now Israel.

Back then, al-Wakeel’s family was displaced from Jaffa, a city 40 miles (65 kilometers) to the north that the 33-year-old has never seen. They refused to take the chance of losing yet another home to Israel forever, she said in a voice note on Oct. 17 from her house in Gaza City.

“We had a consensus in the family,” she said in a recording. “We will not leave, and we won’t give them what they want. Whatever God has preordained will happen.”

For 12 days, she stayed with her parents, sister, brothers, and uncles in the family building as bombs fell near them.

Then the story of displacement that began in a town al-Wakeel has never seen resumed with a vengeance in the only city she’s ever known. On Oct. 19, in a series of frantic pre-dawn texts, she explained what changed their minds.

“They bombed our house over our heads. We miraculously survived,” she wrote.

Her neighborhood, she wrote, was surrounded by what she called a “ring of fire,” describing successive airstrikes in one block. The barrage seemed designed to drive out anyone who dared stay, she said. She and her neighbors pulled her partially paralyzed father to safety.

She wrote in fragments:

“Four people carried him”

“Each holding an arm or a leg”

Twice, her father asked them to leave him to die.

“We sat around him and said if one rocket hits, we all go together. We kept praying and reading the Shahada,” she wrote, referring to the Muslim profession of faith recited when death seems near.

They managed to carry him out, but another strike hit as they fled. The family scattered, reuniting later at Shifa Hospital.

For six days, al-Wakeel went silent. Then briefly, she wrote: “I am sorry. I can’t keep in touch now. The situation is very terrifying. I have no brain. There is no internet.” A similar message landed the next day.

The next day, she wrote: “In no other war before was I so scared of strikes. After what happened to us, I am terrified beyond words. I can’t keep myself together.”

Again, she fell silent. It was the first communication blackout, on Oct. 27.

When she surfaced two days later, it was to report on another Israeli warning, to leave the Shifa hospital area where Israel claims Hamas built an underground headquarters.

“We don’t know where to go. We are calling friends to try to find a place. We have a bus.”

Eight hours later, al-Wakeel and her family joined about 14,000 people sheltering at al-Quds hospital, about 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) away.

Another evacuation order, another “ring of fire.” Two neighboring apartment towers were bombed. Smoke filled the hospital and damaged one of its wards.

“The sound is really loud and terrifying. The hospital is shaking,” she wrote. In a photo she shared, people slept on the floor.

The next morning, the family moved again to another hospital, their third in three days.

“Father is ok. He is just tired of moving.”

Al-Wakeel thought obsessively about a cold drink of water. She was limiting her intake to two sips a day to avoid the crowded, filthy bathrooms.

Since she left home on Oct. 19, she had had one shower but had no change of clothes. She bought new underwear.

Al-Wakeel was thankful she got her period at a time when she still had some privacy. There were reports of Palestinian women searching for birth-control pills to delay their menstrual cycles.

“My sister is praying she doesn’t get it until after the war,” she texted on Oct. 30.

Five days of silence.

On Nov. 4, she wrote that a “ring of fire” surrounded the third hospital where they had sought shelter. They returned to Shifa, the first hospital.

“I want to collapse but I really don’t have the energy for that,” she wrote.

On Nov. 7, she said Shifa was unsafe but neither was going south. On the same day, al-Wakeel wrote to one of her best friends outside of Gaza: “I miss you, my love.”

Israeli forces breached the hospital on Nov. 13. She has not been heard from since.

AP · November 24, 2023

13. Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the US. A legacy law gives him few guardrails

Partisan politics and hyperbole aside. How will this kind of rhetoric impact military recruiting? What do young people think about such proposed policies? Will this kind of rhetoric affect their decisions to enlist?

Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the US. A legacy law gives him few guardrails

BY GARY FIELDS

Updated 12:03 AM EST, November 27, 2023

AP · November 27, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Campaigning in Iowa this year, Donald Trump said he was prevented during his presidency from using the military to quell violence in primarily Democratic cities and states.

Calling New York City and Chicago “crime dens,” the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination told his audience, “The next time, I’m not waiting. One of the things I did was let them run it and we’re going to show how bad a job they do,” he said. “Well, we did that. We don’t have to wait any longer.”

Trump has not spelled out precisely how he might use the military during a second term, although he and his advisers have suggested they would have wide latitude to call up units. While deploying the military regularly within the country’s borders would be a departure from tradition, the former president already has signaled an aggressive agenda if he wins, from mass deportations to travel bans imposed on certain Muslim-majority countries.

A law first crafted in the nation’s infancy would give Trump as commander in chief almost unfettered power to do so, military and legal experts said in a series of interviews.

The Insurrection Act allows presidents to call on reserve or active-duty military units to respond to unrest in the states, an authority that is not reviewable by the courts. One of its few guardrails merely requires the president to request that the participants disperse.

“The principal constraint on the president’s use of the Insurrection Act is basically political, that presidents don’t want to be the guy who sent tanks rolling down Main Street,” said Joseph Nunn, a national security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s not much really in the law to stay the president’s hand.”

A spokesman for Trump’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about what authority Trump might use to pursue his plans.

Congress passed the act in 1792, just four years after the Constitution was ratified. Nunn said it’s an amalgamation of different statutes enacted between then and the 1870s, a time when there was little in the way of local law enforcement.

“It is a law that in many ways was created for a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.

It also is one of the most substantial exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits using the military for law enforcement purposes.

Trump has spoken openly about his plans should he win the presidency, including using the military at the border and in cities struggling with violent crime. His plans also have included using the military against foreign drug cartels, a view echoed by other Republican primary candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor.

The threats have raised questions about the meaning of military oaths, presidential power and who Trump could appoint to support his approach.

Trump already has suggested he might bring back retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser and twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russian influence probe before being pardoned by Trump. Flynn suggested in the aftermath of the 2020 election that Trump could seize voting machines and order the military in some states to help rerun the election.

Attempts to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military for domestic policing would likely elicit pushback from the Pentagon, where the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is Gen. Charles Q. Brown. He was one of the eight members of the Joint Chiefs who signed a memo to military personnel in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The memo emphasized the oaths they took and called the events of that day, which were intended to stop certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, “sedition and insurrection.”

Trump and his party nevertheless retain wide support among those who have served in the military. AP VoteCast, an in-depth survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide, showed that 59% of U.S. military veterans voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. In the 2022 midterms, 57% of military veterans supported Republican candidates.

Presidents have issued a total of 40 proclamations invoking the law, some of those done multiple times for the same crisis, Nunn said. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times — in Baltimore, Chicago and Washington — in response to the unrest in cities after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

During the Civil Rights era, Presidents Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower used the law to protect activists and students desegregating schools. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students integrating Central High School after that state’s governor activated the National Guard to keep the students out.

George H.W. Bush was the last president to use the Insurrection Act, a response to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King in an incident that was videotaped.

Repeated attempts to invoke the act in a new Trump presidency could put pressure on military leaders, who could face consequences for their actions even if done at the direction of the president.

Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the question is whether the military is being imaginative enough with the scenarios it has been presenting to future officers. Ambiguity, especially when force is involved, is not something military personnel are comfortable with, he said.

“There are a lot of institutional checks and balances in our country that are pretty well-developed legally, and it’ll make it hard for a president to just do something randomly out of the blue,” said O’Hanlon, who specializes in U.S. defense strategy and the use of military force. “But Trump is good at developing a semi-logical train of thought that might lead to a place where there’s enough mayhem, there’s enough violence and legal murkiness” to call in the military.

Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, the first graduate of the U.S. Military Academy to represent the congressional district that includes West Point, said he took the oath three times while he was at the school and additional times during his military career. He said there was extensive classroom focus on an officer’s responsibilities to the Constitution and the people under his or her command.

“They really hammer into us the seriousness of the oath and who it was to, and who it wasn’t to,” he said.

Ryan said he thought it was universally understood, but Jan. 6 “was deeply disturbing and a wakeup call for me.” Several veterans and active-duty military personnel were charged with crimes in connection with the assault.

While those connections were troubling, he said he thinks those who harbor similar sentiments make up a very small percentage of the military.

William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor and expert in national security law, said a military officer is not forced to follow “unlawful orders.” That could create a difficult situation for leaders whose units are called on for domestic policing, since they can face charges for taking unlawful actions.

“But there is a big thumb on the scale in favor of the president’s interpretation of whether the order is lawful,” Banks said. “You’d have a really big row to hoe and you would have a big fuss inside the military if you chose not to follow a presidential order.”

Nunn, who has suggested steps to restrict the invocation of the law, said military personnel cannot be ordered to break the law.

“Members of the military are legally obliged to disobey an unlawful order. At the same time, that is a lot to ask of the military because they are also obliged to obey orders,” he said. “And the punishment for disobeying an order that turns out to be lawful is your career is over, and you may well be going to jail for a very long time. The stakes for them are extraordinarily high.”

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Michelle L. Price in New York, and Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

AP · November 27, 2023

14. Singing the CCP’s tune: foreign influencers and China’s propaganda strategy

Are these influencers useful idiots or are they complicit in PRC information warfare?

Excerpts:

Yet, it wasn’t merely the seasoned hands of party-state media or the fiery voices of diplomats that painted this rosy image. A relatively new set of players had stepped onto the stage: foreign influencers. This group of non-Chinese nationals residing in China and carefully nurtured by the CCP over the years has become an integral part of the choir, harmonising with the ‘main melody’ (主旋律)—the party’s term for themes or narratives that promote its values, policies and ideology. Our new ASPI report, Singing from the CCP’s songsheet: the role of foreign influencers in China’s propaganda system, explores how this process works.

In an era where digital content is king, the CCP has recognised the power that foreign influencers wield compared to more traditional communication channels. Boasting millions of followers in China and overseas, especially on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Twitter, the CCP has identified, harnessed and actively developed foreign influencers as unique propaganda assets. It’s become a symbiotic relationship—aligned influencers flourish under the CCP’s regulated social media ecosystem, while the party uses their popularity to bolster its legitimacy both domestically and internationally.

...

In essence, the CCP’s strategy is clear: to ‘cultivate a group of “foreign mouths”, “foreign pens” and “foreign brains” who can stand up and speak for China at critical moments,’ as one scholar wrote in his treatise on the use of foreign influencers. The strategy presents a new dynamic in the global information landscape, one where ordinary content creators are enlisted to advance an authoritarian agenda.

Singing the CCP’s tune: foreign influencers and China’s propaganda strategy | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Fergus Ryan · November 26, 2023

In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe, China faced international scrutiny over its draconian control measures and the nature and origin of the pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party saw an urgent need to push back as it scrambled to uphold its global standing.

The CCP’s propaganda machine sprang into action, launching campaigns through party-state media to underscore the effectiveness of the CCP’s leadership in navigating the crisis. ‘Wolf warrior’ diplomats and media workers, acting in accordance with Xi Jinping’s directives to boost propaganda work, took to global platforms like Twitter and Facebook, presenting a narrative of resilience, capability and control amid chaos. This portrayal emphasised the ‘advantages’ of China’s unique political and social system, turning scrutiny into an opportunity for praise.

Yet, it wasn’t merely the seasoned hands of party-state media or the fiery voices of diplomats that painted this rosy image. A relatively new set of players had stepped onto the stage: foreign influencers. This group of non-Chinese nationals residing in China and carefully nurtured by the CCP over the years has become an integral part of the choir, harmonising with the ‘main melody’ (主旋律)—the party’s term for themes or narratives that promote its values, policies and ideology. Our new ASPI report, Singing from the CCP’s songsheet: the role of foreign influencers in China’s propaganda system, explores how this process works.

In an era where digital content is king, the CCP has recognised the power that foreign influencers wield compared to more traditional communication channels. Boasting millions of followers in China and overseas, especially on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Twitter, the CCP has identified, harnessed and actively developed foreign influencers as unique propaganda assets. It’s become a symbiotic relationship—aligned influencers flourish under the CCP’s regulated social media ecosystem, while the party uses their popularity to bolster its legitimacy both domestically and internationally.

By leveraging the supreme control that it has over the information environment in China, the CCP can eliminate discordant foreign voices and establish a monoculture of foreigners who, when talking about matters of political importance to the party, adhere to the ‘main melody’. Instead of a cacophony of competing views and voices, the party hopes to corral foreign influencers with party-state media workers masquerading as influencers as well as state-approved ethnic-minority influencers into a harmonious choir.

This isn’t just about promoting Chinese culture or achievements; foreign influencers are being guided, both overtly and subtly, to defend the CCP’s stance on sensitive issues. From territorial disputes to human rights concerns, the narratives pushed by many of these influencers are increasingly aligned with the CCP’s ‘main melody’. The CCP’s tentacles of influence extend even to international students at Chinese universities, building them into a ready-made army of young, social-media-savvy influencers.

Taking a closer look, the CCP has used influencers to complement its geopolitical objectives. In particular, Russian influencers in China have been harnessed as part of the CCP’s strategic goal of strengthening bilateral relations with Russia to counter Western narratives. What’s more, foreign influencers’ content is being strategically funnelled into mainstream overseas media, subtly penetrating the viewer’s perspective.

Underlying all these efforts are the CCP’s innovative strategies to incentivise influencers to produce pro-CCP content. State-sponsored competitions with generous rewards and the establishment of multilingual influencer studios in China serve as creative means to that end. These tactics, combined with search engine algorithms that favour fresh, regularly posted content, help CCP-aligned narratives outperform more credible sources on global platforms such as YouTube.

However, it’s crucial to recognise that not all foreign influencers in China are pawns in the CCP’s game. While the party’s overarching control of the information ecosystem might pressure some influencers into compliance, others avoid political topics altogether. Nevertheless, the line between independent voices and those influenced by the party’s narratives is becoming increasingly blurred.

Looking ahead, the far-reaching implications of the CCP’s use of foreign influencers are crystallising. As the strategy evolves, discerning between genuine content and propaganda becomes a formidable challenge for social media platforms, foreign governments and global audiences. This could complicate efforts to counter disinformation and protect the integrity of public discourse.

In essence, the CCP’s strategy is clear: to ‘cultivate a group of “foreign mouths”, “foreign pens” and “foreign brains” who can stand up and speak for China at critical moments,’ as one scholar wrote in his treatise on the use of foreign influencers. The strategy presents a new dynamic in the global information landscape, one where ordinary content creators are enlisted to advance an authoritarian agenda.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Fergus Ryan · November 26, 2023

15. China’s Path to Power Runs Through the World’s Cities

Excerpts:

The Build Back Better World initiative—announced at the 2021 G-7 Summit and later rebranded as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment—aims to coordinate G-7 states’ investment in low- and middle-income countries; it represents a clear attempt to respond to the BRI’s potential to influence the global South, with an initial fund of $600 billion provided by the G-7 and private firms. Its projects include the construction of an India–Middle East–Europe Corridor, announced in September 2023 by the United States and the EU along with India, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia; this corridor would link these continents with new digital infrastructures and transport networks, including maritime routes and railways. The plan borrows from the BRI playbook. The EU, for its part, has offered a series of new strategies for Africa and India with its 2021 $300 billion Global Gateway program, which emphasizes infrastructure investments that adhere to higher social and environmental standards that reflect European values around development, human rights, and sustainability.

These schemes must be given more support. But the West will likely continue to have trouble coordinating large-scale and long-term projects that come near matching the BRI. Grand strategic thinking is difficult for democratic regimes stuck in short term political cycles. It was not always so, however: the post–World War II Marshall Plan, to which the BRI is sometimes compared, deployed extraordinary resources to reconstruct a devastated Europe. This was not only an act of solidarity but also a clear strategic plan to help keep Western European states out of Moscow’s orbit.

Today is another historic moment in which a long-term, generational, grand strategic vision is necessary. Policymakers must rediscover the too-often-neglected connection between infrastructure, cities, and international influence. Democracies have, at key moments, shown themselves to be resilient, capable, and committed when it comes to long-term strategic efforts; recent gathering momentum around addressing climate change suggests they still can be. The West must rise to the complex challenges of refining its vision of sustainable and connected urban life—a vision that incorporates its values—and mobilizing the resources to complete it. At stake is not merely which country will wield more geopolitical influence in the future; infrastructure investment will also shape the day-to-day life for billions of people who live in cities. Cities have long offered economic opportunity, improved health, cultural vitality, and fostered cosmopolitanism. But they are not guaranteed to do so.

China’s Path to Power Runs Through the World’s Cities

To Push Back, the West Must Invest More in Urban Life

By Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus

November 27, 2023

Foreign Affairs · November 27, 2023

In October 2023, world leaders gathered in Beijing to mark the tenth anniversary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the centerpiece of recent Chinese grand strategy. The BRI has received enormous attention for its eye-popping price tag and its huge and protean ambitions. Having already invested around $1 trillion, China intends to link more than 150 countries by new roads, railways, seaports, energy systems, and technological and cyberspace innovations, encouraging commerce and connectivity and drawing two-thirds of the world’s population yet closer to Chinese markets and political influence.

For all the scrutiny the BRI has received, however, a key aspect is often overlooked: that it is, among other things, a sweeping urbanization project, one that may define the future of many cities around the world—especially if other great powers do not contest it. The development of cities is often, wrongly, neglected in the analysis of international relations. But there is an intrinsic connection between infrastructure, urban form, and the shape of the international orders that great powers build. Throughout history, great powers have used cities not only as nodes of commercial and religious connection but as sites for the real and symbolic projection of power. The U.S. unipolar moment that took shape in the aftermath of the Cold War was undergirded by the creation of a distinctive urban form: the global city. Cities such as London, New York, Seoul, Sydney, and Tokyo were, over decades, reshaped by the expansion of the liberal free market. In turn, their rise strengthened the United States’ world-spanning influence.

China, however, is now beginning to generate its own distinctive infrastructural and urban forms: during its era of economic opening, experimentation, and explosive growth that began in 1979, it transformed locales inside its borders, extending them up and out into space by building skyscrapers and urbanizing rural areas, while also connecting them to regional and far-flung economies. Urban spaces have for four decades been central to China’s economic and strategic vision, predating the BRI. But the attention and resources Beijing is now turning to them through the BRI, at home and abroad, portends a transformation in the lives of billions of city dwellers.

China’s long-term strategy for the BRI always had the symbolic date of 2049 in mind—the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in the mid-twentieth-century Chinese Civil War. If the BRI is successful, the vision is of a world transformed, a twenty-first-century reincarnation of the ancient and medieval Silk Roads, the trading networks and urban hubs that tied together the peoples of Afro-Eurasia for over a thousand years before the rise of the West. The enhanced connectivity China intends to create could generate a new kind of transnational market, transforming the connective tissue of the global economy. The BRI has already begun to dramatically grow China’s influence over other cities at a variety of scales from the very small to the immense: from the 2012 Chinese-led redevelopment of a marketplace in the fishing port of Cape Coast in Ghana to new ports such as Hambantota in Sri Lanka and the transfiguration of two thousand miles of territory in Pakistan. Beijing is experimenting with eco-cities that may be a boon to transition to sustainable forms of urban life—but also exporting new technologies of urban surveillance and control.

The BRI represents the possibility that the international order may be rebuilt not through war but through the construction of material conduits that carry Chinese influence, culture, and developmental models around the world. If Western countries wish to both retain their economic and geopolitical influence and protect the cosmopolitan culture that has been a staple of urban spaces for decades, they must more seriously consider how to match the BRI. This will not be easy. U.S. and EU policymakers have begun to develop infrastructure initiatives that are designed to compete geopolitically with the BRI; these schemes need greater support.

But leaders in these increasingly fractious and disorganized democracies lack China’s ability to mobilize huge resources quickly and to plan across a half century. They must move both faster and with predictability and commitment over longer time horizons. The BRI, after all, is not simply an infrastructure project. It is already carrying Chinese influence around the world and laying the foundations for an alternative Chinese-led international order.

URBAN LEGENDS

For millennia, great powers’ influence has depended on cities and infrastructure. And the form cities take has, in turn, been shifted by empires. When Alexander the Great struck out from Macedonia to try to conquer the world, he left in his wake a string of new cities across the Middle East and Central Asia, establishing a long-lasting legacy of Greek culture and architecture. During its colonial era, the British Empire invested heavily in rail and port infrastructure to project power worldwide; even today, its ports, railways, government and commercial buildings, and legal culture still anchor cities as far flung as New Delhi in India, Pretoria in South Africa, and Wellington in New Zealand.

The decades immediately following World War II were another pivotal moment in the history of the city. Across Europe and Asia, cities had to be rebuilt. France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union supported massive housing projects designed to transform the lives of working- and middle-class people worldwide, renegotiating the relationship between citizen and government. As the Cold War deepened, the United States and the Soviet Union undertook special efforts to influence the development of cities beyond their borders. U.S. automobiles, prefabricated housing, and home appliances were shipped around the world with support from the U.S. government, U.S. businesses, and cultural institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, introducing democratic ideals of design and habits of consumptions to millions.

The Soviet Union invested in imposing edifices that served as symbols of communist sophistication and power, such as the Palace of Culture and Science in Poland; the sixth-tallest building in the EU, Warsaw’s skyline is still defined by it. And Moscow invested in mass housing developments that became comparable to small cities, carefully curating their social spaces according to communist ideals. The late-twentieth-century collapse of the Soviet Union and the triumph of free-market liberalism accelerated the expansion of the “global city”: in Tokyo, skyscrapers sprouted in Roppongi Hills, Shiodome, and Shinagawa, joining the city’s ancient yokocho, its restaurant-studded webs of alleys and backstreets, in defining the cityscape and its economy.

Consultants, lawyers, and other corporate service experts began to move freely and comfortably between such global cities. This urban form was underpinned by the hegemony of U.S. power, which secured a global market and culture that stressed free enterprise. But as these cities became beacons for international wealth and talent, they also amplified globalization’s attendant social inequality. It is becoming less and less clear how long that free-market hegemony will last, given the fragilities of the global economic system, the United States’ increasingly polarized politics—and the extraordinary rise of China.

URBAN SPRAWL

No nation in history has urbanized at the scale China did between 1980 and 2020. In 1978, 20 percent of China’s population lived in urban areas; now, over 60 percent of it does. Chinese urban policy focused on rapid building construction and economic growth and experimentation in special economic zones (SEZs), which enabled the deployment of unique economic policies. After Beijing afforded Shenzhen SEZ status in 1980, the Shenzhen SEZ’s urban area grew to more than 600 times the size of the original market town. As China experimented with markets and special economic zones in its coastal cities, agglomeration economies that resulted from the reduction of barriers to capital established themselves.

China’s rapid urbanization generated distinctive architectural and construction styles, heavy civil infrastructure, urban sprawl, and a disregard for historical landmarks, but its policies have also been evolving. Since the 1990s, Chinese state strategy has also stressed the idea of an “ecological civilization,” integrating sustainability into its city planning. In 2004, China identified the subtropical city of Guiyang as an eco-pilot city to test sustainable urban development concepts such as the circular economy; it has already spent around $80 billion on Xiong’an, a new city 60 miles from Beijing projected to be the size of New York and London combined. Intended to become a Chinese example of the “socialist city,” Xiong’an will blend the ecological and the digital: a city of parks and forests, it also will have a digital “twin” in which every building and infrastructural component is represented on an evolving virtual map. China’s most recent Five-Year Plan extols the virtues of “people-centered” and green urban spaces.

The intended scope of the BRI suggests that China’s experiments in rapid urban growth and connectivity could eventually form the basis for a successor to the global city. The very fabric of cities in regions from East Asia to East Africa are already coming under the BRI’s influence. Beijing has invested in highway-building projects that connect cities in Central Asia via high-speed railways that integrate Chinese cities with European terminals such as London, and a “digital silk road” that, among other goals, links western China through Pakistan and down to cities in East Africa. As these infrastructures coalesce, they are transforming cities. Khorgos, once a sleepy town on the Chinese-Kazakh border, is now a busy logistics center, with blocks of stacked containers emerging from the Eurasian steppes into a bustling free-trade and duty-free zone. A “dry port” through which new high-speed freight trains pass on their way to different regions the BRI targets, Khorgos now connects almost 100 Chinese cities to nearly 200 cities in Europe and more than a dozen in Central, East, and Southeast Asia.

Beyond the Chinese border, since 2018, the BRI has reshaped Astana, the Kazakh capital, into a regional international finance hub, financing the construction of a new central business district anchored by the Astana International Finance Center and the striking Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center. Translucent and shaped like a tent, the entertainment center’s architecture is futuristic while recalling the Silk Road nomadic empires. In East Africa, the BRI is funding railway construction and a new deep-water port project on the Kenyan coast to create a new transnational economic corridor connecting Kenya, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.

The Belt and Road Initiative already offers tantalizing glimpses of a world that could better tackle climate change.

China intends to unite urban corridors on different continents by investing in what it calls “Maritime Silk Road” port cities. China’s existing major seaports will be linked to a string of ports outside of China in strategic locations: Piraeus in Greece, Kyaukphyu in Myanmar, Gwadar in Pakistan, and Colombo and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. China hopes its investment in Mediterranean ports in particular can begin to draw trade away from the traditional dominance of northern European ports such as Rotterdam, London, Hamburg, and Antwerp. Alongside these more traditional infrastructure investments, the BRI aims to offer new forms of digital connectivity: Chinese companies such as Huawei are building new submarine cables, data centers, and smart-city platforms in places as diverse as Pakistan, East Africa, and South America.

These are desperately needed interventions in places left behind by the digital revolution, but they also give China an opening to incorporate new countries into its domestic version of the Internet, which emphasizes social control. Digital systems trialed in Chinese cities such as Kashgar—where, since terrorist attacks in 2008 and 2011, surveillance cameras, facial- and gait-recognition scans, license-plate recognition, checkpoints, ID cards, and digital-control centers have become part of everyday life—are finding their way into other cities around the world. Since the BRI was launched, Chinese companies have sold “safe city” solutions to major metropolises in Malaysia, Pakistan, Ecuador, and Kenya. Starting in 2019, Serbia installed thousands of Chinese-made cameras with advanced facial- and license-plate-recognition software in 800 locations in Belgrade and 40 other cities around the country. In cities shaped by the BRI, social control and efficiency of governance may be given more weight than individual freedom.

And yet the BRI also offers tantalizing glimpses of a world that could better engage with intractable problems such as climate change. With the BRI, China hopes that its experiments in sustainable urban practice at home can be used as models elsewhere. “Ecological cities” across Southeast Asia, such the $100 billion Forest City under construction on four islands between Malaysia and Singapore; this city aims to create sustainable urban living for up to a million people by 2035. At the 2019 China-ASEAN Summit, China and the ASEAN member states launched the Smart City Cooperation Initiative, which laid out a commitment to further develop a smart-cities ecosystem in Asia combining digital innovation and sustainability.

CONCRETE BUNGLE

If the BRI is successful in the way that China hopes, it could usher in a new kind of city, one that may form the basis for a new international order. Africa and Eurasia could become much more urbanized, with sprawling, transnational urban corridors connected by high-speed transit and integrated more fully into China’s immense and increasingly sophisticated market. Small cities may be transformed into thriving logistics hubs that would direct the movement of goods around a new supercontinent. Chinese expatriates and the soft-power influence of Chinese culture and language may become commonplace in hundreds of cities worldwide, and urban spaces may become increasingly efficient, safe, and sustainable. These BRI-influenced cities may knit forests and green spaces into the urban fabric in the service of ecological principles—potentially playing a valuable role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

But urban life would likely become more tightly controlled and regulated. Surveillance may become much more ubiquitous as governments circumscribe citizens’ digital access in the name of cyber-sovereignty. The city as an international commercial hub could thrive, but the city as liberal, cosmopolitan enclave may wither.

The United States and other large powers such as the EU would not relish this outcome. It would signal that the liberal international order they have constructed over seven decades is being reengineered from the ground up by a state with very different values and interests. U.S. and EU leaders have already begun to try to counter the BRI with alternative forms of infrastructural geopolitics. U.S. President Joe Biden has sought to develop a new national industrial strategy with green technologies and jobs at its core, with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act focused on infrastructure and climate change abroad as well as at home. The legislation earmarked around $370 billion for green-energy transition projects.

If the BRI is successful, it could usher in a new kind of city—and a new international order.

The Build Back Better World initiative—announced at the 2021 G-7 Summit and later rebranded as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment—aims to coordinate G-7 states’ investment in low- and middle-income countries; it represents a clear attempt to respond to the BRI’s potential to influence the global South, with an initial fund of $600 billion provided by the G-7 and private firms. Its projects include the construction of an India–Middle East–Europe Corridor, announced in September 2023 by the United States and the EU along with India, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia; this corridor would link these continents with new digital infrastructures and transport networks, including maritime routes and railways. The plan borrows from the BRI playbook. The EU, for its part, has offered a series of new strategies for Africa and India with its 2021 $300 billion Global Gateway program, which emphasizes infrastructure investments that adhere to higher social and environmental standards that reflect European values around development, human rights, and sustainability.

These schemes must be given more support. But the West will likely continue to have trouble coordinating large-scale and long-term projects that come near matching the BRI. Grand strategic thinking is difficult for democratic regimes stuck in short term political cycles. It was not always so, however: the post–World War II Marshall Plan, to which the BRI is sometimes compared, deployed extraordinary resources to reconstruct a devastated Europe. This was not only an act of solidarity but also a clear strategic plan to help keep Western European states out of Moscow’s orbit.

Today is another historic moment in which a long-term, generational, grand strategic vision is necessary. Policymakers must rediscover the too-often-neglected connection between infrastructure, cities, and international influence. Democracies have, at key moments, shown themselves to be resilient, capable, and committed when it comes to long-term strategic efforts; recent gathering momentum around addressing climate change suggests they still can be. The West must rise to the complex challenges of refining its vision of sustainable and connected urban life—a vision that incorporates its values—and mobilizing the resources to complete it. At stake is not merely which country will wield more geopolitical influence in the future; infrastructure investment will also shape the day-to-day life for billions of people who live in cities. Cities have long offered economic opportunity, improved health, cultural vitality, and fostered cosmopolitanism. But they are not guaranteed to do so.

• SIMON CURTIS is an Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Surrey.
• IAN KLAUS is Director of Carnegie California at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• They are the authors of the forthcoming book The Belt and Road City: Geopolitics, Urbanization, and China’s Search for a New International Order.

Foreign Affairs · November 27, 2023

16. Netanyahu Open to Extending Hamas Truce, but Pledges to Continue War at ‘Full Power’ Once Ceasefire Ends

Netanyahu Open to Extending Hamas Truce, but Pledges to Continue War at ‘Full Power’ Once Ceasefire Ends

Once the ceasefire is over, Israel plans on 'returning' with 'full power' to 'destroy Hamas'

Published 11/26/23 03:53 PM ET|Updated 13 hr ago

Zachary Rogers

themessenger.com · November 26, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that while he is open to the idea of extending his nation’s temporary truce with the terrorist group Hamas, once the ceasefire is over, Israel plans on “returning” with “full power."

Netanyahu shared his views on the topic with American President Joe Biden, according to The Times of Israel. The two world leaders spoke about the recently freed hostages, who were released as part of the agreed-upon ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

“We brought home another group of hostages, children and women, and I am moved to the depths of my heart, the entire nation is, when we see families reunited,” Netanyahu said in a video statement, singling out the release of recently orphaned 4-year-old Abigail Edan, who is a US-Israeli citizen. “What a joy it is to see her with us. But on the other hand, what sadness that she is returning to a reality without parents.”

View post on Twitter

Netanyahu then floats out a proposition, in which the truce can be allowed to continue but only if “for every day another 10” hostages are released. However, once the ceasefire is over, Netanyahu promised that Israel would see Hamas destroyed.

“At the end of the deal, we are returning full power to carry out our aims: destroy Hamas, ensure that Gaza won’t return to what it was and of course to free all of our hostages,” Netanyahu says he told Biden. “I am sure that we will succeed in this mission — because we have no other choice.”

Sunday is the third day of a currently four-day truce between Israel and Hamas. Hamas terrorists kidnapped hundreds of people during their deadly surprise attack on Israel and are expected to release just 50 of them during the temporary truce.

View post on Twitter

About a dozen were released on Friday, 17 were released on Saturday, and 13 hostages were freed on Sunday. Only women and children are to be released, as per the terms of the current deal. Hamas will return its hostages to Israel and, in return, Israel will release Palestinians who are being held in its detention centers.

themessenger.com · November 26, 2023

17. New beginning or dismal end for the Belt and Road?

Or OBOR (one belt one road).

Excerpts:

The BRI is not all about “push.” There remain dozens of countries such as Cambodia, Greece and Malaysia continuing to welcome traditional, large-scale BRI projects. The BRI is also much more than Africa or South Asia — the Middle East, for instance, is a place where the BRI will thrive.

The future of the BRI likely will entail a mix of big and small, green and polluting, beautiful and ugly. The key for businesspeople and policymakers is to ignore the generalizations present in many discussions about the BRI. Instead, they should undertake nuanced analyses attentive to regional and national political and economic conditions as well as sectoral dynamics.

They also need to be cautious about making decisions based on the data points of the day as opposed to larger trends that will affect their countries or companies over the medium- to long-term. Only then can policymakers and businesspeople take a smart and targeted approach in dealing with the BRI.

New beginning or dismal end for the Belt and Road?

Beijing’s infrastructure-building initiative moving toward ‘smaller, greener and more beautiful projects’ but is it too late?

asiatimes.com · by Jean-Marc F Blanchard · November 25, 2023

Not so long ago, countries were ecstatic about the potential of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a mega-infrastructure scheme launched in 2013 that would connect the world through ports, power grids, railways, roads and telecommunications networks.

Western pundits worried that BRI projects were pulling countries into China’s orbit, empowering Chinese companies and birthing a Sinocentric global order.

For many, it was obvious the road was speeding along as “evidenced” by China’s investments, loans or grants ranging from hundreds of billions to, supposedly, the low trillions of dollars.

Commentators often mixed distinct kinds of monies, classifying loans to countries like Venezuela as BRI loans, equating money invested in or lent to BRI participant countries as BRI money, or labeling projects with no connectivity features as BRI projects. China facilitated these misjudgments by not producing an authoritative BRI project list.

The BRI, initially consisting of the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road Initiative, only raised more concern as it repeatedly broke geographic boundaries, reaching into the Pacific Islands, the Arctic and even outer space.

But one current refrain is that the BRI is falling short of its goals. In fact, before the Third BRI Forum held in Beijing in October 2023, some analysts proclaimed the BRI’s downfall. One only need look at Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zambia and perhaps Malaysia to see the dismal state of the BRI.

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Italy has opted out and Greece is allegedly no longer enthusiastic, despite the successes of Athens’ BRI-linked Piraeus port. Driven by domestic economic constraints, financial problems with BRI participants and project loans, as well as political pushback from the West, BRI investment and contracting are shrinking.

A Chinese worker carries materials for the first rail line linking China to Laos, a key part of Beijing’s Belt and Road project across the Mekong, in Luang Prabang, Laos, May 8, 2020. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Aidan Jones

Facing an uncertain future, another popular contemporary refrain is that the BRI is being rebooted. Beijing has shifted towards what analysts characterize as a “smaller, greener and more beautiful” initiative featuring solar and wind power, ICT infrastructure and ports.

As for the supposed geopolitical ambitions embodied within the BRI, the situation looks rather bleak for China with fewer heads of state attending the October 2023 BRI Forum.

It is easy to paint the current state of the BRI as off-course when it is measured against aspirations it was never likely to reach. Those analyzing the BRI have long pointed out that the complexities of infrastructure, as well as the economic and political shortcomings of numerous BRI participant countries, would adversely affect the BRI’s progress.

Domestic political changes flowing from elections, center–local divides, civil war, terrorism and public protests have time after time stunted, delayed and prevented the realization of BRI projects.

A “smaller, greener and more beautiful” BRI will come against these challenges, which will be coupled with China’s economic downturn, the financial situation of some BRI participants and European disinterest or opposition.

Many of the factors that powered the BRI in the past will continue to power it in the future. China has long been seeking greater market access, pathways to acquire natural resources and ways to improve the security of its resource and trade flows.

As well, Beijing has long searched for ways to deploy its massive foreign currency reserves, internationalize its currency, create opportunities for its companies and promote Chinese tech and standards.

These impetuses will continue to drive the BRI and one that is not necessarily small, green or beautiful. To think that green and ICT-related infrastructure projects will be small ignores reality — green energy projects can easily run into the billions of dollars and hydropower, while green in theory, is not necessarily “beautiful” or entirely non-polluting.

The Khunjerab Pass, starting point of the Belt and Road Initiative’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Photo: Asia Times

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The BRI is not all about “push.” There remain dozens of countries such as Cambodia, Greece and Malaysia continuing to welcome traditional, large-scale BRI projects. The BRI is also much more than Africa or South Asia — the Middle East, for instance, is a place where the BRI will thrive.

The future of the BRI likely will entail a mix of big and small, green and polluting, beautiful and ugly. The key for businesspeople and policymakers is to ignore the generalizations present in many discussions about the BRI. Instead, they should undertake nuanced analyses attentive to regional and national political and economic conditions as well as sectoral dynamics.

They also need to be cautious about making decisions based on the data points of the day as opposed to larger trends that will affect their countries or companies over the medium- to long-term. Only then can policymakers and businesspeople take a smart and targeted approach in dealing with the BRI.

Jean-Marc F Blanchard is Executive Director at the Mr & Mrs S.H. Wong Center for the Study of Multinational Corporations, Palo Alto, United States.

This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

asiatimes.com · by Jean-Marc F Blanchard · November 25, 2023

18. Thousands leave behind American lives to join Israel’s war in Gaza

How would Americans respond to draft notices from the US government? (hypothetically)

Excerpts:

About 10,000 people living in the United States have reported for Israeli military duty after receiving draft notices, part of a larger mobilization of 360,000 troops, Israeli officials told The Washington Post. At least eight U.S. citizens have been killed while serving in Israeli security forces since the war began, according to the State Department.

Thousands leave behind American lives to join Israel’s war in Gaza

By Dan Lamothe and Alex Horton

November 27, 2023 at 5:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · November 27, 2023

Many say they were galvanized by the barbarity of Hamas’s attack. But some lament the thousands of Palestinians killed and wonder how long the fighting will last.

The carnage in Kfar Aza was indelible. Villagers shot dead in the streets. Bodies set on fire.

Menachem Isseroff, a 29-year-old from Brooklyn, was among the Israeli soldiers dispatched to the kibbutz where Hamas militants, having massacred dozens, staged a raging battle amid their surprise cross-border assault. He described the barbarity as “absolutely horrific,” adding, “Any one of those individual scenes would … last most people a lifetime.”

Thousands of miles away in New York, his younger sister Shterny was celebrating the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah. As she learned what had happened, her perspective darkened, too — though for different reasons: The Israeli government, she was sure, would use the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 as “justification” for carrying out “acts of violence against the Palestinian people.”

“War crimes, even,” she said.

Israel-Gaza war

A woman looks at photographs of Israeli hostages in Ramat Gan, Israel, on Nov. 22. (Oded Balilty/AP)

As of Monday, Hamas has released 58 hostages, including Filipino and Thai citizens and a 4-year-old American girl, as the end of a four-day pause in fighting nears in Gaza.

For context: Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war.

End of carousel

The Isseroffs are among thousands of Americans with ties to the Israeli military as it prosecutes a fierce, divisive retaliatory war in Gaza. Weeks of aerial bombardment and an ensuing ground offensive — both now temporarily paused to enable an exchange of hostages and prisoners — have killed thousands of children and other civilians in the Palestinian enclave. With neighborhoods leveled, hospitals crippled, and food, fuel and medical supplies scarce, the crisis has torn at some families, and those directly involved have pondered difficult questions about the cause they have joined.

About 10,000 people living in the United States have reported for Israeli military duty after receiving draft notices, part of a larger mobilization of 360,000 troops, Israeli officials told The Washington Post. At least eight U.S. citizens have been killed while serving in Israeli security forces since the war began, according to the State Department.

The rush of U.S. citizens willing to take up arms for Israel resembles, in ways, the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, whose government appealed to Americans and other foreign nationals to help repel the incursion now nearing the start of its third year. But there are differences, too.

In this case, most of the Americans who have joined the war effort have served previously in the Israel Defense Forces or remain IDF reservists. Historically, about 1,200 Americans serve in the IDF at a given time, according to a study published last year by the journal Sociological Forum. Many are, or become, dual citizens.

In interviews, IDF veterans and reservists who have left behind their American lives described feeling galvanized by the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, even as the ferocity of Israel’s response draws scrutiny and some have begun to wonder about the war’s outlook beyond the Israeli government’s stated goal of destroying Hamas.

“It’s really not clear to any of us how this is going to play out long-term,” Isseroff said, referring to fellow members of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade. “ … You hope that the people who are telling you what to do have a good grasp on the bigger picture.”

They’ve put their trust, he said, in the belief that there is good in fighting to ensure nothing so ghastly can ever happen again.

‘Yes, people will die’

Brooklyn-born, Miami-raised Izzy Ezagui was in Los Angeles last month when the attack on Israel occurred.

His IDF service dates back more than decade. In 2009, during the Israelis’ 22-day offensive into Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead, he was catastrophically wounded, losing his left arm when a mortar hit his base.

A sharpshooter, he fought to stay in the Israeli military, he said, by learning to cradle, fire and reload his rifle with one arm.

About three years ago, Ezagui, now 35, completed his duty, feeling, he said, like he was getting old for a soldier.

That changed in an instant last month, when he decided to leave his service dog, Punch, with family and pause his career in finance to rejoin the IDF.

“As a Jew, there is no better place to be than an IDF base,” he said. “There is no hopelessness here. I would be suffering if I stayed home.”

Soon after his reinstatement, he had a chance encounter with an officer he had known for years who offered Ezagui an assignment ferrying water and ammunition to units inside Gaza and then bringing the wounded back out. He characterized the nighttime missions as quick and chaotic, traversing foggy, narrow corridors where friendly-fire incidents had occurred.

Ezagui returned to Los Angeles on Nov. 7 to settle affairs at home, including, he said, identifying which of his family members will look after Punch. He volunteered for 10 more years of reserve duty, he said. The forms he signed asked the reason he wanted to extend his service.

Ezagui wrote two words, he said: “Kibbutz Beeri,” another of the Israeli villages where Hamas fighters rampaged. He appears resigned to the likelihood that there will be difficult and uncertain days ahead.

“Yes, people will die,” he said. “More Israelis will die. A lot of Palestinians will die. But what choice does Israel have?”

‘No room for skepticism’

Houston Mack, 33, lived in Israel for 10 years, earning citizenship before returning to the United States over the summer. As the magnitude of Hamas’s savagery came into view, IDF commanders directed his unit of reservists to prepare for action. The message was unambiguous, Mack recalled: “Get your bags. Grab your kit and show up to base immediately. We’re at war.”

Mack, a Los Angeles native who had settled in Las Vegas, rotated through a variety of assignments earlier in his Israeli military career, primarily in the West Bank, another Palestinian territory. As a reservist living in the United States, he was not obligated to return, he said. But he was moved to do so after watching videos of the Hamas assault.

In Tel Aviv, Mack said, there are shrines to those killed and taken hostage, some with teddy bears. He intends to stay as long as he is needed. His employer in the United States, a Marine Corps veteran, told Mack he will have a job waiting for him when he returns, he said.

Asked about the doubts held among some Americans over Israel’s prosecution of the war, Mack urged critics to remember that there is a long history of antisemitism and atrocities perpetuated against Jews.

“There is no room for skepticism. There are still people to this day that deny the Holocaust,” he said. “We’re here to defend our right to exist in front of an enemy that wants to destroy us.”

A family divided

Shterny Isseroff sees things differently than her brother. She moved to Israel after high school, spending about five years there. But she left, she said, in part because she’d become troubled by the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

She did work in Israel opposing its occupation of Palestinian areas, she said, but also was disgusted to hear Palestinian friends celebrate after seeing footage of rockets hitting Israeli homes.

“Very often, people are looking for a good guy and a bad guy,” she said. “If anything, I have learned that this is complex and there is a long history and a lot of pain.”

Her brother Menachem also said he sees war as inherently bad. But he added that, as he sees it, there was no alternative after the Hamas attack. Israelis, he said, are “damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” forced between defending their homeland and contending with international criticism.

“The people of Gaza are not our enemies,” he said. “Hamas is our enemy.”

Shterny Isseroff said she worries about her brother and how he might process his military service years from now. It was his choice to be in the IDF, she said, and “he’s going to have to live with the consequences of his decisions.”

Menachem Isseroff said he and his sister care about each other deeply, but that they see the world differently. There’s a “large amount of human suffering and death that is happening in Gaza right now,” but it was set in motion by the attacks Hamas launched, he said. The militant group, he added, is glossing that over as it “cynically” highlights that suffering in the messaging that people like his sister internalize.

On a recent break from duty, Isseroff said, he visited his wife and their 2-year-old son, whom he left behind on Oct. 7. He was struck by his son asking him to sing “Shalom Aleichem,” a traditional song often sung as Jews mark Shabbat, their day of rest. Those singing it wish that “peace be upon you.”

“That’s what you ask for,” Isseroff said. “Every week, that’s all you ask for.”

The notion, he thought, seems far away.

The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · November 27, 2023

19. Special Operations News - Nov 27, 2023 | SOF News

Special Operations News - Nov 27, 2023 | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · November 27, 2023

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: Green Berets with 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) practice underwater transportation methods Sept. 2022, near Fort Campbell, Ky. Green Berets continually adapt to their environment and create solutions to solve complex challenges. (U.S. Army Courtesy Photo by Spc. Taylor Shaffer)

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SOF News

USASOC CCWO. On November 15, 2023, Chief Warrant Officer Robert Davis relinquished responsibility as the United States Army Special Operations Command CCWO Officer and retired after 35 years of service. CW5 Steven Finney is the incoming USASOC Command Chief Warrant.

SOF Operators Suffer Brain Damage. Pentagon researchers say weapons like shoulder-fired rockets expose troops who fire them to blast waves far above safety limits, but they remain in wide use. “U.S. Troops Still Train on Weapons With Known Risk of Brain Injury”, The New York Times, November 26, 2023. (subscription)

U-28 Crews Receive Awards. Ten Airmen assigned to the U-28 Draco spy plane have been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for their actions during the August 2021 effort to evacuate people during the Kabul airlift. The crews provided situational awareness and intelligence to the U.S. ground forces at the Kabul airport. “10 Airmen Make History as the First U-28 Crews to Receive Distinguished Flying Crosses”, Air and Space Forces Magazine, November 21, 2023.

SEAL’s Life Profiled. Solomon ‘Sol’ Atkinson led a life guided by his time as a U.S. Navy SEAL as well as his Native American heritage. He carried those two aspects of his life into his later years with his life-long involvement in community affairs in Alaska. (DVIDS, 24 Nov 2023)

USSOCOM Seeks Counter-EW Technology. The US Special Operations Command is seeking information on drone tech that takes down ground-based electronic warfare systems. The drones should be able to conduct preplanned autonomous attacks on active emitters. “US Special Operations Command Seeks Counter-Electronic Warfare Drone Tech”, The Defense Post, November 24, 2023.

Navy SEAL Honored. SO1 Ebbert was a member of SEAL Team Four (ST-4) and participated in numerous critical operations. His final deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM exemplified his bravery and tactical expertise. “A Real Act of Valor: Navy SEALs honor a fallen hero”, DVIDS, November 17, 2023.

A Green Beret on JFK’s Grave. 60 years ago, a Special Forces soldier placed his Green Beret on the grave of President John F. Kennedy. His spontaneous act become a Special Forces tradition. “Green Beret’s tribute to JFK continues”, Reading Eagle, November 26, 2023.

Seawolf Subs. One of the more ‘secret’ subs used by the U.S. Navy can be outfitted with a Multi-Mission Platform (MMP) – sometimes described as an underwater hanger. The MMP can be used to deploy Navy SEALs or other special operations forces. “USS Jimmy Carter: The Navy Has a Spy Submarine That Can’t Be Matched”, National Interest, November 23, 2023.

International SOF

Report – Accountability and Oversight of UK Special Forces. A report by the University of Essex Human Rights Centre Clinic is critical on the lack of external oversight and accountability of the United Kingdom’s Special Forces. November 2023, PDF, 43 pages.

Philippine FSSR Will Receive Enhanced Capabilities. President Marcos has assured the First Scout Ranger Regiment of government support to enhance its operational capabilities. “Marcos assures Army Scout Rangers of support”, The Manilla Times, November 26, 2023.

Vajra Prahar 2023. U.S. Special Forces teams from 1st SFG(A) and Special Forces personnel from India’s Eastern Command have been an exercise that will conclude on December 11th. The event will provide an opportunity to share best practices and experiences in areas such as joint mission planning and operational tactics for CT operations and unconventional scenarios in mountainous terrain. “Joint training of India, US commandos begins at Umroi”, Highland Post, November 22, 2023.

Aussie SOF Leader Visits MARSOC. U.S. Marine Corps Col. Adam Conway, deputy commander, Marine Forces Special Operations Command welcomed Australian Maj. Gen. Paul Kenny to MARSOC during a visit on Camp Lejeune, NC, November 8, 2023. During his visit, Maj. Gen. Kenny met with leaders from the command to discuss future integration and interoperability between MARSOC and Australian Special Operations Forces.

Exercise Arctic Light 2023. Personnel from the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing joined Danish SOF in a September two-week long exercise to advance capabilities to conduct operations in the Arctic region. The wing provided a HC-130J Combat King II search and rescue aircraft and aircrew as well as Guardian Angel personnel for the event. “New York Air Guard Trains With Danish Special Forces in Greenland”, DVIDS, November 7, 2023.

SOF History

1943 – Alamo Scouts. On November 28, 1943, the Alamo Scouts was activated by the U.S. 6th Army. This special reconnaissance unit was employed in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. The unit is known for its role in liberating American prisoners of war from a Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, Philippines in January 1945. A movie called the Great Raid was produced about this action.

1963 – CIDG Camp Overrun. On November 24, 1963, Camp Hiep Hoa, Republic of South Vietnam, was overrun by the Viet Cong. It was the first CIDG camp to be overrun during the Vietnam War. A Special Forces soldier, Isaac Camacho, one of four missing Americans, later became the first American to escape from a Vietcong POW Camp. In the battle, an estimated 500 Viet Cong fighters took the Hiep Hoa Special Forces Camp, resulting in four American personnel MIA. South Vietnamese commando units and the American Green Berets resisted but were overwhelmed.

1970 – Combat HALO Jump. On November 28, 1970, the first combat HALO jump was conducted by CCN, MACV-SOG. The nighttime parachute jump took place over Laos from C-130 blackbird flying at 17,000 feet.

Conflict in Israel and Gaza

Gaza Update. Israeli troops have occupied much of northern Gaza and have taken control of much of Gaza City. The city has seen massive devastation from Israeli airstrikes and artillery. Thousands of Gaza residents have left the north for the ‘safer’ southern region of the Gaza Strip. The internally displaced residents have few avenues of escape from the violence . . . the border with Egypt is closed to refugees.

Truce and Hostages. The conflict is in the midst of a four-day stoppage of fighting. Hostages are being released by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians who have been imprisoned for the conduct of terrorist acts. Hamas has released 3 batches of hostages, including a four-year-old American girl whose parents were killed in front of her by Hamas terrorists. (Washington Post, 26 Nov 2023). Among the hostages released are 14 Thai and one Filipino nationals. A number of Israeli children taken hostage have also been released. See also “The History of Hostage Negotiations Tells Us Empathy Isn’t Enough”, by Brian Michael Jenkins, The RAND Blog, November 3, 2023.

Hamas Financing. The Congressional Research Service has published an “In Focus” brief entitled Terrorist Financing and Cryptocurrency Fundraising”. The 3-page PDF (CR IF12537) was published on November 21, 2023. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12537

Black September. A Palestinian militant group that gained notoriety in the late 20th century has left a legacy and continues to have a lasting impact on Middle East security. “Black September: The Origins of Palestinian Militancy”, Grey Dynamics, November 26, 2023.

References: Map Gaza Strip (2005), and more maps of Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Israel.

Ukraine Conflict

Ukrainian Offensive. News reports indicate that Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian forces away from parts of the east bank of the Dnipro River (Britannica). For more than a year the opposing forces have occupied the opposite banks of the Dnipro in southern Ukraine – the Ukrainians on the west bank and the Russians on the east bank. The Ukrainian offensive has lasted months and has been a grinding event with success measured in meters not kilometers. (Business Insider, 19 Nov 2023)

Russian Offensive. The attacks on the city of Avdiivka (Google Maps) continues. Both sides are suffering huge losses over the devasted city in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv suffered through the largest drone attack of the war over the weekend. (BBC News, 25 Nov 2023)

Status of War. Ukraine is asking for more international assistance – including the approval of additional aid packages from the U.S. and European nations and a formal start of accession talks to join the European Union.

Interactive Map. Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine by the Insitute for the Study of War and Critical Threats.

On storymaps.arcgis.com

Commentary and National Security

SOF and IW Campaigns. Brian Petit, a retired Special Forces officer, provides his perspective on how irregular warfare campaigns can influence the future. “U.S. Special Operations and the Shadowy Promise of Irregular Campaigns”, War on the Rocks, November 21, 2023.

China and Hybrid Warfare. Nils Peterson has penned a paper entitled The Chinese Communist Party’s Theory of Hybrid Warfare. Institute for the Study of War, November 21, 2023, PDF, 7 pages. Read or download here.

China’s Propaganda Strategy. In an era where digital content is king, the CCP has recognized the power that foreign influencers wield compared to more traditional communication channels. Boasting millions of followers in China and overseas, especially on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Twitter, the CCP has identified, harnessed and actively developed foreign influencers as unique propaganda assets. “Singing the CCP’s tune: foreign influencers and China’s propaganda strategy”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, November 27, 2023.

Report – Defense Primer: Naval Forces. The Congressional Research Service has updated its “In Focus” brief on U.S. naval forces (Navy and Marines) with info on U.S. strategy, navy ship types, size of the navy, and more. CRS IF10486, updated November 14, 2023, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10486

U.S. Military and the Arctic. The United States has considerable interests in the Arctic and is one of just eight countries with territory in the region. It also has a responsibility to prepare and protect its armed forces that could be called upon to secure its Arctic interests as the region becomes an increasingly active security environment. Learn more in a report entitled Report on the Arctic Capabilities of the U.S. Armed Forces, RAND Corporation, November 2023, PDF, 104 pages. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1638-1.html

Russia Funnels Migrants to Border Points. Finland, Estonia, and Latvia are accusing Russia of shipping migrants to the Finnish border. This has caused Finland to shut all but one border crossing with Russia. The Russians are using the tactic as a “hybrid attack”. Meanwhile, some human rights groups are raising concerns about asylum seeker’s rights. “Finland shuts more Russia border points, says asylum inflow must stop”, Reuters, November 24, 2023.

Border Security. Legal and illegal migration across the U.S. southern border is up dramatically. Illegal crossings topped a daily average of more than 8,000 earlier this fall. The Biden administration is facing criticism for not stemming the tide of illegal immigrants. Recent reports detail the extent of the problem and what the U.S. government is attempting to do to alleviate the crisis.

• U.S. Efforts to Manage Western Hemisphere Migration Flows, Congressional Research Service, CRS IF12538, November 22, 2023, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12538
• See also “Democrats’ border problem is getting real“, The Washington Post, November 21, 2023 (subscription)
• “Visa Restriction Policy for Flight Operators Facilitating Irregular Migration”, U.S. Department of State, November 21, 2023.
• Reporting on Border Security Metrics Could Be Improved, U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-24-106277, November 13, 2023, PDF, 67 pages. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106277

Blacksmith Publishing is a media partner of SOF News. They are a book publishing firm, sell ‘Pinelander Swag’, have a weekly podcast called The Pinelander.

Afghanistan

Medals for Airmen. Hundreds more airmen who orchestrated Operation Allies Refuge, the massive evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan as U.S. forces withdrew in 2021, will receive medals honoring those efforts, the Air Force announced. “Hundreds more airmen to receive medals for roles in Kabul evacuation”, Air Force Times, November 8, 2023.

Al-Qaeda Defeated? Not So Much. Sara Harmouch reports that the terrorist group is still a threat to the United States. A June 2023 United Nations report states that the group’s activities are intensifying in Afghanistan as well as globally. The group continues to have ties with the Taliban. “Al-Qaeda: A Defeated Threat? Think Again”, War on the Rocks, November 22, 2023.

History – Canada in Afghanistan. The first comprehensive, in-depth history of Canada’s war in Afghanistan, written largely in real time over several years by a military historian, was quietly (some might say reluctantly) published last summer by a federal government printer. Average Canadians, the soldiers who fought there and the families of those killed in action will have a hard time getting their hands on a copy, however. “Canada now has its own history of the Afghan war – good luck finding a copy”, CBC News, November 10, 2023.

Haqqani Network. Apurva Ramakrishnan provides us with a deep dive into the Haqqani Network. The organization’s enduring influence underscores the necessity for counterterrorism practitioners to prioritize containment and disruption efforts, as the group’s ability to sustain and perpetuate global terrorism remains undiminished. “A Network of Possibilities: How the Haqqani Network Changed the Face of Global Terrorism Forever”, Georgetown Security Studies Review, November 13, 2023.

Middle East

AC-130 Strikes Militants in Iraq. The U.S. has experienced an increased number of rocket, missile, and drone attacks over the past few months. In late November a U.S. AC-130 gunship flying over Iraq struck a target that had launched a missile against Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq. “AC-130 Strikes Iranian-Backed Militants Following Missile Attack”, DoD News, November 21, 2023.

U.S. Navy Detains Would-be Pirates. Five gunmen boarded and attempted to take control of the M/V Central Park; a tanker owned by an Israeli businessman. However, the tanker crew had barricaded themselves in an armored panic room, The pirates then left the ship and headed to Yemen aboard a skiff but were apprehended before reaching shore. They were apprehended by U.S. and allied ships of the coalition counter-piracy force (TF 151). The event took place in the Gulf of Aden. (USNI, 26 Nov 2023).

Report – Syria and U.S. Policy. The Israel-Hamas conflict has resulted in increased attacks against U.S. troops in Syria by Iran-backed militia organizations. Read about the current conflict in Syria and U.S. responses. Congressional Research Service, CRS IF11930, updated November 15, 2023, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11930

Africa

Sudan Conflict. A detailed look at the long-running conflict in the West Darfur region of Sudan is provided in the report by Human Rights Watch. The report was completed before the current outbreak of fighting in Sudan began in 2023 but is good background on the fighting taking place now between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Violence in West Darfur, Human Rights Watch, November 26, 2023.

Sudan – Attacks Against Civilians. Arab forces are pressing ahead with their efforts to move Sudan’s ethnic-African Masalit tribe from West Darfur. The paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and its allied Arab militias are intensifying attacks against civilians. “Sudan refugees detail second wave of bloody ethnic purge by Arab forces”, Reuters, November 22, 2023.

SOF News Book Shop

View our selection of books about special operations forces at the SOF News Book Shop.

Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

Podcast – SOG Was Compromised in Cambodia. HL Serra, a Naval intelligence officer who served during the Vietnam conflict, knew that MACV-SOG was compromised. SOG CAST, Red Circle, November 14, 2023, 58 minutes. Listen here.

Podcast – Surviving Special Forces Selection. Pineland Underground, November 6, 2023. Google Podcasts.

Video – Civil Affairs in Benin. The Benin Armed Forces and a U.S. Army Civil Affairs unit conducted a medical civic action program (MEDCAP) in Cana, Benin this past July. The MEDCAP served as a temporary field clinic providing medical treatment to the local population. Special Operations Command Africa, July 17, 2023, 3 minutes. Posted November 20, 2023.

Video – Napoleon 1805 – The Austerlitz Campaign. Animated maps show the Battle of Ulm to the Battle of Austerlitz and cover movements of the major units during this campaign – which is often considered the pinnacle of Napoleonic warfare. Army University Press, YouTube, November 22, 2023, 6 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK-fmyQqqUc

Upcoming Events

November 29-30, 2023

SOF & Irregular Warfare Symposium

Defense Strategies Institute

December 8, 2023

Winter Cruise

Combat Diver Association

December 8-10, 2023

2023 Civil Affairs Conference

Civil Affairs Association

sof.news · by SOF News · November 27, 2023

20. However Difficult, The United States Should Still Pursue Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Excerpts:

On its own, each of these recommendations addresses Palestinian suffering and ongoing aggravators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without infringing on Israel’s security. Together, they offer at least some hope of generating political space for U.S. officials to imagine and pursue a peace deal broader than a fraught and fragile ceasefire — even if far more contentious topics will inevitably remain.

The long-held assumption in Washington has been that the best way to ensure Jerusalem’s safety is to work for its broad acceptance throughout the Middle East. As Kissinger put it, “Israel’s hope of survival over the long term is to work toward a normal relationship with its neighbors.” In his view, a political settlement was “Israel’s salvation.” American policymakers, then, should do everything in their power to incentivize such an acceptance — and advancing negotiations with the Palestinians remains arguably the single best way to accomplish that goal.

However Difficult, The United States Should Still Pursue Israeli-Palestinian Peace - War on the Rocks

GALEN JACKSON AND ANDREW LEBER

warontherocks.com · by Galen Jackson · November 27, 2023

The horrific Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel has laid bare a key assumption underpinning U.S. policy toward the Middle East: that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be marginalized indefinitely from regional political dynamics. Both the Donald Trump and Joseph Biden administrations banked on the unifying threat posed by Iran to bring Israel and the Gulf Arab states together and have sought to institutionalize tacit cooperation into a new regional security architecture based on that realignment. That strategy, however, has now been called into question. At a minimum, the deadliest month in the conflict’s history since the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war will indefinitely delay efforts to secure a Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement. At worst, it threatens to spark an expanded regional conflict.

In all, the fallout from Hamas’ attack suggests that the United States can no more avoid addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than it can pivot from conflicts in the Middle East to focus exclusively on “great power competition” elsewhere. U.S. policymakers should not fall into the trap of viewing the present devastation as a mere speedbump on the road to a new regional political landscape. Even if diplomatic negotiations achieve a limited ceasefire, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to present a major risk to U.S. strategy toward the Middle East. In the absence of progress toward a political settlement, the present war and potential reoccupation of the Gaza Strip will present an ongoing threat to Israel’s security and economy, prevent the consolidation of the very security architecture that the United States has counted on to contain Iran, and heighten the chances of a major international conflict in the region in the years to come.

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The United States, then, has an interest in taking even minor steps that keep the future prospect of a settlement alive. These include applying pressure to get humanitarian, and ultimately reconstruction, aid into the Gaza Strip; emphasizing the need for Gazan residents to return to the north of the enclave under Palestinian governance after the fighting has ended; and more forcefully addressing Israeli settlement construction and settler violence in the West Bank. At a minimum, it is hard to imagine that the United States can secure the Palestinian Authority’s participation in the future governance of Gaza without something that the Palestinian leadership can present as a meaningful concession from Israel to non-Hamas political factions.

U.S. Interests and the Arab-Israeli Dispute

In many ways, the Oct. 7 attack suggests a return to an earlier understanding of U.S. interests in the Middle East. For much of the postwar era, U.S. policymakers regarded a Middle East peace settlement as a critical strategic objective and U.S. pressure — including on Israel — as a means of obtaining it. During the Cold War, American strategists felt that a peace deal would help protect Washington’s geopolitical position by checking the spread of Soviet influence in the Arab world. President Richard Nixon, for example, favored “a totally even-handed policy” and believed that if the United States needed to put its thumb on the scale, it should weigh in “on the side of 100 million Arabs rather than on the side of two million Israelis.” In doing so, he wanted to avoid giving Moscow “an unparalleled opportunity to extend its influence in the Arab world.” This type of thinking was only reinforced when the Arab oil-producing states decided to use oil as a political weapon during the October 1973 Middle East war. And to move matters toward a settlement, U.S. officials like Nixon believed that, ultimately, the United States would have to “squeeze [the Israelis] goddamn hard.”

American policymakers, moreover, felt that a settlement was profoundly in Israel’s own interest. They viewed genuine acceptance from Israel’s Arab neighbors as the ultimate guarantee of that country’s security over the long term. “In a historical perspective,” Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, said in 1969, “[there is] no way 3 million people can survive in the midst of 60 million hostile people unless they can change that hostility.”

Above all, U.S. officials worried that the Arab-Israeli dispute could spark a major regional conflict that would seriously jeopardize American interests, potentially drawing in the United States directly. Per Nixon, the Middle East was “an international powder keg, that, when it exploded, might lead not only to another war between Israel and its neighbors, but also to a direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.” Thus, a scenario in which an Arab-Israeli crisis resulted in Soviet intervention was, for Kissinger, a “nightmare.”

This perception of U.S. interests survived into the post–Cold War period. Though the United States faced reduced geopolitical competition in the region, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks indirectly provided new incentives for policymakers to seek a peace settlement, with analysts arguing this would help the United States prosecute the “Global War on Terror” and improve the American position vis-à-vis regional rivals like Iran. “The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East,” the 2006 Iraq Study Group concluded, “unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability. There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts.”

To be sure, it can hardly be said that policymakers in Washington have consistently made the Palestinians per se a top policy concern. Yet as new consideration of available evidence makes clear, U.S. officials have long recognized that addressing the Palestinian issue ultimately represented a core ingredient of long-term regional stability — even if concerns about domestic politics meant these views were often expressed in private. Unless the Palestinians were satisfied in negotiations, officials in the Jimmy Carter administration observed, “any agreement that is reached will be dangerously incomplete.” Even Kissinger, who many scholars contend was largely uninterested in the issue, stressed its importance, even though he ultimately chose not to pursue a comprehensive Middle East settlement. Although he emphasized that the White House had “an extreme domestic problem” when it came to the Palestinian issue “because the [Palestine Liberation Organization] is still considered here as a terrorist organization,” and, thus, that the Arabs needed “to think in terms of what the political traffic will bear,” the secretary of state was fully aware that the matter was of the utmost importance to achieving peace and stability in the Middle East. Frustrated with Israeli policy, Kissinger declared in November 1975: “We could co-exist with the [Palestine Liberation Organization]. It is indeed historically inevitable.” Regardless of how the matter was ultimately dealt with, he understood that it “can’t be avoided.”

By contrast, the Biden administration’s pursuit of a Saudi-Israeli deal, with only cursory attention given to the Palestinian issue, suggests that American officials now see little need to maintain even the appearance of balance in their approach to the conflict. While there have been a number of factors driving U.S. policy since Oct. 7 — among them the utterly repugnant nature of the attacks, the strength of the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship,” and Biden’s personal feelings about Israel — the force of President Biden’s support for Israel stands out in comparison with U.S. policy during past Arab-Israeli conflicts, such as the June 1967 war. Even during the October 1973 war, when the United States carried out a substantial airlift and passed a $2.2 billion aid bill for Israel, Kissinger was preoccupied with the task of building American credibility with the Arabs so that he would be in a good position to jumpstart a diplomatic process once the fighting had ended.

Troubled Prospects for Regional Realignment

This shift in American policy is underpinned by a belief that U.S. strategic dilemmas can be resolved by locking in bilateral ties between Israel and friendly Arab governments without addressing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. As the thinking goes, if even Israel’s former Gulf Arab adversaries are joining Egypt and Jordan in embracing normalization, then perhaps the Palestinian issue no longer holds geopolitical significance for the United States. Normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia is generally presented as the final step in this process, with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman openly acknowledging negotiations to this end in a marquee Fox News interview just weeks before the attacks.

Still, this line of thinking banks heavily on the ability of Arab autocrats to repress, or at least withstand, popular sympathies with the Palestinian cause. Gulf monarchies such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (and to a lesser extent Qatar) have publicly acknowledged once-tacit security cooperation with Israel alongside reinforced repression of domestic pro-Palestinian sentiment — often with the direct aid of surveillance tools pioneered in Israel. This repression has driven dissenting views underground more than it has built support for normalization. In recent online polling by the Qatar-based Arab Center for Research and Studies, a full 57 percent of Saudis refused to answer a question about normalized relations with Israel, and only 5 percent supported normalization outright.

Notably, recent moves toward normalization have unfolded at a time of relative quiet in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — context seemingly taken for granted by American, Israeli, and Arab Gulf policymakers alike. Now, as images of demolished Gazan buildings and dead Palestinian children flood Arab and Muslim social media networks, regional rulers have struggled to prevent latent disregard for Israel from translating into destabilizing mass mobilization. In Saudi Arabia, for example, well-connected commentators pivoted rapidly from spelling out the benefits of normalization for Saudi security, to trying to deflect blame onto Hamas, to warning citizens against getting too caught up in “politics.”

U.S. security partners among the Arab countries thus remain under considerable pressure to display at least some solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has struggled to keep “official” pro-Palestinian protests from threatening his hold on power amid a stagnant economy and with presidential elections looming. Jordan’s King Abdullah signed off on the air force air-dropping supplies to Gazan hospitals and recalling Amman’s ambassador from Israel. Even in Saudi Arabia, efforts to focus on domestic Saudi events have been accompanied by an official aid fund for Gaza — with King Salman personally donating around $8 million and bin Salman contributing another $5.6 million.

The conflict also risks direct involvement from Iran, Hizballah, and other members of the self-styled “Axis of Resistance” — none of whom countenance anything remotely resembling “normalization” — at a time when Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies have managed to secure a tenuous détente on regional security issues. A fraught, de facto ceasefire between Saudi Arabia and Houthi forces in Yemen has been underpinned by resumed diplomatic relations with Iran and Arab countries’ rehabilitation of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, cooling down, at least temporarily, regional hotspots to Saudi Arabia’s north, along its southern border, and within vulnerable Persian Gulf shipping lanes. Notably, Saudi leaders have sought to position the Kingdom alongside Iran in putting diplomatic pressure on Israel for a ceasefire, rather than criticizing Hamas to mobilize domestic public opinion against the Islamic Republic.

The devastation of the Israeli ground invasion may crank up pressure on Saudi Arabia and other regimes even higher, while even a ceasefire would carry the looming threat of renewed violence that would further augur against normalization. As Riyadh seeks U.S. security guarantees in exchange for normalization, those guarantees will have to be more ironclad and carry a greater downside risk for the United States in the absence of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Implications for American Policy

“The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated barely a week prior to Hamas’ attack. The events of Oct. 7, along with Israel’s response, have presumably altered this assessment in dramatic fashion. At a minimum, they represent a clear signal that the Palestinian issue cannot simply be walled off from broader regional dynamics.

As American strategists try to pivot toward great power competition with China and Russia, we argue that relative peace and stability in the Middle East remain a critical interest for Washington. If the United States wants to counter the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” in the Middle East, restore the potential for a regional realignment, and help shield friendly governments in states like Egypt and Jordan from political trouble, then it should focus its attention on ensuring that Tehran and its partners can no longer use the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as a wedge to divide Washington and Jerusalem from their Arab partners. Although it is unclear whether Hamas sought to derail any specific negotiations, the sense of the Palestinian cause’s geopolitical isolation undoubtedly fed into the planning for such an appalling display of violence. With neither direct U.S. diplomatic nor coercive approaches to addressing Iranian influence proving both effective and sustainable, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite its considerable complications, represents a more feasible path to a more peaceful region, if not regional peace.

We realize that this is probably not what many people in the Middle East want to hear right now. Indeed, we sympathize with Israelis who, in the aftermath of an attack that some observers are calling their country’s Sept. 11, do not currently have peace negotiations on their mind, as well as with Palestinians experiencing the direct and indirect effects of Israel’s retaliation for that attack. Nor is the idea of reviving the peace process likely a popular one within the Biden administration, particularly with an election year just around the corner. We have no illusions about the enormous obstacles that stand in the way of even minor progress — prospects for productive peace talks have perhaps never been worse.

But movement on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would help stabilize the region, and, for better or worse, the United States, even after all of its failures in the region, remains the country best positioned to help generate it. Conflict in the region has helped produce diplomatic progress in the past. After the October 1973 war, the Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter administrations believed that major U.S. interests were at stake, made the Arab-Israeli conflict a top priority, and within six years the United States helped broker an Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement. To be sure, the situation today is very different in a number of ways. One cannot compare former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with Hamas — or even with Mahmoud Abbas, the deeply unpopular president of the Palestinian Authority — and Israeli, Palestinian, and American domestic politics constrain leaders more than at the height of the Cold War. But to the extent that core American interests have once again been implicated in the Arab-Israeli dispute, the analogy is relevant.

Some analysts will undoubtedly object to reorienting American policy in the Middle East around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presenting it as a return to a strategy marked by failure. After all, the Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s response have not yet resulted in a wider escalation involving Iran and its partners in the region, especially Hizballah, and Washington has not had much success in its past efforts to mediate the dispute. One could argue that staying the course is the superior option: continuing to support Israel’s present military operations; simultaneously working to deter Iran and its proxies from entering the fighting; ultimately establishing some sort of successor authority in Gaza, likely under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, once the fighting has ended; and, after some time has passed, trying to resume normalization negotiations with Riyadh.

But such proposals are seriously flawed. Failure to invest in a meaningful peace process risks catastrophic consequences for regional stability over the long term. Even if Washington manages to restore the status quo ante, the best-case scenario will entail a lingering risk of regional escalation, along with an exacerbation of the threat that terrorists pose to the U.S. homeland. It will also feature continued frustration throughout the Arab world with American policy and politically risky repression of dissent in Jordan and Egypt. Even in Saudi Arabia, rulers will probably take some time to feel assured that pro-Palestinian sentiment has subsided before forging ahead again with normalization efforts. It seems unlikely, moreover, that over the long term, the Palestinian cause will simply recede into the background — and the longer it continues, the longer it will be a drag on U.S. interests and reputation in the Middle East and beyond.

Furthermore, U.S. policy toward the Middle East has not exactly been successful in recent years. Despite heavy expenditures of blood and treasure, Iran has expanded its influence throughout the region and made significant progress toward acquiring nuclear weapons; support for American interests remains heavily dependent on assistance from authoritarian partners; and all the while, the number of devastating civil conflicts, including ones involving the extensive use of American arms, has seemingly grown by the month. Even if the more troubling scenarios that we have outlined ultimately do not come to pass, the idea that the United States should simply return to its pre-Oct. 7 policies — and even leaving aside the extent to which the Hamas attack has called U.S. policy into question — thus seems fundamentally unsound.

Recommendations

Beyond merely supporting ongoing ceasefire negotiations, we believe there are several steps the Biden administration can take to achieve incremental progress toward a peace process. Each of these measures broadly aligns with existing U.S. policy aims, can likely be pursued without any major political backlash at home, and holds the potential to reduce the strain on U.S. security commitments in the region. However, each will also require the administration to apply meaningful political pressure on Israel — in public if necessary.

An immediate concern is ensuring access for humanitarian aid — particularly fuel — into the Gaza Strip. Even before the current fighting, the humanitarian situation was dire. Now, prolonged Israeli attacks on Gaza City and the resulting displacements have created dire conditions amid Israeli-mandated limitations on aid that can cross in from Egypt. The worse this situation gets, the more the administration will be blamed — certainly by Arab audiences, and potentially even by some voters — for helping bring about a catastrophe. U.S. pressure has been consistently credited with forcing even minor concessions from Israel on aid and essentials entering Gaza. More can be done in this area, particularly in pressing the Israeli government to permit major fuel shipments into the territory. Alleviating suffering is both good in and of itself and reduces political pressure on U.S. security partners in the region.

Next, the administration should not only continue to insist that Gazan residents will remain in Gaza, but also should begin emphasizing their ultimate return to the northern part of the enclave after the immediate fighting has ceased. In practical terms, the southern part of the Gaza strip will struggle to support more than 600,000 displaced Gaza residents, even with massive provisions of aid—to say nothing of Israeli plans to expand the IDF ground invasion southward. With the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unable or unwilling to put forward a vision of postwar governance of Gaza, the Biden administration should seize the initiative to emphasize the need to return the Gaza Strip to Palestinian governance, likely under the Palestinian Authority, however long this may take. This would not only partially address Palestinian and Arab concerns that present military operations constitute a “Second Nakba,” but also would start building support for a renewed Palestinian political role in both immediate governance needs and, eventually, political negotiations.

Finally, the U.S. government should seek to restrain the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as settler attacks on Palestinian communities. The settlements undermine prospects for good-faith peace negotiations, both in signaling ultimate Israeli intentions to annex the West Bank and in creating a political constituency fiercely opposed to Israeli concessions. Neither the settlements nor annexation are particularly popular among independent or Democratic voters, making it feasible for the administration to hive the issue off from U.S. support for Israel writ large. At a minimum, the Biden administration should promote a settlement freeze for the duration of Israeli military operations in Gaza and continue criticizing the striking rise in settler violence in the West Bank — an increase that predates the fighting in Gaza. Given that the Netanyahu government has ceded authority on the West Bank to the most extreme members of his coalition, movement on this issue will require the threat of real consequences, such as withholding weaponry clearly intended for use in the occupied territories or even public threats to withhold the U.S. veto on United Nations Security Council condemnations of settlements.

On its own, each of these recommendations addresses Palestinian suffering and ongoing aggravators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without infringing on Israel’s security. Together, they offer at least some hope of generating political space for U.S. officials to imagine and pursue a peace deal broader than a fraught and fragile ceasefire — even if far more contentious topics will inevitably remain.

The long-held assumption in Washington has been that the best way to ensure Jerusalem’s safety is to work for its broad acceptance throughout the Middle East. As Kissinger put it, “Israel’s hope of survival over the long term is to work toward a normal relationship with its neighbors.” In his view, a political settlement was “Israel’s salvation.” American policymakers, then, should do everything in their power to incentivize such an acceptance — and advancing negotiations with the Palestinians remains arguably the single best way to accomplish that goal.

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Galen Jackson is an assistant professor in the political science department at Williams College and the author of A Lost Peace: Great Power Politics and the Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1967–1979 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023).

Andrew Leber is an assistant professor in the political science department as well as the Middle East North African Studies program at Tulane University, where he researches the domestic politics of Saudi Arabia and U.S. attitudes toward foreign policy in the Middle East.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Galen Jackson · November 27, 2023

21. The Pentagon’s new opportunity to boost readiness among female troops

The Pentagon’s new opportunity to boost readiness among female troops

militarytimes.com · by Katherine Kuzminski · November 22, 2023

First lady Jill Biden on Nov. 13 announced the launch of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research to highlight the goal of fundamentally changing the way women’s health is approached and funded.

The effort is designed to provide opportunities to improve health and performance outcomes for all women, including — perhaps most importantly — women in the military.

The scarcity of research on women’s health is not a new problem. In medical and human performance research, women are frequently omitted from the data. When women are included, they are regularly treated as interchangeable with men. Yet women are not small men — they have different physiological and hormonal requirements yielding distinct nutritional, injury prevention, training and recovery needs.

A nurse practitioner conducts a check-up for an airman on Sept. 27, 2023, at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. (Senior Airman Kadielle Shaw/Space Force)

Now is the moment for the federal government to invest in optimizing women’s health and performance in the military. Women currently comprise 17.3% of the total active duty force, 19.2% of the officer corps, and 17% of the enlisted corps (with variation across services).

In the Post-9/11 era, more than 300,000 women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, a number comprising 11% of all deployed service members. More than 9,000 women earned Combat Action Badges in Iraq and Afghanistan — many prior to the lifting of combat job restrictions on women. What’s more, the services are increasingly turning to women as qualified military recruits in the wake of a challenging recruiting environment. Female high school students are more likely to meet the standards for military service, as they graduate high school at higher rates than their male counterparts and are less likely to have a criminal record.

The lack of research attention given to the health and performance optimization of women in the military yields suboptimal results for both the military services and women in uniform. The U.S. military observes outcome data indicating women are at higher risk for musculoskeletal injuries, particularly during basic training. The data on female service members’ injury rates has, at times, been used to justify why women should not be allowed to enter into combat roles. Yet what such information fails to capture are the ways existing policies, practices, and equipment hinder female performance optimization in the military.

For example, military-issued protective gear — including body armor — was designed for male physiologies. As such, women in uniform are subject to ill-fitting equipment, resulting in gaps in coverage and an improper balance of weight on women’s musculoskeletal frames.

Further, women in the military use oral contraceptives at higher rates than their civilian counterparts, in part to ensure that women’s natural menstrual cycles do not affect their ability to train at the same pace as their male peers. A growing body of research is examining the potential impacts of the use of oral contraceptives on the physical performance of women.

Weight standards — measured every six months, in addition to physical fitness testing standards — are associated with a prevalence of eating disorders and disordered eating among women in uniform. In an effort to meet height and weight standards based on male physiology, some women in uniform are trading away strength in order to “make tape.”

The question of the moment is not whether the challenges facing women in the military should preclude their participation, but whether and how new approaches to female-specific research on health and performance optimization might improve the readiness and lethality of our female troops.

The military need look no further than the ways in which U.S. Olympic, professional, and collegiate athletic organizations approach their research, evaluation, and protocols for individual athletes: tailored nutrition and recovery protocols, custom equipment, and training cycles that account for the impact of hormonal cycles on performance.

An improved approach to health and performance optimization research on women in the military doesn’t just benefit female service members; it fundamentally changes the paradigm of the data, metrics, training, and treatment research necessary to optimize the performance of all tactical athletes at the individual level — men and women alike.

The White House’s focus on women’s health research presents an opportunity for the entire Department of Defense to identify ways in which their own research can better harness and unleash the readiness and lethality of the growing number of women in uniform.

Katherine Kuzminski is the deputy director of studies and the director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security.

​22. Concern about military toxic exposure injuries remains high among vets

I know that retired members from 1st Special Forces Group are tracking all the early deaths as well as cancer diagnosis of soldiers and family members. I have seen the list and while it may be in line with statistics among the military and other groups, it is still quite shocking to read the names, diagnoses, and causes of death for so many people we know.

Concern about military toxic exposure injuries remains high among vets

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · November 22, 2023

Veterans Affairs medical staff say patients continue to report high rates of concern about potential military toxic exposure injuries, underscoring the non-combat dangers faced by troops across different generations of military service.

In November 2022, as part of outreach efforts mandated under the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act — better known as the PACT Act — VA officials began administering toxic exposure screenings as part of regular veteran health care visits. VA Under Secretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal said this week that the department completed nearly 5 million total screenings in the last year.

About 40% of veterans surveyed reported potential health concerns related to burn pit smoke, Agent Orange poisoning, water contamination or other military toxic exposure threats during their time in the ranks, Elnahal said. That rate has remained steady over the course of the last 12 months.

“It’s connected to all generations,” he said. “This is really a confirmation of what advocates have been saying for years, that the denominator of veterans exposed to harmful substances is quite large.”

RELATED

VA to screen all patients for toxic exposure issues

The move is part of the PACT Act, passed this summer to improve benefits for veterans dealing with those injuries.

Veterans who voice concerns about problems during the screenings are not necessarily ill or injured now. But VA staff said the goal of the questionnaire is to head off potential serious health problems with early intervention and consistent monitoring.

Elnahal said VA staff have set up new referral procedures for individuals who show signs of toxic exposure injuries and additional training for clinicians on the topics.

“No clinician should be surprised when a veteran presents with a concern about an exposure and how that might relate to their health,” he said.

Department leaders hope to eventually use the data collected from the screenings to look for trends in military toxic exposure illness rates, potentially predicting which veterans may face more serious health consequences in the future.

The information will also be used to add more illnesses to the list of conditions presumed caused by military service, opening the door for veterans to more quickly and easily obtain disability benefits.

Elnahal said officials’ next push with the screenings will be to contact more veterans who do not regularly use VA for health care, to better gauge their medical status. About 3 million veterans are enrolled in VA health care but do not regularly visit any department medical offices.

About Leo Shane III

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

​23. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 26, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-26-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed drone strikes on Ukraine on the night of November 25-26.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a large-scale drone strike on Russian territory, and Russian occupation officials accused Ukrainian forces of launching a strike on occupied Donetsk Oblast that resulted in widespread power outages.
• Russian forces reportedly complained about the vulnerability of Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast amid continued complaints about weak Russian capabilities on the east bank.
• Russia continues to face skilled and unskilled labor shortages amid inconsistent and contradictory Kremlin policies that disincentivize Russians who fled Russia and migrant workers from working in Russia while simultaneously trying to increase Russian industrial capacity and force generation.
• Russian forces continued attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
• The Russian Supreme Court ruled that certain Russian mobilized individuals have the right to serve in the Russian Alternative Civil Service (AKS) rather than on the front lines.
• Russian occupation officials continue to establish programs aimed at indoctrinating Ukrainian children in occupied Ukraine into Russian national and cultural identities.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 26, 2023

Nov 26, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 26, 2023

Nicole Wolkov, Christina Harward, Grace Mappes, Kateryna Stepanenko, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

November 26, 2023, 6:30pm ET 

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 2:15pm ET on November 26. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the November 27 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed drone strikes on Ukraine on the night of November 25-26. Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces launched nine Shahed-136/131 from Primorsko-Akhtarsk direction and that Ukrainian air defenses shot down eight drones.[1] Ukrainian Joint Forces Commander Lieutenant General Serhiy Nayev, like other Ukrainian officials on November 25, continued to praise the actions of Ukrainian mobile fire groups in intercepting Russian drones.[2] Nayev stated that mobile fire groups will receive foreign-made man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) in the near future.[3]

The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a large-scale drone strike on Russian territory, and Russian occupation officials accused Ukrainian forces of launching a strike on occupied Donetsk Oblast that resulted in widespread power outages. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian air defenses shot down 24 Ukrainian drones over Moscow, Tula, Kaluga, Bryansk, and Smolensk oblasts on the night of November 25-26 and on the morning of November 26.[4] Tula Oblast Governor Alexei Dyumin stated that one drone crashed into an apartment building in Tula City after Russian air defenses shot it down.[5] Ukrainian outlet Suspilne, citing its own unnamed sources, reported that the overnight Ukrainian drone strike on Russia was a GUR special operation.[6] Russian sources, including Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin, also claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a large artillery and HIMARS strike on power distribution substations in occupied Donetsk Oblast overnight, causing electricity outages in many settlements and cities, including Donetsk City, Mariupol, and Manhush.[7]

Russian forces reportedly complained about the vulnerability of Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast amid continued complaints about weak Russian capabilities on the east bank. A Russian milblogger claimed on November 26 that personnel of the Russian 70th Motorized Rifle Division (of the newly formed 18th Combined Arms Army) often write to him complaining about the vulnerability of Russian logistics in the east bank of Kherson Oblast near Krynky (30km northeast of Kherson Oblast and 2km from the Dnipro River) to Ukrainian drone strikes.[8] The milblogger also agreed with another Russian milblogger’s previous claims that Russian forces in this area struggle with unit coordination as well as commanders’ negligence at the company and battalion levels.[9] The milblogger suggested that Russian forces near Krynky should create a separate anti-drone company staffed by personnel of the separate reconnaissance battalion of the 70th Motorized Rifle Division to protect Russian GLOCs.[10] Russian GLOCs on left bank Kherson Oblast, such as the E58 Antonivka-Sahy highway (about 5-8km away from the Dnipro River), are located close to the Dnipro River shoreline, making them vulnerable to Ukrainian interdiction. ISW previously reported that Russian milbloggers have repeatedly complained about Russian forces near Krynky suffering from problems, such as insufficient fire support, unit coordination, electronic warfare (EW), counterbattery, and air defense, but has observed that these reported problems do not always translate into significant battlefield effects.[11] Russian sources have continually claimed that Russian forces are unable to push Ukrainian forces out of Krynky and that Ukrainian forces are currently unable to make operationally significant advances in the east bank area.[12]

Russia continues to face skilled and unskilled labor shortages amid inconsistent and contradictory Kremlin policies that disincentivize Russians who fled Russia and migrant workers from working in Russia while simultaneously trying to increase Russian industrial capacity and force generation. Russian State Duma Chairperson Vyacheslav Volodin claimed on November 25 that many Russians who left Russia because of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine are returning to Russia because they could not find work abroad.[13] Volodin warned that Russia is not “waiting with open arms” to accept returning Russians and claimed that they “committed treason against Russia, relatives, and friends.”[14] A prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger agreed with Volodin’s statements on November 26 but noted that Russia continues to face severe skilled labor shortages and characterized the number of returning Russians as “catastrophically small.”[15] The milblogger added that the labor shortages have increased the number of migrants seeking jobs in Russia and criticized Russian authorities for their “open door policy” on migration.[16] The Russian government appears to be struggling to reconcile incoherent and competing objectives by prioritizing crypto-mobilization efforts to send manpower to the frontline at the expense of Russia’s national labor force while simultaneously enforcing policies that restrict migrants’ prospects to work in Russia.[17] Russian law enforcement agencies are also coercing migrants both with and without Russian citizenship into Russian military service, further reducing the migrants’ ability to augment Russia’s labor force.[18] The Kremlin’s incoherent and contradictory policies seek to achieve mutually exclusive objectives of reducing negative shocks to Russia’s domestic labor force, while disincentivizing migrants from working in Russia and enticing Russians to return from abroad while not providing them opportunities to work and trying to recruit them into a war they fled. The poor implementation of these policies has not generated any apparent or imminent threats to the Russian economy or war effort at this time, however.

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces conducted a series of Shahed drone strikes on Ukraine on the night of November 25-26.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reportedly conducted a large-scale drone strike on Russian territory, and Russian occupation officials accused Ukrainian forces of launching a strike on occupied Donetsk Oblast that resulted in widespread power outages.
• Russian forces reportedly complained about the vulnerability of Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast amid continued complaints about weak Russian capabilities on the east bank.
• Russia continues to face skilled and unskilled labor shortages amid inconsistent and contradictory Kremlin policies that disincentivize Russians who fled Russia and migrant workers from working in Russia while simultaneously trying to increase Russian industrial capacity and force generation.
• Russian forces continued attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
• The Russian Supreme Court ruled that certain Russian mobilized individuals have the right to serve in the Russian Alternative Civil Service (AKS) rather than on the front lines.
• Russian occupation officials continue to establish programs aimed at indoctrinating Ukrainian children in occupied Ukraine into Russian national and cultural identities.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 26 and made a confirmed advance. Geolocated footage published on November 26 shows that Russian forces marginally advanced southwest of Pershotravneve (24km east of Kupyansk).[19] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk), Novoselivske (14km northwest of Svatove), and near the Serebryanske forest area (10km southwest of Kreminna).[20] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces have unsuccessfully attempted to advance northeast and east of Kupyansk over the past week.[21] Ukrainian Ground Forces Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Fityo reported that Russian forces have intensified their use of loitering munitions and first-person view (FPV) drones near Synkivka in attempts to advance toward Kupyansk.[22]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 26. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Synkivka, Ivanivka, and near the Serebryanske forest area.[23] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to seize the initiative in the Serebryanske forest area over the past week by taking advantage of a Russian troop redeployment from the area to other unspecified directions.[24] Russian milbloggers have routinely claimed in recent weeks that Ukrainian forces are preparing to launch a localized offensive effort near Kreminna.

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued conducting assaults south of Bakhmut on November 26 and are inflicting personnel and military equipment losses on Russian forces.[25]

Russian sources claimed on November 26 that Russian forces marginally advanced near Bakhmut. A Russian milblogger claimed that a Russian armored group attacked near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and seized unspecified positions but that Ukrainian forces still control key heights around the settlement.[26] The milblogger added that Russian forces advanced northeast of Klishchiivka, towards Bohdanivka (5km northwest of Bakhmut), and near the railway in the vicinity of Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut) over the past week.[27] A Russian news aggregator similarly claimed on November 25 that Russian forces advanced towards Klishchiivka and on its northeastern outskirts, and successfully counterattacked near Andriivka.[28] Some milbloggers, however, claimed that there had been no changes to the Bakhmut frontline.[29] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[30] Russian milbloggers indicated that elements of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) 58th Spetsnaz Battalion (1st Army Corps, 8th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) and 137th Guards Airborne (VDV) Regiment (106th Guards VDV Division) are operating in the Bakhmut direction.[31]

Ukrainian forces reportedly attacked northwest of Horlivka (25km south of Bakhmut) on November 26 but did not make claimed or confirmed advances. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Pivdenne and Shumy (both immediately northwest of Horlivka).[32] Russian milbloggers claimed that there have not been any changes on the Horlivka frontline as of November 26.[33]

Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked northwest of Horlivka on November 26. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks on the eastern part of Pivnichne (just northwest of Horlivka).[34]

Russian forces made confirmed advances northwest and southeast of Avdiivka on November 26. Geolocated footage published on November 26 shows that Russian forces marginally advanced northwest of Krasnohorivka (7km northwest of Avdiivka) and in the eastern part of the industrial zone on Avdiivka’s southeastern outskirts.[35] Geolocated video footage on November 26 shows Russian armored vehicles attacking Ukrainian positions in the northern part of the industrial area on Avdiivka’s southeastern outskirts.[36] Russian milbloggers overwhelmingly claimed that Russian forces captured the entire industrial area near the Yasynuvata-2 railway station on November 26 after clearing the last remaining buildings in the area on November 25, though ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims yet.[37] Russian milbloggers claimed that the industrial zone is located on a slight hill that they assessed would allow Russian forces to shell Ukrainian positions on the outskirts of Avdiivka and develop further offensive operations.[38] Some Russian sources claimed that capturing this industrial area will not make further offensive operations easier for Russian forces, however, as Russian forces will need to develop offensives on Avdiivka’s other flanks or mobilize more personnel to achieve rapid and decisive results.[39] Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian forces gained a foothold near the railway adjacent to the Avdiivka Coke Plant.[40] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces repelled all Russian attacks on the Avdiivka Coke Plant and near Stepove (3km northwest of Avdiivka) on November 26 and that Russian forces advanced on the eastern approaches to Avdiivka and near Novokalynove (7km north of Avdiivka) over the past week.[41] The milblogger observed that Russian advances over the past week do not immediately threaten Ukrainian forces and largely do not affect Russian efforts to capture Avdiivka but simply extend the frontline. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults east of Novobakhmutivka (9km northwest of Avdiivka); south of Novokalynove; and near Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka), Stepove, Avdiivka, and Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka).[42]

Ukrainian forces reportedly continued to counterattack on the Avdiivka frontline on November 26 but did not make claimed or confirmed advances. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are continuing to counterattack despite retreating from their fortified positions near Stepove.[43] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces failed to restore the lost position in the industrial zone on Avdiivka’s southeastern outskirts after counterattacking in the area.[44]

Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations west and southwest of Donetsk City on November 26. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched unsuccessful offensive operations near Marinka (immediately west of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[45] A prominent Russian milblogger similarly claimed that Russian forces did not advance near Marinka or Novomykhailivka on November 26 but claimed that Russian forces made some unspecified advances near Novomykhailivka over the past week with the operational objective of reaching Vuhledar.[46] The milblogger added that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces back to the northwestern part of Marinka over the past week.

The Russian MoD claimed on November 26 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Marinka and Shevchenko (8km southwest of Vuhledar).[47]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not make any confirmed advances on November 26. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces made unspecified advances in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on November 26.[48] The Ukrainian General Staff reported in its morning situation reports that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked east of Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and south of Zolota Nyva (11km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and reported in their evening situation report that Russian forces did not conduct any offensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.[49]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on November 26. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked Robotyne and Verbove (9km east of Robotyne) with small infantry groups.[50] Russian sources claimed on November 25 and 26 that Ukrainian forces reduced the tempo of their operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast in part due to poor weather conditions.[51] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 26 that Ukrainian forces advanced half a kilometer towards Novofedorivka (15km northeast of Robotyne) and unsuccessfully tried to advance in the direction of Kopani (5km northwest of Robotyne) in the past week.[52]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed advances on November 26. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted a series of counterattacks along the Kopani-Robotyne-Novoprokopivka-Verbove line and advanced near Verbove.[53] The milblogger also claimed that Russian forces achieved unspecified tactical successes near Novoprokopivka (2km south of Robotyne) before heavy rainfall disrupted the active fighting.[54] The Ukrainian General Staff reported in its morning situation reports that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Robotyne and noted in their evening situation report that Russian forces did not conduct any offensive operations in the Zaporizhia direction.[55] A Russian source claimed that elements of the Russian 1430th Motorized Rifle Regiment (Russian Territorial Troops [TRV]) and 136th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade (58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are operating near Robotyne.[56] Russian sources claimed that elements of the Russian 108th Guards Air Assault (VDV) Regiment (7th Guards VDV Division) and the 70th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th CAA, SMD) are operating in the Zaporizhia direction.[57]

Ukrainian forces maintained positions in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast as Russian forces made claimed advances on the east bank on November 26. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces maintain positions on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River.[58] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces out of forest areas near Krynky (30km northeast of Kherson Oblast and 2km from the Dnipro River).[59] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces entered the western outskirts of Krynky.[60]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted an unsuccessful missile strike against occupied Crimea on November 26. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian air defenses shot down two Ukrainian S-200 missiles over the Sea of Azov that some Russian sources claimed targeted the Kerch Strait Bridge.[61]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

The Russian Supreme Court ruled that certain Russian mobilized individuals have the right to serve in the Russian Alternative Civil Service (AKS) rather than on the front lines. The Russian Supreme Court ruled on November 23 in favor of Pavel Mushumansky, who served in the AKS based on his religious beliefs after conscription in 2019 and asked to serve in the AKS again after mobilization in fall 2022.[62] Mushumansky deployed to a military unit and appealed his case to the Supreme Court after the Leningrad Oblast court denied his appeal to serve in the AKS. Kremlin newswire RBK reported statements from Russian legal experts that the Supreme Court’s ruling affirms the right of Russian conscripts and mobilized personnel to replace military service with AKS if military service contradicts their spiritual or religious beliefs.[63] The experts noted that the mobilization ruling only applies to individuals who can demonstrate that military service violates their beliefs and who have not served in the military or as a conscript previously, however.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Nothing significant to report.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation officials continue to establish programs aimed at indoctrinating Ukrainian children in occupied Ukraine into Russian national and cultural identities. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration announced on November 26 that it and the Kremlin-backed United Russia party are opening a center for children without parental care in occupied Kherson Oblast.[64] The Kherson Oblast occupation administration noted that Kremlin-appointed Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova supported the project and that the Ryazan Oblast government will help renovate the center.[65] Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported on November 26 that Russian occupation authorities are launching a program at institutions of higher education in occupied Melitopol to train students to create minefield maps.[66]

Russian occupation authorities continue to use maternity capital benefits to augment passportization efforts in occupied areas. The Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Militia claimed on November 26 that residents in occupied Luhansk Oblast can apply for maternity capital payments for their second and third children and their first child (if the first child was born after January 1, 2020) if they or their children have Russian passports.[67]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian sources are seizing upon a civilian protest on the Ukrainian-Polish border to amplify standard Kremlin narratives aimed at driving a wedge in relations between Ukraine and Poland. Polish truckers began a blockade of three border crossings between Ukraine and Poland on November 6 and expanded the blockade to a fourth border crossing on November 24 as part of a strike to prevent Ukrainian truckers from crossing the Polish border into Ukraine.[68] The Polish truckers are reportedly protesting the competition from Ukrainian trucks and only allow humanitarian and passenger vehicles to cross the border, creating significant traffic jams of over 2,000 trucks and a humanitarian crisis at the border crossings that has resulted in the deaths of two Ukrainian truck drivers.[69] Ukrainian officials have routinely called for an end to the protest, and Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins expressed willingness on November 26 to mediate between Poland and Ukraine to unblock the border.[70] Pro-Kremlin Russian sources are claiming that the blockade has created critical fuel and military shortages in Ukraine, that some Ukrainian officials are also protesting, and that the strike may expand further.[71] These narratives are likely intended to undermine Ukrainian-Polish relations and sabotage future negotiations to end the strike.

The Russian MoD continues efforts to portray Russian-led international organizations as unified during Russia's full-scale invasion in Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed on November 26 that the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has effectively created a unified air defense network because Russia already has bilateral air defense agreements with all other CSTO member states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.[72] A bilateral agreement creating a joint regional air defense network between Russia and Kyrgyzstan as part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) framework came into force on November 9.[73] Shoigu’s mention of Armenia alongside other CSTO member states is notable, as Armenia did not attend the CSTO Collective Session in Minsk, Belarus, on November 23 amid continued Armenian efforts to distance itself from Russia.[74]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

The independent Belarusian monitoring project The Hajun Project reported on November 26 that Russian and Belarusian forces have extended joint exercises in Belarus to mid-December that have been ongoing since April 29, 2022.[75]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

24. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 26, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-26-2023

Key Takeaways:

1. Neither Israel nor Hamas claimed violations of the humanitarian pause in the Gaza Strip as they completed the third swap of Hamas-held hostages for Israeli-held prisoners. CTP-ISW did not record verifiable reports of kinetic activity inside the Gaza Strip or reports of attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
2. Israel said that Hamas established a checkpoint on the Salah al Din road to prevent aid from reaching northern Gaza Strip residents.
3. Israeli forces arrested 21 individuals in several raids across the West Bank. Palestinian militia fighters clashed with Israeli forces for nine hours in the Jenin refugee camp.
4. Lebanese Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias did not conduct any attacks into northern Israel.
5. Israeli aircraft conducted an airstrike on Damascus International Airport and possibly a second airstrike on Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus, damaging both facilities.
6. Unspecified fighters attempted to seize the Israeli-owned, Liberian-flagged Central Park oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden and may have successfully held the tanker for some short period of time.
7. An IDF fighter jet intercepted a drone flying toward Israel over the Red Sea.
8. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—did not claim any attacks against US forces in Iraq or Syria.
9. Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah announced that it will reduce its rate of attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria and halt attacks against Israel until the end of the Israel-Hamas humanitarian pause.
10. Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed efforts to extend the Israel-Hamas pause in fighting during a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.
11. Iranian Artesh Commander Major General Abdol Rahim Mousavi stated that the Artesh is prepared to deploy “near” the Gaza Strip to provide medical aid to Palestinians.

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 26, 2023

IRAN UPDATE, NOVEMBER 26, 2023

Nov 26, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, November 26, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Annika Ganzeveld, Andie Parry, Johanna Moore, Brian Carter, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Key Takeaways:

1. Neither Israel nor Hamas claimed violations of the humanitarian pause in the Gaza Strip as they completed the third swap of Hamas-held hostages for Israeli-held prisoners. CTP-ISW did not record verifiable reports of kinetic activity inside the Gaza Strip or reports of attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
2. Israel said that Hamas established a checkpoint on the Salah al Din road to prevent aid from reaching northern Gaza Strip residents.
3. Israeli forces arrested 21 individuals in several raids across the West Bank. Palestinian militia fighters clashed with Israeli forces for nine hours in the Jenin refugee camp.
4. Lebanese Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias did not conduct any attacks into northern Israel.
5. Israeli aircraft conducted an airstrike on Damascus International Airport and possibly a second airstrike on Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus, damaging both facilities.
6. Unspecified fighters attempted to seize the Israeli-owned, Liberian-flagged Central Park oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden and may have successfully held the tanker for some short period of time.
7. An IDF fighter jet intercepted a drone flying toward Israel over the Red Sea.
8. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—did not claim any attacks against US forces in Iraq or Syria.
9. Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah announced that it will reduce its rate of attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria and halt attacks against Israel until the end of the Israel-Hamas humanitarian pause.
10. Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed efforts to extend the Israel-Hamas pause in fighting during a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.
11. Iranian Artesh Commander Major General Abdol Rahim Mousavi stated that the Artesh is prepared to deploy “near” the Gaza Strip to provide medical aid to Palestinians.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip

Neither Israel nor Hamas claimed violations of the humanitarian pause in the Gaza Strip as they completed the third swap of Hamas-held hostages for Israeli-held prisoners on November 26. Israel and Hamas confirmed that Hamas released 17 hostages held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for Israel releasing 39 Palestinian prisoners.[1] The hostages included the first American whom Hamas has released since the war began.[2] Hamas also released a Russian citizen whom they claimed that they released because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support for the Palestinian cause.[3] Russia hosted Hamas leadership in Moscow on October 26.[4] Hamas separately said on November 26 that it seeks to extend the pause after the four-day period ends on November 27.[5] Israeli Army Radio reported that there are efforts to extend the pause by an additional four days in return for Hamas releasing 40 hostages.[6] This report is consistent with previous reports saying that Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the pause for 24 hours for every 10 hostages released by Hamas.[7]

An Israeli official said that Israel did not violate the terms of the humanitarian pause on November 25 after Hamas accused Israel of releasing Palestinian prisoners out of order. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 26 that an unidentified Israeli official denied that Israel had broken any terms of the hostage exchange and that Israel was not aware of any stipulation regarding the order of prisoners.[8] Hamas publicly released on November 22 what it claimed were the details of its agreement with Israel.[9] The agreement that Hamas released did not include stipulations covering the order in which Israel must release Palestinian prisoners.[10]

Israel said on November 26 that Hamas established a checkpoint on the Salah al Din road to prevent aid from reaching northern Gaza Strip residents.[11] The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arab media spokesperson published an image that has been geolocated in support of its assertion.[12] The location of the checkpoint—based on a geolocated image—is 1.3 kilometers from a Hamas tunnel entrance, according to a 2014 map published by the Wall Street Journal.[13] Hamas media adviser Taher al Nunu claimed that Israel is violating the pause agreement by failing to supply sufficient aid to the northern Gaza Strip on November 25, but the director general of the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry said that Israel has allowed some fuel and medical aid to enter the northern Gaza Strip.[14] Qatar similarly confirmed on November 26 that humanitarian aid is reaching the northern Gaza Strip.[15] Israel also confirmed that humanitarian aid is reaching the northern Gaza Strip.[16] The mayor of Gaza city contrastingly said on November 26 that no fuel has reached Gaza city.[17] Israel said the UN manages some of the aid flows.[18] The Hamas and Israeli statements regarding humanitarian aid flow to the northern Gaza Strip are consistent with the hypothesis that Hamas is redirecting aid before it gets to the northern Gaza Strip.

Israel said its forces killed five Hamas commanders in airstrikes in the Gaza Strip prior to the beginning of the humanitarian pause on November 24.[19] The al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—announced the death of several commanders responsible for Hamas’ military operations in the northern Gaza Strip.[20] The commanders included the Northern Gaza Strip Brigade Commander Ahmed Ghandour, who directed all Hamas activity in the northern Gaza Strip. Ghandour also coordinated militia activity in the West Bank. The airstrikes also killed the head of Hamas’ Tulkarm Committee Farsan Khalifa. Khalifa developed cells of fighters in the Nur al Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm in the West Bank.[21] Hamas has been rebuilding ties with militia groups in the West Bank and seeking to attract support, according to a 2023 Reuters report.[22] The IDF has worked to eliminate Hamas operatives and commanders at the field and senior levels since October 7.[23]

NOTE: The IDF has said that its forces are stationed along ceasefire lines across the Gaza Strip during the pause in fighting. CTP-ISW's map of Israeli clearing operations shows reported Israeli clearing operations and the claimed furthest Israeli advances. CTP-ISW will not be mapping the shift in Israeli operating areas during the humanitarian pause.

CTP-ISW did not record verifiable reports of kinetic activity inside the Gaza Strip or reports of attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel on November 26.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces arrested 21 individuals in several raids across the West Bank on November 26.[24] These individuals included a Hamas member, who killed two Israelis in a terror attack in Huwara in August 2023, according to the IDF and the co-founder of the West Bank branch of the al Qassem Brigades, Abdel Hakim Hanini.[25]

Palestinian militia fighters clashed with Israeli forces for nine hours in the Jenin refugee camp on November 26.[26] The Jenin Battalion of the al Quds Brigades claimed that its fighters ambushed and fired on Israeli forces and detonated IEDs against Israeli military vehicles in the al Damj neighborhood of Jenin during an Israeli raid.[27] The Jenin Battalion of the al Quds Brigades claimed five fighters died in the clashes with Israeli forces.[28]Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fighters similarly used small arms and IEDs in clashes with Israeli forces in Jenin.[29] The IDF said that it destroyed a facility used for making IEDs and conducted a drone strike in Jenin.[30] Co-founder of the West Bank branch of the al Qassem Brigades Abdel Hakim Hanini threatened that Palestinian militias would conduct an “appropriate” response to the “scale of the crime” in the Jenin camp.[31] Palestinian militias announced a general strike in response to their fighter deaths in the Jenin raid.[32] Palestinian militants separately clashed with Israeli forces in three other areas of the West Bank on November 26.[33]

CTP-ISW recorded one demonstration in the West Bank on November 26. Palestinians demonstrated in support of imprisoned and recently released Palestinians in Ramallah.[34]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and other Iranian-backed militias did not conduct any attacks into northern Israel on November 26.

Israeli aircraft conducted an airstrike on Damascus International Airport and possibly a second airstrike on Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus on November 26, damaging both facilities. The Syrian Defense Ministry reported that an Israeli airstrike targeted Damascus International Airport and damaged its runway.[35] Iranian state media posted footage after the airstrike, showing smoke plumes over the runway.[36] Israel previously conducted an airstrike on Damascus International Airport on November 22.[37] The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that Israeli aircraft targeted an air defense system located at Mezzeh Military Airport on November 26.[38] CTP-ISW cannot independently verify this claim from SOHR. The airstrike on Damascus International Airport disrupts a transportation node through which the IRGC has historically tried to transfer military materiel and personnel to Syria and Lebanon. Israel has conducted similar strikes at the Damascus International Airport to prevent Iranian weapons deliveries.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Unspecified fighters attempted to seize the Israeli-owned, Liberian-flagged Central Park oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden and may have successfully held the tanker for some short period of time on November 26.[39] The UK Maritime Trade Operations reported that “unauthorized persons” boarded a vessel southwest of Aden, Yemen, on November 26.[40] An unidentified US official confirmed the seizure to Western media.[41] A US Navy warship responded to Central Park’s distress signal, and unspecified US officials stated that the ship is now “safe and free,” according to Reuters.[42]

No group claimed responsibility for the attempted seizure, although the most likely perpetrators are either the Houthis or Somali pirates.

• A Yemeni journalist reported on November 26 that the fighters who boarded the ship are likely members of the Houthi movement.[43] IRGC-affiliated outlet Tasnim News Agency separately reported that the seizure would mark the fourth seizure or attack on Israeli ships by the Axis of Resistance since October 7.[44] Houthi fighters previously hijacked an Israeli-owned freighter transiting the Red Sea on November 19. CTP-ISW also assessed that the IRGC may have conducted a one-way drone attack on an Israeli-owned freighter in the Persian Gulf on November 24 and that the Houthis likely seized an Israeli-owned freighter transiting the Red Sea on November 25.[45]
• Western media noted on November 26 that Somali pirates do not typically operate in the area off the coast of northwestern Somalia where the tanker was seized.[46] Somali pirates last seized a commercial vessel on November 22, when they hijacked an Iranian fishing vessel off the coast of Somalia’s autonomous Puntland region.[47] Somali pirates’ most recent attempted hijacking before the November 22 incident occurred in 2018.[48]

An IDF fighter jet intercepted a drone flying toward Israel over the Red Sea on November 25.[49] The IDF reported that the drone failed to enter Israeli airspace. The Houthi movement has repeatedly attempted to conduct drone and missile attacks against Israel since October 19.[50] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has also claimed attacks on Israeli territory since November 3.[51]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—did not claim any attacks against US forces in Iraq or Syria on November 26. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has not claimed any attacks since the Israel-Hamas pause in fighting went into effect. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq and its affiliated groups claimed 74 attacks against US forces in the Middle East between October 18 and November 23.[52]

Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH) announced on November 25 that it will reduce its rate of attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria and halt attacks against Israel until the end of the Israel-Hamas humanitarian pause.[53] The statement added that KH will resume attacks against US forces after the pause until they leave Iraq. KH is a member of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which conducted attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria almost daily between October 18 and November 23.[54] Emirati media reported on November 23 that Tehran ordered its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen to abide by the temporary pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas.[55]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed efforts to extend the Israel-Hamas pause in fighting during a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan on November 25.[56] Abdollahian stressed the need to “completely stop Israeli crimes” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Fidan emphasized Turkey’s determination to extend the current humanitarian pause. Abdollahian called on Turkey, along with other Muslim countries, to take “stronger actions” to support Palestinians. This call is consistent with CTP-ISW's previous assessment that Iran is attempting to exploit the Israel-Hamas war to undermine Turkish-Israeli rapprochement.[57] Abdollahian met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fidan in Ankara on November 1 as part of his second regional diplomatic tour since October 7.[58]

Thai Deputy Prime Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara thanked Iran for its efforts to facilitate the release of Thai hostages from Hamas during a meeting with Iranian Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Bagheri Kani in Bangkok on November 23.[59] Hamas released 14 Thai nationals between November 24-25.[60] Bagheri Kani also met with the Thai deputy foreign affairs minister, national security council head, and parliamentary president during his visit to Bangkok. He discussed increasing Iran’s economic and security ties with Thailand during his meetings with these officials.

Iranian Artesh Commander Major General Abdol Rahim Mousavi stated that the Artesh is prepared to deploy “near” the Gaza Strip to provide medical aid to Palestinians.[61] The Artesh is Iran’s conventional military. Mousavi made this statement during a meeting with nursing students from the Artesh University of Medical Sciences in Tehran on November 26. Mousavi claimed that Hamas, which he referred to as “one of the branches” of the Axis of Resistance, “defeated” Israel. Mousavi repeated previous Iranian rhetoric that Israel failed to achieve any military successes in the Gaza Strip and was therefore “forced” to accept Hamas’ terms in the four-day humanitarian pause. CTP-ISW has not observed any Artesh forces deploy to or near the Gaza Strip.

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