Quotes of the Day:

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“The power under the Constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing.”

– George Washington

“The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.”

– Alexis de Tocqueville

“We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves, and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”

– John F. Kennedy

Please do not forget to VOTE today. It is our most important and sacred responsibility as citizens.

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

Access NSS HERE

1. Russia Suspected of Plotting to Send Incendiary Devices on U.S.-Bound Planes

2. In Next President’s Inbox: 10 Global Nightmares

3. Drones Are Not Artillery Yet

4. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 4, 2024

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 4, 2024

6. The Defense Reformation (by Shyam Sankar Palantir CTO)

7. Russia suspected of sending incendiary devices on US- and Canada-bound planes, Wall Street Journal reports

8. DOD Announces New Director for Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies

9. This Retired General Settled the 9/11 Case. Then the Defense Secretary Took Charge.

10. Meta Permits Its A.I. Models to Be Used for U.S. Military Purposes

11. Ukraine needs 500,000 more troops amid slowing mobilization, senior lawmaker says

12. The Next World War Starts Here (Northeast Asia)

13. The Self-Defense of American Democracy

14. How the War in Ukraine Could Go Nuclear—by Accident

15. Is Turkey’s Military the World’s Latest Paper Tiger?

16. Australian Explosives Giant Sees Dynamite Opportunity in North America

17. Harris and Trump are ignoring the US defense crisis

18. Cartels, Corruption, and Fentanyl: How Can US-Mexico Cooperation Address Shared Security Concerns?

19. How and why Russia is conducting sabotage and hybrid-war offensive

20. The Age of Incremental War

21. CIA Has Secret "Nonviolent" Way To Disable Large Ships: Report

22. The Theoretical Edge: Why Junior Officers Should Study Military Classics

1. Russia Suspected of Plotting to Send Incendiary Devices on U.S.-Bound Planes

State sponsored terorism? I am reminded of the influence Claire Sterling's book had when I read it in the early 1980s.

From Wikipedia:

The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism (ISBN 0030506611) is a 1981 book by Claire Sterling, published by Henry Holt & Company, which argued that the USSR was using terrorists as a proxy force.^[1]

In part because of the book, CIA director William J. Casey commissioned a Special National Intelligence Estimate on Soviet support for terrorism. After receiving the draft estimate, Casey objected that there was less in the draft on Soviet ties to terrorism than in Sterling's book. Although Casey was advised that the CIA had played a part in supplying Sterling with "concocted misinformation for public propaganda", he requested that the draft be revised.^[2] The resulting estimate had this to say about the book:

The publication of The Terror Network by Claire Sterling and the selections in the press have created a great deal of interest inside and outside the Intelligence Community. Although well-written and extensively documented, amassing information in public sources, the book is uneven and the reliability of its sources varies widely. Significant portions are correct; others are incorrect or written without attending to important detail. Sterling's conclusion is that the Soviets are not coordinating worldwide terrorism from some central point, but that they are contributing to it in several ways.^[3]

Michael Ledeen promoted the book's claims when it was published. He was quoted in National Review, a conservative magazine, claiming that "Almost everything Claire said was borne out" by Stasi files that emerged after the end of the Cold War.^[4]

According to Melvin Goodman, the Head of Office of Soviet Affairs at the CIA from 1976 to 1987, the claims of a terror network were in fact black propaganda created by the CIA.^[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_Network

Excerpts:

Now investigators and spy agencies in Europe have figured out how the devices—electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance—were made and concluded that they were part of a wider Russian plot, according to security officials and people familiar with the probe.

Security officials say the electric massagers, sent to the U.K. from Lithuania, appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America.

Lithuanian police arrested a suspect who sent four incendiary devices, including two from a DHL shop in the capital Vilnius, a European law-enforcement official said. The suspect identified himself as Igor Prudnikov, but his real name is Alexander Suranovas, the official said. Investigators said they believe he was used as a proxy by Russian spy services.

Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office said authorities there have arrested four people in connection with the fires and charged them with participating in sabotage or terrorist operations on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency. Poland is working with other countries to find at least two more suspects.

Russia Suspected of Plotting to Send Incendiary Devices on U.S.-Bound Planes

Two devices that ignited in Europe, officials say, were part of a covert operation to put them on cargo or passenger aircraft

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-plot-us-planes-incendiary-devices-de3b8c0a?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Bojan Pancevski

Follow in Berlin, Thomas Grove

Follow in Warsaw, Max Colchester

Follow in London and Daniel Michaels

Follow in Brussels

Updated Nov. 4, 2024 4:59 pm ET

A pallet of packages on fire

Western security officials say they believe that two incendiary devices, shipped via DHL, were part of a covert Russian operation that ultimately aimed to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the U.S. and Canada, as Moscow steps up a sabotage campaign against Washington and its allies.

The devices ignited at DHL logistics hubs in July, one in Leipzig, Germany, and another in Birmingham, England. The explosions set off a multinational race to find the culprits.

Now investigators and spy agencies in Europe have figured out how the devices—electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance—were made and concluded that they were part of a wider Russian plot, according to security officials and people familiar with the probe.

Security officials say the electric massagers, sent to the U.K. from Lithuania, appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America.

Lithuanian police arrested a suspect who sent four incendiary devices, including two from a DHL shop in the capital Vilnius, a European law-enforcement official said. The suspect identified himself as Igor Prudnikov, but his real name is Alexander Suranovas, the official said. Investigators said they believe he was used as a proxy by Russian spy services.

Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office said authorities there have arrested four people in connection with the fires and charged them with participating in sabotage or terrorist operations on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency. Poland is working with other countries to find at least two more suspects.

A photo from a European law-enforcement official shows the suspect at a DHL shop in Vilnius.

“The group’s goal was also to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada,” the prosecutor’s office said, without saying who was orchestrating the group’s efforts.

But the head of Poland’s foreign-intelligence agency, Pawel Szota, said Russian spies were to blame and such an attack, if carried out, would have represented a major escalation in Moscow’s campaign against the West. “I’m not sure the political leaders of Russia are aware of the consequences if one of these packages exploded, causing a mass casualty event,” Szota said.

Szota’s comments echo what other Western intelligence officials said, indicating that Russia, and specifically its military-intelligence agency, known as the GRU, was responsible.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked for comment by The Wall Street Journal, said: “We have never heard any official accusations” of Russian involvement, adding: “These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media.”

European authorities allege that Russia is behind an expanding campaign of sabotage, including arson in the U.K. and the Czech Republic, attacks on pipelines and data cables in the Baltic and tampering with water supplies in Sweden and Finland.

Investigators and spy agencies in Europe have figured out how the devices—electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance—were made and concluded that they were part of a wider Russian plot, according to security officials and people familiar with the probe.

Earlier this year, the U.S. warned Germany that Russia planned to kill the chief executive of Rheinmetall, the German armaments giant that supplies Ukraine.

In the months after the fires at the DHL logistics hubs, the heads of both U.K. intelligence agencies called out Russia’s sabotage operations. In September, Richard Moore, the head of MI6, the U.K.’s foreign-intelligence service, said that the Russian spy agencies had “gone a bit feral in some of their behavior.” 

A month later, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, the U.K.’s domestic spy agency, warned that Russia was orchestrating “arson, sabotage and more. Dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness.”

Downing commercial passenger or cargo planes would be a big step up and some Western intelligence agencies have questioned whether such a plot could be the result of Russian spies carrying out a plan without the full authorization of the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the matter.

A Central Intelligence Agency spokesperson in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The incendiary devices that ignited in July only narrowly missed being on aircraft used by DHL, the people said. German police who tested replicas of the incendiary devices said that once magnesium ignited it would be difficult to extinguish with the firefighting systems most planes have, people familiar with the German investigation said, and pilots would have been forced to make an emergency landing.

An aircraft far from land and over an ocean would have been at risk of going down, the people said.

Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned that Russia was orchestrating ‘arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness.’ Photo: Yui Mok/Associated Press

Germany-based DHL uses cargo and passenger airplanes to transport packages. A spokeswoman for the company said the incendiary devices that ignited in July were carried in cargo planes and said the company was cooperating with authorities.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration declined to comment on the alleged plot. The agency said it has worked with U.S. and foreign air carriers to put additional safety measures in place on air-cargo shipments as part of continuing efforts to improve security.

Poland hasn’t named the four people arrested in connection with the incendiary devices, nor has it disclosed their nationalities.

The U.K. is investigating the device that caught fire in Birmingham and is working with other law enforcement authorities in Europe, a spokesperson for the country’s counterterrorism police said. No arrests have been made.

The head of Germany’s internal security agency, Thomas Haldenwang, told the country’s legislators that no one was harmed because a flight was delayed, describing it as a “lucky coincidence.” An airplane could have gone down in flames, he said.

Karolina Jeznach in Warsaw contributed to this article.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com, Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com, Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

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

Appeared in the November 5, 2024, print edition as 'Russia Allegedly Targeted Jets Flying To U.S.'.

2. In Next President’s Inbox: 10 Global Nightmares

After reading this "to do" list I do not know how anyone could want the job of President.

Excerpts:

1. Middle East wars — and a “new generation of terrorists” 
2. Autonomous drone weapons
3. World War III (scenario 1): Middle East war goes global
4. Hackers and U.S. critical infrastructure
5. AI and disinformation
6. World War III (scenario 2): War over Taiwan
7.  AI and Biowarfare 
8.  World War III (scenario 3): NATO & Russia go to war
9. Kim Jong Un – and his new friend
10.  Violence on the home front

In Next President’s Inbox: 10 Global Nightmares

A dizzying set of security challenges await the 47th president.

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/in-next-presidents-inbox-10-global-nightmares?mc_cid=3f3fe1893b&utm

SPECIAL REPORT(Designed by Connor Curfman / The Cipher Brief)Tweet

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Posted: November 3rd, 2024

By Tom Nagorski

Tom Nagorski is the Managing Editor for The Cipher Brief.  He previously served as Global Editor for Grid and served as ABC News Managing Editor for International Coverage as well as Senior Broadcast Producer for World News Tonight.

SPECIAL REPORT – As a divided nation hurtles towards the election, and officials worry about politically-driven violence, potential nightmares abound for the next commander-in-chief. Put simply, the 47th president of the United States will face an unprecedented array of global and national security threats. 

Major wars are raging in Europe and the Middle East, powerful U.S. adversaries are acting in concert, China poses threats on many fronts, and fresh dangers lurk in the realms of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence as well. 

In this special report, we lay out ten such threats, drawn from assessments made — in articles, public events, and at the recent Cipher Brief 2024 Threat Conference — by members of our network of experts. It’s a subjective exercise – different experts are worried about different issues – but on one point there is no disagreement: it’s a profoundly challenging inbox for the next commander-in-chief. 

1. Middle East wars — and a “new generation of terrorists” 

Soon after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli invasion of Gaza that followed, intelligence agencies issued warnings of terrorism inspired by the war — in particular by the toll of dead and wounded Palestinians. One year later, more than 40,000 Gazans have been killed and nearly 100,000 wounded, and those terror warnings have proved prescient.

At the recent Cipher Brief conference, Brett Holmgren, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), was blunt: “The Israel-Hamas conflict is emerging as the most consequential event impacting global terrorism in the last decade,” Holmgren said, citing at least 19 attacks and 21 disrupted plots in more than 20 countries, for which the Gaza war had served as “a primary motivational factor.” 

Holmgren and other top U.S. officials worry that this is the tip of an iceberg, involving what Avril Haines, head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), calls “a new generation of terrorists” inspired by the war in Gaza – and now in Lebanon as well. 

Former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers told The Cipher Brief last month that while the global terrorism threat had not reached “pre-9/11 levels…the conditions for it are certainly there. And now with the wars in the Middle East and the situation in Gaza, this will accelerate global jihadism again.”

Among those “conditions,” Vickers and other experts highlight the growing number of global safe havens for jihadists. 

Ahmad Zia Saraj, the last head of Afghan intelligence before the 2021 Taliban takeover, told The Cipher Brief that since the U.S. withdrawal, Afghanistan has become “a utopia for jihadi groups,” thanks to Taliban support and large numbers of young and poor recruits. “The [jihadist groups] have free or very cheap manpower,” Saraj said. “So this makes Afghanistan a place where they can accomplish a lot.” 

1. Autonomous drone weapons

Every report we’ve done on this subject, and every new briefing from officials and experts who monitor the technology, has been more frightening than the last. A decade ago, drone weapons were limited to the arsenals of the U.S. and a few other global powers; the weapons themselves were inaccurate or unreliable or — if they performed well — prohibitively expensive. Today, advances in technology have made them cheaper and easier to obtain; and artificial intelligence has opened the way to higher-end drone weapons that can actually “communicate” with one another, in swarm-like attacks. 

These weapons – high- and low-end both – have been on frequent display in Ukraine and the Middle East. And while Ukraine has created a large-scale domestic drone industry, several U.S. adversaries have as well. China dominates global drone production, and Iranian drone weapons are in play on multiple fronts – used by Russia against Ukraine, supplied to Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel, and provided to the Houthis in Yemen, who have used drone weapons to attack vessels in the Red Sea.

If it seems a distant threat, consider what the autonomous weapons expert Zachary Kallenborn told The Cipher Brief, when asked about scenarios that keep him up at night.

“You send a whole bunch of drones equipped with facial recognition, and search Capitol Hill for different congressmen who voted on a particular bill terrorists didn’t like,” Kallenborn said. “They could narrow the search to target only those people – no staffers, civilians, anything like that. Only those particular congressmen. Ideal, from the terrorists’ perspective.” 

Kallenborn and others see a long list of such possibilities – agricultural drones “which are more or less ready-made chemical biological weapons delivery systems” is another worrisome one – and experts fear that the advances in technology and affordability may outpace the capability to defend against them. 

“The bottom line is we are going to have to completely rethink the way we defend against drone armies – on land, air, sea, and undersea,” said Cipher Brief expert and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Philip Breedlove. “And I think we have a ways to go. ”

1. World War III (scenario 1): Middle East war goes global

Fears of “World War III” are raised all too often these days, in different contexts and involving different parts of the world. Our list of global threats includes three scenarios that have surfaced under that heading.

In the Mideast version, the events play out like this: Iran and/or its proxy armies are joined in war against the U.S. and Israel; Russia takes the side of Iran, returning the favor of Iranian support in Ukraine; global terror threats and attacks follow; the Gulf states and others are pulled in.

There’s a range of opinions on the likelihood of such a conflagration. Pessimists worry that Israel will strike harder than it has thus far against Iran, and that Iran – after only limited responses to date – will feel it must retaliate with greater force. Last week, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted that Israel now has “greater freedom of action in Iran than ever.” That sounded like a prescription for more Israeli attacks, and a possible escalatory spiral. 

The more optimistic view? Israel has so degraded Iran’s proxy armies, and laid bare Iran’s own limitations in terms of air defense, that Iran may be unable (or unwilling) to climb what Cipher Brief expert Gen. Frank McKenzie, a former head of U.S. Central Command, has called the “escalation ladder” of conflict with Israel.

“Israel’s attacks…have undermined Iran’s entire regional security strategy to an extent that may not yet be appreciated,” Norman Roule, former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at ODNI, told us last week.

At the Cipher Brief Threat Conference, CIA Director William Burns warned of “the very real danger of a further regional escalation of conflict…the risk of a further escalation between Iran and Israel.” And in an interview last month, Gen. McKenzie argued that the much-feared “wider war” between Israel and Iran had already begun (and that was before Israel’s latest counterattack). 

So – not “World War III” by any means, but still uncharted territory for the Middle East.

1. Hackers and U.S. critical infrastructure

This nightmare gets less attention — much to the dismay of experts in the intelligence community who worry about it constantly. Cyber experts within the Cipher Brief community regularly sound the alarm: America’s critical infrastructure is at grave risk from hackers — some interested in ransom payments, others working for America’s adversaries — and the U.S. is unprepared to deal with the threat. 

As Harry Coker, Jr., the White House National Cyber Director, put it at the Threat Conference, “We cannot lose sight of the fact that critical infrastructure is under steady attack.”

The problem, in a nutshell: because the nation’s water supply and electrical grid and other key infrastructure systems are decentralized, and only as secure as their weakest links, they are all prime targets for cyber attacks. And America’s adversaries are taking advantage.

Of particular concern: cyber criminals tied to China who have probed and occasionally breached American infrastructure – often in remote, poorly-protected areas. The fear is that these probes are meant to give China the ability, in the event of a future U.S.-China conflict, to cause havoc for millions of Americans. 

Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, a Cipher Brief expert and former Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, believes the nation’s water supply is at greatest risk. 

“It combines this perfect storm of ‘not ready,’” he said, adding that recent research showed water supply systems lacked proper security, infrastructure, and public-private collaboration. “All three elements were missing,” Montgomery said. “It’s extremely vulnerable.” 

There are dozens of other potential nightmares in this space, and a recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assessment suggested more were on the way.

“Domestic and foreign adversaries almost certainly will continue to threaten the integrity of our critical infrastructure with disruptive and destructive cyber and physical attacks,” the DHS said, “because they perceive targeting these sectors will have cascading impacts on U.S. industries and our standard of living.” 

1. AI and disinformation

This threat is perhaps best measured by the number of experts and newly-minted organizations working to mitigate the danger. That danger is simple and profound: AI can now mimic legitimate sources of information, and U.S. adversaries will use that ability to spew disinformation and sow discord among Americans. 

Last month, National Intelligence Council Acting Chair Michael Collins told The Cipher Brief that of all the issues that cross his desk, AI-driven disinformation is “the one that bothers me the most. Because at its core, what we’re talking about is the ability of an adversary to tell a different story without the same degree of accountability or standards controlling what their approach is to the truth – or the lack thereof.”

Among the scenarios: a fake video purports to show a political candidate saying something offensive to the electorate; an AI-created statement spreads false information about an act of terrorism; a replica of a trusted news organization spreads a conspiracy theory. The list is long. And many such “scenarios” are already happening.   

Ellen McCarthy, a Cipher Brief expert and former Assistant Secretary of State who now runs the Trust in Media Cooperative, has argued for information standards – just as food and medicine are labeled and certified – to help mitigate the threat.

“We need to prove that if people understand what’s in the information they’re consuming, they will make different choices,” McCarthy said.

That’s the hope. The danger – given the fast pace of AI growth and all those who use it to spread disinformation – is that the good guys face an uphill climb. 

The latest DHS Threat Assessment warned that “China, Iran, and Russia will use a blend of subversive, undeclared, criminal, and coercive tactics to seek new opportunities to undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and domestic social cohesion. Advances in AI likely will enable foreign adversaries to increase the output, timeliness, and perceived authenticity of their mis-, dis-, and malinformation designed to influence US audiences.”

1. World War III (scenario 2): War over Taiwan

This may be the most distant threat on this list – but if and when it happens, a full-blown conflict over Taiwan would be an unprecedented nightmare. More accurately, multiple nightmares: horrors for the region; a potential U.S.-China conflict; and — given Taiwan’s role as the world’s premier manufacturer of microchips – a nightmare for the global economy as well.

“The sense on timing, given what [China’s leader] Xi Jinping is saying to his people and what he’s doing to prepare his forces and to insulate his economy…is that something is likely within single-digit years,” Rear Admiral Mike Studeman, former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence, told The Cipher Brief. “There’s a deep concern and it’s resulting in a lot of preparations.”

The reunification of Taiwan with mainland China has been a core tenet for Beijing since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, and Xi has suggested he may use force to make it happen. In May, China dropped language from a government paper referencing “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, and following the inauguration of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, who is viewed by Beijing as a separatist, China launched “punishment” military drills near Taiwan. It has since held regular exercises to plan for either an invasion or blockade of the island.

The Chinese government increased its defense spending by 7.2% this year, part of a military buildup and modernization that are widely seen as preparation should Xi order an assault against Taiwan.

Bottom line: this isn’t a Day-One crisis for the next U.S. president, but it may well surface during his/her term.

1.  AI and Biowarfare 

This threat has made few headlines, but it certainly belongs on this list. Biosecurity experts are worried that governments haven’t done enough to limit the risk of terrorists using AI models to create biological weapons.

It’s a classic example of the tug between the good and the frightening potential of AI: on the one hand, AI holds life-changing potential when it comes to helping scientists develop new medicines and vaccines; at the same time, it may be a tool for would-be bioterrorists. 

At the Threat Conference, Jennifer Ewbank, a former CIA Deputy Director for Digital Innovation, said she was “very concerned about the application of AI in biological weapons by unsavory actors.” While “everyone wants to talk” about AI and the nuclear threat, Ewbank said, the barriers to creating a bioweapon were much lower. “The ability to either jailbreak a model, or leverage an open source model in a manipulative way to understand how to create bespoke bio weapons – that is a real and genuine threat.”

A recent report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security warned that in the near future, AI models may “greatly accelerate or simplify the reintroduction of dangerous extinct viruses or dangerous viruses that only exist now within research labs.”

Thomas Inglesby, the Hopkins center’s director, told The Cipher Brief that the U.S. and other countries must create systems and guardrails against the danger. 

“The concern is that these [AI] models will simplify, enable and lower the barriers toward creating very high-consequence biological constructs,” Inglesby said. “And whether that then results in accidents or deliberate misuse, that could lead to very, wide-ranging biological events – epidemics, even pandemics. That’s the concern.”

1.  World War III (scenario 3): NATO & Russia go to war

What if the worriers are right? What if Vladimir Putin, backed into a corner, with no possible route to victory, actually does resort to the tactical nuclear option? Or to an attack against NATO nations? 

On the one hand, it’s a highly unlikely scenario at the moment, given recent Russian battlefield gains. And experts note that these would likely be suicidal options for Putin.

“The Ukrainians have crossed every red line that the Russians have put down,” former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus told The Cipher Brief. “I think the threat has proven to be hollow, and is still hollow.”

But losing the current war might also be suicidal for Putin, in a different way. And as Julia Davis, the creator of Russian Media Monitor, told The Cipher Brief, Kremlin-friendly propagandists have repeatedly urged Putin to use the nuclear option against Ukraine. 

“They don’t actually believe that the Russian government is insane enough to start using nuclear weapons against the West,” Davis said. “However, they do believe that the Russian government might use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine if things look like they’re losing.”

“Right now I think nobody a hundred percent dismisses those threats that are coming from Putin, or some of his ‘red lines,’” Dave Pitts, a former Assistant Director of CIA for South and Central Asia, told The Cipher Brief. 

And while CIA Director Burns told the Threat Conference that he doubted Putin would choose the nuclear option, he added that “Russia is the only other nuclear power in the world today, at least comparable to the United States. So we can’t take [Putin’s threats] that lightly.” 

1. Kim Jong Un – and his new friend

In every recent U.S. presidential transition, North Korea has ranked high on the list of global threats passed on to the incoming administration. Now North Korea is back in the headlines – for a new reason.

North Korea’s deployment of thousands of troops to Russia has stunned policymakers and experts around the world – even those who were already sounding the alarm over the North’s military aid to Moscow. 

Various intelligence agencies say between 8,000-12,000 soldiers from the North have been sent to the fight. It’s the first time a third country’s forces have been deployed in the nearly three-year-old war, and their appearance in Russia’s Kursk region – where Ukrainian troops have seized 400 square miles of territory – came in the same week that North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time this year.

Cipher Brief expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, a former CIA director of East Asia Operations, worries that the Moscow-Pyongyang partnership carries consequences well beyond the Ukraine war. In his view, “North Korea’s enhanced allied relationship with Russia, and leader Kim Jong Un’s decision to send troops to aid Russia in its war of aggression in Ukraine, could be the prelude to war on the Korean Peninsula.”

At last month’s Threat Conference – before the North Korean deployment was public – CIA Director Burns told us that in the past year, “one of the more troubling developments has been the strengthening of the defense partnership between North Korea and Russia, with the North Koreans supplying significant quantities of artillery munitions for Russia, desperately needed by the Russians on the battlefield. Short-range ballistic missiles as well. And of course the challenge is, this is a two-way street, because the North Koreans benefit as well from this, something we watch very carefully.”

1.  Violence on the home front

While Cipher Brief experts and U.S. officials give varying weight to different global threats, they regularly bring the conversation back to the home-grown variety. 

The DHS has warned repeatedly of threats from within, most recently of “terrorism…fueled by potential extremist responses to the November election, and ongoing turmoil in the Middle East. Lone wolves and small groups represent the greatest menace.”

Vickers, the former Under Secretary of Defense, says that for all the global dangers, his greatest worry involves divisions and potential violence on the home front. 

“The thing I’m most concerned about is really the domestic basis of American power,” Vickers said. “Our political fragmentation, our social divisions, the receptiveness we seem to have for disinformation and fake news.”Already there have been two attempts made on one presidential candidate’s life; the nation is less than four years removed from the attempted insurrection at the Capitol in January 2021; and by almost any assessment, the nation is more polarized now than it was then.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.

3. Drones Are Not Artillery Yet

Important analysis and insights.

Mon, 11/04/2024 - 9:39pm

Drones Are Not Artillery Yet

By L. Lance Boothe

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/drones-are-not-artillery-yet

“Mushroom clouds are rising above the ground; doors in Staraia Toropa are shaking. Part of the military personnel fled during the night, abandoning the vehicles they arrived in. Everything is burning,” an unidentified villager tells Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU.[1] These things happen when munitions are left laying out in the open in a depot and stacked-up on not-so-secret railway platforms.[2] Welcome to war. A drone pack set in motion by Ukrainian special forces claims another arsenal deep in Russian territory.

A few days prior on 18 September 2024, Ukrainian special forces attacked warehouses in Toropets, Russia, belonging to the 107th Arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU) 500 km from Ukraine.[3] One hundred Ukrainian produced drones descended on this ammunition depot, setting it ablaze after triggering earthquake producing explosions.[4] Clearly, at over 300 miles from the fight, the Russians did not see this coming despite claiming some of the drones were taken down by jamming. In war, belligerents constantly surprise each other as Clausewitz reminds us, so in this aspect there is nothing new here. But are we seeing a new evolution in drone warfare?

At first glance, the observer of the Russia-Ukraine War may be tempted to see these strikes deep into Russia with remote controlled or possibly autonomous “smart” drones as the new artillery of the 21st Century. But what we are seeing is more akin to a poor man’s air force than the next generation of artillery. Also, the observer needs to appreciate that drones are more versatile than artillery systems and munitions. Though smart attack drones could, and should, be the next evolution in artillery submunitions. The point is that intelligent machines whether unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or robotic ground systems operating by adaptive algorithms can do more than attack targets. They can perform reconnaissance and surveillance functions, deliver supplies, be communications and electronic warfare platforms, clear and emplace mines, provide security, and conduct counter-air operations. And all these functions can be done without putting a whole bunch of soldiers at risk on the battlefield.

Like with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, in the Russia-Ukraine War, we are seeing the steady evolution of drone warfare. 

For the putative Ukrainians, the last several weeks of their drone blitz into Russia have netted considerable results. The current ratio of artillery fire “between Ukrainian and Russian forces is about 1:2. This marks an improvement from early summer 2024, when the ratio was 1:3, and even more so compared to the beginning of the year, when the ratio heavily favored Russia at 1:7, 1:8, or worse.”[5] This is good news. Artillery fire produces 80% of the casualties in the Ukraine war.[6] The Ukrainian counterfire fight is having a strategic effect.[7] Instead of playing whack-a-mole against Russian artillery pieces, a Sisyphean feat, the Ukrainians are attacking the logistics that feed the Russian beast. This is just good targeting – identify vulnerable critical nodes and attack them – Targeting 101.[8] The goal being to create more than a localized effect. In these instances of the Ukrainians attacking ammunition supply points, their takedown of logistical nodes impacts a large number of systems on the battlefield, producing an effect on the entire Russian artillery enterprise which takes considerable time from which to recover. This is just competent targeting. While I would like to believe the Ukrainians have cracked this code all by themselves, I suspect otherwise thanks to the targeting professionals in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The anatomy of these strikes seems rather obvious. Group II drones are launched from within Russia by special operations teams who case the target after infiltering into position or Group III drones are launched from Ukraine proper, infiltering the Russian integrated air defense system (IADS), to strike the target acquired through satellite imagery.[9] Regardless of the exact method used to acquire and attack the target, the key takeaway is that drones are being used for precision strike against targets that are susceptible to infiltration and vulnerable to destruction by creating an explosive chain reaction, which starts at multiple points to consume a larger area, magnifying the destructive effect. Further down the line, the gift keeps giving as supply chains are disrupted to the point that artillery fires across the front are restricted. In some instances, parts of the line are left without artillery fires as ammunition is moved to more critical sectors to sustain ongoing offensive operations. Either way, planning is complicated, target engagement restricted, and dilemmas created. All this disruption is caused by killing mechanisms that are relatively cheap to produce and employ. Given that three Russian arsenals were pretty much destroyed along with their stocks of billions of dollars in artillery projectiles and missiles by a pack of drones that at most cost tens of thousands of dollars, the Ukrainians came out ahead on the cost equation. Russia cannot sustain these kinds of losses either materially or financially. When the apparent Russian strategy is one of exhausting Ukrainian resistance through attrition, degrading Russia’s ability to attrit the Ukrainian Army through their main combat arm – artillery – spells defeat for such a strategy.

Of course, this begs the question: are drones a replacement for rocket/missile artillery? Well, the Ukrainians do not think so. They have been wailing incessantly about being “allowed” to strike into Russia with missiles like the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) provided by the US.[10] Of course, a debate rages among armchair generals as to whether it is advisable to expand the war in this manner.[11] Operationally, it makes sense. And Ukraine should ignore NATO’s handwringing. The strategic gains already achieved by striking deep into Russia are proof enough of drone effectiveness in particular, and surface-to-surface fires in general. But alas, the timidity with those with no skin in the game always seems to trump operational imperatives when it comes to Great Power Competition. But to answer the question as to drones being the new artillery, the answer is no – at least for now.

While what the Ukrainians have achieved to-date with drones is specular, bear in mind they are also losing about 10,000 of them a month primarily due to electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) interdiction.[12] For that outlay in drones, there is no evidence Russian casualties are exponentially increasing. War is about more than destroying stuff. It is about killing. Well trained and competent people are much harder to replace than things. So while precise strikes with drone packs garner headlines by igniting explosive chains from stockpiles of munitions on pallets sitting in warehouses stacked on top of each other and carelessly piled in the open, what is not happening here are high casualty rates. No deaths and only 13 injuries were reported after the drone raid on the 107th Arsenal of the GRAU.[13] Substantially more casualties come from massed artillery fires on exposed positions, maneuver formations in the open, artillery and mortar firing points occupied too long, or at ammunition exchange points directly feeding the fight.[14] Remember, 80% of the casualties in this war are being produced by massed artillery fires from volleys of “dumb” munitions (rockets and cannon projectiles unaided by GPS) against formations and their field trains and command posts. Drones are not the preferred means for producing mass casualties despite YouTube videos showing drones attacking Russian trucks stuck in the mud or armored vehicles (and personnel in the open) scurrying around the battlefield.[15] Drones are good at precision strikes, not area fires. Drones are most effective where EMS interdiction is limited, so that their circuitry does not get fried, or transmitter-receivers jammed. It is about the permissibly of the environment around the target and the target itself (and effect desired on it) that dictates the means of attack. Every munition has its time and place – the entire point of weaponeering – and make no mistake drones are now munitions as we are witnessing.

Also, we are not seeing large swaths of critical infrastructure or communications networks being crippled exclusively through drone attack. Yes, infrastructure is attacked with drones, particularly oil refineries and power generation stations, but interestingly, those effects appear rather localized and temporary. Neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians are freezing to death in mass when winter hits. Cars are still on the road. Communications networks while suffering disruption from limited drone attack remain largely functional. The internet is running and accessible for all the war bloggers on both sides to keep us appraised from their mothers’ basements on every detail of the fight. Most structures, whether of military value or not, in towns and cities where the fighting is raging are being reduced to dust by copious amounts of high explosive. This destruction is wrought more by cannon projectiles, rockets/missiles, and glide bombs than “kamikaze” drones. Group I-III UAS do not have the payload capacity for the amount of high explosives required to bend steel I-beams, nor are they heavy enough to penetrate reinforced concrete in any structurally compromising way. Of course, if one of these drones comes crashing into, say, some Soviet era concrete tenement building, the folks in the apartment that gets struck will have a bad day. There will not be much left of their drab digs, but the entire building is not going to come down on them or the other tenants as witnessed in Ukraine’s most recent drone attack in Moscow.[16]

Simply put, the Ukrainians are using drones as long-range precision fires that would otherwise be provided by artillery systems and munitions (and of course, fighter-bombers), because drones are all they have available given the restrictions placed on them by their Western benefactors. The right answer for efficient shaping fires is to use both drones and rockets/missiles.[17] As Matthew Savill at the Royal United Services Institute asserts, “ATACMS could do serious damage to Russian air defense radars and systems.”[18] He claims, “if you punch a hole through…Ukrainian long-range drones have got better options to penetrate deeper into Russia” to interdict lines of communication (LOCs) mostly insulated by distance from the forward line of troops.[19] Interdicting LOCs should be the norm for deep strikes, only the means of attack will vary. Drones are best suited to attack LOCs at points where IADS and EMS defense is weak. Let rockets/missiles kick in the door, opening a route to the target area for the drones. Rockets/missiles can be impervious to electronic interference while overwhelming IADS at points along LOCs where these defenses are strong, creating mass casualties and destruction over a greater area than drones.[20] Again, it comes down to the target, and the environs around the target. Neither the use of attack drones or rockets/missiles (guided or not) is an aberration, they ought to be complementary and routinely used to interdict LOCs. I suspect that if the Ukrainians were unrestricted in their means of attack, they would mix it up in ways that would discomfit the Russians, and surprise Western observers. Necessity remains the mother of invention.

War is a harsh schoolmaster.[21] And the war in Ukraine is only going to get harsher. Drones are the wave of the future. This is beyond dispute. What neither side is doing in this war so far is delivering smart drones via missiles to hunt in wolfpacks, attacking high payoff targets (HPTs) without human control or oversight. This is the next evolution in drone warfare. This is a capability the US military needs to be developing in earnest. Once drones are truly autonomous, enabled by artificial intelligence, hardened against EMS interdiction, used in packs, and delivered into target areas of interest at hypersonic speed, then the war gets interesting and far more deadly. Let us hope the madness in Ukraine is ended before we get a nasty surprise from it. War at machine speed without respite will break human endurance, spiraling well out of control.

As I have asserted in Military Review, intelligent machines are going to take warfare to a whole new level. Enemies will aim to draw blood at each other’s industrial, agricultural, and energy underbelly – the center of gravity for any nation. Once the people who make life possible are dead and the associated infrastructure is wrecked, the means to resist is shattered. To presume the advent of smart drones will turn warfare into an intelligent machine on intelligent machine melee is folly. Clearing an adversary’s intelligent machines from the battlespace is just the prelude to attacking the center of gravity. Smart drones jeopardize a nation’s center of gravity as never before because they are relentless killing machines, taking war to maximum effectiveness and its logical conclusion without nuclear holocaust.

Chantal Grut argues in the Journal of Conflict & Security Law that

as weapons technology becomes more and more advanced, humans are moving further and further away from the battlefield. We already live in a world of robotic warfare, in which a pilot sitting in an operating room … can control an unmanned aerial vehicle or ‘drone’ to conduct lethal targeting operations on the other side of the world. In a sense, weapons development has always been moving in this direction, with the goal of removing human personnel as far from the risk of harm as possible. The next step may remove the human from the process altogether.[22]

However, where Grut gets it wrong is that people will never be removed from risk. The Russian villagers around those GRAU arsenals found this out when those facilities went up in flames right in their backyards. The unpleasant truth is humans at the center of gravity of a nation are more at risk than ever before, both combatants and noncombatants. Intelligent machines are not just built to fight other machines. Look no further than how remote-controlled drones or ones with limited programming for autonomy are being used in the Ukraine war. The Russians are certainly attacking critical infrastructure with the drones they send into Ukraine.[23] Nor are the Ukrainians ignoring Russian infrastructure, striking refineries and power generation facilities in addition to grabbing headlines with their drone attacks on “military” targets like GRAU arsenals.[24] For nation-states, particularly developed ones, food, fuel, electricity, and consumer products rule the day. The people who feed society, power society, and bring society its daily necessities are the linchpin to life. Attacking them and the infrastructure which sustains society can bring society to its knees.

Realism drives war. Since Napoleon Bonaparte, warfare has been the “nation in arms,” so everyone at the center of gravity is fair game.[25] For one nation to defeat another, war must be taken to its logical conclusion. We should bear in mind, the United States dropped atomic weapons on Japan to shatter that nation in arms, bringing the worst conflagration in human history to a decisive end. In war, there is no substitute for victory, and the unmitigated employment of intelligent machines is the next, best, means to victory.

Every capability has a counter or weakness. Direct energy (DE) weapons show the potential to effectively counter drones. But can DE be everywhere at once, particularly around all critical infrastructure or over extended LOCs? Can it be overwhelmed? These things are yet to be seen. Power generation is critical to DE. If power is being supplied by the national electrical grid, then the grid is a logical target, which is easy to strike in mass at hundreds if not thousands of points of failure. While DE will be formidable once it arrives in force on the battlefield, it can and will be countered. Part of that counter comes in the form of presenting multiple dilemmas – a combination of smart drones, guided and dumb artillery munitions (even bombs and missiles from Big Blue or the US Navy) delivered in coordination with a variety of non-lethal enablers can open windows for these lethal munitions to get in to destroy HPTs or compound the destructive effect of these Joint fires.[26] I believe the Ukraine war is teaching us that massed artillery fires matter more than any other means of attack. When GPS aided munitions or remote-controlled and semi-autonomous drones work, they produce devastating results. The Ukrainians clearly want to use all the means at their disposal just as we would if we were in their predicament. What will be interesting to see is whether DE proliferates in the Ukraine war as a counter to the pervasive drone warfare witnessed so far. My bet is that when DE starts to make a significant appearance, artillery fires will increase further. Then DE systems will struggle to survive on the battlefield and elsewhere. And the drones will keep on flying.

 In conclusion, it is too soon to draw definitive conclusions, but as a friend and respected old soldier reminds me, it is never too late to speculate. What is obvious is that drones work. At the writing of this piece, Ukraine launched another drone attack deep into Russia. This time attacking the “Chechen special forces university” (whoever they are and whatever that is), damaging the facility and presumably disrupting operations. Like with the arsenals around Staraia Toropa out of ATACMS range, but clearly within drone range, the Ukrainians continue to do what they can to bring Goliath down. If the Ukrainians get the green light from the West (the US in particular) to do what is operationally sound and strike LOCs within Russia with ballistic and cruise missiles, a new chapter in this war will open – perhaps even a decisive one for the valiant Ukrainians. Indications are they would strike using a combination of drone and artillery fires. One complimenting the other and vice versa. Once truly intelligent drones capable of hunting targets autonomously, expelled from missiles traveling at hypersonic speeds into target areas, make their debut, the game changes. Then drones become artillery. And then the vicious cycle of countermeasure upon countermeasure to yet more counters begins until the next technological breakthrough emerges, worlds without end in our eternal quest to better slaughter one another.

 [1] https://uawire.org/two-russian-ammunition-depots-ablaze-in-tver-and-krasnodar-regions-after-massive-overnight-drone-attack

[2] Ibid.

[3] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-toropets-drones-attack-e3d05b2637d316b437e4789a35c7f59e; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30lp1qq6pzo; https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-says-drone-attack-destroyed-key-russian-missile-arsenal-2024-9

[4] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-toropets-drones-attack-e3d05b2637d316b437e4789a35c7f59e; https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-targets-western-russian-regions-with-drones-russian-officials-says-2024-09-18/

[5] https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/two_weeks_of_ukrainian_drone_strikes_achieve_more_than_two_years_of_sanctions_russian_artillery_fire_rate_dropped_by_15_times-12298.html

[6] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-06-17/endless-shelling-and-dead-soldiers-a-vicious-artillery-war-spreads-in-ukraine; https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-artillery/; https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-taking-heavy-casualties-counteroffensive-soldiers/story?id=102347740  

[7] Counterfire is more than just counter-battery fire (acquiring and engaging artillery systems). The counterfire fight is about defeating threat artillery logistics and command and control (C2). Given that modern artillery systems (self-propelled howitzers and rocket launchers) emplace and displace rapidly, employing “shoot and scoot” tactics, it is nearly impossible to engage artillery when it is shooting. Howitzers and launchers simply are not around long enough after firing to engagement with counter-battery fires from other howitzers and launchers. Between the time it takes from acquisition (usually by radar) to mission processing to fire mission execution and the time of flight of the projectiles or rockets onto target, the howitzers or launchers you are shooting at will be long gone. This is why you must either anticipate where the threat might be or more effectively track them to rearm, refuel and refit sites. Better yet, find logistics resupply points (or the unit supply trains) and destroy them, depriving the guns or launchers of ammunition and fuel. The next best thing to do is break the link between guns/launchers and observers/sensors or the ability to issue fire orders to the guns/launchers, i.e. attack their C2. Artillery is useless if it can’t shoot or communicate, and dead if it can’t move. And if you must punk individual firing platforms, it is best done by attack helicopters or fighter-bomber aircraft, and now drones, after the guns or launchers are rendered ineffectual and trying to hide or retreat – movement attracts predators.

[8] Whether it’s the US Army’s targeting methodology of decide, detect, deliver, assess (D3A) or special operations world’s find, fix, finish, assess (F3A) or the USAF’s convoluted find, fix, track, target, engage, assess (F2T2EA), targeting in practice all boils down to matching sensors to targets to killing / engagement mechanisms. The nodal analysis done to decide what to attack is the most critical part of the process. The point is to get the best result (effect) for the most economical expenditure of resources at the least risk to our forces. Identifying and striking the critical point or points of failure in the enemy’s system of systems and operations (this part tends to get overlooked by the targeting Rain Men in the USAF) is the Grail Quest for the targeting community.

[9] For a pretty good explanation of UAS groups visit https://cuashub.com/en/content/what-do-the-uas-groups-mean/. Of course, the exact ranges for these systems are protected by the pay wall of officialdom. But the real takeaway here that’s being lost in translation concerning drone warfare is its cost effectiveness, and the fact that the US military is behind the innovation curve after essentially pioneering drone warfare. Elliot Ackerman put out an article in The Free Press (https://www.thefp.com/p/usa-germany-world-war-three-weapons) warning us that our military isn’t ready for modern war; that is to say, the next evolution in drone warfare. And if this isn’t startling enough, even our Congress has figured out that drone warfare is upon on us and essential to Ukrainian succuss on the battlefield, which as Ackerman points out in his article, and I quote: “This past May, a bipartisan group from Congress grew so concerned they sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. It read, in part: ‘we strongly encourage you to include the delivery of small, American-made drones [to Ukraine], which are essential for tactical success on the battlefield’. Six months later, these American-made drones have yet to arrive in Ukraine.” Say it isn’t so. Let’s understand this for a moment – we have spent billions on the mess in Ukraine and delivered them none of the cheap drones they want and need yet have managed to deliver a whopping 700 high-cost Switchblades at $60-80,000 a pop, whereas the Ukrainians are using (and prefer to use) the Mavic 3 series, an off-the-shelf drone which costs anywhere from $2,199 to $4,799 on Amazon. If this isn’t fraud, waste, and abuse, then nothing is. And since that war consumes 10,000 drones a month, the Switchblades we did manage to send are long gone by now, while the Chinese, yes, that is right, the Chinese seem able to ship all the Mavic 3s the Ukrainians could possibly want. Apparently, the Chinese aren’t afraid to profit from both sides in the Ukraine war. The cynicism at play here would make Lucifer cringe. Go free market – the irony is rich.

[10] https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-missiles-war-nato-zelenskyy-b8039dcdd5b5f03415acd757fbead8e6; https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/22/europe/ukraine-western-long-range-weapons-russia-intl/index.html

[11] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr75r70jgp7o; De-escalation is the obsession of the weak, indecisive, and feckless. De-escalation is no more a strategy than fighting the Russians to the to last Ukrainian. And concerns over escalation are not an excuse for failing to do what is operationally expedient. The Ukrainians are engaged. Now, it is time to finish the fight. Of course, this will never happen because the West fears its own shadow, so the Ukrainians will be forced into a settlement – a casualty of Great Power Competition – despite their sacrifice in blood and treasure. War is not just (as I have opined in this august journal previously).

[12] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/05/22/ukraine-drones-losses-are-10000-per-month/; https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-losing-10000-drones-month-russia-electronic-warfare-rusi-report-2023-5

[13] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-toropets-drones-attack-e3d05b2637d316b437e4789a35c7f59e

[14] https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-taking-heavy-casualties-counteroffensive-soldiers/story?id=102347740; Note that this report is on the casualties being taken by Ukrainians from Russian artillery fires. Those fires are persistent, pervasive, and demoralizing, and of course, deadly. War is made with artillery. This remains as true today as it was when Napoleon practiced it in the 19th Century.

[15] While dropping grenades on hapless Russians in open personnel carriers or chasing them around exposed positions with drones makes for good YouTube videos, the propaganda value and psychological effect is far greater than the actual casualties produced when compared to massed artillery fires. Frankly, the videos are kind of sick, and by-the-way, the Russians are doing the same to Ukrainian soldiers (and civilians). War is not some sort of grotesque reality video game despite what social media would have us believe. You are not going to win a war by droning individuals, but you can win through accumulating mass casualties, something we have yet to see drones do.

[16] https://www.pbs.org/video/russian-invasion-1726003005/; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7l375z720o; Of course, not much condemnation is forthcoming over these nonmilitary (“civilian”) targets being struck by the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are just as guilty of creating collateral damage as the Russians, but only one is called a war crime – interesting how that works.

[17] And lest we forget, these ground-based fires should be integrated with air support, performing air interdiction. But we’re not here to discuss air component operations, which for the Ukrainians are relatively nonexistent outside of UAS employment by their land component.

[18] https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/22/europe/ukraine-western-long-range-weapons-russia-intl/index.html

[19] Ibid.

[20] The Russian arsenals attacked by the Ukrainians are out of range of ATACMS, but in range of ground-based cruise missiles. When the new missile replacing ATACMS comes online fully, and if given to the Ukrainians (doubtful), supply depots like the Toropets arsenal could be held at risk by ballistic missiles that are cheaper and faster than cruise missiles, not to mention far easier to plan and shoot with the US Army Field Artillery’s current C2 system. Also, it is not always possible or even desirable to carry out precision strikes down to a gnat’s butt. Target size and dispersal or disposition matters. And all sensors contrary to popular belief do not have the same degree of accuracy in locating targets (or share the same confidence level), thereby requiring area fires to hit the targets they acquire. Area fires hit the target with shrapnel from the casing around the explosive warhead or projectile, ball bearings or tungsten cubes encased in front of or embedded in the high explosive filler, or shape-charge bomblets expelled from the rocket/missile or cannon projectile. Hence the term “steel rain.” You are covering an area with metal to ensure you hit the target. So not only does raining down metal all over the place have the advantage of hitting imprecisely located targets (in the artillery we call it high target location error – TLE), but it allows us to hit large targets that would otherwise require multiple aimpoints to destroy with hit-to-kill munitions like laser guided bombs, GPS aided unitary warhead rockets, or full motion video attack drones with high explosive (HE) payload. Steel rain falls on the just and unjust, hitting multiple things spread-out all over God’s green earth, maximizing death and destruction beyond blast overpressure. Yes, how pleasant. Killing is ugly. Artillery is not an extreme range snipper rifle, and we are not putting rounds into a one-inch bullseye lined up in crosshairs. Artillery is an indirect fire weapon where rounds are calculated to essentially be lobbed onto target, producing casualties and destruction with the area containing that target through HE. We must stop confusing accuracy with precision. Cannon projectiles and rockets/missiles are not bullets precisely aimed directly at targets. That’s not how it works nor intended to be. Artillery munitions are accurately put into the vicinity of the target, and HE does the rest.

[21] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by C. F. Smith (Cambridge: Loeb Classic Library Harvard University Press, 1920), III: LXXXII.

[22] Chantal Grut, “The Challenge of Autonomous Lethal Robotics to International Humanitarian Law,” Journal of Conflict & Security Law 18, no. 1 (2013): 5–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcsl/krt002.

[23] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-launches-major-drone-attack-ukraine-damages-residential-buildings-2024-10-03/; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-war-russian-missile-drone-attack-energy-infrastructure/

[24] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-drones-oil-refineries-1e519695515998158f4a6b390397a0a3;   https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/02/europe/ukraine-big-drone-attack-russia-intl-hnk/index.html; https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-destroys-ukraine-launched-drone-flying-towards-moscow-mayor-says-2024-09-09/

[25] Hugh Nibley, Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, ed. Don E. Norton and Shirley S. Ricks (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994), 295.

[26] What would any article on military affairs be without mentioning the Joint Force? All things “joint” is military jargon for the Armed Services working together in perfect harmony (at least in theory). The US military has been obsessed with “jointness” since it got force fed it after the debacle in Grenada in the 80s. Ever since the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, it’s been joint this and joint that, which is really to say the USAF runs everything now. Anyhow, what is being described here, looking passed the reference to Joint fires, is the US military’s aspiration to achieve effects in all domains (or cross them or throughout them or from one to another – no one has yet to really figure out how to describe it to the collective’s, that is to say, the Joint Force’s satisfaction in some pithy term). We think the key to success now and in the future is to integrate lethal fires (things that go boom) from all the Services with nonlethal effectors (things that buzz) from all the Services to create effects on land, at sea, in the air, in outer space, and, of course, cyberspace to discomfit and otherwise destroy our foes in battle.

About the Author(s)

L. Lance Boothe

L. Lance Boothe is a senior Concepts Developer for Field Artillery in the Concepts Development Division of the Fires Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He is a retired Field Artillery Officer and veteran of Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, and Bosnia. 

4. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 4, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 4, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-4-2024

Iran reportedly warned some Arab countries that it will conduct a complex attack on Israel in retaliation for the recent Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strikes on Iran. Unspecified Arab and Iranian officials told the Wall Street Journal that the upcoming Iranian attack will include drones and missiles and that some will have heavier payloads than those which Iran has previously fired at Israel. Western and Iranian analysts have noted that Iran could use the Khorramshahr-4 liquid-fueled, medium-range ballistic missile, which purportedly carries a payload of 1,500 kilograms and has a range of 2,000 kilometers. The Arab and Iranian officials also told the Wall Street Journal that Iran will use other weapons beyond drones and missiles and will include the conventional Iranian military, known as the Artesh, in the attack. The inclusion of the Artesh would mark the first time that it has attacked Israel; the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has taken lead on attacking Israel up until this point. The Artesh would participate presumably because the IDF killed four Artesh officers in its recent strikes on Iran. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei reportedly told senior regime officials that the IDF strikes were ”too large to ignore.” The Artesh has some means of supporting an attack on Israel, such as one-way attack drones, decades-old combat aircraft, and ship-launched missiles, though it remains far from clear that these systems would perform well against Israeli defenses.

Key Takeaways:

• Iran-Israel conflict: Iran reportedly warned some Arab countries that it will conduct a complex attack in retaliation for the recent IDF strikes on Iran. Tehran reportedly plans to use drones and missiles, some of which will have heavier payloads than what Iran has previously fired at Israel. The upcoming attack will reportedly include the IRGC and conventional Iranian military.

• Gaza Strip: Hamas and Fatah officials met in Cairo to discuss post-war governance in the Gaza Strip and agreed to form an administrative committee to manage borders and other civil affairs. Hamas seeks to establish an intra-Palestinian government that Hamas can ultimately control as an alternative to a UAE plan that would exclude Hamas from post-war governance in the strip.

• Iran: A female Iranian student removed some of her clothing in protest after being reportedly harassed and assaulted by regime security forces. She has rapidly become an online symbol of the Iranian protest movement standing against regime oppression and efforts to enforce behavioral standards on the Iranian population.

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 4, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 4, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-4-2024

Russian and pro-Kremlin actors launched an information operation on November 4 to discredit incumbent Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s victory in the Moldovan presidential elections. The Moldovan Central Election Commission (CEC) confirmed on November 4 that Sandu won 55.35 percent of the vote, defeating Kremlin-friendly opponent Alexandr Stoianoglo. Numerous world leaders congratulated Sandu on November 3 and 4, and international election observers largely commended the conduct of the elections in spite of Russian attempts to sway the outcomes against Sandu. Pro-Russian opposition parties and officials attempted to discredit Sandu’s victory, with the Moldovan Socialist party calling her “an illegitimate president”; Kremlin-affiliated Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor telling Russian state TV channel Rossiya-24 that the Moldovan opposition has 'evidence' of mass falsifications in favor of Sandu; and pro-Kremlin former Moldovan president Igor Dodon telling Kremlin newswire TASS that Sandu only won because of the Moldovan diaspora vote. The Russian information space, including Russian milbloggers, echoed the words of the pro-Russian Moldovan opposition claiming that Moldovan elections were controlled by 'European bureaucrats' and that Moldovans had no agency in determining the outcome of the elections. ISW previously reported on Russia’s systematic efforts to interfere in the Moldovan election in order to derail the passage of Moldova’s European Union (EU) referendum and Sandu’s victory.

Key Takeaways:

• Russian and pro-Kremlin actors launched an information operation on November 4 to discredit incumbent Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s victory in the Moldovan presidential elections.

• Georgian civil society and opposition resumed peaceful demonstrations on November 4 against the highly contested October 26 Georgian parliamentary elections, calling for continued resistance and further investigations into large-scale voting irregularities.

• Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's (RFE/RL) Sistema project released an investigation on November 4 detailing Russia's initial 2022 demands for Ukraine's total capitulation, further supporting ISW's long-standing assessment that Russia has never been willing to engage in good-faith negotiations with Ukraine on any terms but its own.

• Russian drone and missile strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure in Summer 2024 reportedly significantly impacted Ukrainian electrical generation capacity compared to March 2024, though it is unclear whether Russia had been able to inflict significant further damage on the Ukrainian energy grid since.

• The Kremlin-awarded founder and director of the prominent Rybar Telegram channel and social media project attempted to falsely portray himself as a non-Kremlin actor in the Western media and confirmed the Kremlin’s efforts to establish “media schools” abroad.

• Russian authorities arrested Rosgvardia's Deputy Head of Logistics Major General Mirza Mirzaev for bribery on November 3.

• Russian forces advanced near Novy Put, Kursk Oblast.

• Ukrainian forces advanced in Kharkiv Oblast and Russian forces advanced in the Kupyansk, Kreminna, Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and Vuhledar directions.

• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues attempts to form a cadre of loyal military journalists in an effort to control the pro-war Russian information space and centralize control over Russia’s war coverage.

6. The Defense Reformation (by Shyam Sankar Palantir CTO)

The is a fascinating article from the Palantir CTO. Please go to the link to read the entire piece. It is a fancy presentation of many critical issues.

https://www.18theses.com/

The  Defense Reformation

Introduction

As a nation, we are in an undeclared state of emergency.

Around 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, China militarized the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and Iran was allowed to pursue the bomb. A decade later, we have had more than 300 attacks on U.S. bases by Iran, 1,200 people slaughtered in a pogrom in Israel, an estimated 1 million casualties in brutal combat in Ukraine, and an unprecedented tempo of CCP phase zero operations in the Taiwan Straits.

This is a hot Cold War II. The West has empirically lost deterrence. We must respond to this emergency to regain it.

We have a peer adversary: China. “Near-Peer” is a shibboleth, a euphemism to avoid the embarrassment of acknowledging we have peers when we were once peerless. In World War II, America was the best at mass production. Today that distinction belongs to our adversary. America’s national security requires a robust industrial base, or it will lose the next war and plunge the world into darkness under authoritarian regimes. In the current environment, American industries can’t produce a minimum line of ships, subs, munitions, aircraft, and more. It takes a decade or two to deliver new major weapon systems at scale. If we’re in a hot war, we would only have days worth of ammunition and weapons on hand. Even more alarming is our lack of capacity and capability to rapidly repair and regenerate our weapon systems.

Given the vast sums we have spent on defense in these decades of Pax Americana, it would be reasonable to wonder: what went wrong?

Written By

Shyam Sankar

Palantir CTO

Published

October 31

2024

Length

20 Min

4,000 Words

7. Russia suspected of sending incendiary devices on US- and Canada-bound planes, Wall Street Journal reports

Additional reporting based on the Wall Street Journal report.

Russia suspected of sending incendiary devices on US- and Canada-bound planes, Wall Street Journal reports

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/04/europe/russia-suspected-incendiary-devices-europe-intl-latam/index.html

By Tara John, Eve Brennan, Pete Muntean and Antonia Mortensen, CNN

 3 minute read 

Updated 4:27 PM EST, Mon November 4, 2024

A DHL aircraft in front of the DHL Air Hub at Leipzig, Germany. Heiko Rebsch/dpa/picture alliance/Getty Images

CNN — 

Incendiary devices that ignited in Germany and the United Kingdom in July were part of a covert Russian operation that aimed to start fires aboard cargo and passenger flights heading to the US and Canada, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Monday, citing Western security officials.

In July, device explosions at DHL logistics hubs in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, UK, kickstarted a race to find the suspects, WSJ reported.

When asked about the incidents, a spokesperson at DHL Express told CNN the company is “aware of two recent incidents involving shipments in our network,” adding they are “cooperating with the relevant authorities.”

The devices, which were reportedly electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance, were sent to the UK from Lithuania and “appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America,” the WSJ reported.

When the WSJ asked Russia for comment about the suspected Russian plot, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied the allegations. “We have never heard any official accusations” of Russian involvement, adding: “These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media.”” He said according to WSJ.

CNN is attempting to reach the Kremlin for comment.

Asked about the alleged Russian plot, a US government official told CNN that “at this time, there is no current active threat targeting U.S.-bound flights.”

Polish authorities in October said four people had been arrested under suspicion of being involved in international sabotage and a sabotage group, according to a statement from the national prosecutor’s office. An international search has been initiated for two more suspects.

Related article

From $7 graffiti to arson and a bomb plot: How Russia’s ‘shadow war’ on NATO members has evolved

The Polish statement, which does not name the sabotage group, says “parcels containing camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials” were sent via courier to the UK and European Union countries and “spontaneously ignited or detonated during land and air transport.”

It adds that the group’s goal “was [also] to test the transfer channel for this type of shipments which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada.”

A UK counter-terrorism police spokesperson confirmed to CNN that they are “investigating an incident at a commercial premises in Midpoint Way” in Birmingham: “On Monday, 22 July, a package at the location caught alight. It was dealt with by staff and the local fire brigade at the time and there were no reports of any injuries or significant damage caused,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the investigation is ongoing, and they are “liaising with other European law enforcement partners to identify whether this may or may not be connected to any other similar-type incidents across Europe.”

CNN reported in July that Russia has been engaged in a “bold” sabotage operation across NATO’s member states for more than six months, targeting the supply lines of weapons for Ukraine and the decision-makers behind it, according to a senior NATO official.

Multiple security officials across Europe describe a threat that is metastasizing as Russian agents, increasingly under scrutiny by security services and frustrated in their own operations, hire local amateurs to undertake high-risk, and often deniable, crimes on their behalf.

8. DOD Announces New Director for Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies

I have looked up Maj. Gen. Suzanne Puanani Vares-Lum.

Below is an excerpt from her Army War College paper which seems on topic for her new position. "Security in the Philippines and Indonesia: The U.S. Military Role in Southeast Asia"

DOD Announces New Director for Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3955692/dod-announces-new-director-for-asia-pacific-center-for-security-studies/

Nov. 4, 2024 |   

Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Pete Nguyen provided the following statement:

The Department of Defense is pleased to announce Maj. Gen. Suzanne Puanani Vares-Lum as the new director of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (DKI APCSS), effective early 2025.

Maj. Gen. Vares-Lum’s leadership as President of the East-West Center and her 34 years of service in the U.S. Army provide her with the vision and experience needed to be a transformational leader at this vital DoD institution in the Indo-Pacific region.

Retired Rear Adm. Pete Gumataotao departed the Center this last summer after more than six years of distinguished service as director of DKI APCSS.

DKI APCSS is the department’s premier institution dedicated to scholars and practitioners focused on the Indo-Pacific region.

Indo-Pacific

 Here is the link to the new Director's 2011 War College paper.

"Security in the Philippines and Indonesia: The U.S. Military Role in Southeast Asia"

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA565032.pdf

Here is an excerpt on JSOTF-P:

The use of the Joint Special Operations Task Force – Philippines (JSOTF-P) has been one of the most successful counterterrorism operations in the region. The model of using JSOTF-P in the Philippines, not as a kinetic force, but one of an advisor, and in a support role has proven to be very effective.101 The JSOTF-P has been conducting operations since 2002 and conducts counterterrorism support operations in the Sulu, Tawi Tawi, Basilan and Maguindanao provinces that make up the Autonomous Region of Muslims (AARM).102 After the first three years of U.S. Special Operations Forces in the Southern PI, there was a drastic reduction in kidnappings and beheadings along with the elimination of many ASG fighters.103 The low profile, non-kinetic employment of the JSOTF-P dispelled the notion that the U.S. was an occupying force, and demonstrated sensitivity to the Philippines’ colonial history and resentments. The model used was a success in Basilan and was exported to Jolo.104 According to a high-level Philippine government official, “If the U.S. forces leave the Philippines, it will be chaos in the Philippines. Without the help of the U.S. Government, the extremists would flourish. They are checked with the presence of the U.S. military. If the U.S. stays in the Philippines, JI and ASG will be in check.”105

9. This Retired General Settled the 9/11 Case. Then the Defense Secretary Took Charge.

Excerpts:

Now, a judge must decide whether Mr. Austin acted properly when he overruled her. The judge had agreed to hear arguments on the question this month. But in an order on Monday, he said he would rule “without oral argument” based on the lawyers’ written filings.

Mr. Austin also took away Ms. Escallier’s authority to reach plea agreements in the cases against the men accused of helping to plan and finance the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. She continues in her job in a nondescript office building in Alexandria, Va., with the same title but diminished responsibility.

Those who work in her offices have little to say about their boss, whose role is part judicial, part administrative. Some described her as aloof and humorless. She declined a request for an interview.

But U.S. military officers who worked with her say she was an outstanding military lawyer who steadily rose through the ranks from one demanding job to another in a career that took her to the Middle East and Africa.

Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr., who became the first overseer of the war court in 2003 after he retired, said Ms. Escallier held “some of the hardest jobs the Army ever had for lawyers and came out the other end as a one-star,” a brigadier general.

One of her last public remarks comes from a video in 2019 when, as a brigadier general, she advised junior military lawyers that their job may require telling a commander that a course of action is forbidden or unlawful.

This Retired General Settled the 9/11 Case. Then the Defense Secretary Took Charge.

Susan Escallier’s approval of a plea deal, one of the most important decisions in the history of Guantánamo Bay’s war court, has drawn attention to her role and the dysfunctional military commissions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/us/politics/susan-escallier-sept-11-plea-deal.html

Susan Escallier in July approved a prosecution plea deal with the man accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 plot, only to have it overturned by the defense secretary.Credit...Monica King/U.S. Army

By Carol Rosenberg

Carol Rosenberg reported from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Washington.

Nov. 4, 2024

Updated 4:07 p.m. ET

Susan Escallier excelled at being an Army lawyer. During her 32 years in uniform, she had jumped out of airplanes, deployed to Iraq three times and was a devoted, competitive runner. Then she suffered a stroke and had to retire in 2021.

So, a year ago, when she was offered a job as the Pentagon official in charge of the war court system at Guantánamo Bay, it was her ticket back to serving the military. It was a thankless job, largely unseen and even less understood.

For months, Ms. Escallier quietly oversaw years-old cases. Then she made one of the most important decisions in the court’s history, setting off events that have drawn attention to her role and to the dysfunctional military commissions.

On July 31, Ms. Escallier approved a prosecution plea deal with the man accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 plot, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and two other defendants. In exchange for pleading guilty, they would serve life in prison instead of someday possibly facing a death sentence.

Two days later, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III reversed her decision.

Now, a judge must decide whether Mr. Austin acted properly when he overruled her. The judge had agreed to hear arguments on the question this month. But in an order on Monday, he said he would rule “without oral argument” based on the lawyers’ written filings.

Mr. Austin also took away Ms. Escallier’s authority to reach plea agreements in the cases against the men accused of helping to plan and finance the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. She continues in her job in a nondescript office building in Alexandria, Va., with the same title but diminished responsibility.

Those who work in her offices have little to say about their boss, whose role is part judicial, part administrative. Some described her as aloof and humorless. She declined a request for an interview.

But U.S. military officers who worked with her say she was an outstanding military lawyer who steadily rose through the ranks from one demanding job to another in a career that took her to the Middle East and Africa.

Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr., who became the first overseer of the war court in 2003 after he retired, said Ms. Escallier held “some of the hardest jobs the Army ever had for lawyers and came out the other end as a one-star,” a brigadier general.

One of her last public remarks comes from a video in 2019 when, as a brigadier general, she advised junior military lawyers that their job may require telling a commander that a course of action is forbidden or unlawful.

What to Know: The Sept. 11 Case at Guantánamo Bay

Card 1 of 6The crime. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other defendants are facing charges in a U.S. military tribunal at Guantánamo Bay of aiding the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people. The charges carry the death penalty.

The trial. The defendants were arraigned in 2012, but the case has been mired in pretrial proceedings, much of them focused on the C.I.A.’s torture of the defendants. Learn more about why the trial hasn’t started.

The role of torture. In 2021, a military judge in Guantanamo's other capital case threw out key evidence because that prisoner was tortured. Defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 case are challenging the same type of evidence, and seeking to have either the case or possibility of a death penalty dismissed because of torture.

The plea deal. A Pentagon official authorized a plea agreement meant to resolve the case with lifetime sentences for Mohammed and two other defendants. But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin abruptly canceled the deal, reviving the possibility that they could someday face a death penalty trial. Defense lawyers are now challenging Austin’s rescindment as unlawful, or simply too late.

The defendants in the plea deal. Along with Mohammed, Walid bin Attash is accused of training two of the hijackers, researching flights and timetables and testing the ability of a passenger to hide a razor knife on flights. Mustafa al-Hawsawi is accused of helping some of the hijackers with finances and travel arrangements.

The other defendants. Ammar al-Baluchi is accused of transferring money from the United Arab Emirates to some of the hijackers in the United States. He chose not to join the plea agreement and could face trial alone. Ramzi bin al-Shibh was accused of helping to organize a cell of hijackers in Germany. In 2023, he was found medically incompetent to stand trial and removed from the case. He could someday face trial if his mental health is restored.

“You just have to stand strong and say, ‘Here’s what the law is,’” she said.

California Upbringing

Ms. Escallier grew up in the small town of Los Banos in central California, the daughter of a pharmacist and a real estate agent. She made the local newspaper for being on the high school honor roll in 1980, then again for obtaining a scholarship to attend the University of California at Berkeley.

Image

Ms. Escallier’s sophomore portrait in the 1981 Los Banos High School yearbook.

Another article recounted that after her freshman year in college, Ms. Escallier and a friend visited Los Angeles and landed stints as extras in a bar scene on “Days of Our Lives,” a soap opera that premiered the week she was born.

She went to Berkeley to study literature and to become a teacher, the scholarship announcement said. But by her junior year she had joined the Army R.O.T.C. Within a few years she discovered an Army program that sent promising officers to law school, in her case at Ohio State University.

Early in her career she was among the first female paratroopers assigned to an infantry unit, the 82nd Airborne Division’s Third Brigade Combat Team, said Col. Candice E. Frost, who was the first, in 1999.

“She took the hardest assignments in the Army over and over and over again,” said Colonel Frost, who was an intelligence officer and is now retired. “I can’t think of a JAG that has been in more combat situations than her,” she said, referring to judge advocates general.

Physical endurance also gained her respect in the Army, at a time when women were excluded from combat roles.

Ms. Escallier took up skydiving for sport in North Carolina with a rising star, David H. Petraeus, becoming “one of Petraeus’s jump buddies,” a former boss said. That was long before the future General Petraeus took command of the 101st Airborne and she traveled as a member of the legal team advising his “Screaming Eagles” in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“She struck me as a very impressive legal counsel and an equally impressive soldier and paratrooper,” General Petraeus said by email.

Battlefield Lawyering

On Sept. 11, 2001, Ms. Escallier was a major attending advance training at the JAG school in Charlottesville, Va., when word reached the classroom that America was under attack. The students were in their everyday uniforms, office attire, but would soon don combat uniforms, even when far from the battlefield.

In March 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, she was working the overnight shift at a desert encampment in Kuwait for Col. Richard O. Hatch, the senior lawyer at the 101st, when someone rolled three grenades into a tent there, killing two officers and wounding 14 troops.

Image

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division aiming weapons at detained Iraqi and Kuwaiti civilians immediately after a grenade attack on the brigade’s headquarters in Kuwait in 2003.Credit...Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images

First reports suggested it was an enemy attack. As it became clear that it was the work of a fellow soldier, a “fragging,” she summoned Army investigators to gather evidence for what became the court-martial of Sgt. Hasan K. Akbar.

Ms. Escallier recalled the episode in an oral history on the Iraq war compiled by the Army in 2006, referring to Sergeant Akbar as a “rat bastard.” Today, Sergeant Akbar sits on death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., his appeals exhausted in a military justice system that has not executed one of its own since 1961.

During the Iraq war, she handled a variety of legal issues, from reviewing proposed bomb targets to looking for signs of war crimes at a Saddam Hussein-era prison to working with local leaders.

Ms. Escallier was “gung-ho in everything that I had dealing with her,” Colonel Hatch recalled. “She was very professional but very much into all things Army.”

Rewarding Career

“If you look at her career path,” Colonel Hatch said, “she punched all the right tickets for a challenging career.”

Ms. Escallier did time as a prosecutor, as a court-martial judge and at an appeals court. There was also office work, as the commander of the U.S. Army Legal Services Agency and as the senior staff lawyer at the 101st Airborne and at III Corps — the role that she had said sometimes required a lawyer to “stand strong” and tell the commander that something was not allowed.

Image

Ms. Escallier, then a brigadier general, speaking at U.S. Army Reserve Legal Command training in 2019.Credit...Maj. Jeku Arce/U.S. Army Reserve Legal Command

Colonel Frost called her “incredibly methodical” in her analysis and decision making, “fearless but not reckless,” conscious about the safety of her troops, and a tough competitor in sports, which was expected of women. “Physically you had to consistently not only hang with the rest of the pack, but you couldn’t let them see you sweat,” she said.

So it came as a surprise to colleagues when one of their fittest soldiers had a stroke. More senior jobs went to other Army lawyers while she was recovering, essentially forcing her to retire in 2021 in the military’s up-or-out system.

She returned to California, helped care for a parent, sat on a board for a proposed memorial for female combat veterans and volunteered in nature conservancy projects in Yosemite National Park before she got the call to return to the Pentagon.

Quiet Return

The role of the convening authority is unique to the military. In the court-martial system, that person typically decides whether a soldier should be charged and with what crimes, what resources are necessary for the trial and, once convicted, whether a sentence should be reduced.

In her appointment letter on Aug. 21, 2023, Mr. Austin authorized her to “exercise her independent legal discretion with regard to judicial acts and other duties of the convening authority.”

The top lawyer in the Army, Lt. Gen. Stuart W. Risch, issued a special announcement that one of their own was returning to service. He described the core duty of the job in the first paragraph: “Brigadier General (retired) Escallier will oversee the Guantánamo war court, a position that includes approving plea deals and deciding whether prosecutors can seek death sentences.”

Image

The Sept. 11 case was more than a decade into pretrial proceedings when Ms. Escallier started on the job. Credit...Marisa Schwartz Taylor/The New York Times

He noted that she had a record of advising “on the most difficult of decisions in the most difficult of times, holding the rule of law in the highest regard.”

The Sept. 11 case was more than a decade into pretrial proceedings when Ms. Escallier started on the job. Prosecutors were also more than a year into plea negotiations, which her predecessor had authorized in March 2022. The Biden White House had been asked if it would sign off on certain conditions of their lifetime confinement, and had declined.

General Altenburg, who helped set up the commissions, said that as early as 2004, Pentagon officials had discussed whether to have a death penalty at the war court. Officials knew there would be opposition to not having capital punishment as the maximum penalty in the war crimes cases. But they also discussed the complex resources required to pursue a capital case and whether putting the prisoners to death would turn them into martyrs.

A Question of Legacy

The plea agreement stunned and divided some Sept. 11 families, and many members of the public. But others who had carefully followed the proceedings were less surprised. The case had bogged down in the new, untested war court, largely because of the decision to seek the death penalty against prisoners who had been tortured by the C.I.A.

Members of Congress responded with anger. Then the House Armed Services Committee ordered the White House to turn over relevant documents, and the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation.

In overruling Ms. Escallier, Mr. Austin left her with oversight of other aspects of the Sept. 11 case, including whether to fund experts for the legal team of the defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was found not competent to stand trial.

Image

Yet to be decided is whether Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III acted too late, and whether the deals Ms. Escallier signed are still valid.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

She still has the authority to approve plea agreements in the other two active prosecutions, for Al Qaeda’s bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole off Yemen in October 2000 and an affiliate terrorist organization’s attacks on a nightclub district in Bali, Indonesia, in 2002.

Yet to be decided is whether Mr. Austin acted too late, and whether the deals she signed are still valid. If so, Ms. Escallier would go down in history as the Pentagon official who signed away the possibility of an eventual death penalty sentence, and the possibility of years of appeals.

In exchange, she and prosecutors settled for “judicial certainty,” detailed guilty pleas with life sentences that cannot be appealed.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Carol Rosenberg reports on the wartime prison and court at Guantánamo Bay. She has been covering the topic since the first detainees were brought to the U.S. base in 2002. More about Carol Rosenberg

10. Meta Permits Its A.I. Models to Be Used for U.S. Military Purposes

Meta Permits Its A.I. Models to Be Used for U.S. Military Purposes

The shift in policy, covering government agencies and contractors working on national security, is intended to promote “responsible and ethical” innovations, the company said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/technology/meta-ai-military.html

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, in September. Meta supports open-source artificial intelligence models that other developers, companies and governments can freely copy and distribute.Credit...David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

By Mike Isaac

Reporting from San Francisco

Nov. 4, 2024, 7:57 p.m. ET

Sign up for the On Tech newsletter.   Get our best tech reporting from the week. Get it sent to your inbox.

Meta will allow U.S. government agencies and contractors working on national security to use its artificial intelligence models for military purposes, the company said on Monday, in a shift from its policy that prohibited the use of its technology for such efforts.

Meta said that it would make its A.I. models, called Llama, available to federal agencies and that it was working with defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen as well as defense-focused tech companies including Palantir and Anduril. The Llama models are “open source,” which means the technology can be freely copied and distributed by other developers, companies and governments.

Meta’s move is an exception to its “acceptable use policy,” which forbade the use of the company’s A.I. software for “military, warfare, nuclear industries,” among other purposes.

In a blog post on Monday, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said the company now backed “responsible and ethical uses” of the technology that supported the United States and “democratic values” in a global race for A.I. supremacy.

“Meta wants to play its part to support the safety, security and economic prosperity of America — and of its closest allies too,” Mr. Clegg wrote. He added that “widespread adoption of American open source A.I. models serves both economic and security interests.”

A Meta spokesman said the company would share its technology with members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance: Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand in addition to the United States. Bloomberg earlier reported that Meta’s technology would be shared with the Five Eyes countries.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been working to spread its A.I. software to as many third-party developers as possible, as rivals like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Anthropic vie to lead the A.I. race. Meta, which had lagged some of those companies in A.I., decided to open source its code to catch up. As of August, the company’s software has been downloaded more than 350 million times.

Meta is likely to face scrutiny for its move. Military applications of Silicon Valley tech products have proved contentious in recent years, with employees at Microsoft, Google and Amazon vocally protesting some of the deals that their companies reached with military contractors and defense agencies.

In addition, Meta has come under scrutiny for its open-source approach to A.I. While OpenAI and Google argue that the tech behind their A.I. software is too powerful and susceptible to misuse to release into the wild, Meta has said A.I. can be improved and made safer only by allowing millions of people to look at the code and examine it.

Meta’s executives have been concerned that the U.S. government and others may harshly regulate open-source A.I., two people with knowledge of the company said. Those fears were heightened last week after Reuters reported that research institutions with ties to the Chinese government had used Llama to build software applications for the People’s Liberation Army. Meta executives took issue with the report, and told Reuters that the Chinese government was not authorized to use Llama for military purposes.

In his blog post on Monday, Mr. Clegg said the U.S. government could use the technology to track terrorist activities and improve cybersecurity across American institutions. He also repeatedly said that using Meta’s A.I. models would help the United States remain a technological step ahead of other nations.

“The goal should be to create a virtuous circle, helping the United States retain its technological edge while spreading access to A.I. globally and ensuring the resulting innovations are responsible and ethical, and support the strategic and geopolitical interests of the United States and its closest allies,” he said.

Meta’s A.I.

In Battle Over A.I., Meta Decides to Give Away Its Crown Jewels

May 18, 2023

Meta, in Its Biggest A.I. Push, Places Smart Assistants Across Its Apps

April 18, 2024

How A.I. Made Mark Zuckerberg Popular Again in Silicon Valley

May 29, 2024

Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent for The Times based in San Francisco. He regularly covers Facebook and Silicon Valley. More about Mike Isaac

11. Ukraine needs 500,000 more troops amid slowing mobilization, senior lawmaker says

As we have heard from the experts, this is the achilles heel for Ukraine.

Ukraine needs 500,000 more troops amid slowing mobilization, senior lawmaker says

kyivindependent.com · by Sonya Bandouil · November 3, 2024

Roman Kostenko, secretary of the parliamentary defense committee, stated on Nov. 2 that in his view it is necessary to mobilize 500,000 citizens, given current battlefield conditions.

Speaking on the "Pryamiy" TV channel, he noted that mobilization rates dropped in September after an initially steady pace following the mobilization strengthening law in April.

While the goal had been to draft 200,000, Kostenko believes this falls short, aligning with former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny’s earlier recommendation for 500,000 recruits.

In December 2023, President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the military's proposal for large-scale mobilization, estimating it would cost Ukraine 500 billion hryvnias.

Currently, plans are set to mobilize an additional 160,000 men, adding to the 1.05 million already serving.

Ukraine has been struggling to mobilize enough soldiers for the front line to compensate for troop casualties and the need to rotate soldiers who have been fighting since the onset of the full-scale war.

Ukraine calls on Moscow to provide list of POWs ready for swap

Ukrainian human rights commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said on Nov. 3 that Ukraine remains willing to receive its citizens and blamed Russia for slowing down the exchanges.

The Kyiv IndependentOlena Goncharova

kyivindependent.com · by Sonya Bandouil · November 3, 2024

12. The Next World War Starts Here (Northeast Asia)

Ominous.

Excerpts:

As strange as it might seem in this moment, the next U.S. administration’s strategy is hamstrung by some old history. Japan and South Korea — which have powerful militaries, and in Japan’s case one that’s recently embarked on a major buildup — are haunted by long-running disputes from the previous century that make their entente feel fragile. It’s an open question whether it can last, even as the threats that are pulling them together grow more serious.

Over the hills that ring Seoul lies the most heavily militarized region in the world. The DMZ separates this vibrant capital from a nuclear-armed hermit state ruled by an unpredictable autocrat that weighs heavily on Korean minds.

The view from Tokyo, a quick flight across the Sea of Japan, is as unreassuring these days.

...

The wartime history in East Asia feels far more alive and relevant to the future than in Europe. Beijing, naturally, exploits it. The Chinese government has managed to transfer animosity toward Japan to the next generation. A 10-year-old Japanese boy was stabbed to death in September while walking to school in Shanghai on the anniversary of Japan’s invasion of China, the latest in a string of attacks on Japanese in the country.

Beijing has another card to play against both South Korea and Japan. Both countries are deeply integrated with China economically, which Beijing has used to pressure them.

As much as the U.S. wants their friendship to build, Japan and South Korea will look primarily to Washington for reassurances about American power and its commitment to them individually.

“Beijing wants to send a signal that the U.S. is unable to support treaty allies in the region, and to send a signal to Taiwan, to portray us as hollow allies,” Pottinger said. “Xi has led himself into believing that America is in irrevocable decline and that China and its allies will paper the world in chaos.”

The Next World War Starts Here

Politico

An aggressive China and Russia’s war on Ukraine brought South Korea and Japan closer — with lots of American help. Keeping them together to deter Beijing will be one of the most important foreign policy tasks for Harris or Trump.

Japan and South Korea are haunted by long-running disputes from the previous century that make their entente feel fragile. | Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images

11/04/2024 10:04 AM EST

Matthew Kaminski is editor-at-large, writing regularly for POLITICO Magazine on American and global affairs. He’s the founding editor of POLITICO Europe, which launched in 2015, and former editor-in-chief of POLITICO. He previously worked for the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, based in Kyiv, Brussels, Paris and New York.

SEOUL — East Asia is the most serious threat to world peace. An eruption here is hotter and bigger than anything the Middle East or Europe would conceivably produce.

The Biden administration leaves behind a strong diplomatic legacy in Asia, in contrast to its failure in Afghanistan and mixed record in Ukraine and the Middle East. It built webs of security alliances across the region to deter China and forged what has proved elusive for decades — a rapprochement, if not warm friendship, between historical foes and America’s closest Asian allies, South Korea and Japan.

Huge challenges loom for Joe Biden’s successor here. The scale of the forces lining up against each other in the northern Pacific is terrifying. China is forging a deeper alliance of American adversaries in North Korea and Russia, making threats against Taiwan and staking stronger claims on territory in the South China Sea. America’s actions in other geopolitical theaters — above all Ukraine — will reverberate in East Asia.

As strange as it might seem in this moment, the next U.S. administration’s strategy is hamstrung by some old history. Japan and South Korea — which have powerful militaries, and in Japan’s case one that’s recently embarked on a major buildup — are haunted by long-running disputes from the previous century that make their entente feel fragile. It’s an open question whether it can last, even as the threats that are pulling them together grow more serious.

Over the hills that ring Seoul lies the most heavily militarized region in the world. The DMZ separates this vibrant capital from a nuclear-armed hermit state ruled by an unpredictable autocrat that weighs heavily on Korean minds.

The view from Tokyo, a quick flight across the Sea of Japan, is as unreassuring these days.

Russian military planes are breaching the country’s northwestern coastal airspace repeatedly, a reminder that Tokyo and Moscow have an unresolved, nearly 80-year-old territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands that leaves them technically in a state of war. China disputes Japan’s claim over the Senkaku Islands in the south. In the first ever known incursion, Chinese military aircraft flew through Japanese airspace in August. Chinese and Russian military ships together passed near Japanese waters in September during a joint exercise. North Korea openly considers Japan a foe and occasionally sends a missile over the country.

“Japan is now facing off against North Korea, Russia and China and that makes for a severe security environment,” Minoru Kihara, Japan’s defense minister until the government changed last month, told me in an interview in Tokyo. “We feel a strong sense of crisis considering that such incidents took place in a short period of time.”

The war in Ukraine shifted plates in Asia. After Vladimir Putin launched the invasion, Xi Jinping backed him strongly against a unified NATO — making that European conflict a test of China’s superpower ambitions. Japan is “paying close attention to China’s alliance with Russia,” Kihara added. Ukraine also brought Moscow and North Korea closer. Kim Jong Un sent thousands of his soldiers to fight there last month in return, presumably, for military technology and other goodies.

‘Drinking buddies’

The answer to this robust authoritarian axis à trois is the trilateral relationship with Seoul and Tokyo that Washington spent years trying to bring to life.

While both countries are protected by the U.S. through treaties going back over 70 years — and while both share common enemies — South Korea and Japan have long been estranged. During World War II, Japan occupied South Korea, enslaving Koreans to work in their factories and sexually service their soldiers. Japan has apologized and paid reparations to Koreans. But this remains an open nerve — and badly strained political and military ties.

During his time as the commodore of a squadron of guided missiles destroyers in the 1990s, retired Adm. Jim Stavridis recalled that during joint exercises the U.S. had to keep Japanese and South Korean vessels far away from each other — or “you’d get the on-the-sea version of ‘road rage’.” It is as if France and Germany had remained frosty after World War II. Under that scenario, Europe wouldn’t have NATO or the EU.

The Xi era in China changed Japanese attitudes about security. Ukraine is the more recent accelerant.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who stepped down this autumn, elaborated a line used by his foreign minister — “First Ukraine, then Taiwan” — to suggest the war could come here: “Ukraine may be the East Asia of tomorrow.” Russia’s biggest supporter China is the one power today openly challenging the U.S.-led order, and the only one with the ability potentially to do so.

Japan responded by unveiling plans to double defense spending — from 1 percent of its GDP to 2 percent by 2027. The budget has already gone up more than 40 percent since 2022. Under its constitution, Japan can only defend itself and had neglected the military. A previous Japanese leader, Shinzo Abe, started to change things in the 2010s. Japan built out a formidable navy and added modern weaponry. By the time the current expansion plans are in place, Japan is expected to be the world’s third-largest spender on defense, after the U.S. and China. Germany, by contrast, is reversing plans to boost defense spending.

Even for all that spending, “China is outpacing Japan’s increase of defense budget and they have four times more than we do,” said Kihara, the former defense minister. “It is difficult for us to face China on our own.”

South Korea is an obvious ally for Japan. Kishida was open to closer relations, believing Japan needed friends to resist China. What made that possible was the presidential election in March of 2022, a month after the invasion of Ukraine, that brought Yoon Suk Yeol to the presidential palace in Seoul.

The left and right swap power every five or 10 years here. The left tends to seek reconciliation with North Korea and dislike Japan. A man of the right, Yoon brought more hawkish views and something else: a genuine affection for Japan going back to his father’s time studying and teaching there.

He had his first chance to meet Kishida at the Madrid NATO summit in July of that year. “Yoon hugged him,” recalled a former Korean official who was there. Kishida was taken aback. Yoon is outgoing, Kishida circumspect. “Asian leaders don’t do hugs, unless they are communists.”

From that awkward beginning came a relationship that this former official described as “drinking buddies.”

The U.S. had been looking for an opening like this for years. Kurt Campbell, the deputy secretary of State, pushed a rapprochement strategy from Washington. Dozens of trilateral meetings followed where the U.S. did “the thing that’s unusual for America — step back and let everyone else talk,” said Rahm Emanuel, America’s ambassador in Tokyo.

Little was straightforward. Korean and Japanese ministers rarely meet each other one-on-one. Korea’s defense minister hadn’t come to Tokyo for 15 years before this July. If the Japanese defense chief goes to Seoul next year, as planned, that would be the first time in nine years. The U.S. has to play mediator and counselor to both sides.

“History is history, brother,” Emanuel said. “It has a pull on emotions and it has a pull on psychology.

“The U.S. plays an important role in keeping the plates spinning,” he added.

When Japan was hosting the G7 summit in Hiroshima in May of 2023, Washington pressed to have Korea invited. During the meeting, Yoon and Kishida went together with their spouses to pay respects at a memorial to the Korean victims of the 1945 atomic bombing of the city. It was a first of sorts and created a lasting image.

The culmination of the courtship was the Camp David summit in August last year. Yoon, Kishida and Biden hailed a new era and announced various agreements, including on sharing data about missiles and a major exercise. “This is an all hands on deck moment in the region,” said a senior administration official in Washington, who asked for anonymity.

“When you have trust in us and in the president, you don’t do the bare minimum,” Emanuel said. “They went beyond their comfort zone. In a world consumed by war and grievance, history can catch up to the present and shape it. Camp David showed dialogue and diplomacy shaped the future.

“Now,” Emanuel continued, “the goal is to institutionalize it in the DNA of governments.”

‘Not allies’

The fact is this rapprochement is far from a done deal. Leaders in Seoul and Tokyo sound at best cautionary notes.

“I’m very pessimistic,” said a senior Japanese official who was granted anonymity to discuss the matter. The Koreans “swing from one extreme to the other.” Yoon’s opponents have called him a sellout to Japan, riding him hard on the rapprochement.

Another foreign ministry official in Tokyo recalled working visits to Seoul during the lead-up to the Camp David summit. “They would yell at us during negotiations over what happened in the war and when the meeting’s over, they say, ‘no hard feelings, let’s go out for drinks’,” this official said. “The next day they yell at us some more. It’s due to the domestic political pressure they’re under.”

In Korea, this issue isn’t purely a matter of partisan politics. Distrust crosses generations and goes deep.

While Korea has agreed to joint naval and aerial exercises, Japanese forces aren’t welcome on Korean soil. “We prefer to have them somewhere else,” deadpanned a senior Korean official.

Asked whether Japan was now an ally, this official paused and said, “Don’t think so. Partner is enough.”

The recurring pain points involve Korean demands for reparations and more apologies. The Japanese reply that these demands were settled already — and want to stay away from Korea’s messy internal politics.

Yes and no. Korea’s enthusiasm for the rapprochement may pass with President’s Yoon’s departure from office. Yet Japan’s own politics are tortured by history as well, which hinders its ability to build deeper relationships with Korea and other nations across Asia that fear China’s rise.

Japan’s 21st century awakening on defense contrasts with its former wartime ally in Germany. There is another contrast with Germany that is less complimentary. “The curious thing,” Ian Buruma wrote in his book Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, “much of what attracted [the] Japanese to Germany before the war — Prussian authoritarianism, romantic nationalism, pseudo-scientific racialism — had lingered in Japan while becoming distinctly unfashionable in Germany.”

No Japanese politician, Buruma continued, has “ever gone down on his knees, as Willy Brandt did in the old Warsaw ghetto, to apologize for historical crimes.”

The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for all but four years since 1955 and will almost certainly continue to despite losing its majority in the past weekend’s elections, has a vocal nationalist right wing. Many mornings outside LDP headquarters, trucks with loudspeakers and flags blare nationalist speeches.

These historical issues might have been settled long ago. The U.S. can share some blame, deciding, in order to get a peace deal done, to let the Japanese emperor stay as head of state but give up his divine right to rule. Japan’s military kept its flags and symbols. Germany was wiped clean of the Nazi regime and its vestiges.

“We didn’t really grow up,” said one foreign ministry official that I spoke to in Tokyo.

Yasukuni Shrine is a large complex in central Tokyo near the imperial palace. The shrine honors Japan’s war dead, among whom are 14 war criminals who committed atrocities in World War II. A large museum on the site treats Japan’s wartime histories with reverence. Models of a kamikaze plane and submarine are displayed. Exhibits for the last war suggest the Japanese were fighting Western imperialism in Asia. It’s as if a museum in Berlin displayed Nazi flags and honored Nazi leaders.

Whenever an LDP politician visits Yasukuni, Koreans and Chinese have an excuse to complain. Kihara, the defense minister, went on Aug. 15, the 79th anniversary of Japan’s surrender. He was unapologetic, saying that “those who had sacrificed should be given tribute” and that his own relatives worship there. “It is unfortunate that this has been politicized,” he said.

Just don’t call it Asian NATO

These two awkward neighbors need each other and America needs them to get along to marshal a credible response to the China-led threesome.

The security anxieties in the region are bound to grow. If Beijing acts on its threats and succeeds, the fall of Taiwan would be a huge economic and political blow to the U.S. It would also put the rest of Asia in play, so to speak. Add to that the reemergence of Russia in the region and the heightening of the North Korean threat. The war in Ukraine is sputtering along, and the outcome there might hang on what happens in the U.S. Tuesday.

The Biden diplomatic push of the past couple years in East Asia is intended to build out enough military muscle and overlapping alliances to create a kind of NATO for the region — with China in the role of the old Soviet Union. You just can’t call it NATO. The South Koreans and others don’t want to be formally allied with Japan. To be more like Germany, Japan would also become an equal partner to America and others.

The U.S. isn’t ready to reopen the postwar security deal that keeps Japan in a kind of arrested development. The current Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba used to muse about an Asian NATO and reopening the status of forces agreement between the U.S. and Japan. He had to disavow the idea minutes after winning power in late September.

Those political issues are a distraction, U.S. officials say. In practical terms, however, a lot has already changed. The region is arming up, passing Europe in terms of defense expenditures a decade ago. As they spend more, Japan’s terrible demographics limit their ability to add manpower. The money is going to buy hundreds of American long-range Tomahawk missiles, integrated antimissile systems and unmanned defenses. Japan’s navy could be “the swing vote on effective deterrence” over Taiwan, said Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser in the Trump White House. Japan wants to develop weapons with the U.S. and train its troops there.

Earlier this year, the U.S. upgraded the commander of forces in Japan from a two-star to a three-star general officer and pledged to build a new command and control center — which Emanuel called “the largest change in our force structure” and “the most important thing we have done here in 60 years.”

Other baby steps are planned. The trio is talking about putting in place some institutional roots. Perhaps a secretariat for the trilateral relationship — that’s not exactly a second coming of NATO.

The wartime history in East Asia feels far more alive and relevant to the future than in Europe. Beijing, naturally, exploits it. The Chinese government has managed to transfer animosity toward Japan to the next generation. A 10-year-old Japanese boy was stabbed to death in September while walking to school in Shanghai on the anniversary of Japan’s invasion of China, the latest in a string of attacks on Japanese in the country.

Beijing has another card to play against both South Korea and Japan. Both countries are deeply integrated with China economically, which Beijing has used to pressure them.

As much as the U.S. wants their friendship to build, Japan and South Korea will look primarily to Washington for reassurances about American power and its commitment to them individually.

“Beijing wants to send a signal that the U.S. is unable to support treaty allies in the region, and to send a signal to Taiwan, to portray us as hollow allies,” Pottinger said. “Xi has led himself into believing that America is in irrevocable decline and that China and its allies will paper the world in chaos.”

Politico

13. The Self-Defense of American Democracy

We are a federal democratic republic.

Conclusion:

The United States faces strong headwinds from cultural conflict, as well as deliberate efforts by domestic and foreign actors to sow divisions, spread disinformation, and create distrust in the system. If federalism is unable to prevent policy paralysis in Congress or eliminate the risk of political violence, it can at least fill the policymaking vacuum through advances at the state level. And crucially, it can also provide a defense against a sudden slide toward tyranny. Ultimately, a federal system that endows states with substantial authority can act as a powerful custodian of democracy, one that goes well beyond the mere involvement of state officials in the electoral system. For those who fear a frayed electoral process, or a leader who could pose serious threats to the future of American democracy, the independence of states will be pivotal in keeping the country resilient.

The Self-Defense of American Democracy

How Federalism Can Protect Against Election Meddling—and Prevent Tyranny at the Top

By Jenna Bednar and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar

November 5, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by The Robust Federation: Principles of Design · November 5, 2024

Many Americans are afraid of what the aftermath of the election could bring. Alongside familiar concerns about the country’s priorities, reflected in the candidates’ differing policy prescriptions, they worry that one of the candidates may refuse to accept the results as legitimate. With the memory of the violent January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol still fresh, many voters fear that the peaceful transfer of power will again be under attack. Heightening these concerns is the likelihood that the election will be decided by a comparatively tiny number of votes in a few swing states—raising the possibility that state-level challenges could throw the integrity of the election into doubt.

Indeed, since 2020, the crucial role of the states in presidential elections has become a point of intense scrutiny. In one sense this is understandable: with its 50 different states, each with its own election rules and overseen by its own election officials, the U.S. electoral system is unlike that of nearly all other democracies; even most federations have centralized election commissions that set electoral rules for provinces to administer. Some have argued that this variation and decentralization could, in the event of another contested result, pose a danger to American democracy itself: indeed, many may fear that a single, partisan-controlled state could potentially try to thwart the election outcome. These anxieties have led to calls to centralize the rules, processes, and even the administration of elections.

But this view ignores the vital ways that states can also safeguard American democracy—including in a contested presidential election. The U.S. Constitution grants states wide latitude over areas of law and administration not explicitly accorded to the federal government: as of 2023, state and local jurisdictions had a total of 19 million employees relative to the federal government’s three million civilian employees; they also command the vast bulk of the country’s law enforcement resources, organize and oversee all elections, and retain the investigative and prosecutorial capacity to clear up election-related concerns. These prerogatives are a core feature of the United States, and because the states must coexist with a large federal government with formidable powers of its own, conflict over state authority has long been a major theme in U.S. history.

But precisely because of state powers, it is actually much harder for any candidate or party to steal a presidential election. Even if the outcome hinges on a single jurisdiction, those seeking to overturn the result would need to muster support from a variety of state and local governments, and these, in turn, could use their power to mount strenuous resistance to such efforts. In addition to simply upholding an independent election process, states could, in extreme circumstances, take further steps to obstruct a partisan effort to interfere with the election process, for example, by filing lawsuits, suspending cooperation with the federal government, or mobilizing local constituencies to oppose efforts to thwart democracy.

This does not mean that efforts to delegitimize the results of the election—or the possibility that antidemocratic forces may try to mount a sustained attack on the electoral system—should be taken lightly. As voters learned in early January of 2021, even when state public officials resist a partisan call to reverse election outcomes, a further vulnerability comes at the point of aggregation: in Congress, where the electoral votes are counted. But it does suggest that there are multiple ways that states can uphold democratic institutions, even in moments of extreme stress. As a crucial feature of U.S. democracy, this latent capacity could help constrain reckless attempts to undermine the mechanics of the election and the peaceful transfer of power.

TAKING ON TYRANNY

Along with other powers granted to them, the states’ authority to hold and oversee elections did not come about by chance. It goes back to the origins of U.S. federalism in the eighteenth century. In The Federalist Papers, no. 45, James Madison wrote that “the powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” As Madison saw it, the federal government’s primary role was limited to national security, conducting trade with foreign entities, and ensuring the free movement of goods and people between the states. The states, as the original political units on which the republic was built, retained control of the elections. More than two centuries later, this account of the state-federal balance continues to remain broadly true.

For the founders, allowing states to maintain a preponderance of power provided a “double security” against tyranny; if fragmentation of the national government was insufficient to prevent a tyrant, the resistance from the states would both enfeeble the would-be tyrant and, by sounding a cry of alarm, cause the public to turn away from the despot. The states’ capacity to govern also provided an important spur to policy experimentation and innovation, allowing them to try out measures that could, if successful, be adapted at the federal level. In recent years, as gridlock in Congress has often slowed federal policymaking and the U.S. Supreme Court continues to rein in the power of the executive branch, states have become even more important policy actors. All of which helps explain why federalism continues to be a core feature of American democracy and how states can safeguard the democratic process.

Nonetheless, since 2020, state control of elections has begun to seem more of a vulnerability. Following that election, Trump and his allies attempted to pressure states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan not to certify their state election results. Although the states did not cave to this pressure and none of the challenges succeeded, the turmoil caused some observers to argue that control of elections needs to be centralized. Indeed, many citizens now harbor doubts about the competence of state officials to uphold democracy.

For the founders, the states’ preponderance of power could enfeeble a would-be tyrant.

In particular, the diverse ways that states choose to administer elections have become a central focus of those who seek to question the legitimacy of electoral processes. At a time of heightened anxiety about American democracy in general, states’ broad authority to hold elections according to their own rules—including deciding ballot design, polling locations and hours, and the criteria that candidates have to meet to appear on the ballot and voters to vote—has contributed to public uncertainty and politically motivated attacks. In a system that relies on local administration, so the argument goes, any local official might fall prey to the corrupting temptation of money or power—or, as Madison feared, to the allure of a would-be despot. Conditioned by partisan commentary to anticipate such corruption, many voters may come to distrust the official vote count, suspecting fraud in the voting rolls, including voting by noncitizens or even by the deceased.

Yet centralized control of elections, policies, and government capacity could introduce its own vulnerabilities. Although it might in principle seem efficient, giving a federal election agency authority over the election process, for example, would mean that those seeking to undermine voting outcomes would need to capture only a single authority. Even short of an actual coup, such a system would also be more vulnerable to election hacking, since a concentrated attack might have nationwide consequences.

In fact, the existing system offers a number of important democratic protections. For one, state control ensures that the United States’ presidential election is a complex, multitiered, and multimonth process—encompassing voting, counting, and certification—the bulk of which falls to state officials. This process was further clarified by the 2022 amendments to the Electoral Count Act, which redefined the certification of electoral votes and affirmed the vice president’s role as purely ceremonial. For another, the sheer number of disparate state and local jurisdictions that would need to be manipulated makes any attempt to steal an election much harder.

It is also essential to remember the resilience demonstrated by state election officials in 2020. Despite intense pressures, such as the Trump administration’s attempts to influence the Republican members of Michigan’s Board of Canvassers not to certify the state’s vote count, no state officials altered the election’s outcome. Rigorous review processes failed to uncover any significant instances of voter fraud, and the integrity of the counting and certification was maintained by public officials across the board. As U.S. Election Commissioner Ben Hovland described it to one of us, after visiting countless election sites across the country, he and his fellow commissioners are struck by the integrity of local officials; even those who are partisan-elected overwhelmingly put country above party.

These state and local officials are democracy’s backbone. Even so, in light of preparations that have already been made in some quarters to challenge the outcome of the current election, it is fair to ask whether these officials would be enough to withstand a more concerted antidemocratic attack.

THE ROGUE STATE RISK

When rioters assaulted the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote, they introduced the shocking prospect that the outcome of a U.S. election might be thwarted by political violence. But they also raised the specter of another kind of threat to American democracy: what if the federal system becomes so splintered that it causes a state to throw an election to a preferred candidate—as supporters of the insurrection hoped? Traditionally, state party officials, bound by democratic norms, would honor the electoral outcome, and they ultimately did in late 2020 and early January 2021. But the insurrection put the American public on high alert. Although the system held that time, it should not depend on the heroism of local and state election officials who put democracy above party.

What might another extreme attack on the U.S. electoral system look like? Because of the decentralized electoral system, an individual state does have the power to delay or subvert the process of appointing electors—perhaps by alleging voting irregularities—even in the event of a clear popular-vote victory for a certain candidate in that state. In Moore v. Harper (2023), the U.S. Supreme Court underscored the continuing relevance of existing state law governing the allocation of electoral votes—procedures that presumably can be changed only by following the rules laid out in state constitutions. Nonetheless, it is possible that committed partisans in a given state could find a way to frustrate the appointment of duly elected slates of electors from that state. In the event that such a reckless effort were poised to reverse the outcome of the presidential race, the resulting crisis could spur the remaining states to take extraordinary measures to protect the democratic order.

In a 2022 essay in Foreign Affairs, we argued that federalism is a balancing act, in which national and state powers are counterposed. No single government—whether the national executive or any state government—can exert control over the whole electoral process. That implies that just as federalism guards against the tyranny made possible through overt centralization, federalism also has counterweights to prevent individual state governments from wrecking the whole. Although the Constitution empowers states to run elections, it also allows for congressional intervention. One example is the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and particularly, the preclearance requirement it included for jurisdictions with racist pasts. The Help America Vote Act of 2002, passed with bipartisan support following the problematic 2000 presidential election, created new national standards for election administration, including upgraded voting equipment and voting systems, provisional voting procedures, and the creation and maintenance of statewide voter-registration databases.

Indeed, Congress had already exerted its authority in the Electoral Count Act in 1887, which institutionalized standards to reduce the extent of reliance on democratic norms. For the first time, the United States had relatively precise rules and deadlines governing each state’s determination of its slate of electors. The act was designed to counter the problems of the 1876 election, when some states submitted competing slates; that election required a compromise to settle on a winner, and the cost was undoing many of the Reconstruction Acts.

In 2022, the Electoral Count Reform Act, passed with bipartisan support, strengthened the original act by creating a system of judicial oversight, where courts have the final say on the lawful counting of votes and determination of a slate of electors. These rulings are binding on Congress, insulating members of Congress from the potential influence of machinating governors, who might otherwise seek to pressure their state’s representatives to lodge unfounded objections during the electoral-vote-counting process in Congress. And states cannot change the rules of how votes will be counted after the election has begun.

STATES OF EMERGENCY

But the capacity to prevent a rogue state from thwarting the U.S. election process goes beyond Congress. As the 2020 election demonstrated, federalism can also bolster the integrity of elections precisely because of the power that states themselves have. In an extreme case, a fatally flawed federal election or tendentious effort to disqualify legitimately elected senators or representatives could trigger a strong enough backlash from remaining states—involving litigation and lack of cooperation with the federal government—to make governing more costly for those who would seek to wrest control of the government.

Consider the unlikely but possible event that a candidate or party attempts to subvert the legitimate outcome of an election by taking advantage of any remaining loopholes in the counting of electoral votes. For example, the Speaker of the House might try to argue, without support from any court, that recently enacted reforms to the electoral-vote-counting process still leave the Speaker some room to decide whether the election was “free and fair”; or the Speaker might hold that those reforms are unconstitutional and that a different process should be followed to determine whether votes from certain slates of electors from key states should be counted. Suppose further that such a maneuver managed to cast doubt on enough electoral votes for the election to be decided by the House of Representatives.

Federalism can also prevent individual state governments from wrecking the whole.

In this extreme case, states could conceivably respond by leveraging their own governing capacity—by opting out of or slowing cooperative federalism arrangements, for example, or by bringing reasonable lawsuits against the federal government—to raise concerns about the specific democracy-related question at issue. This does not mean that states would be unconstrained in their use of such powers: state and federal courts might well hear certain disputes about the balance of state and federal power and the purposes for which state power can be used, for example. Lawyers and scholars would pass judgment, and cross-partisan pro-democracy coalitions would need to emerge to support and legitimize the states’ contentious actions.

In practice, of course, the dynamics of a state’s role in the federal system depends on who is in charge of what office or branch. It is much more difficult, if not impossible, to reverse an election outcome if the would-be insurrectionists lack allies in the state leadership. In the upcoming election, five battleground states—Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin—have Democratic governors, for example, even though Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature in Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and the upper house in Pennsylvania. In cases of divided government, the legislature and executive oversee one another, raising a public alarm at any sign of malfeasance. And since they are battlegrounds, all these states also have a relatively split public—one that would most likely generate an outcry if either party seeks to pervert the electoral process.

The larger reality is that the democratic guardrails on which the U.S. election system depends—a system whose health and stability have global implications—remain crucially with the states: not with Congress, and not with local election boards.

SAFER, NOT FAILSAFE

Despite deep institutional commitments to democracy and the rule of law in the United States, the last decade has provided ample evidence that institutions can be directly threatened. And they may be especially vulnerable during the high stakes of the presidential election process. It should also be noted that in recent presidential contests, objections to the certification of the electoral vote have come from members of both major parties, with several Democratic members of Congress raising opposition after the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. Federalism is not a panacea, but it does offer a measure of protection against antidemocratic forces that seek to pervert the will of the people. The genuinely federated system that Americans often take for granted makes it far harder to steal an election from the top by providing counterweights to potential rogue states and by creating an environment in which state-level experimentation can lead to broader practices that better serve the public.

Of course, state authority can also work against public confidence in elections. The proliferation of partisan gerrymandering in many states, for example, and the range of electoral procedures between states and even from one county to another, can lead voters to mistrust the system. The wide diversity in the way that individual states design and run their elections may also raise doubts, particularly in an era of intense polarization. Certain states, for example, may offer no-excuse absentee ballots or same-day registration where others do not; some may offer much more expansive early voting than others, and some may permanently disenfranchise citizens convicted of felonies where others do not. When faced with this variation, it is natural that many Americans would interpret it in terms of inequity and injustice.

But every element of this state-level variation is consequential and also has the potential, as with other areas of policy, to bring innovation to the system. For example, some states have addressed partisan gerrymandering by appointing nonpartisan or balanced citizen or judicial panels to draw political boundaries. In the backdrop of widespread dissatisfaction with the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College, Nebraska and Maine allocate their electoral votes at the more fine-grained district level. Other experiments are less noticeable but nonetheless consequential: by increasing early voting, for example, states have observed changes in who participates in elections, including those previously left out of the process. In a recent study, the MIT Election Data and Science Lab found that from 2010 to 2022, almost every state improved its management of elections among 18 indicators, from percentage of mail ballots rejected to voter turnout. The only one that did not improve was North Dakota, which already was ranked highest among the states.

The United States faces strong headwinds from cultural conflict, as well as deliberate efforts by domestic and foreign actors to sow divisions, spread disinformation, and create distrust in the system. If federalism is unable to prevent policy paralysis in Congress or eliminate the risk of political violence, it can at least fill the policymaking vacuum through advances at the state level. And crucially, it can also provide a defense against a sudden slide toward tyranny. Ultimately, a federal system that endows states with substantial authority can act as a powerful custodian of democracy, one that goes well beyond the mere involvement of state officials in the electoral system. For those who fear a frayed electoral process, or a leader who could pose serious threats to the future of American democracy, the independence of states will be pivotal in keeping the country resilient.

• JENNA BEDNAR is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Faculty Director of UMICH Votes and Democratic Engagement at the University of Michigan and a member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the author of The Robust Federation: Principles of Design.
• MARIANO-FLORENTINO CUÉLLAR is President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was previously a justice on the California Supreme Court. He is the author of Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies.

Foreign Affairs · by The Robust Federation: Principles of Design · November 5, 2024

14. How the War in Ukraine Could Go Nuclear—by Accident

Excerpts:

To truly safeguard its nuclear arsenal, Russia would need to end its onslaught against Ukraine and the increasingly complicated cross-border conflict that its invasion has generated. But with no instant end to the war in sight, more immediate steps must urgently be taken. In the near term, Russian nuclear warheads must be removed from any base that is close to wartime operations and bases from which Russia is launching conventional attacks. Thus far, Russia has failed to move its warheads out of danger. Russia believes that its advantage in nonstrategic nuclear weapons serves to deter Ukrainian and Western escalation against Russia. But in truth, if Russia wants to maintain that advantage, it must end the war or relocate the warheads to safer locations. Nuclear deterrence does not depend on warheads being located on a country’s frontlines. In fact, a country best maintains its deterrence if it stores its nuclear weapons well out of harm’s way.

Russia must immediately facilitate the safe movements of all of its warheads located within 500 miles of the Ukraine border to storage sites east of the Ural Mountains. China, which has become a crucial partner for Russia since the war began, is in the best position to press Russia on this point. It can push Russian leaders to secure their warheads during bilateral discussions or within the P5 forum. Ultimately, China cannot view Russia as a credible nuclear power, or partner, if Russia cannot secure its nuclear warheads away from military operations.

The other countries that are signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as well as the members of the UN General Assembly can also pressure Russia. If Russia does not agree to move its warheads after this concern is raised by the P5 and the UN, repercussions as severe as the country’s temporary or permanent removal from the UN Security Council are warranted. As a signatory to the NPT, China may even support such an action: Beijing cannot, in fact, afford any incident involving nuclear weapons to occur as a result of the war in Ukraine, because that would draw much more scrutiny to its own nuclear buildup. The world must convince Russia that it is fundamentally endangering its reputation as a responsible nuclear power: its management of its nuclear arsenal over the past two and a half years clearly violates the basic responsibilities expected of nuclear states.

How the War in Ukraine Could Go Nuclear—by Accident

Russian Atomic Weapons Are Dangerously Close to the Frontlines

By William M. Moon

November 5, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by William M. Moon · November 5, 2024

A nuclear state’s greatest responsibility is to keep its warheads secure. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it has put approximately 30 percent of its estimated 5,580 warheads in an untenably precarious position. Early in the war, concerns that the invasion increased the danger of a nuclear detonation or accidental explosion focused on the risk to Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants and Russia’s threats to intentionally escalate the conflict past the nuclear threshold. But the more Ukraine seeks to hit targets inside Russia, the clearer it becomes that Russia’s unwillingness to adequately secure the nuclear arsenals it has stored in its west—which are now within striking distance of Ukrainian missiles and drones and even Ukrainian troops—poses a dire risk.

Every week, Russia is launching up to 800 guided aerial bombs and over 500 attack drones at Ukrainian cities and energy plants. In response, Ukraine has begun launching up to hundreds of drones daily at carefully selected Russian targets.Ukraine has every right to defend itself in this manner, and there is no indication that Ukrainian forces would intentionally target nuclear warhead storage sites. Because Ukrainian drone assaults have already reached as far as Moscow, however, it is clear that at least 14 Russian nuclear storage sites now fall within range of its drones. At least two of those sites are less than 100 miles from the Ukraine border, well within striking range of the more damaging missiles Ukraine already possesses, and another five sites lie less than 200 miles from the border, close to or just beyond the range of the advanced Western-provided missiles that Ukraine is seeking permission to use against conventional targets in Russia.

The responsibility to move its nuclear warheads out of the way of danger lies with the Russian government. Russia knows that its warheads should not be positioned anywhere near conventional military operations: after Ukraine launched its first drone and missile attacks against Belgorod in the spring of 2023, Russia quickly reported that its Belgorod storage site was no longer storing nuclear warheads—acknowledging that warheads should not be stored anywhere near active fighting. But remarkably, there have been no Russian announcements about the status of the warheads it has at any of its other storage sites. There are several possible reasons for Russia’s clear dereliction of duty here: Russian President Vladimir Putin may believe that moving Russian nuclear warheads would be a sign of weakness; senior Russian leaders may not recognize the dangers posed to these warheads; or the Russian military may fear that the West would misconstrue moving warheads as preparations for a nuclear attack, prompting a pre-emptive strike by NATO.

The country that likely has the most influence over Russia’s handling of its nuclear arsenal is China. In September, Beijing became coordinator of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s P5 process, a forum of the five original nuclear weapons states—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—designed so those countries could jointly discuss their responsibilities. In this capacity, the Chinese leadership can—and must—lead a collective effort to persuade Russia to secure its vulnerable warheads, drawing on its own expanding bilateral relationship with Moscow. If China does not push for this, the risk that Russian nuclear sites become entangled in its war on Ukraine will only continue to grow, with potentially catastrophic consequences both for Russia and for the rest of the world. The possibility that a Ukrainian drone or missile will strike a warhead and create an explosion that distributes fissile material is already a major risk. But it is not the only one. Even more dangerous is the possibility that a Ukrainian missile strike or territorial takeover could throw a storage site into operational chaos, allowing rogue actors to seize its nuclear warheads—or inadvertently prompt Russian nuclear escalation.

WARHEAD GAMES

In 1991, as the collapse of the Soviet Union appeared imminent, the U.S. Congress established the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, which aimed to help Russia secure the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal of approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads that it inherited. Because these storage sites were no longer overseen by the Soviet police state, their locations were no longer secret, they had little or no security equipment, and their guards were not getting paid. With the CTR’s assistance, Russia reduced its number of warheads and consolidated its arsenal within 42 existing storage facilities that were equipped with modern security features. The warheads were secured at three kinds of sites: 12 large central locations that housed hundreds of strategic and nonstrategic warheads; 30 smaller storage facilities adjacent to military bases, which stored dozens of warheads that could be fitted to the missiles, submarines, ships, or aircraft at the bases; and three rail transfer points where warheads can be transferred to and from trains to trucks. Russian warheads are frequently moved for maintenance and safety checks, so these transfer points almost always have warheads at them—and these rail transfer points are where the warheads are most vulnerable, because they are not in secure bunkers and are protected only by the trucks’ and rail cars’ reinforced exteriors.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, most experts viewed the primary threat to Russia’s nuclear stockpiles to be a potential terrorist attack—which could even be carried out by up to 12 assailants—rather than armed conflict with another well-armed state. Over the course of 30 years leading the CTR’s bilateral effort to secure Russia’s warheads, I met more than 75 times with the leaders of the organization within Russia’s Defense Ministry responsible for maintaining and securing Russia’s nuclear arsenal. I visited dozens of Russian nuclear warhead storage sites, including those in Belgorod and Voronezh, near Russia’s border with Ukraine. And by 2008, Russia’s nuclear arsenal appeared relatively safe from such a terrorist threat. Security upgrades had been installed at all the warhead storage sites and rail transfer points. Every storage site was provided with three layers of security fencing, microwave and fence disturbance sensors, lights, video cameras, new security gates, and a fully equipped security control building.

But these upgrades were not designed to protect the warheads from attacks by a well-armed military force—and they cannot do so. When Russia initiated its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it brought a conventional war near areas where hundreds of nuclear warheads are stored. Russia’s Belgorod central storage site, which may have stored hundreds of nuclear warheads, is located less than 30 miles from the Ukrainian border north of the city of Kharkiv, where Russia instigated heavy fighting. It is also just south of the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched a major incursion into Russia in August and where fighting continues now. Russia reported that it removed all the warheads from this site, but it is not clear if that was done before or after the fighting began. Moving nuclear warheads during a conventional war is extremely dangerous behavior and would demonstrate that Russia is no longer a conscientious nuclear power. The warheads could have been struck accidentally by drones or missiles—or deliberately attacked or stolen.

The major Voronezh storage site, although it is farther east, is still less than 190 miles from the Ukrainian border. Already, there have been multiple drone attacks less than 100 miles from it.

Russia has also breached a sacred tenet of nuclear security by launching attacks against Ukraine from military bases that store nuclear warheads, thus making those bases a legitimate target for counteroffensives. Since March 2022, for instance, Russia has been using the Engels-2 air base 500 miles southeast of Moscow to launch Kinzhal missile attacks on Ukraine. Kinzhal missiles are dual capable, meaning they can carry nuclear warheads, and there are probably dozens of nuclear warheads stored less than four miles from the Engels-2 base’s main airfields. Ukraine has allegedly repeatedly attacked this air base with drones, including as recently as mid-September. Russia is believed to store dozens of nuclear warheads for short-range aircraft at the Yeysk air base, an installation directly across the Sea of Azov from Mariupol. Dozens more may be stored at Morozovsk, another aircraft base less than 100 miles from Luhansk, where Russian forces are fighting off Ukrainian troops to try to recapture lost territory. The longer the war continues, the more one or more of these sites risk getting caught in crossfire—an outcome that could have devastating consequences.

TIME BOMB

A strike on a storage site would not in itself cause warheads to detonate in a nuclear explosion. But if a warhead is not in its bunker because it is being moved for maintenance within the storage site or at a rail transfer point, and it is hit by an armed drone or missile, that could cause a major explosion that would release fissile material and render a several-mile radius uninhabitable for years. International observers might not even be able to judge how catastrophic such a strike had been, because Russian reporting on nuclear incidents historically cannot be trusted. And even if an attack did not directly strike a warhead, it could damage nuclear security systems or kill guards, thus rendering the warheads vulnerable to theft.

Nuclear warheads are especially unsafe when they are located at Russia’s rail transfer points. Although it is unclear whether Russia is currently moving warheads through any of these sites, if it is doing so, then a Ukrainian drone or debris from a bomber, Russian air defense system, or missile attack could easily hit them. Given that Russia has an inventory of thousands of warheads, there are almost always a handful that are being moved for maintenance. Ukraine, the United States, NATO, and open-source satellites may not be able to differentiate whether Russia is transporting warheads for maintenance or security—or to a military base from which they might be launched. Imagine if the United States or Ukraine detected a covert warhead movement and interpreted it to be part of an intentional operation against Ukraine or a NATO country: they would have to consider targeting that warhead shipment preemptively.

Russian nuclear warheads could be seized by a small, rogue group of fighters.

Beyond the immediate risks, storing nuclear warheads in a war zone increases the likelihood of escalatory actions by the Kremlin. Russia’s nuclear doctrine holds that an attack on any element of its deterrent force justifies a nuclear response. It is not clear whether an accidental strike on a nuclear warhead storage site would cross a Russian nuclear redline, but Putin has recently sought to draw attention to his country’s escalation doctrine. The fact that its nuclear warheads are so close to Ukraine could, in fact, tempt Russia to conduct a false-flag operation on its own storage sites in order to justify a nuclear attack.

But perhaps the greatest danger now posed by Russia’s nuclear weapons storage sites is the one that was originally envisioned after the Cold War’s end: that is, the danger that warheads could be seized by a small, rogue group of fighters. Russia still faces internal threats including terrorists, separatists, and the thousands of former Wagner fighters now scattered across Russia and Belarus. Its actions in Ukraine have greatly exacerbated the danger posed by these long-standing threats.

On August 6, Ukrainian troops entered Russian territory and captured a swath of the Kursk region—an area that lies between two large Russian storage sites (in Bryansk and Voronezh) housing hundreds of warheads. The concern is not that the Ukrainian military would do something hazardous with loose nukes. But if the Ukrainian military were to attack or drive Russian security forces away from a storage site, rogue actors could enter the site and seize its warheads. Former members of the Wagner paramilitary company, for instance, might wish to use such warheads against Ukraine, or Russians fighting on Ukraine’s behalf might wish to attack a Russian city. A single Russian actor could instigate such an operation with or without direction from Russian authorities. And with its military tied up in Ukraine, Russia simply may not have military forces available to respond to an attack on a warhead storage site or convoy.

RESTORING TRUST

To truly safeguard its nuclear arsenal, Russia would need to end its onslaught against Ukraine and the increasingly complicated cross-border conflict that its invasion has generated. But with no instant end to the war in sight, more immediate steps must urgently be taken. In the near term, Russian nuclear warheads must be removed from any base that is close to wartime operations and bases from which Russia is launching conventional attacks. Thus far, Russia has failed to move its warheads out of danger. Russia believes that its advantage in nonstrategic nuclear weapons serves to deter Ukrainian and Western escalation against Russia. But in truth, if Russia wants to maintain that advantage, it must end the war or relocate the warheads to safer locations. Nuclear deterrence does not depend on warheads being located on a country’s frontlines. In fact, a country best maintains its deterrence if it stores its nuclear weapons well out of harm’s way.

Russia must immediately facilitate the safe movements of all of its warheads located within 500 miles of the Ukraine border to storage sites east of the Ural Mountains. China, which has become a crucial partner for Russia since the war began, is in the best position to press Russia on this point. It can push Russian leaders to secure their warheads during bilateral discussions or within the P5 forum. Ultimately, China cannot view Russia as a credible nuclear power, or partner, if Russia cannot secure its nuclear warheads away from military operations.

The other countries that are signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as well as the members of the UN General Assembly can also pressure Russia. If Russia does not agree to move its warheads after this concern is raised by the P5 and the UN, repercussions as severe as the country’s temporary or permanent removal from the UN Security Council are warranted. As a signatory to the NPT, China may even support such an action: Beijing cannot, in fact, afford any incident involving nuclear weapons to occur as a result of the war in Ukraine, because that would draw much more scrutiny to its own nuclear buildup. The world must convince Russia that it is fundamentally endangering its reputation as a responsible nuclear power: its management of its nuclear arsenal over the past two and a half years clearly violates the basic responsibilities expected of nuclear states.

• WILLIAM M. MOON retired in 2019 from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the U.S. Department of Defense. From 1995 to 2013, he was the Russian Nuclear Security Program Manager for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Foreign Affairs · by William M. Moon · November 5, 2024

15. Is Turkey’s Military the World’s Latest Paper Tiger?

The is the money quote in the first sentence of the conclusion:

Excerpt:

Too often, the United States self-deters in the face of paper tigers in a way that empowers them. In effect, the United States might hold a full house militarily, but it folds before a pair of twos. Turkey today presents another problem, however, since it is nominally an ally rather than adversary. While Erdogan seeks benefit from an illusion of strength, it is time to question whether the size of Turkey’s military mattes if it has effectively become a third world force, little different than Iraq 1991 or Russia 2022. If so, then perhaps the next administration must recalculate the deference to which Turkey is due and even such basic questions about whether the Syrian Kurds, if properly armed, can contribute more to regional security than Turkish troops whose illusion of power will dissipate the moment they leave their barracks.

Is Turkey’s Military the World’s Latest Paper Tiger?

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Michael Rubin · November 4, 2024

Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More

A Turkish Air Force F-16 receives a mid air refuel from a NATO allied aircraft on Oct 23, 2018 during exercise Trident Juncture 18. Trident Juncture is a multinational NATO exercise that enhances professional relationships and improves overall coordination with Allied and partner nations. (photo by Nebil; Turkish Air Force)

A video circulating on Telegram and other social media suggests North Korean Special Forces dispatched to fight Ukraine on Russia’s behalf have seen their first combat. The video purports to interview the single North Korean survivor from a unit of 40 compatriots who encountered Ukrainian forces near the Ukraine-occupied Russian town of Kursk. While unclear if the video is authentic—some suggest it is psychological warfare—it is believable. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urges the world to intercede before more North Korean units can reach the battlefield, military analysts wait to see how North Koreans do in battle. After all, despite their fearsome displays and bellicose rhetoric, it has been decades since the North Korean Army engaged in open combat. North Koreans are increasingly shorter and lighter than their South Korean neighbors are.

North Korea is not the only country that coasts on reputation. As much as the United States fears China’s rise, the fighting ability of the People’s Liberation Army is an unknown. It is perhaps the only army in the world entirely comprised of only children. The last time the People’s Republic of China fought an open war—a month-long conflict with Vietnam in 1979—China lost. Since then, China has only engaged small and unarmed or only lightly armed opponents—Filipino coast guard speedboats, Vietnamese fishing boats, or small squads of Indian soldiers high up in the Himalayas. China can bluster about conquering Taiwan. The People’s Liberation Army can cause incredible devastation with missiles and drones, but their ability to occupy the country is a different matter. The second the People’s Liberation Army engages, Beijing knows, their carefully crafted image of invincibility might crater.

Russia has been another paper tiger. As Russian forces massed on the Ukrainian border in February 2022, President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan urged Zelensky to surrender preemptively and flee the country. The intelligence briefings Biden and Sullivan received from the U.S. intelligence community grossly exaggerated the capabilities of the Russian army. Rather than march triumphantly through Kyiv, the Russian Army today loses every two months more than the United States lost in the entire Vietnam War. Russia might still win, but not as it envisioned. Rather, it will simply seek to outlast its Ukrainian opponents in a new Stalingrad. The Kremlin might have sold an image of itself as a first world military capable of shock and awe, but what it showed the world was not much different from Russian forces in World War I.

The Saddam-era Iraqi Army was also a paper tiger. In the lead up to the 1991 Operation Desert Storm and the liberation of Kuwait, Iraq had the fifth largest army in the world. Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confused size with competence and sought a diplomatic compromise with Iraq, a proposal President George H.W. Bush wisely rejected. The subsequent decimation of Iraq’s army showed what a paper tiger they had been.

While North Korea, China, Russia, and Saddam-era Iraq are or were all U.S. adversaries, the same dynamics may also apply to NATO. The Turkish military forms the second largest force component within NATO, after the United States. Diplomats, analysts, and Turkey’s lobbyists on K Street and in Washington think tanks conflate Turkey’s military power and strategic importance, but seldom consider if Turkey’s military power is real.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a formidable military and sought to remake it in his own image. To expedite its transformation, he cited various conspiracies as fact, culminating in the “Reichstag Fire coup.” The result of Erdogan’s purges has been the prioritization of politics over competence. One-in-five Turkish F-16 pilots, for example, ended up in prison; their replacements had a fraction of their imprisoned colleagues’ experience.

The same is true with Turkey’s Ground Forces. While Turkish forces have pushed into Syria into some Kurdish districts of Syria, they only do so with proxies or against lightly armed opponents. While Turkey has waged war against Syrian Kurds’ civilian infrastructure such as oil pipelines and electrical substations or Yezidi farms across the border in Iraq, the Turkish military has failed to engage the Islamic State. There are two possible explanations for this: Either Turkey as a whole or certain commanders do not consider the Islamic State to be an enemy or Turkish commanders fear directly engaging the Islamic State would expose the weakness of Turkey’s post-Erdogan ground forces.

Here, Libya provides some clues where the Wagner Group effectively has held NATO’s second largest military to a draw. The state-controlled Turkish media will cite its air support for Azerbaijan’s assault on Armenians or provision of drones to Ukraine, but neither of these supposed successes involved the deployment of Turkish troops with the exception perhaps of some Special Forces to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Too often, the United States self-deters in the face of paper tigers in a way that empowers them. In effect, the United States might hold a full house militarily, but it folds before a pair of twos. Turkey today presents another problem, however, since it is nominally an ally rather than adversary. While Erdogan seeks benefit from an illusion of strength, it is time to question whether the size of Turkey’s military mattes if it has effectively become a third world force, little different than Iraq 1991 or Russia 2022. If so, then perhaps the next administration must recalculate the deference to which Turkey is due and even such basic questions about whether the Syrian Kurds, if properly armed, can contribute more to regional security than Turkish troops whose illusion of power will dissipate the moment they leave their barracks.

About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and pre-and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For over a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism to deployed US Navy and Marine units. Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics. The opinions and views expressed are his own.

In this article:

Written By Michael Rubin

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Michael Rubin · November 4, 2024

16. Australian Explosives Giant Sees Dynamite Opportunity in North America

Excerpts:

Gandhi said the U.S. is a very attractive market for Orica’s expansion ambitions given its abundant energy supplies, large and growing population, and massive infrastructure investment plans, including in data centers to support the development of artificial intelligence.

“There’s no better market,” he said. “It’s just a perfect situation for a manufacturer like us.”

The acquisition of Cyanco, with its manufacturing plants in Nevada and Texas, has more than doubled Orica’s sodium cyanide production capacity and turned it into the No. 1 supplier globally. The company partly funded the purchase with an equity raising.

Sodium cyanide is used by miners to separate metals like gold from ore. Orica had previously struggled to break into the high-margin North American market because Cyanco was so dominant there, said Gandhi.

He said work to integrate that business is now “well progressed.”

Australian Explosives Giant Sees Dynamite Opportunity in North America

The CEO expects the region to account for 30%-40% of revenue in the next few years.

https://www.wsj.com/business/australian-explosives-giant-sees-dynamite-opportunity-in-north-america-c7b3031e?mod=latest_headlines

By Rhiannon Hoyle

Follow

Nov. 5, 2024 12:36 am ET

CEO Sanjeev Gandhi says North America accounted for 22% of revenue in the first half of fiscal 2024. Photo: Ian Waldie/Bloomberg News

SYDNEY—The world’s biggest commercial-explosives maker, Australia’s Orica ORI -0.58%decrease; red down pointing triangle, made North America the centerpiece of a recent global buying spree that has included eight acquisitions in four years.

As a result, North America—Orica’s second-largest market after Australia—should account for between 30% and 40% of the company’s revenue within the next few years, said Chief Executive Sanjeev Gandhi. In the first half of Orica’s 2024 fiscal year, the region accounted for 22%.

Orica’s acquisitive run has been part of a strategy to grow beyond its core blasting business. The $5.5 billion company wants to be bigger in specialty chemicals and digital technologies that can help miners recover metals, like those needed to make batteries, more efficiently.

In April, Orica bought Texas-based sodium cyanide producer Cyanco from private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management for $640 million. Two months earlier, it purchased a Canadian sensors-and-software company from Vance Street Capital for about $380 million.

The made-in-America manufacturing revival has helped lure foreign firms like Orica, whose customers also include construction and civil infrastructure companies.

Gandhi said the U.S. is a very attractive market for Orica’s expansion ambitions given its abundant energy supplies, large and growing population, and massive infrastructure investment plans, including in data centers to support the development of artificial intelligence.

“There’s no better market,” he said. “It’s just a perfect situation for a manufacturer like us.”

The acquisition of Cyanco, with its manufacturing plants in Nevada and Texas, has more than doubled Orica’s sodium cyanide production capacity and turned it into the No. 1 supplier globally. The company partly funded the purchase with an equity raising.

Sodium cyanide is used by miners to separate metals like gold from ore. Orica had previously struggled to break into the high-margin North American market because Cyanco was so dominant there, said Gandhi.

He said work to integrate that business is now “well progressed.”

Orica, which is due to report annual results for the year through September on Nov. 14, immediately cut duplicated roles, including some marketing and administrative jobs. Now, the company is working through ways of making the combined operations run more efficiently, like changing from which plant it ships products to minimize logistics costs.

Later, should it find demand is increasing, Orica might seek to increase volume from its plants via small so-called de-bottlenecking projects, Gandhi said.

While recent purchases have given Orica plenty to digest, the company will continue to screen the market for more, said Gandhi, its CEO since April 2021.

Orica is unlikely to chase another acquisition as large as Cyanco, at least in the short run.

“I would think twice about doing one [a major acquisition] so soon because we need time in terms of management bandwidth to digest everything that we’ve bought,” he said.

But Orica could comfortably handle more small bolt-on acquisitions, worth less than 100 million Australian dollars, or roughly $66 million, said Gandhi.

Orica’s explosives business is already the biggest of its kind, so there’s limited scope to add to that via acquisitions, he said.

Gandhi said he’d be interested in additions to Orica’s mining chemicals business catering to copper miners. Today, that business is focused on gold. He also said he’d look at opportunities to further build Orica’s digital capability with artificial intelligence-enabled tools.

It isn’t just in North America that Orica expects opportunities for growth, he said, listing countries spanning the globe from Peru to the Philippines to parts of Africa.

Orica doesn’t have any immediate plans for another acquisition, said Gandhi. “But as opportunities come in the next 12 to 24 months, I always like to have a seat at the table,” he said.

Write to Rhiannon Hoyle at rhiannon.hoyle@wsj.com

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

17. Harris and Trump are ignoring the US defense crisis

Excerpts:

In the past, mandated Congressional Quadrennial Reviews or initiatives of incoming administrations to undergo major defense studies have produced, at best, changes on the margin.  

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, George H.W. Bush’s administration was cautious in reducing America’s military. Thirty years later, the emergence of China has led to bipartisan demands for greater defense spending. Yet without a major change in strategy to correct the flaws in the National Defense Strategy, more money will not provide more capability.

In these conditions, only one realistic method exists to force the next administration to confront this mismatch between strategy-force levels and budgets. The uniform military must conduct an objective assessment of the state of our defenses today and in the future.  

Without the full permission of civilian leadership, a truly independent evaluation has proven difficult to undertake.

But without such an assessment, every year, the U.S. military will be decidedly less capable and prepared for war than it is today. Harris and Trump, are you listening?

Harris and Trump are ignoring the US defense crisis

by Harlan Ullman, opinion contributor - 11/04/24 12:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4966754-us-national-defense-strategy-crisis/?utm

“The U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” So said the Congressional Commission on the U.S. National Defense Strategy in September 2024.

With the 2024 presidential election tomorrow, and in light of what this panel dramatically concluded, why have Kamala Harris and Donald Trump completely ignored any serious discussion of the dire state of America’s defenses in the campaign? 

One can argue that except in times of crisis, foreign policy and defense have minimal impact on presidential elections. Yes, Harris and Trump may disagree about U.S. support for Ukraine and Israel and defending Taiwan, should China decide to invade. But the illegal immigration, the economy, abortion, character and personality will determine the 47th president.

Further, to most Americans, what this panel concluded is inconceivable. In fiscal 2025, the U.S. will spend nearly $900 billion on national defense, about 40 percent of all global military spending. The administration’s political and uniform leadership still claims that the U.S. possesses the finest military in the world. And yet the more the U.S. spends on defense, ironically, the more America’s forces continue to shrink.

The next president can ignores the state of our defenses at his or her peril. Trump accused the Biden administration of weakening the military he had restored, but those accusations lacked any specific evidence.

The crisis is that the National Defense Strategy approved by the last three administrations is fatally flawed for at least three reasons. If these flaws are not addressed, American fighting power will continue to erode.  

The first is that the aim of deterring America’s principal rivals, short of preventing thermonuclear war, has failed.

Where have China and Russia or, for that matter, Iran’s Houthi proxies been deterred? China continues to challenge the West’s rules-based order and threatens Taiwan with its military buildup. Russia has not been stopped from invading Ukraine twice and launching clandestine attacks on Western democracies. And the Houthis have successfully cut off Suez for a large percentage of maritime traffic.

Second, our Defense Department has not dealt with real, uncontrolled annual cost growth as high as 7 percent for every item from precision weapons to people to pencils. With inflation running at just 2.5 to 4 percent, for the $900 billion defense budget, an additional $70-100 billion is crucial just to maintain current capabilities, let alone to increase them.

Third, the Defense Department will not meet future recruiting and retention goals to sustain the current active duty and reserve force, given the attitudes of Gen Z. The current cohort for service show no signs of wishing to serve.

A few obvious questions: Has anyone in either camp had any idea of the potential crisis facing the nation’s defenses? If there is an appreciation of these realities, what planned actions are being considered to reverse these threatening trends? And, if the answer to these questions is no, can the next administration be persuaded of the need to conduct a comprehensive and objective analysis of the nation’s defenses?

In the past, it has taken crises such as Pearl Harbor, the 1950 invasion of South Korea or Sputnik to provoke the U.S. to take action. Russia’s use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or a full-out Iranian-Israeli war might trigger a major American response. But outside such a catalytic or catastrophic event, in the normal course of politics, defense is unlikely to be subject to other than what is part of the routine transition to install the next administration.

In the past, mandated Congressional Quadrennial Reviews or initiatives of incoming administrations to undergo major defense studies have produced, at best, changes on the margin.  

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, George H.W. Bush’s administration was cautious in reducing America’s military. Thirty years later, the emergence of China has led to bipartisan demands for greater defense spending. Yet without a major change in strategy to correct the flaws in the National Defense Strategy, more money will not provide more capability.

In these conditions, only one realistic method exists to force the next administration to confront this mismatch between strategy-force levels and budgets. The uniform military must conduct an objective assessment of the state of our defenses today and in the future.  

Without the full permission of civilian leadership, a truly independent evaluation has proven difficult to undertake.

But without such an assessment, every year, the U.S. military will be decidedly less capable and prepared for war than it is today. Harris and Trump, are you listening?

Harlan Ullman is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon. 

18. Cartels, Corruption, and Fentanyl: How Can US-Mexico Cooperation Address Shared Security Concerns?

There was a lot of military support to counternarcotics operations in the post-Cold War world prior to 9-11.

Excerpts:

The US military’s participation in counternarcotics is essential to a larger interagency strategy that leverages military capabilities to support law enforcement agencies that traditionally lead these efforts. Despite being primarily nonmilitary, these operations often demand resources that the military can best provide—leadership, logistics, surveillance, and rapid response capabilities—especially in conflict zones where these agencies face constraints or limited presence.

US Southern Command leads the Joint Interagency Task Force South, which focuses on detecting and tracking illegal trafficking within its area of operations. This supports US and partner nations’ security efforts by enabling the interception and disruption of these activities.

Furthermore, the military’s unique international reach and established ties with foreign defense entities allow it to play a vital supportive role in operations beyond US borders. This support can range from direct interdiction and intelligence sharing to regional stability initiatives that weaken transnational criminal networks and limit the operational capacity of drug traffickers.

In one effort, the US Air Force collaborated with Caribbean partners to target drug trafficking routes, using specialized aircraft and advanced surveillance to monitor vast ocean areas. Similarly, the National Guard Counterdrug Program bridged the gap between DoD and civilian agencies, pooling resources to address local and international narcotics threats.

In essence, the military’s involvement does not replace the primary responsibilities of domestic law enforcement but rather enhances them, helping to address complex transnational issues that demand an interagency approach. This collective use of assets and capabilities helps overcome the limitations of any single agency and justifies the military’s presence in what might traditionally be considered law enforcement territory.

Cartels, Corruption, and Fentanyl: How Can US-Mexico Cooperation Address Shared Security Concerns? - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Nicholas Dockery · November 5, 2024

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For decades, US-Mexico law enforcement and counternarcotics cooperation has been fraught with difficulties stemming from a history of strained relations. These challenges date back to the 1980s, most notably marked by the torture and murder of US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. This event revealed deep-rooted corruption within the Mexican government and law enforcement. Mexico’s sovereignty concerns and the pervasive infiltration of cartels into its government, military, and law enforcement institutions have continuously hampered efforts at collaboration.

Despite these challenges, US-Mexico security cooperation managed to climb during President Felipe Calderón’s term (2006–2012), highlighted by the launch of the Mérida Initiative in 2007, which provided Mexico with over $1.5 billion in security assistance by 2012. This collaboration led to significant successes in targeting cartel leaders and a significant increase in extraditions to the United States. However, the period also exposed deep challenges within Mexico’s institutions. Violence escalated considerably despite these efforts, with homicides nearly tripling between 2007 and 2011. Concerns about human rights abuses by Mexican security forces grew. And corruption remained a significant issue, exemplified by later revelations about potential cartel ties of high-ranking officials.

The subsequent administration of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018) initially appeared to distance itself from the previous approach to US cooperation. During his first year in office, Peña Nieto seemed to put the Mérida Initiative on hold, requiring all cooperation to go through a “single window” in his administration’s interior secretariat, which delayed the dispersal of millions in assistance. However, as his term progressed, Nieto’s security policies came to resemble those of his predecessor. He continued to work with US intelligence to arrest high-value targets, capturing or killing 109 of the 122 traffickers that the Mexican government considered most dangerous.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president from 2018 until September of this year and a traditional leftist with strong nationalist tendencies, further scaled back cooperation to nearly zero. His reluctance to engage closely with the United States stems partly from his close ties with the military, especially after US authorities arrested General Salvador Cienfuegos, a former Mexican defense secretary. Cienfuegos had been indicted by US law enforcement on drug trafficking charges. He was returned to Mexico a month after his arrest, reportedly after an agreement that Mexican authorities would investigate him, but he was swiftly released, highlighting the ongoing tension in the bilateral relationship.

The López Obrador Administration’s Approach

López Obrador’s broader security policy, often referred to as the “hugs not bullets” strategy, marks a significant departure from his predecessors’ approaches to combatting criminal organizations. His administration focused on socioeconomic programs aimed at preventing young people from joining criminal groups rather than directly confronting these organizations through law enforcement. López Obrador believed that if law enforcement pulled back, the cartels would resolve their conflicts internally, reducing violence. However, this approach largely failed. Violence in Mexico has intensified and cartel influence has expanded, increasingly affecting daily life, the economy, and politics. Cartels have become more brazen in their criminal activity, tightening their grip on regions previously untouched by such violence.

One of the most complex issues affecting US-Mexico relations in drug enforcement is migration. Former President Donald Trump’s focus on controlling migration from Mexico gave the Mexican government leverage. President López Obrador has strategically used Mexico’s role in managing migrant flows—referred to as instrumentalized migration—as a bargaining tool. By using migration as leverage, López Obrador has deflected US pressure on other key issues like fentanyl trafficking and democratic backsliding in Mexico, creating a political deadlock that limits US influence beyond migration policy.

Impact of Fentanyl and US Pressure

The escalating crisis of fentanyl in the United States, with over one hundred thousand drug overdose deaths annually, stems mainly from Mexican cartels, which manufacture fentanyl products (with precursors sourced almost exclusively from China) and smuggle them into the United States. This situation increased pressure on the López Obrador administration to act aggressively against these cartels. Despite the Mexican government’s high-profile arrests, such as that of Ovidio Guzmán, son of the notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, these efforts have remained sporadic and largely symbolic. They failed to disrupt the cartels’ operations or fentanyl production and trafficking in any significant way.

Additionally, reports from sources like Reuters exposed the Mexican government’s misleading claims about fentanyl lab busts and production. López Obrador, at one point, falsely asserted that no fentanyl was produced in Mexico, contradicting overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

In July 2024, US law enforcement arrested two significant figures from the Sinaloa cartel in a high-profile sting operation—Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a longtime leader of the Sinaloa cartel, and Joaquín Guzmán López, another son of El Chapo. While the operation was dramatic, it is unlikely to lead to a significant reduction in fentanyl trafficking due to the cartel’s extensive networks and redundancy systems.

There is a significant risk that the arrests will escalate violence in Mexico. This could occur within cartels—the Chapitos and Zambada factions vying for control of the organization—or between rival cartels. This could further destabilize regions already plagued by violence.

However, the arrest of Zambada presents a unique opportunity. As one of Mexico’s most influential cartel leaders, Zambada has intimate knowledge of the corruption networks that allow cartels to operate with impunity. If US prosecutors leverage this information, it could lead to further indictments of high-level officials in Mexico, potentially disrupting the political protection that shielded criminal organizations for decades.

Looking Forward to the Sheinbaum Administration

The US-Mexico counternarcotics relationship remains deeply strained, with cooperation at a low point despite the formal Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities. The López Obrador administration’s passive approach to law enforcement exacerbated cartel violence and failed to address the fentanyl crisis adequately. With the recent inauguration of Claudia Sheinbaum as president, many of López Obrador’s policies will likely continue. The United States faces a complex challenge in addressing migration and narcotics enforcement. Strengthening investigative capacities in Mexico and leveraging US arrests to expose corruption networks may be critical to breaking the cycle of violence and restoring the rule of law.

Sheinbaum has signaled her intent to maintain López Obrador’s policies under the “fourth transformation” framework—an initiative to overhaul Mexico’s social, economic, and political systems. As a close ally of López Obrador, Sheinbaum served as mayor of Mexico City during his administration.

On security, Sheinbaum has emphasized the continuation of socioeconomic strategies, echoing López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” approach. However, as currently implemented, these programs appear insufficient to curtail cartel influence or violence. One potential positive development is Sheinbaum’s focus on increasing the number of investigators in Mexico. Given that the López Obrador administration significantly reduced the capacity of the federal police, this is a critical step in rebuilding law enforcement’s ability to confront organized crime.

What the United States Must Do: Policy Reforms

To improve the US-Mexico counternarcotics relationship and address the growing fentanyl crisis, the United States must implement several key policy reforms. First, it should demand greater transparency and accountability from Mexico in its law enforcement operations, particularly regarding efforts to combat corruption within the police and government. US assistance should be contingent on clear benchmarks demonstrating progress in reducing cartel influence and restoring the rule of law. Strengthening joint investigative initiatives between US and Mexican agencies is also crucial. The United States should support and encourage deeper cooperation that dismantles the corruption networks that protect cartel leaders and facilitate the fentanyl trade, share intelligence, and assist Mexico in rebuilding its investigative capacities.

Moreover, the United States must leverage diplomatic and economic pressure to push Mexico toward more robust cooperation in counternarcotics efforts. To improve cooperation, the United States must directly link foreign aid and trade agreements to meaningful anticorruption reforms and tangible improvements in law enforcement. In addition to addressing immediate security concerns, the United States should also focus on supporting long-term socioeconomic programs that target the root causes of violence and instability in Mexico. However, these initiatives will only succeed if backed by a strong rule of law, something the United States should strongly encourage the Sheinbaum administration to prioritize.

Finally, the United States should expand its operations to disrupt the fentanyl trade, mainly targeting the cross-border supply chains that link China and Mexico’s cartels. This includes enhancing maritime and land interdiction efforts to cut off the flow of fentanyl before it reaches American communities. Without coordinated reforms and pressure from the United States, Mexico’s struggle with cartel violence will continue to undermine regional security, with severe consequences for both nations.

What Role for the US Military?

The US military’s participation in counternarcotics is essential to a larger interagency strategy that leverages military capabilities to support law enforcement agencies that traditionally lead these efforts. Despite being primarily nonmilitary, these operations often demand resources that the military can best provide—leadership, logistics, surveillance, and rapid response capabilities—especially in conflict zones where these agencies face constraints or limited presence.

US Southern Command leads the Joint Interagency Task Force South, which focuses on detecting and tracking illegal trafficking within its area of operations. This supports US and partner nations’ security efforts by enabling the interception and disruption of these activities.

Furthermore, the military’s unique international reach and established ties with foreign defense entities allow it to play a vital supportive role in operations beyond US borders. This support can range from direct interdiction and intelligence sharing to regional stability initiatives that weaken transnational criminal networks and limit the operational capacity of drug traffickers.

In one effort, the US Air Force collaborated with Caribbean partners to target drug trafficking routes, using specialized aircraft and advanced surveillance to monitor vast ocean areas. Similarly, the National Guard Counterdrug Program bridged the gap between DoD and civilian agencies, pooling resources to address local and international narcotics threats.

In essence, the military’s involvement does not replace the primary responsibilities of domestic law enforcement but rather enhances them, helping to address complex transnational issues that demand an interagency approach. This collective use of assets and capabilities helps overcome the limitations of any single agency and justifies the military’s presence in what might traditionally be considered law enforcement territory.

Nicholas Dockery is a White House Fellow, Special Forces officer, United States Military Academy graduate, and Wayne Downing scholar. Dockery holds a master of public policy from Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and previously served as a research fellow at the Modern War Institute.

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

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Nicholas Dockery · November 5, 2024

19. How and why Russia is conducting sabotage and hybrid-war offensive

Excerpts:

Anti-US campaigns are also active in developing countries. Some aim to discredit US-funded anti-malaria programs in Africa.

Western leaders have been reluctant to call for a more vigorous response to Russian sabotage, probably out of fear of escalation. Some media reports even suggest that fears of retaliatory sabotage actions, such as attacks on US bases, have fed into US reluctance to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles.

The West is running out of non-military options for response, since it is already imposing extensive economic and diplomatic sanctions against Moscow and has limited capacity or opportunity to retaliate in kind inside Russia. Still, a more strenuous response by Western governments is needed.

Former Finnish president Sauli Niinisto has suggested that the EU needs its own pan-European intelligence agency to help countries fend off threats, saboteurs and espionage. At the very least, the US and Europe should respond to Russian hybrid warfare by removing the shackles from Ukraine, allowing it to repel the Russian invaders from its territory.

How and why Russia is conducting sabotage and hybrid-war offensive | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Jon Richardson · November 5, 2024

Across Europe, we’re seeing more confirmed or suspected instances of Russian sabotage. It is part of a broader hybrid war campaign against NATO countries, aimed at eroding support for Ukraine and damaging Western cohesion.

In the US, Russia is refraining from sabotage, but it’s working hard on disinformation.

The head of MI5 warned in October that agents of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, had conducted arson attacks, sabotage and other dangerous actions ‘with increasing recklessness’. His MI6 counterpart said Russian intelligence services had gone ‘a bit feral’.

The chiefs of Germany’s three intelligence branches echoed these concerns, reporting a ‘quantitative and qualitative’ increase in acts of Russian-sponsored espionage and sabotage in their country. On 22 October, Poland announced it would close the Russian consulate in Poznan due to alleged sabotage attempts.

Russia has conducted arson attacks in Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia and Czechia. Other reported sabotage attempts include flying drones over Stockholm airport, jamming of Baltic countries’ civil aviation GPS systems and disruption of French railways on the first day of the Paris Olympics. Facilities linked to supplying Ukraine have also been targeted: a BAE Systems munitions facility in Wales, an air-defence company’s factory in Berlin and a Ukrainian-owned logistics firm in London.

Authorities have arrested suspects for plots to bomb or sabotage a military base in Bavaria and a French facility supporting Ukraine’s war efforts. Agencies disrupted a plot to assassinate the CEO of German arms maker Rheinmetall, a supplier of artillery shells to Ukraine. Latvian authorities tracked down saboteurs dispatched to several countries on paid missions. Norway’s domestic intelligence service warns of the threat of sabotage to train lines and to gas facilities supplying much of Europe.

This upsurge in sabotage activity is a rebound from initial setbacks that Russian intelligence suffered in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Its assessment of likely Ukrainian resistance and Western unity was lacking, affecting its ability to analyse and influence those factors. Some 750 Russians with diplomatic cover were expelled from Russian embassies and consulates across Europe, mostly spies.

Russia’s intelligence and security services rapidly regrouped. They have since managed to build new illegal networks and recruit criminals and other proxies through the dark web or social media platforms such as Telegram.

Sabotage operations are part of its larger hybrid war campaign. This is designed to cause fear and division in order to undermine support for Ukraine without going so far as provoking war. Russian hybrid warfare encompasses several tactics, most notably cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.

Another grey-zone tactic is weaponising immigration. Russian authorities direct migrants into neighbouring European countries without proper documentation, instructing them to claim asylum there. The aim is to destabilise those neighbours. European officials reported Russian plans to set up a 15,000-strong force comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants. Migration routes through Libya link to other places with Russian military or paramilitary presence, notably through Central African Republic and Sudan, as well as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Fostering irregular migration further supports right-wing European parties which oppose immigration and European integration and which Russia funds. These include AfD in Germany, National Rally in France and Reform UK, which all gained in recent elections and are mostly Russia-friendly and critical of support for Ukraine.

So far, Russia has refrained from sabotage in the US, although European officials have warned that uncovered plots to plant incendiary devices on planes in Europe could be test runs for similar plans in the US. Russian disinformation efforts in the US have stepped up since 2022 and expanded during the presidential election campaign. Donald Trump’s and MAGA Republicans’ reluctance to support Ukraine makes Trump the clearly preferred candidate of Russia.

In the aftermath of hurricanes Milton and Helene in the US, Russia-affiliated social media accounts pushed fake narratives claiming the Biden administration’s response had been incompetent, reflecting wider government failures and prioritisation of resources to Ukraine over domestic needs. The Justice Department has indicted two employees of Kremlin media propaganda arm RT for paying US$10 million to a media company in Tennessee to spread disinformation.

Anti-US campaigns are also active in developing countries. Some aim to discredit US-funded anti-malaria programs in Africa.

Western leaders have been reluctant to call for a more vigorous response to Russian sabotage, probably out of fear of escalation. Some media reports even suggest that fears of retaliatory sabotage actions, such as attacks on US bases, have fed into US reluctance to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles.

The West is running out of non-military options for response, since it is already imposing extensive economic and diplomatic sanctions against Moscow and has limited capacity or opportunity to retaliate in kind inside Russia. Still, a more strenuous response by Western governments is needed.

Former Finnish president Sauli Niinisto has suggested that the EU needs its own pan-European intelligence agency to help countries fend off threats, saboteurs and espionage. At the very least, the US and Europe should respond to Russian hybrid warfare by removing the shackles from Ukraine, allowing it to repel the Russian invaders from its territory.

Jon Richardson is a visiting fellow at the ANU Centre for European Studies. He is a former diplomat who covered Eastern Europe from Moscow (in the USSR and later Russia), Belgrade, London and Canberra. He also served as high commissioner in Nigeria and Ghana.

Image of the aftermath of an alleged Russian arson attack on Berlin’s Diehl Metal Applications facility: Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Jon Richardson · November 5, 2024

20. The Age of Incremental War

Hmmm... Incremental War. I think we get an" "incremental war" when our national security and foreign policy "prime directive" is to prevent escalation.  

Hmmmm... The Shadow Response Group. (I guess that would be the SRG - we have to always check acronyms and abbreviations - how would we pronounce SRG? Would it be "surge"?).

This sounds like an active measures working group but on steroids with kinetic capabilities. Sign me up. (note attempt at humor).

Excerpts:

Therefore, it's time for the West to respond and deter forcefully. The United States, hopefully with the assistance of some of our NATO partners, should set up a permanent strike force and direct it to prepare a list of targets and offensive measures against RIC provocations.

The Shadow Response Group should include members from the National Security Agency, the CIA, the DIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, DARPA, and military special operations units such as the Navy Seals. National leaders might add agencies like the Treasury, Homeland Security, and the FBI.

We should ask our NATO and non-NATO allies for suggestions. Since many U.S. allies know about particular RIC vulnerabilities we have missed, we should invite them to offer advice and recommendations. For some missions, they could become active partners.

...

The United States has the most sophisticated computer networks in the world and some of the best hackers on the planet. Many of these hackers now work for the U.S. government to secure our thousands of networks. We may need to hire thousands of additional computer engineers and hackers to penetrate our adversaries' networks and discover their vulnerabilities.

Psychological warfare, propaganda, misinformation, rumors, visa bans, and reputational damage should all be part of the Shadow Response mission.

The basic goal of the Shadow Response Group's actions would be to slow or stop the RICs' incremental attacks. We want them to hesitate before they move the next pawn. The purpose is to persuade the RICs to de-escalate and prevent the outbreak of major hostilities.

We need to signal to the RIC leaders and opinion makers that their actions will promptly and constantly have painful consequences.

Creating a Shadow Response Group will require a new mindset in Washington and in NATO. Passivity will be out. The new mindset will be aggressive and proactive, not to stimulate a hot war but to prevent it.

The Age of Incremental War

By James S. Fay

November 05, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/11/05/the_age_of_incremental_war_1069944.html

We have lived through hot and cold wars. Now, we are fighting an Incremental War.

The Players

Clever and calculating dictators have been manipulating and taunting the United States and the West for decades. Russia, Iran, and China, let's call them the RICs, are the masters of this game.

All three countries are engaging in a low-level shadow war against the world order.

Russia is waging an expansive cyber war against the U.S. and NATO while pursuing multiple high-intensity mini-wars against neutral European countries, Iran is supporting violent proxy armies and terrorist acts throughout the Middle East, and China is aggressively forcing its way into the South China Sea waters claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Vietnam. It is also extensively hacking American infrastructure.

Let us consider examples of this aggressive incremental war. In 1990, Russia made a minor intrusion in Moldova, seizing 1,600 square miles. This intrusion was not a casus belli for the United States or NATO because Moldova is on the edge of Europe and not an E.U. member or a NATO partner.

It was, as Neville Chamberlain spoke of the Nazi conquest of Czechoslovakia in 1938, "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing."

Then, there was the faraway Russo-Georgian War in 2008. This conflict was Europe's first 21st-century war. Russia ended up seizing Abkhazia (3,300 square miles) and South Ossetia (1,500 square miles).

In 2014, Putin seized Ukrainian Crimea (10,000 square miles). The West yawned. Encouraged by passivity in Brussels and Washington, Putin marched again into Eastern Ukraine in 2018, seizing 42,000 square miles or eighteen percent of Ukraine's territory.

Putin has also used proxy mercenary armies, like the Wagner group, to destabilize and manipulate governments in the Middle East and Africa: Syria, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, for example.

Iran has funded and directed violent proxy armies in Gaza (Hamas), Yemen (the Houthis), Lebanon (Hezbollah), and Iraq (Kataib Hezbollah). Iran has used these proxies to attack Israel and Western interests in the Middle East. Earlier this year, the Justice Department indicted Iran for ongoing hacking against national security agencies and corporations.

China is by far the most territorially aggressive of the three. In 1950, China seized Tibet, devouring its 475 thousand square miles, or four times the size of Texas. In recent years, China has claimed virtually the entire South China Sea, an area encompassing 1.4 million square miles, or one-third of the size of the United States. China has used its powerful Navy and maritime assets to gradually bully its way to domination in these waters and exert its claim over the vast energy resources it holds.

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence asserts that "China remains the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private sector, and critical infrastructure networks."

In all these territorial seizures and online perfidy, the malevolent RIC chess players move a pawn against us and then pause. At first glance, the pawn's movement is only somewhat threatening, and we are not sufficiently alarmed. It is not an overt act of war against the U.S. or our allies. We don't perceive a direct threat to our core interests. Like the Obama and Biden administrations, or Europe in general, we don't want to acknowledge what is before our eyes. We don't want to escalate or make a fuss.

This hesitancy, this passivity of the West, will inevitably lead to a checkmate by our enemies.

Shadow Response

Therefore, it's time for the West to respond and deter forcefully. The United States, hopefully with the assistance of some of our NATO partners, should set up a permanent strike force and direct it to prepare a list of targets and offensive measures against RIC provocations.

The Shadow Response Group should include members from the National Security Agency, the CIA, the DIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, DARPA, and military special operations units such as the Navy Seals. National leaders might add agencies like the Treasury, Homeland Security, and the FBI.

We should ask our NATO and non-NATO allies for suggestions. Since many U.S. allies know about particular RIC vulnerabilities we have missed, we should invite them to offer advice and recommendations. For some missions, they could become active partners.

The purpose of this Shadow Response Group should be to prepare and update a list of thousands of targets in Russia, Iran, and China that could be damaged or destroyed in response to an "incremental" attack by one of the three criminal malefactors. Damage to or destruction of the target should always be "incremental" and purposely kept below the threshold of war, but it should always be provocative and highly damaging. On a continuing basis, we want to make life uncertain and very unpleasant for the RICs' establishment and for the general population. We want to demonstrate forcefully that we, too, can move a pawn.

Developing Potent Shadow Responses

The U.S. needs to prepare an extensive list of RIC vulnerabilities. But where to start?

The economic backbone of all major societies is their system of utilities such as electricity, gas, water, and communications. At a regional and national level, these utilities are fed by a system of electric grids, water conduits, information systems, and energy-related pipelines. The national transportation system relies on an integrated system of airports, railroads, highways, and waterways. The national communication system depends on another sophisticated network of satellites, fiber-optic, microwave, and copper connections. All these systems on land, sea, and space are vulnerable to disruption or destruction.

The Shadow Response Group needs to analyze all of our adversaries' systems and networks and ferret out their vulnerabilities. Then, skilled and imaginative intelligence analysts and operatives must devise ways to disrupt and damage the RIC systems and networks. The level of damage should be at least as great as the damage caused by the RIC incursion, disruption, or sabotage.

The Shadow Response Group should prepare an ever-expanding list of potential targets for the Defense Department and the CIA to present to the President for prompt action. The President could order specific actions that he felt would have the maximum effect on our adversary.

A month-long shutdown of the metro system in St. Petersburg, Shanghai, or Tehran would get the attention of the national leadership, as would the failure of crucial electric generating plants, air terminals, government computer systems, financial infrastructure, GPS systems, citywide traffic signals, and water systems. The loss of all utilities in the political or military elite neighborhoods would undoubtedly impact the elite's thinking and force them to consider the consequences of their action. Hacking into everyday appliances, such as what happened recently in Lebanon, would unnerve any elites.

The United States has the most sophisticated computer networks in the world and some of the best hackers on the planet. Many of these hackers now work for the U.S. government to secure our thousands of networks. We may need to hire thousands of additional computer engineers and hackers to penetrate our adversaries' networks and discover their vulnerabilities.

Psychological warfare, propaganda, misinformation, rumors, visa bans, and reputational damage should all be part of the Shadow Response mission.

The basic goal of the Shadow Response Group's actions would be to slow or stop the RICs' incremental attacks. We want them to hesitate before they move the next pawn. The purpose is to persuade the RICs to de-escalate and prevent the outbreak of major hostilities.

We need to signal to the RIC leaders and opinion makers that their actions will promptly and constantly have painful consequences.

Creating a Shadow Response Group will require a new mindset in Washington and in NATO. Passivity will be out. The new mindset will be aggressive and proactive, not to stimulate a hot war but to prevent it.

James S. Fay is a semi-retired attorney, political scientist, and college administrator. His articles have appeared in social science and law journals, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and Real Clear Defense. He served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer in Germany. He has worked in both the public and private sector and has started three companies.

21. CIA Has Secret "Nonviolent" Way To Disable Large Ships: Report

This capability should belong to the Shadow Response Group (https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/11/05/the_age_of_incremental_war_1069944.html)

CIA Has Secret "Nonviolent" Way To Disable Large Ships: Report

President Trump's administration is said to have considered using the CIA's secret ship-stopping system against Venezuelan oil tankers.

Joseph Trevithick

Posted on Nov 4, 2024 4:47 PM EST

165

twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency reportedly has at least one mysterious system capable of “covertly (and nonviolently)” disabling ships, including very large ones. The secret system is said to have been considered for use against fuel tankers sailing between Venezuela and Cuba during President Donald Trump’s term in office.

A mention of the CIA ship-disabling system is included in a detailed exposé about the Trump administration’s unsuccessful efforts to overthrow dictatorial Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that Wired published on October 31 and is worth reading in full. The report describes a host of efforts that the U.S. government and foreign partners undertook to try to unseat Maduro between 2018 and 2020. This includes a cyber attack on the payroll system for Venzeuzla’s armed forces, sabotage raids by Colombian operatives targeting the Venezuelan Air Force’s Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30 fighters, and support for opposition leader Juan Guaido’s attempt to overthrow Maduro’s government.

President Donald Trump, at left, and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, at right, at the White House on February 5, 2020. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

“Cuba relies on oil from Venezuela. In return, US officials believe, the Cuban security services have helped protect Maduro, essentially serving as an on-the-ground praetorian guard for the embattled socialist autocrat,” per Wired‘s report. “The Trump administration thought if the US could somehow intercept or sabotage the oil ships sailing from Venezuela to Cuba, it could strike a blow against both regimes.”

“At least one option involved the CIA, which had a mobile system that could covertly (and nonviolently) disable ships. Trump administration officials wanted the agency to move the system near Venezuela, to hit some of its fuel tankers,” the story continues. “The agency balked. CIA officials explained that it only had one of these systems, that it was currently in another hemisphere, and they didn’t want to move it to the northern end of South America. The idea was shelved.”

An oil tanker and other ships are seen off the coast of Venezuela in January 2024. GUSTAVO GRANADO/AFP via Getty Images

No specific details about the CIA’s ship-stopping system, including its ‘nonviolent’ method of function, are provided in Wired‘s piece, but there are some clear possibilities.

What comes to mind first is the possibility that the system in question creates the intended effects by pumping out bursts of high-power microwave (HPM) energy. This could allow for the destruction, disabling, or disruption of key systems, such as radars, computerized navigation gear, communications suites, steering systems, and electronic engine control systems, in turn stopping a vessel, but also leaving its crew unharmed.

“HPM weapons create invisible beams of electromagnetic energy within a specific spectrum of radio and microwave frequencies that can cause a range of temporary or permanent effects on electronic targets. Examples include non-kinetic disabling of computer systems, damaging targeted electronics, disrupting security and industrial control systems, etc,” a 2023 press release related to a U.S. Air Force/U.S. Navy program called High-power Joint Electromagnetic Non-Kinetic Strike (HiJENKS) explains. “Electromagnetic energy from an HPM weapon can couple to an electronic target directly through a transmit or receive element (like an antenna), or indirectly, through an aperture or cable points of entry (e.g., cracks, seams, external wires). Currents and voltages can be induced in target circuitry, resulting in erroneous signals, system lock-up, system failure, and/or physical damage.”

Publicly available details about HiJENKS remain limited, but this capability was successfully demonstrated at least once during a live-fire test event at the Navy’s sprawling China Lake test center in 2022. HiJENKS also follows on from the similarly secretive Counter-Electronics High-Power Advanced Microwave Project (CHAMP) missile containing an HPM generator payload, which Boeing is understood to have delivered at least a small number of to the Air Force.

The U.S. military is also known to have at least funded work in the past on lower-tier HPM systems designed to stop smaller watercraft, as well as vehicles, including ones rigged up as suicide bombs, on land.

A 2016 briefing slide discussing HPM “vehicle and vessel stopper” work at that time and plans for future developments. USN via FOIA

An HPM-based system could require getting the source relatively close to the target, which might also be difficult to do covertly. Employing uncrewed aerial or maritime platforms, or disguised ‘civilian’ ones, configured to launch an ‘attack’ of this kind would potentially offer ways to reduce the chance of detection and/or attribution. A nuclear submarine-based capability is also possible.

The CIA’s ship-stopping system might also be capable of launching some other kind of highly-targeted electronic or cyber warfare attack to produce broadly similar effects. An electronic attack that blinds key sensors and communications could stop or slow a vessel. A cyber attack could disable key industrial control systems on a ship, bringing it to a halt, but it would require a vector to breach those systems externally from the vessel.

All of this evokes the memory of still unsubstantiated reports of the U.S. government’s use of less-than-lethal “stun bombs” in Libya in 2011 and “electricity bombs” in Syria in 2017. The War Zone previously explored the potential legitimacy of those claims, including as evidence of novel directed energy and/or electronic/cyber warfare attacks, as well as other possibilities, in detail.

6/ When plane wants to drop electricity bomb, we are told to drop anything metal that we carry. Otherwise we also burn like ISIS fighters.

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) July 7, 2017

Some kind of physical mode of attack, such as one that causes an obstruction to certain features of ship, including elements of its propulsion system and rudders, and that doesn’t cause permanent damage, could be another option. Systems designed to slow or stop a vessel by fouling its propellers do exist, as seen in the video below, though they are generally intended for use against smaller watercraft. Prop foulers have been used to disable larger ships, but usually during harassment activities with a ship towing a long chain with floaters on it or other improvised obstruction mechanisms. It’s possible an unmanned craft could be adapted for this, but those are very dynamic operations that require a lot of situational awareness to pull off successfully. Innocuous accidents involving ship propellers getting tangled up in a fishing net also do just happen.

A system designed to initiate a physical less-than-lethal attack sufficient enough to hamper the movement of a large ship like an oil tanker, and doing so covertly, seems less likely than the aforementioned, less physically invasive options. Getting an obstructing device of some kind successfully in place discreetly, especially in front of or on a vessel in motion, could present significant challenges.

It’s unknown whether or not the CIA has expanded its inventory of the system that Wired reported on in recent years or has any other similar ones in its toolkit now. The fact that there was just one, at least at the time, points to a somewhat exotic and/or experimental capability.

The CIA is certainly well-known at this point for developing or supporting the development of novel means of targeting adversaries, lethally and non-lethally. For instance, the Agency had a hand in the development of the specialized low-collateral damage AGM-114R9X version of the Hellfire missile, which features an array of pop-out knife-like blades rather than a high-explosive warhead.

The details from Wired‘s story that the CIA “only had one of these systems, that it was currently in another hemisphere, and they didn’t want to move it,” are also very interesting regardless of how the reported ship-stopping capability works. This would seem to point to the system in question being forward deployed outside of the Western Hemisphere already, and possibly with a very specific target set in mind. This might also indicate a reticence to potentially expose what this system can do absent an especially serious crisis or very high priority, clandestine operations.

An oil tanker sits just off the coast of Venezuela in 2019. A fisherman is seen in the foreground working with a net. JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images

Regardless of its specific mode of function, it is not at all hard to see how a covert and less-than-lethal ship-stopping capability would be highly attractive. For instance, it could be of great use for visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) operations. Stopping a ship, and even possibly cutting off its sensors and power, could make boarding and seizing control over it much easier. In areas where a VBSS or other special operations boarding teams are not present and will take too much time to there, such a system could stall the ship in preferred waters until critical capabilities arrive. Beyond just making a raid easier and safer, this all could be especially useful for responding on very short notice to top-priority actionable intelligence, such as alerts about the smuggling of particularly worrisome cargoes like nuclear material.

There are many other applications, as well. When used against military vessels, we are talking about taking the ship offline, or at least stopping it from moving and leaving it more vulnerable without firing a shot.

Altogether, while Wired‘s report provides limited details, the ship-stopping capability described therein would make good sense for the U.S. government to have up its sleeve.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

• Americas
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twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick

22. The Theoretical Edge: Why Junior Officers Should Study Military Classics

Not just junior officers, but all of us to include policymakers and strategists

My thesis: any complex political military problem can be understood and possible solutions developed by studying and internalizing the writings of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Thucydides.

Colin Gray:“If Thucydides, Sun-tzu, and Clausewitz Did Not Say It, It Probably Is Not Worth Saying.”

​It seems like my SAMS curriculum is described below.

The basis of all PME should rest on:

Military history

Military Theory

Military Geography.

Operational Art

Strategy

"Thoughts on Professional Military Education: After 9-11, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the Era of Fiscal Austerity"

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/thoughts-professional-military-education-after-9-11-iraq-and-afghanistan-era-fiscal

The Theoretical Edge: Why Junior Officers Should Study Military Classics

cimsec.org · by Guest Author

By Jack Tribolet

Throughout history, war has tested human ingenuity, often deciding the fate of empires, nations, and ideologies. Imagine looking out over an active battlefield, the air thick with tension and kinetic projectiles. Each choice could alter history, and you suddenly have a consequential decision to make with lives on the line. This is not only a hypothetical scenario but a possibility for which junior officers must be mentally prepared. While proficiency in Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) is essential, broadening their understanding of the warfighting domains is equally important. This broader understanding can be achieved by studying military theory in a challenging era where the history discipline is contracting.1

Studying prominent military theorists before mid-level Professional Military Education would give junior officers a comprehensive understanding of the warfighting domains, enhancing their situational awareness and decision-making abilities. By studying theorists like Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and John Boyd before mid-level Professional Military Education (PME), junior officers can enhance their situational awareness and decision-making capabilities, increasing their lethality.

Dominant military theorists such as Clausewitz, Mahan, and Giulio Douhet provided perspective to their respective eras and domains of war, adding clarity and grammar to chaos. Others, such as Antoine Jomini, Julian Corbett, and Boyd, refined and built upon previous theorists, sometimes not amicably. For cadets, midshipmen, and junior officers, delving into the works of these great minds is not merely an academic exercise but an integral piece of their professional development. By studying military theory in officer accession programs, officers could gain additional tools to think critically and lead effectively, ensuring they are well-equipped to face the increasingly complex modern battlefield.

By understanding the evolution of warfare and the application of historical lessons to contemporary conflicts, officers can develop what the French call coup d’œil — “a glance that takes in a general view.”2 Clausewitz defined coup d’œil as an “inward eye” enabling a “rapid and accurate decision” that would typically only be perceived “after a long study and reflection.”3 Coup d’œil requires trained observation and an exhaustive look at previous campaigns—strategy, tactics, decision points, technology, and truisms—all best encapsulated by military theory.

The great captains of military history, Caesar, Napoleon, Patton, and Mattis, have demonstrated the value of applied military theory. Each read history voraciously, Napoleon famously stating, “Peruse again and again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick. Model yourself upon them. This is the only means of becoming a great captain, and of acquiring the secret of the art of war. Your own genius will be enlightened and improved by this study, and you will learn to reject all maxims foreign to the principles of the great commanders.”4 Therefore, the early introduction of this practice has infinite potential for the training of junior officers.

Defining Military Theory

Some might question the necessity of studying military theory before attending PME. To answer this, we need to understand the role of theorists. Clausewitz explains, “The theory of any activity, even if it aimed at effective performance rather than comprehensive understanding, must discover the essential, timeless elements of this activity, and distinguish them from its temporary features.”5

In other words, theorists identify and describe enduring principles of warfare. These principles remain functional across time and space, providing a framework for understanding historical and modern conflicts.

Niccolo Machiavelli, who predated Clausewitz by three centuries, said, “In peace he (the warfighter) should addict himself more to its exercise than in war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.”6 Machiavelli’s discourse recodified the ancient Roman way of citizen war and reintroduced the Roman practice of applied history. His treatise was placed on the first papal Index of Prohibited Books in 1559 for his effort.7 It is ironic that perhaps the premier military theorist, Clausewitz, had suspicions of applied theory, warning, “Theory can never lead to complete understanding, which is an impossibility, but it can strengthen and refine judgment.”8 He believed theory should “guide him [the warfighter] to self-education” and hazarded against it accompanying “him on the field of battle.”9

Despite Clausewitz’s warnings, studying theorists affords officers essential battlefield grammar: friction, center of gravity, lines of communication, strategic versus tactical bombing, and many more vital employable descriptive terms. Clarity in writing equates to clarity in thought. Many senior leaders use these terms colloquially, sometimes confusing an untrained audience, which prompted their quick introduction into the midshipman’s repertoire at the University of Southern California Naval ROTC unit so that they could decipher “Colonelese.”

Ultimately, studying military theory links the past and present in the officer’s mind, developing an internal timeline for the continuum of conflict and facilitating the identification of timeless principles from precedents. Clausewitz’s emphasis on enduring principles and Machiavelli’s advocacy for continuous study highlights the timeless relevance of military theory in developing critical thinking and decision-making skills.

Historical Context and the Evolution of Warfare

Individual theorists define their age, but more importantly, correspond to their chosen domain of war. Battlespace environments or military domains, defined by physical characteristics, require “unique doctrines, organizations, and equipment for military forces to effectively control and exploit in the conduct of military operations.”10 Consequently, theorist grammar produces the archetypes of their respective warfighting domain, defining the realm and rules for operation.

Prominent theorists can be assigned to domains as follows:

Land Domain

Clausewitz and Jomini, who fought against and with one another in the Napoleonic Wars, endeavored to describe the fundamental nature of war but ultimately became the golden standard for land-centric campaigns. Jomini spent most of his literary career struggling against Clausewitz’s ghost, calling his logic “frequently defective.” However, he provided a valuable counterbalance to Clausewitz’s theories.11

In the scrum of theorists, Clausewitz has emerged as the champion, peerlessly describing war as a “continuation of policy with the addition of other means.”12 However, while Jomini’s attempt to entirely “sciencefy” war failed, his concepts of interior lines and the application of force are integral to land domain comprehension.13

Sun Tzu, who predates Clausewitz and Jomini by two thousand years, remains shrouded in mystery as the author’s existence and when he wrote his treatise fall under scrutiny. However, Sun Tzu provides insight into Chinese war grammar and way of thought, which is valuable in light of the inevitable Taiwan Crisis. His use of creative naturalistic dialectical metaphors to tether common sense principles to practices is absent in Western literature. Using dialectical oppositional pairs to capture a concept challenges the Western military mind and provides insight into the pacing threat.14

Other prominent land theorists include Flavius Vegetius Renatus, Miyamoto Musashi, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Mentecuccoli, Maurice Marshal de Saxe, Frederick the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry Lloyd, Helmuth von Moltke, B.H. Liddell Hart, and Heinz Guderian—an all-star lineup of some of history’s finest commanders.

Maritime Domain

Mahan and Corbett clashed on naval warfare in the age of the ever-enlarging capital ship, taking opposing views on employing fleets. Mahan advocated for decisive fleet-on-fleet battles involving capital ships, believing such engagements would determine naval supremacy. In contrast, Corbett viewed maritime power as a means to support land operations, emphasizing the importance of controlling sea lines of communication to ensure the movement and supply of land forces. These differing perspectives continue to influence modern naval strategy, as seen in the strategic deployment of carrier strike groups and the protection of critical maritime routes.

Other prominent maritime theories/theorists include La Jeune École, John and Philip Colomb, Herbert Richmond, and Hyman G. Rickover. However, due to the nature of maritime combat, naval theorists are as much technologists as strategists.

Air and Space Domains

Douhet, John Boyd, and John Warden arose in the 20th century with the advent of air power and had the difficult task of describing a rapidly shifting air domain. Douhet recognized the game-shifting application of air power in WWI and addressed the future of strategic bombing campaigns, which would shape Allied strategy in WWII. Boyd and Warden penned their concept of Strategic Paralysis in the aftermath of the precise bombing campaign of the Gulf War. Unsurprisingly, Boyd and Warden recognized the value of striking critical command and control centers; however, despite this leap in targeting capabilities, the priority of tactical versus strategic bombing remains in question, and both are seen in the current Ukraine War.15

Other prominent air theorists include Hugh Trenchard, William Mitchell, Thomas C. Schelling, and Robert J. Aumann. Unlike other domains, air power exists on an exponential technological curve, representing a formidable challenge for an air theorist to stay ahead of innovation.

Cyber and Informational Domains

Newest to the fight, these domains remain up for grabs for a future military theorist. The recently published Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 8-10 made a significant leap forward in informational doctrine, recognizing the new dimension of social media and access to information witnessed in the current Ukraine and Israeli Wars. Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 8-10 must become required reading for all military members, regardless of position or rank, as it concisely captures a new aspect of modern warfare.

In culmination, the warfighting domains encapsulate the entirety of warfare, each with unique doctrines, responsible organizations, and history. Participants in these domains must endeavor to comprehend their battlefield and dissect their associated theorists to gain situational awareness to develop a refined intuition.

Strategic and Tactical Proficiency

Unlike standard military history, theorists exist in the realm of application, deducing principles from precedents. Mahan cautioned against mistaking precedent with principle, “a precedent is different from and less valuable than a principle. The former may be originally faulty or may cease to apply through change of circumstances; the latter has its root in the essential nature of things, and, however various its application as conditions change, remains a standard to which action must conform to attain success.”16

Principles of war guide the development and refinement of TTPs. For example, understanding the “economy of force” principle can help officers allocate resources more effectively during operations.17 By grasping the theoretical foundations of their TTPs, officers can enhance their tactical proficiency and make more informed decisions in the heat of battle. TTPs ultimately reflect the handed-down knowledge from competent predecessors, thus representing an ever-changing chain of lessons learned.

For example, at the Battle of Midway, Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky intuitively understood the Mahanian principle of a decisive naval battle enabled by his superior coup d’œil. Dangerously low on fuel, he continued the search for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) carriers, putting his squadron into fuel extremis, knowing that he had to break his TTPs for the chance of decisive victory. McClusky’s actions at Midway demonstrate the practical application of Mahanian principles, underscoring the value of understanding military theory for effective decision-making. The IJN were strict adherents to Mahanian theory, and they forced Midway to become a decisive battle, just not in the manner they expected.18

Leadership and Decision-Making

Dominant battlefield methodology develops directly from technological innovation, and the rate of change increases the complexity of battlefield TTPs. Consequently, TTPs serve as a lagging indicator of technological progress. Increased complexity has downstream effects; as Clausewitz would say, “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.”19 The increased situational awareness gained by studying timeless military principles gives officers the required perspective in a fluctuating scenario to make critical decisions. “Just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.”20

When becoming an aircraft commander, pilots are expected to learn their systems in and out—limits, emergency procedures, and TTPs—which become second nature through study. The end state of this learning profile enables the aircraft commander to understand when and how to break procedures as McClusky did. This analogy applies to learning domain warfare—by understanding the domain paradigm—junior officers have the foundational knowledge to understand the cause and effect of sometimes necessary TTP rule-breaking in warfare decision-making.

Beyond domain comprehension, some theorists provide critical insight into the decision-making process. Boyd’s OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) exemplifies how theoretical frameworks can enhance rapid decision-making, a crucial skill for junior officers in dynamic combat situations. For instance, during aerial combat, pilots who quickly observe the enemy’s actions, orient themselves to the situation, decide on the best course of action, and act swiftly are more likely to succeed. When internalized and practiced, this process can significantly enhance an officer’s ability to make rapid and effective decisions under pressure.

Case Studies and Practical Applications

Theory provides the realm of possibility, the domain’s boundaries, enabling a scenario-driven decision point. One example of a scenario-driven event is the Decision Forcing Cases (DFC) model used in the United States Marine Corps. DFCs represent a valuable tool for training cadets, midshipmen, and young officers. These scenarios encourage situational learning and critical thinking and facilitate stress through time restrictions and real-time instructor feedback.

However, instruction must include a deep dive into historical campaigns to maximize scenario-based theory learning and understand possibility boundaries. For example, an in-depth look at Napoleon’s conquest of Europe includes grand strategies such as logistical considerations and pairs them with tactical decision-making. Where do you apply force, and how?

Furthermore, what were the consequences of critical decisions made in the historical context? In 1812, Napoleon’s intuition failed him due to a lack of temperance. His Russian campaign provides a clear example of the importance of strategic decision-making. Initially aiming for a quick victory, Napoleon pressed on past his initial objectives, leading his troops deeper into Russia with Moscow in sight. This decision resulted in severe logistical challenges as supply lines stretched beyond their limits. The harsh winter compounded these issues, ultimately leading to an apocalyptic retreat where only 100,000 men of the 612,000 that crossed the border returned.21 Analyzing this campaign helps officers understand the critical balance between ambition and logistical feasibility in military strategy and should provide a warning to pair objectives with temperance.

A deep understanding of the continuum of change in war enables officers to identify truisms and trends, which expands their ability to anticipate further evolution—”Victory smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of war.”22 The current conflict in Ukraine has spotlighted the real-time evolution of drone warfare. Consequently, future drone theorists and AI integration arbiters are likely already in the service or will soon be joining. These fundamental changes to warfare outline a ripe opportunity to deliver the grammar of these technologies into doctrine, thus necessitating these future service doctrine-writing members to have a firm grasp on previous theories as they initiate the testing phase.

Conclusion: Preparing Junior Officers for Modern Warfare

Integrating military theory into early education—officer ascension programs, and training would equip junior officers with essential principles for effective leadership and decision-making— coup d’œil. Officer Candidacy School, ROTC, and the academies must strive to add the study of theorists to curriculums inside and outside the classroom. Furthermore, this instruction must continue into active units, which could be as simple as guided discussion groups led by unit commanders. Military theory provides a framework for understanding historical and contemporary conflicts by distilling complex concepts into coherent truisms. Effective decision-making lies at the heart of officership, and studying military theory refines and strengthens this critical skill. As the adage goes, “He who desires peace should prepare for war.”23

By incorporating military theorists into their early education, junior officers and officer candidates engage with the primary sources of war, which better prepares them to lead confidently in the challenges of modern warfare.

Lieutenant Jack Tribolet is Assistant Professor of Naval Science at the University of Southern California ROTC and is the course coordinator for Seapower and Maritime Affairs. He is a naval aviator.

References

1 Bret Devereaux, “The History Crisis Is a National Security Problem, Foreign Policy, March 10, 2024. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/10/the-history-crisis-is-a-national-security-problem/

2 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “coup d’oeil,” accessed July 8, 2024, https://www.oed.com/

3 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael E. Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 102.

4 Kevin Kinley, “Thumbing through the Napoleonic Wars: The Words of Napoleon and Others Who May Have Influenced His Methods,” The Napoleon Series, Accessed July 17, 2024. https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/napoleon/c_quotes.html

5 Clausewitz, On War, 11.

6 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. W.K. Marriott, (New York: NY, Fall River Press, 2017), 62.

7 John Lewis Gaddis, On Grand Strategy (Westminister: UK, Penguin Books, 2018) 110.

8 Clausewitz, On War, 193.

9 Clausewitz, On War, 4.

10 Michael P. Kreuzer, “Cyberspace is an Analogy, Not a Domain: Rethinking Domains and Layers of Warfare for the Information Age,” The Strategy Bridge, July 8, 2021. https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2021/7/8/cyberspace-is-an-analogy-not-a-domain-rethinking-domains-and-layers-of-warfare-for-the-information-age

11 Baron De Jomini, The Art of War (Radford, VA: Wilder Publications, 2008) 127.

12 James Holmes, “Everything You Know About Clausewitz Is Wrong,” The Diplomat, November 12, 2012. https://thediplomat.com/2014/11/everything-you-know-about-clausewitz-is-wrong/

13 Jomini, The Art of War, 77.

14 Gaddis, On Grand Strategy, 66.

15 David S. Fadok, John Boyd and John Warden: Air Power’s Quest for Strategic Paralysis (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University, 1995) 13, 23.

16 Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History (Boston: Little Brown, 1902), 7.

17 Paul Murdock, “The Principles of War on the Network-Centric Battlefield: Mass and Economy of Force,” Parameters 32, no. 1 (May 2002): 86.

18 Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2005), 215-216.

19 Clausewitz, On War, 119.

20 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles, (New York: NY, Fall River Press, 2015) 69.

21 T. Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “French invasion of Russia,” Encyclopedia Britannica, July 11, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/event/French-invasion-of-Russia.

22 Giulio Douhet, The Command of The Air, trans. Dino Ferari (Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books, 2020), 30.

23 John Clarke, “De Rei Militari by Flavius Vegetius Renatus” in Roots of Strategy: The 5 Greatest Military Classics of All Time, edited by Thomas R. Phillips, (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1985), 124.

Featured Image: Painting “Rescue of the crew of Achille during the Battle of Trafalgar,” by Richard Brydges Beechey, 1884. (Via Wikimedia Commons)

cimsec.org · by Guest Author

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com