Quotes of the Day:

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it." 

– George Orwell

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience." 

– Oliver Wendell Holmes

"There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-protected pursuit." 

– Edmund Burke

1. The Chinese Approach to Gray Zone & Irregular Competition: An Integrated Strategy Not Matched By The U.S.

2. Beyond Binaries: Cyber Force Generation and the SOCOM-like Model

3. The Shifting Priorities in the Hunt for Osama bin Laden

4. Donald Trump Has a Big Choice to Make for Secretary of State

5. Peggy Noonan: On Loving America

6. Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are

7. Legos, Cocoa, and Coloring Books for Georgetown Students

8. Trump’s Promises and Threats: A Guide to What’s Possible

9. A Xi Enforcer Is Revving Up China’s Spy Machine—and Alarming the West

10. I Study Guys Like Trump. There’s a Reason They Keep Winning.

11. Why America Stopped Winning Wars

12. A New Strategic Service for a New Cold War

13. Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders

14. Mastering Human-Machine Warfighting Teams

15. NATO allies ready sea drones for the task of repelling enemy warships

16. The US needs to get real about maneuver warfare in space

17. SMDC team launches Black Dagger Zombie during test

18. The National Security Imperative for a Trump Presidency

19. Democracy Without America?

20. Houthis’ lesson for the US Army: how a land force can fight a maritime war

21. Army’s new Pacific commander has decades-deep roots in Hawaii

22. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea threaten the world order (please read).

1. The Chinese Approach to Gray Zone & Irregular Competition: An Integrated Strategy Not Matched By The U.S.

A fascinating and thought provoking read for the weekend. Please go to the link to view some very interesting and well done graphics (which I assume were generated by AI, except for the second one that is the simplistic one the military has been using for more than a decade to try to show the difference between conventional and irregular warfare.  

It is really one of the most intellectually bankrupt graphics used in DOD that simply says the difference between conventional warfare and irregular warfare is a shift in the (simplistic but incorrect) Clausewatizian trinity (should be passion reason, and chance) of focusing on the government and the military in conventional warfare to the government and the people in irregular warfare with everything also being the same. I believe that the lack of understanding of both Clausewitz and the attempt have a simplistic understanding of irregular warfare as focusing on the people rather than the military is what has contributed to our inability to develop strategies and campaign plans that effectively allow os to complete, fight, and win in the gray zone of strategic competition (and yest fighting takes place in strategic competition and we need to compete and fight to win). 

As an aside I would like to point out why the concept of shifting from the military to the people is a bankrupt concept. (of course the proponents interpret this shift to mean the shift from force on force conventional battalion versus conventional battalion to only operations among the people such as to counter insurgencies). An anecdote from a conference I attended this week (Chatham House rules so Incannot review the participants of the venue). As we were discussing elements of IW and in particular influence I asked the question of why we don't consider returning our military PSYOP forces to conduct PSYOP against our adversary military forces using their Title 10 authority to do so. If we understand the nature of authoritarian regimes they are reliant on their militaries for support and to oppress the population and suppress resistance (or resistance potential). Most importantly, if you want to hold the population at risk to an authoritarian leader you should consider eroding military support for the leadership as well as support to suppression of resistance among the people. He reverted to the idea that there are too many examples of problems caused by mistakes (but did not specify any) in PSYOP and that we need to focus on influencing governments and the people. He, like others on the panel, remains enamored with "covert influence." In addition, one of my points is that if you want to have effective covert influence you may be able to hide such influence in plain sight among an overt PSYOP campaign targeting the enemy military, which is something everyone should expect our military to be conducting. Our military PSYOP campaigns should alway be focused on targeting the enemy militaries to create two effects: first, erode their will to conduct an external attack and ultimately disobey an order to conduct an external attack, and second, erode their will to conduct operations to suppress resistance among their own people and disobey the orders of the authoritarian leaders. But the former senior leader just either didn't understand or just disregarded these points (or perhaps more likely, I did not explain them well enough to allow him to understand). That said, I do not believe that military PSYOP should also be employed in support of US Emasayries (where they have been doing great work as well as other US government agencies (e.g., The Global Engagement Center at State) and within the IC. But their main effort, in my opinion, should be to target the enemy's military to deter war and to deter military use against their own populations. Apologies that these comments may seem somewhat beyond the scope of this article but I wanted to share them.

The importance of this article is the analysis of China and irregular warfare which should create the foundations for an important intellectual discussion and contribution to our understanding of China's intentions, capabilities, and actions.

One immediate critique is that it uses a now obsolete definition of irregular warfare but one that has been in vogue with only a slight change from 2007 to 2022: Irregular Warfare (IW) is a violent struggle between state and non-state actors to gain influence and legitimacy over a population

Joint Definition:

Irregular Warfare is a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare. (Joint Pub 1, Joint Warfighting, August 2023)

Army Definition:

Irregular warfare is the overt, clandestine, and covert employment of military and non-military capabilities across multiple domains by state and non-state actors through methods other than military domination of an adversary, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare. (Army Publication FM 3-0, Operations, October 2022)

Congressional Description:

Irregular Warfare is conducted “in support of predetermined United States policy and military objectives conducted by, with, and through regular forces, irregular forces, groups, and individuals participating in competition between state and non-state actors short of traditional armed conflict.” (National Defense Authorization Act of 2017) 

The thought provoking conclusion. We must understand the nature, objectives, and strategy of the PRC and especially Xi and the CCP. This is how I assess China:  China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives.

Excerpts:

Special Operations Forces (SOF) remain at the core of U.S. military IW efforts. They engage in various missions, from direct action to counterterrorism and unconventional warfare to countering a limited range of gray zone threats posed by adversaries. The U.S. approach also involves collaboration with allies, interagency coordination, and using diplomatic, economic, and informational tools to complement military efforts or in some combination. However, adapting these capabilities to counter China's sophisticated gray zone tactics remains a significant challenge.

SOF enhances U.S. influence without direct confrontation by training allies and partners, supporting insurgents, countering insurgents, psychological operations, and conducting information operations. Despite their effectiveness, traditional SOF tactics have limited reach in the information-heavy environment that characterizes gray zone warfare. The U.S. struggles to match China’s capability in deploying state-controlled media, legal frameworks, and digital subversion to achieve strategic gains. The State Department, which has legal authority over these operations, heavily restricts military use of IO, further limiting its effectiveness.

... 

Conclusion – Competing In This Era, Not The Last One

China’s IW strategy represents a comprehensive effort to shape the global environment to its advantage, using every tool available short of open warfare. Using maritime militias, PAP units, cyber capabilities, and political manipulation illustrates how Beijing merges IW and conventional capabilities to pursue its goals. As the world enters an era of renewed great power competition, China’s commitment to IW means that future conflicts involving China are unlikely to be purely conventional. Instead, IW will likely serve as the primary method through which China exerts influence and undermines adversaries without escalating to open hostilities.

For policymakers and military planners, understanding the intricacies of China’s IW is crucial. Beijing’s approach demands that rival strategies be developed that address the entirety of China’s IW toolkit—military, political, legal, and informational. By recognizing that China’s use of IW and gray zone approaches are part of a long-term strategy to reshape the international order, the United States and its allies can better prepare to dilute these efforts both in the Indo-Pacific and globally.

To dilute China’s efforts to degrade the U.S. while advancing its interests in great power competition, the U.S. must undergo significant organizational, doctrinal, and methodological changes. These changes must effectively counter irregular approaches in the gray zone while protecting and advancing U.S. national security interests. Simply countering the Chinese is a great way for the U.S. to chase its tail and not create the world the U.S. can thrive in. To compete with China’s integrated gray zone/irregular strategies, the U.S. must broaden its approach beyond conventional and special operations frameworks, developing a comprehensive interagency system with robust cyber, intelligence, and informational warfare capabilities. Organizationally, a unified structure that enhances interagency collaboration, especially between SOF, cyber units, and civilian agencies, will be essential to effectively coordinate military and civilian functions and implement gray zone activities that can counter, degrade, deter, and advance. 

Doctrinally, U.S. forces must shift to a holistic, improved and expanded IW doctrine that incorporates aspects of the gray zone approach and embraces military, diplomatic, economic, and informational tools to address complex threats and opportunities. This shift requires an adaptive strategy that combines offensive and defensive cyber operations, strategic messaging, and influence operations to challenge adversaries in the informational domain. Furthermore, counter-lawfare tactics and psychological operations must be prioritized outside traditional combat zones to address China’s nuanced and pervasive gray zone methods.

Methodologically, the U.S. must build resilient IW units capable of rapid response, digital warfare, and intelligence operations aligned with advanced technological innovations in AI and cybersecurity. By restructuring SOF capabilities to include IW-specific units and enhancing coordination with allied forces for regional security missions, the U.S. can assert its influence and deter adversarial encroachment in contested regions. Only through a multi-domain, multi-faceted approach can the U.S. effectively navigate the gray zone, protect its interests, and maintain stability amid great power competition. SOF should lead the way, not by being a slightly better version of its current self, but by becoming something different.:

The Chinese Approach to Gray Zone & Irregular Competition

An Integrated Strategy Not Matched By The U.S.

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/the-chinese-approach-to-gray-zone-irregular-competition?postId=b2abab91-5f27-40b1-b1c1-eceb3dd88359&utm

Strategy Central

For And By Practitioners

By Monte Erfourth, November 2024

Introduction

China's approach to Irregular Warfare (IW) is integral to its broader military and geopolitical strategy, designed to complement conventional forces and expand influence through non-kinetic means. China is weaving an irregular strategy that extends beyond traditional battlegrounds into the social, economic, and informational realms by leveraging information, influence, and non-state actors. China calls IW “Hybrid Warfare,” but we will use IW interchangeably in this discussion.

To confuse matters even more, the U.S. refers to the realm between peace and war as the gray zone. In contrast to China’s ambiguous and integrated approach to competition short of conflict, the U.S. approach to IW and gray zone activities has often been compartmentalized, focusing heavily on Special Operations Forces (SOF) and a mixed bag of diplomatic, economic, and informational conventional tools. U.S. intelligence services likely have the most success exploiting the gray zone, but they must be better coordinated and revelatory about the effects. A U.S. and China comparison of gray zone approaches shows significant differences in the scope, patience, and flexibility between the two nations, with China embracing a more diverse and integrated approach.

The United States should revise its gray zone strategy to counter China and effectively advance and protect its national security interests within the context of Great Power Competition. This article aims to enhance understanding of Beijing's perspective on Irregular Warfare (IW), including its historical context and the application of IW operations in the gray zone. A comparison between the two approaches will demonstrate the need for strategic adaptation in the U.S. approach.

 The U.S. History and Approach to Irregular Warfare and the Gray Zone

Irregular Warfare (IW) is a violent struggle between state and non-state actors to gain influence and legitimacy over a population. They are operations aimed at achieving political objectives through unconventional means, often below the threshold of traditional warfare. It includes unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, and foreign internal defense. Gray zone activities, on the other hand, occupy a space between peace and open conflict, characterized by actions like cyber intrusions, disinformation campaigns, economic coercion, espionage, and challenging other governments levers of control through harassment, intimidation, and strong arms tactics that push legal, policing, or military boundaries (lawfare). These operations seek to achieve strategic gains while avoiding the direct triggers of a strictly military response of consequence.

Gray zone security challenges are competitive actions between states or states and non-state actors that fall between peace and war. The lack of distinction between belligerence at the threshold of war and a regular occurrence creates complications for foreign policymakers. Unlike conventional categories of war or peace, these challenges are marked by ambiguity about the nature of the conflict, the actors involved, and applicable legal frameworks. While gray zone activities share specific characteristics, each challenge is unique, requiring tailored approaches. These challenges are more intense than typical peacetime competition, inherently aggressive, ambiguous on a scale between peace and war, and dependent on perspective. The gray zone is not merely physical space as a “zone” implies; it is also an approach that confuses others about intentions and employs methods that always carry an air of deniability.

In its early history, the United States often employed gray zone tactics against established powers, but this approach shifted as it became a global leader. The current national security architecture, primarily shaped by the National Security Act of 1947, is focused on maintaining the world order, making the U.S. ill-suited for gray zone challenges despite decades of attempts to address them. Since World War II, the U.S. has struggled to respond effectively to these challenges due to gaps in laws, policies, and strategies. America's responses are frequently either overly militarized or overly constrained, failing to navigate the ambiguous middle ground between peace and warfare, where clear concepts for law enforcement and military action do not neatly apply. The chart above illustrates that the U.S. has traditionally focused on a Clausewitzian approach, emphasizing the trinity and often adopting a predominantly tactical mindset. In contrast, China has successfully blended tactical and strategic practices, utilizing Sun Tzu’s theories to establish hybrid warfare as a core strategy.

For the U.S., the convergence between IW and the gray zone involves using aggressive methods that stop short of war, focusing on influencing and leveraging specific populations. IW is a limited approach to influencing populations, and the gray zone goes beyond a specific Indigenous group to the perception of these operations in the geopolitical landscape. Additionally, the gray zone encompasses more than just population dynamics. It represents an approach to degrade, deter, and out-compete other nations without engaging in direct conflict. It also goes beyond simply seeking friendly resolutions to access and control resources, communication lines, or markets.

The U.S. approach to IW and gray zone activities has evolved and has been shaped by various conflicts and global challenges. Below is an overview of critical elements of the U.S. history and approach to IW and the gray zone:

• Unconventional Warfare (UW): During the Cold War, the U.S. engaged in unconventional warfare to support anti-communist insurgencies worldwide, often utilizing CIA operations and Special Forces to conduct covert activities to weaken Soviet influence.
• Counterinsurgency (COIN): In conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the U.S. adopted COIN strategies that combined military operations with efforts to win the "hearts and minds" of local populations.
• Foreign Internal Defense (FID): U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) have long trained and assisted allied nations' militaries in countering internal threats, thereby preventing adversaries from gaining influence.
• Information Operations (IO): The U.S. has increasingly focused on information operations to counter adversarial propaganda, particularly during the Gulf War and recent engagements against extremist groups.
• Cyber Warfare: The U.S. has developed cyber capabilities as part of its IW strategy, focusing on defensive measures and offensive operations to counter threats from state and non-state actors.
•  

Special Operations Forces (SOF) remain at the core of U.S. military IW efforts. They engage in various missions, from direct action to counterterrorism and unconventional warfare to countering a limited range of gray zone threats posed by adversaries. The U.S. approach also involves collaboration with allies, interagency coordination, and using diplomatic, economic, and informational tools to complement military efforts or in some combination. However, adapting these capabilities to counter China's sophisticated gray zone tactics remains a significant challenge.

SOF enhances U.S. influence without direct confrontation by training allies and partners, supporting insurgents, countering insurgents, psychological operations, and conducting information operations. Despite their effectiveness, traditional SOF tactics have limited reach in the information-heavy environment that characterizes gray zone warfare. The U.S. struggles to match China’s capability in deploying state-controlled media, legal frameworks, and digital subversion to achieve strategic gains. The State Department, which has legal authority over these operations, heavily restricts military use of IO, further limiting its effectiveness.

Historical Roots & Modern China’s Irregular Warfare Approach

The foundation of China’s current approach to IW can be traced back to its history of asymmetric resistance and revolution. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was born out of Mao Zedong's guerilla strategies during the Chinese Civil War, where irregular tactics were employed to counter the technologically superior Kuomintang forces. Mao’s philosophy centered on influencing the population and transitioning from irregular to conventional tactics when advantageous. This historical narrative shapes the Chinese mindset, where IW is not an afterthought but an essential part of national defense and expansion strategies.

Chinese leaders understand that irregular approaches are a powerful tool in an era when outright military conflict could have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) incorporates them into its broader strategic approach, focusing on disrupting adversaries and projecting power in subtle, often deniable ways. This methodology, rooted in historical necessity, persists in modern Chinese strategy, as evidenced by its activities in the South China Sea and beyond.

China’s modern concept of IW is often called hybrid warfare and integrates political, military, and informational efforts to influence populations and diminish adversarial legitimacy. Unlike Western powers, which often compartmentalize IW into counterterrorism or counterinsurgency, China sees hybrid warfare as central to its great power competition strategy. Beijing merges hybrid with conventional operations, using them in tandem to shape the battlespace and ensure favorable outcomes without direct confrontation. Blending conventional and irregular tactics is seen as a natural approach in any potential great power conflict, especially with the United States, as demonstrated in the South China Sea, where maritime militias act as vanguards of Chinese sovereignty claims without engaging conventional military assets.

A central approach to China’s hybrid strategy emphasizes the “Three Warfares”—public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare. These elements aim to manipulate the information environment to undermine adversaries to ensure strategic gains without firing a shot. For example, public opinion warfare utilizes state-controlled media and social platforms to influence domestic and international audiences. Psychological warfare is intended to demoralize opponents, while legal warfare seeks to exploit international law ambiguities, particularly in disputes over the South China Sea. These efforts, all conducted in the gray zone below the threshold of open conflict, are essential to Beijing's aim of reshaping the global order in its favor.

 PLA Methodology & Capabilities

China’s approach to gray zone operations is broad, diverse, and well-developed. Critical components of China’s strategy include:

• The Three Warfares: Public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare are central to China’s strategy of shaping the information environment, influencing populations, and manipulating legal norms to support its strategic objectives.
• Maritime Militias: China employs maritime militias—non-military fishing vessels equipped for reconnaissance and harassment missions—to assert control over disputed waters without engaging conventional military forces.
• People's Armed Police (PAP): The PAP is utilized for domestic security but also plays roles in international operations, particularly in border areas and maritime security.
• Cyber and Information Warfare: China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) engages in cyber espionage and disinformation campaigns to weaken adversaries and achieve strategic gains without direct confrontation.
• United Front Work: This political strategy involves cultivating relationships with influential individuals and groups in other countries to increase Chinese influence abroad.
• Economic Coercion: China uses economic measures, such as trade restrictions and infrastructure investment through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to create dependencies and exert political leverage over other nations.
•  

China does not routinely focus on IW approaches similar to U.S. SOF. While China attempts to create instability and apply pressure on unfavorable governments or sway specific populations, unconventional warfare (UW) or foreign internal defense (FID) are not their preferred methods. Instead, they rely primarily on information operations (IO), lawfare, and psychological operations. China’s most aggressive military tactics include using maritime fishing militias, Coast Guard harassment in international waters, building islands in international waters, claiming land and waters that are not China, and conducting military exercises around Taiwan. PLA Air Force fly-bys and violations of other nations' airspace are also common. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) and People's Armed Police (PAP) SOF are mainly limited to supporting conventional operations.

In late 2015, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) initiated sweeping reforms to transition from land-based territorial defense to broader power projection across space, cyberspace, and the far seas, aligning with its strategy to protect Chinese interests in these “strategic frontiers.” A central aspect of this reform was the creation of the Strategic Support Force (SSF) (not a SOF unit), which consolidates the PLA’s space, cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare capabilities into a single unit, aiming to enhance the PLA’s capacity to engage in "informationized" wars. The SSF plays two critical roles: strategic information support and strategic information operations. In its support role, the SSF centralizes intelligence collection, enables joint operations, and strengthens PLA power projection, particularly in space and nuclear domains. In its operational role, the SSF coordinates cyber, electronic, and space warfare to target enemy command systems, aiming to “paralyze” and “sabotage” these systems in the early stages of conflict.

The SSF enhances the PLA’s effectiveness in conducting complex information operations by unifying previously disparate capabilities. This integration allows the PLA to streamline cyber espionage, offensive cyber actions, and information warfare campaigns, creating new synergies to conduct decisive information operations. The SSF's unified command structure supports the coordination and deployment of information warfare assets, positioning the PLA to execute sophisticated, multi-domain strategies in competition and future conflicts.

In short, China has built a homologized PLA that blends military and civilian structures suited for gray zone activities from the tactical to the strategic levels. They can influence populations, degrade rival capabilities, create confusion about what and how they conduct themselves, build access to markets and lines of communication, and manipulate states to go along with their strategic designs. U.S. SOF are not built or trained for this pseudo-war capability that spans domains, confounds legal definitions, and retains plausible deniability to obviously problematic activities.

 Chinese DIME Approaches to Irregular Warfare

The Chinese approach to IW draws from multiple elements of national power. Politically, China employs “United Front” operations, using diplomatic engagements, economic influence, and even cultural exchanges to expand its influence abroad and secure compliance among its neighbors. Politically motivated IW activities include efforts to sway opinions in target countries by cultivating political elites through economic incentives or coercion, thereby enhancing Chinese influence without direct intervention.

Militarily, the PLA employs its regular forces in roles traditionally associated with special operations, such as direct action and reconnaissance, but tightly integrates these actions with conventional capabilities. The People’s Armed Police (PAP) and maritime militias are also instrumental in China’s hybrid efforts. The maritime militia, for instance, has been pivotal in asserting control over contested waters in the South China Sea, allowing Beijing to advance territorial claims through persistent presence and intimidation, all while maintaining plausible deniability.

China also uses its intelligence services as an integral component in gray zone approaches. The Ministry of State Security (MSS) engages in cyber espionage, disinformation campaigns, and economic warfare to weaken adversaries and steal valuable data. These activities are coordinated with other national power elements, blurring the line between traditional military operations and covert actions typical of IW.

China’s primary global security approach is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which strategically employs gray zone tactics to expand its influence, subtly bypassing direct military engagement. By offering infrastructure loans to developing countries, China enables economic dependency and political sway, often binding countries with debt through terms favorable to Chinese interests. Infrastructure projects, such as ports, roads, and railways, facilitate economic interconnectivity while enabling dual-use logistics that support China's military and commercial interests. Additionally, China's involvement in these regions allows it to shape local politics and align the strategic goals of partner nations with its own, securing vital resources and expanding its sphere of influence without resorting to armed conflict. Through these methods, the BRI operates in the geopolitical gray zone, advancing Chinese interests under the guise of development and cooperation.

 Comparing the U.S. and Chinese Approaches to Irregular Warfare

The Chinese approach to irregular activities and gray zone challenges are more comprehensive, diverse, and developed than the United States. China’s flexibility and patience, coupled with its use of non-military tools to achieve its objectives, give it an advantage in gray zone operations. Beijing leverages various legal, economic, cyber, and informational instruments, integrating them with military capabilities. This contrasts with the U.S. approach, which remains primarily compartmentalized. SOF and intelligence agencies often conduct IW activities in isolation from broader political and economic efforts.

China’s patience in achieving long-term strategic goals also contrasts with the often reactive nature of U.S. policy. While the U.S. has demonstrated tactical proficiency in IW through its SOF, the broader integration of IW into national strategy lags behind China’s cohesive, multi-domain approach. The Chinese ability to operate effectively within the gray zone, using a mix of coercion, disinformation, and legal manipulation, highlights the need for the U.S. to adapt its strategy to compete effectively.

 Improving the U.S. Approach to Compete in the Gray Zone

To better compete with China in the gray zone, the U.S. must broaden its IW doctrine to address the diverse and evolving challenges posed by Chinese gray zone operations. This involves developing IW capabilities beyond the traditional focus on SOF and incorporating an interagency approach that includes diplomatic, economic, and informational tools. Enhanced interagency collaboration, particularly in cybersecurity and intelligence sharing, is essential to creating a comprehensive IW platform capable of countering China's tactics.

The U.S. could also establish dedicated cyber and information warfare units within SOF or build new partnerships with technology industries to innovate in the IW domain, especially as AI and other computing systems dramatically alter the competitive playing field. Joint operations with regional allies, such as multinational maritime security missions, could effectively deter Chinese aggression in contested areas like the South China Sea.

Moreover, expanding strategic messaging and influence operations will help counter China's extensive use of state-controlled media and disinformation campaigns. By fully embracing a broader IW approach that leverages military, economic, informational, and diplomatic capabilities, the U.S. can position itself to better compete in the gray zone and preserve stability in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

To bridge the capability gap with the Chinese, the U.S. needs to enhance its IW framework to align more closely with China's capabilities to counter Chinese strategies in the gray zone. This involves expanding SOF capabilities, including cyber defenses, strategic messaging, counter-lawfare operations, military deception, strategic sabotage, psychological operations outside combat zones, reconnaissance, and enhanced collaboration with allies (Advise, Assist, Accompany). Additionally, the U.S. must be willing to adjust its formations, such as incorporating dedicated IW units focused on cyber and information warfare (digital media) rather than relying solely on traditional SOF missions.

Special Operations Forces (SOF) doctrine, forged in the crucible of Cold War proxy conflicts, now faces a critical test as it confronts the unique challenges posed by China’s strategic maneuvers in the gray zone. While the Cold War-era doctrine suited past great power competition, today’s security environment demands a fresh assessment of SOF’s methods, capabilities, and techniques to effectively wield irregular warfare (IW) in defense of U.S. national interests. China's sophisticated gray zone tactics—combining economic coercion, cyber threats, and influence operations—reveal gaps in current SOF doctrine that require urgent adaptation. The question is whether SOF will evolve to meet the unconventional threats posed by China or continue to rely on a doctrine designed for a world that no longer exists.

 Great Power Competition - Irregular Warfare – Gray Zone

Throughout recorded history, Irregular Warfare and gray zone strategies have long been principal approaches to competing with other powerful nations. Great power competition (called strategic competition by the Joint Staff) inherently involves a struggle for influence and power projection without escalating to full-scale war, and IW has provided an effective way to achieve this balance. During the Cold War, for example, the United States and the Soviet Union extensively used IW methods, such as supporting proxy wars, insurgencies, and covert operations, to expand their influence and counter each other's geopolitical moves. This was done to avoid the catastrophic consequences of direct conflict between two nuclear powers.

Today, a similar dynamic is evident in the competition between China and the United States. Both nations seek to assert influence and undermine each other’s positions through non-conventional means, recognizing the risk of direct military engagement. China’s use of the gray zone allows it to make incremental gains that contribute to its strategic objectives without crossing the threshold of conventional warfare. This calculated approach reflects an understanding of the historical effectiveness of gray zone and irregular/hybrid approaches in great power competition—where indirect methods, influence operations, and strategic patience can yield significant outcomes while mitigating the risk of broader conflict.

China’s gray zone strategy reflects a clear understanding of global power dynamics and seeks to maximize Beijing’s influence while mitigating risks. A prime example is the South China Sea. Chinese IW operations, including maritime militia deployments and artificial island construction, have effectively expanded Chinese influence without provoking large-scale military conflict. China has gained strategic advantages by employing non-conventional forces in maritime disputes while minimizing international backlash.

Moreover, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a strategy enabled by gray zone/irregular approaches, creating economic dependencies in countries across Africa, Latin America, and Europe. These dependencies can be leveraged politically, ensuring that nations benefiting from Chinese investments remain favorable to Beijing’s interests. In Africa, for example, Chinese private security companies are increasingly used to protect Chinese investments, reflecting a hybrid model that combines economic engagement with a subtle military footprint.

For the United States, acknowledging the role of IW in great power competition and maximizing gray zone approaches means investing in capabilities that extend beyond traditional military power while better integrating all elements of power. Competing effectively in the gray zone requires embracing a range of activities under a central strategy that ranges from economic measures and strategic messaging to cyber and covert operations. As history demonstrates, IW and gray zone activities are critical to gaining a strategic advantage against powerful adversaries, making it essential for the U.S. to refine and expand its IW strategies to keep pace with the evolving nature of great power competition.

 Conclusion – Competing In This Era, Not The Last One

China’s IW strategy represents a comprehensive effort to shape the global environment to its advantage, using every tool available short of open warfare. Using maritime militias, PAP units, cyber capabilities, and political manipulation illustrates how Beijing merges IW and conventional capabilities to pursue its goals. As the world enters an era of renewed great power competition, China’s commitment to IW means that future conflicts involving China are unlikely to be purely conventional. Instead, IW will likely serve as the primary method through which China exerts influence and undermines adversaries without escalating to open hostilities.

For policymakers and military planners, understanding the intricacies of China’s IW is crucial. Beijing’s approach demands that rival strategies be developed that address the entirety of China’s IW toolkit—military, political, legal, and informational. By recognizing that China’s use of IW and gray zone approaches are part of a long-term strategy to reshape the international order, the United States and its allies can better prepare to dilute these efforts both in the Indo-Pacific and globally.

To dilute China’s efforts to degrade the U.S. while advancing its interests in great power competition, the U.S. must undergo significant organizational, doctrinal, and methodological changes. These changes must effectively counter irregular approaches in the gray zone while protecting and advancing U.S. national security interests. Simply countering the Chinese is a great way for the U.S. to chase its tail and not create the world the U.S. can thrive in. To compete with China’s integrated gray zone/irregular strategies, the U.S. must broaden its approach beyond conventional and special operations frameworks, developing a comprehensive interagency system with robust cyber, intelligence, and informational warfare capabilities. Organizationally, a unified structure that enhances interagency collaboration, especially between SOF, cyber units, and civilian agencies, will be essential to effectively coordinate military and civilian functions and implement gray zone activities that can counter, degrade, deter, and advance. 

Doctrinally, U.S. forces must shift to a holistic, improved and expanded IW doctrine that incorporates aspects of the gray zone approach and embraces military, diplomatic, economic, and informational tools to address complex threats and opportunities. This shift requires an adaptive strategy that combines offensive and defensive cyber operations, strategic messaging, and influence operations to challenge adversaries in the informational domain. Furthermore, counter-lawfare tactics and psychological operations must be prioritized outside traditional combat zones to address China’s nuanced and pervasive gray zone methods.

Methodologically, the U.S. must build resilient IW units capable of rapid response, digital warfare, and intelligence operations aligned with advanced technological innovations in AI and cybersecurity. By restructuring SOF capabilities to include IW-specific units and enhancing coordination with allied forces for regional security missions, the U.S. can assert its influence and deter adversarial encroachment in contested regions. Only through a multi-domain, multi-faceted approach can the U.S. effectively navigate the gray zone, protect its interests, and maintain stability amid great power competition. SOF should lead the way, not by being a slightly better version of its current self, but by becoming something different.

 Bibliography

• Congressional Research Service. Defense Primer: What is Irregular Warfare?, January 2024.
• Cleveland, Charles, et al. Maximizing the Potential of American Irregular Warfare in Strategic Competition. RAND Corporation, April 3, 2023.
• Radziszewski, Elizabeth. Harnessing GRAT for Irregular Warfare in Great Power Competition, Irregular Warfare Initiative, May 2024.
• Jones, Seth. The Role of Special Operations Forces in Great Power Competition, Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 8, 2023.
• Shapiro, Jacob, and Liam Collins. Great Power Competition Will Drive Irregular Conflicts, War on the Rocks, April 8, 2024.
• Erwin, Sandra. Space Competition Enters the Gray Zone, SpaceNews, November 14, 2023.
• Siebens, James. Three Ideas for Countering China in the Gray Zone, Defense One, March 6, 2024.
• Brady, Anne-Marie. China as a Polar Great Power. Cambridge University Press, 2017.Rolland, Nadège. "China's Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative." National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017.-Swaine, Michael D. "Chinese Views on the Belt and Road Initiative: Strategic Rationales, Risks, and Implications." China Leadership Monitor 55 (2018): 1-24.
• 2023 OSD REPORT ON CHINESE MILITARY - SPECIAL FORCES
• John Costello and Joe McReynolds.China’s Strategic Support Force:A Force for a New Era.NDU Pres

2. Beyond Binaries: Cyber Force Generation and the SOCOM-like Model

Excerpts: 

Cyber Command is reaching an inflection point in force generation. Chinese cyber actors are actively compromising US critical infrastructure to preposition capabilities in the event of a crisis or contingency involving the United States, potentially over Taiwan. Congress has granted Cyber Command significant service-like authorities to counteract such threats. Meanwhile, the debate about the best path to improve cyber force generation has largely become reified between a yet-to-be-defined SOCOM-informed solution or the standup of an entirely new service. The essential role cyberspace plays as an independent domain of warfare and a warfighting enabler across other domains means that how the United States generates cyber forces will have significant national security implications. Now is the time to take bold, impactful actions and consider significant improvements to improve the cyber forces’ readiness to face potential adversaries. Cyber Command needs to drive this process by defining the characteristics and practices it seeks to adopt or avoid. More importantly, the Command should define its force generation goals and specify how they will enable the United States to deter or, if necessary, defeat its pacing threat. Fundamentally, a SOCOM-like model should not be assumed to be the easiest, most effective, most efficient, or least disruptive solution until properly defined. Paradoxically, the model will likely be defined by its implementation plan. Therefore, the conversation must progress toward specific changes and analysis of their second and third-order effects. For proponents of a SOCOM-like model, an independent cyber service, or some combination of the two, uncovering what the CYBERCOM-like model is will require putting in the work.

Beyond Binaries: Cyber Force Generation and the SOCOM-like Model - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · November 7, 2024

This article is part of Project Cyber, which explores and characterizes the myriad threats facing the United States and its allies in cyberspace, the information environment, and conventional and irregular spaces. Please contact us if you would like to propose an article, podcast, or event environment. We invite you to contribute to the discussion, explore the difficult questions, and help.

United States Cyber Command’s need to identify, train, and retain personnel has grown alongside its mission set, which includes everything from ransomware defense and election security to preparing for potential contingencies with America’s “pacing threat.” Yet, Cyber Command does not control the recruitment, professional development, or retention incentives of the military service members selected to fight in the cyber domain. Instead, the individual military services (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Space Force) are responsible for force generation and readiness. Over time, as General (Retired) Paul N. Nakasone stated, US Cyber Command has tried to “build its authorities much in the same way Special Operations Command did.” More recently, the Pentagon’s inaugural Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, Honorable Michael Sulmeyer, testified that “a range of options should be considered” to address current cyber force readiness challenges, “including extending aspects of the US Special Operations Command [(SOCOM)] model to US Cyber Command.” This perspective reflects a consensus among several senior leaders that special operations should inform how the US military organizes itself to generate forces—the process of recruiting, training, and retaining personnel—for cyberspace operations. As far back as 2016, senior leaders have drawn similarities between cyber and special operations, noting how success in both types of operations requires prioritizing a highly specialized workforce. However, the cyber-special operations analogy is problematic, largely because it is rooted in uninterrogated assumptions.

Despite the popularity of modeling Cyber Command after Special Operations Command among senior leaders, there is no consensus on what a “SOCOM-like model” is or how it could solve the problems plaguing the cyber mission force. Cyber Command has not formally defined the “SOCOM-like model” concept or explained why it considers that model superior to alternative organizational structures for force generation in cyberspace, like establishing an independent service. Despite lacking a coherent and consistent definition, proponents of adopting a SOCOM-like model for cyberspace insist that it is more effective, more efficient, simpler to implement, and less disruptive than creating a Cyber Service. However, policymakers should not forge ahead with implementing a SOCOM-like model before evaluating its implications for cyberspace. Moreover, unexplored solutions, such as a hybrid approach to force generation combining elements of an independent service with implementing a SOCOM-like model, may yield the best and most realistic approach to improve cyber readiness. Regardless, the conversation surrounding Cyber Command’s force structure is too immature to become anchored on any given solution.

We aim to further the discussion on force generation for the cyber domain in two ways: first, by presenting likely manning practices and their associated challenges that may arise within a SOCOM-like model, and second, by highlighting why the choice between a SOCOM-like model and a Cyber Service is a false binary. We do not attempt to authoritatively define or comprehensively analyze what a SOCOM-like model is, nor advocate for one approach over another. Instead, we focus on defining possible implementations of a SOCOM-like model for cyberspace to illuminate assumptions that may be false, inaccurate, or under-analyzed. Ultimately, our analysis shows the need to advance the conversation surrounding cyber force generation beyond theory to discuss implementation before fully embracing any one model. Only then can we understand the implications of a force generation model for the cyber domain, discover creative solutions, and move forward on a course grounded in realistic and informed assumptions.

What is a SOCOM-like Model?

To evaluate a SOCOM-like model for cyber force generation, we need to start from a common understanding of the force generation process for special operations personnel. For Special Operations Command, force generation begins with the individual services, each responsible for recruiting personnel and providing them with initial entry training. Then, the services assess, select, and train prospective special operators through extensive service-specific courses like the Army’s Special Forces Qualification Course or the Navy’s Basic Underwater Demolitions/SEAL training. Special Operations Command conducts specialized training and then presents these highly-trained units to the Geographic Combatant Commands. For the most part, special operations personnel remain managed by their respective services, but in some cases Special Operations Command may provide unique administrative support structures. For example, the Command may provide further advanced training beyond the initial training provided by the services, which is designed to support the distinct needs of the special operations community and mission.

It is reasonable to assume that Cyber Command already relies on a SOCOM-like model for force generation. Similar to Special Operations Command, Cyber Command depends upon each of the services to generate and present forces to the command. However, that assumption is false. Senior leaders have indicated the Department of Defense is still evaluating the suitability of a SOCOM-like model for Cyber Command, implying that such a model has not yet been fully implemented. Additionally, Cyber Command’s service like authorities regarding the cyber mission forces—such as elevation to Combatant Command, enhanced budgetary control, the creation of an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, and updating the Unified Command Plan to name Cyber Command as the Joint Force Provider and Joint Force Trainer—are only now coming into effect. Even though Cyber Command has yet to publicly define how it will use many of its new authorities, leaders have alluded to policies regarding personnel and assignments that draw from the SOCOM model.

Critically, the assumption that Cyber Command already uses a SOCOM-like model raises a second related assumption: that Cyber Command has already completed the analysis to support the implementation of a SOCOM-like model. Unfortunately, inconsistent or unspecified definitions of what a SOCOM-like model entails, coupled with the assumption that the model is an effective approach to force generation, have undermined any meaningful analysis of the model itself and stymied productive conversations about what cyber force generation could and should look like. In reality, Special Operations Command is far from perfect and faces several similar force generation challenges and inefficiencies that Cyber Command is trying to overcome. For example, because special operations forces, like cyber forces, are segregated in their training and resourcing and have a distinct chain of command, it remains challenging to integrate special operations with other military operations. Ultimately, leaders are advocating for the SOCOM-like model before it has been evaluated for effectiveness and without any analysis of its outcomes or how it will improve Cyber Command’s overall force readiness.

Challenges with the SOCOM-like Model

The significant challenges associated with the SOCOM model itself are often overlooked when comparing cyberspace and special operations. For example, a 2020 review of Special Operations Command revealed a number of force generation challenges and potentially incompatible practices that also occur in Cyber Command. First, Special Operations Command units consistently sustain a high operational tempo, which places force readiness at risk. The result is that already undermanned formations often experience increased medical, training, and retention problems. Second, service members in Special Operations Command are still beholden to industrial era Departmental policies and service behaviors. Individuals are promoted by and receive incentive pay from their respective military services, meaning a soldier and sailor of equivalent rank and skill could be promoted differently, receive different incentive pay for their service or have different retention bonus options. Service members assigned to Cyber Command experience similar talent management problems, such as incentive and retention pay discrepancies between services—or even within a single service. Moreover, the service components and Special Operations Command do not always agree on priorities, leading to tensions that can impact service members and their careers. Similar practices have also proven inadequate and inequitable for the cyber force. Consequently, Special Operations Command struggles with maintaining high standards and service fundamentals in its selection and training pipelines—an issue that Cyber Command confronts.

That said, the SOCOM-like model presents some positive practices relevant to cyberspace. One example is implementing a selection process. Special Operations Command relies on the services to uphold a rigorous and highly selective assessment process to maintain the quality of special operations personnel. Meanwhile, the services currently assign personnel to units and positions in Cyber Command without an assessment process or qualification course. The result is Cyber Command’s ongoing struggle with the quality, consistency, and operational effectiveness of the forces it receives from the services.

However, if Cyber Command were to implement a SOCOM-like assessment and selection process, it would have to accept the necessary attrition rate such a process would inevitably incur—which could be up to 75% for some special forces training and qualification courses, resulting in an overall average 52% attrition rate across all of its elements, or approximately 80% when assessing individuals prior to completing their initial military training. Assuming these attrition rates and consistent quality of recruits, one service must attract five recruits to fill a single special forces billet. Extending this logic to cyberspace, for Cyber Command to adopt a SOCOM-like model, it should expect similar or greater attrition rates and, therefore, require a significant increase in recruits. Given the recruitment challenges the services already face in cyberspace (not to mention more broadly), it is unclear how they would fulfill an even greater recruitment demand. Furthermore, each service would have to adjust its recruitment practices, goals, and training pipelines to meet Cyber Command’s needs. Importantly, unlike Special Operations Command, whose ideal recruit profile (i.e., physically fit, leadership attributes, and mental agility, among others) is also an ideal candidate for the conventional force, Cyber Command’s ideal recruit profile may not align with what the services need to perform their domain-specific warfighting functions and tasks. Education in, or a deep affinity for, computer science and engineering are not necessary for a person to fire a rifle but are fundamental requirements to become an interactive on-net operator. The question then becomes how the services could, or should, adjust their recruiting practices and initial entry requirements to meet the unique demands of Cyber Command and if they would even be willing to do so. Regardless, there is the possibility that each service would be faced with making drastic and disruptive changes, on the one hand, or risk continuing to fail to meet their force generation obligations and leaving the cyber mission forces hollow, on the other hand.

Ultimately, implementing any new force generation model will pose challenges. However, the perceived effectiveness of the SOCOM model should not immediately qualify it as the optimal solution for Cyber Command. Some of the challenges associated with a SOCOM-like model could exacerbate existing cyber force generation issues rather than solve them.

Moving Past False Dichotomies

Another common assumption is that the SOCOM-like model and the creation of a new, independent service to generate forces for cyberspace are mutually exclusive courses of action. However, this is a false binary. Many of the changes necessary to generate cyber forces of sufficient quality and quantity will distract or place a significant burden on the services. It would be more efficient and less disruptive if each service only provided Cyber Command with personnel whose work roles also have value in their organic service formations. In that case, a SOCOM-like model would necessitate a new or existing service focused on cyberspace, which would be established or designated to generate forces for Cyber Command and the remaining cyber-related work roles that do not align with the existing services’ needs. This action would allow the existing services to avoid the training and doctrinal burdens of providing forces unique to Cyber Command-aligned units. It would also guard the services from compromising standards or sacrificing cyber competencies in pursuit of efficiency. Furthermore, it would enable Cyber Command to uphold a high standard and more freely evolve its requirements without necessitating changes from all services. Although rarely discussed, this option could avoid the near-term disruptions of a new cyber service without hindering a strategy for long-term domain dominance.

Looking Ahead

For the Cyber Mission Force to meet growing demands and compete with China and Russia in the cyber domain, it must be developed and institutionalized to protect it from becoming a marginalized asset. Special operations forces escaped becoming marginalized by the conventional forces and broader US military community, and an analogy with the evolution of Special Operations Command does offer a possible (though not necessarily complete) model for the future of cyber force generation. Special Operations Command succeeded with a new organizational home, high-level advocacy, and secure funding. These three elements would also be extremely beneficial in overcoming the challenges now faced by Cyber Command. However, while those lessons are important, the cries for Cyber Command to adopt a SOCOM-like model for force generation rely on the perceived successes of Special Operations Command while ignoring its shortcomings—both the SOCOM model itself and its application to cyberspace. In many ways, operational outcomes and mission accomplishments have overshadowed or allowed the force generation issues within the special operations community to be overlooked and underappreciated. Like any organization, Cyber Command tries to succeed and protect its equities and has also sought to highlight its high operational tempo as an operational achievement—if the command is busy, it must mean it is doing something right. But showcasing busy teams is a diversion from Cyber Command’s manning shortfalls, training backlogs, and dismal force readiness levels.

Cyber Command is reaching an inflection point in force generation. Chinese cyber actors are actively compromising US critical infrastructure to preposition capabilities in the event of a crisis or contingency involving the United States, potentially over Taiwan. Congress has granted Cyber Command significant service-like authorities to counteract such threats. Meanwhile, the debate about the best path to improve cyber force generation has largely become reified between a yet-to-be-defined SOCOM-informed solution or the standup of an entirely new service. The essential role cyberspace plays as an independent domain of warfare and a warfighting enabler across other domains means that how the United States generates cyber forces will have significant national security implications. Now is the time to take bold, impactful actions and consider significant improvements to improve the cyber forces’ readiness to face potential adversaries. Cyber Command needs to drive this process by defining the characteristics and practices it seeks to adopt or avoid. More importantly, the Command should define its force generation goals and specify how they will enable the United States to deter or, if necessary, defeat its pacing threat. Fundamentally, a SOCOM-like model should not be assumed to be the easiest, most effective, most efficient, or least disruptive solution until properly defined. Paradoxically, the model will likely be defined by its implementation plan. Therefore, the conversation must progress toward specific changes and analysis of their second and third-order effects. For proponents of a SOCOM-like model, an independent cyber service, or some combination of the two, uncovering what the CYBERCOM-like model is will require putting in the work.

MAJ Skylar Onken spent 11 years active duty conducting intelligence and offensive cyber operations. He is now a U.S. Army Reservist and co-founder at Twenty.

MAJ Nick Starck is an active duty U.S. Army cyber officer with a background in defensive cyber operations. He has served in operational roles as a signal and cyber officer and researcher at the Army Cyber Institute at West Point.

MAJ JC Fernandes is an active duty US Army cyber officer and researcher at the Army Cyber Institute at West Point who has experience conducting defensive cyber operations. He was initially commissioned as an infantry officer and served with the 173rd IBCT(A).

Erica D. Lonergan, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at the Columbia University. She previously served as a Senior Director on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

MAJ Maggie Smith, Ph.D. is an active duty U.S. Army cyber officer with a background in offensive cyber operations. She is currently the Co-Director of IWI’s Cyber Project and is a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

LTC Todd Arnold, Ph.D. is an active duty U.S. Army cyber officer and currently serves as a research team lead at the Army Cyber Institute at West Point.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

Main Image: Sgt. James Hyman, Expeditionary CEMA operator for the 11th Cyber Battalion’s Expeditionary Cyber-Electromagnetic Activities Team-01 (photo by Steven Stover)

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3. The Shifting Priorities in the Hunt for Osama bin Laden

Not an article I would normally expect to find on Sports Illustrated. 

Perhaps some revisionist history here but I will defer to those who lived this history.

I do not think this was the Army's "choice" to "pivot" to Iraq. I think this was the strategic direction provided by our political leaders.

Excerpt:

What’s interesting about this shift is what it says about the priorities and strategies of military operations. In warfare, priorities shift based on logistics, politics, and, at times, the natural inclinations of military branches. The Army’s pivot to Iraq wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision to deprioritize bin Laden but rather a strategic move that aligned with its strengths. Iraq was a battlefield where the Army could fully engage, while Afghanistan demanded a different approach. But this decision came with trade-offs—delaying bin Laden’s capture and leaving Afghanistan as a more tenuous front in the broader War on Terror.

View the podcast on YouTube at the article link: HERE

The Shifting Priorities in the Hunt for Osama bin Laden

Understanding how priorities shift during conflict can offer insight into broader strategic decisions

John Welbourn | Nov 7, 2024\

In my recent podcast with John McPhee, we discussed the complex dynamics and shifting priorities during the War on Terror, especially the chase for Osama bin Laden and the eventual pivot to Saddam Hussein. In the early days, bin Laden was undoubtedly the primary target. He was the central figure responsible for 9/11, and there was no question that every effort was aimed at tracking him down. But as the war unfolded, a shift took place—one that redirected much of the U.S. military’s resources from Afghanistan to Iraq, with Saddam Hussein emerging as the new top priority.

One of the primary reasons for this shift, as John discussed was likely the difference in the nature of the two battlefronts. The mountainous, rugged terrain of Afghanistan posed an enormous challenge to conventional U.S. forces, particularly the Army, which is traditionally structured and trained for more open-field or urban warfare. Afghanistan required small, agile, specialized teams to navigate the difficult geography and locate bin Laden. This kind of terrain favored Special Forces units trained for unconventional warfare rather than the larger, tank-based approach of the conventional Army. The Army simply wasn’t equipped or perhaps even inclined to conduct extended operations in Afghanistan’s mountains.

On the other hand, Iraq was a far more accessible battlefield. The U.S. military could deploy tanks, armored vehicles, and entire divisions to Baghdad with relative ease. From a logistics and strategy perspective, Iraq offered the Army a place to exercise its conventional warfare strength, its tanks, troops, and more direct forms of engagement. So, it wasn’t surprising when the Pentagon’s focus gradually shifted. Targeting Saddam Hussein and his regime became a top priority, symbolized by the infamous ""deck of cards"" featuring key figures within his inner circle. Saddam was now bad guy number one, and all available resources were redirected to capture him and dismantle his regime.

This shift in priority wasn’t just a simple choice; it was a decision that significantly impacted the course of the war. With the bulk of the Army focused on Iraq, the task of pursuing bin Laden in Afghanistan was left to a smaller force—primarily Special Forces teams. These elite units were incredibly skilled, but they didn’t have the sheer numbers or support of the larger, conventional forces. In effect, the hunt for bin Laden became a more isolated, prolonged effort. While the Special Forces were highly capable, tracking down a single individual, especially someone as elusive as bin Laden in mountainous terrain, was a monumental task. Fewer boots on the ground inevitably meant a longer timeline and less visibility into bin Laden’s movements, allowing him to evade capture for years.

What’s interesting about this shift is what it says about the priorities and strategies of military operations. In warfare, priorities shift based on logistics, politics, and, at times, the natural inclinations of military branches. The Army’s pivot to Iraq wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision to deprioritize bin Laden but rather a strategic move that aligned with its strengths. Iraq was a battlefield where the Army could fully engage, while Afghanistan demanded a different approach. But this decision came with trade-offs—delaying bin Laden’s capture and leaving Afghanistan as a more tenuous front in the broader War on Terror.

Throughout this period, the pursuit of bin Laden was still active; if there were any credible sightings or intel, Special Forces teams were dispatched to pursue leads. However, without consistent, large-scale support, these efforts were often limited to brief windows of opportunity. The Special Forces did an incredible job with the resources they had, but they were working within constraints that slowed down the process.

This discussion between John and I put light on the complexities of military strategy and the way priorities can shift in response to changing dynamics. It also highlights how these shifts can have long-lasting consequences, shaping the direction and duration of conflicts. The decision to focus on Iraq, while tactically advantageous in some respects, changed the trajectory of the War on Terror, redirecting resources and shifting attention away from Afghanistan, which may have left room for figures like bin Laden to remain at large.

Understanding these shifts in priorities helps us recognize that warfare isn’t simply a matter of identifying a target and going after it. It’s a constant balancing act between strategy, resources, and real-time adjustments based on the evolving landscape. The pursuit of bin Laden and the pivot to Saddam Hussein reveal how operational priorities are influenced by a mix of logistics, capability, and sometimes even the specific strengths and preferences of military branches.

In hindsight, it’s clear that the choice to focus on Iraq had profound consequences, not just in terms of bin Laden’s evasion but also in the larger framework of the War on Terror. It’s a reminder that in high-stakes situations, every decision carries weight - and sometimes, those decisions can lead to outcomes that take years to fully understand.

Published Nov 7, 2024

JOHN WELBOURNJohn Welbourn is Founder/CEO of Power Athlete Inc and former NFL player. John was drafted with the 97th pick in 1999 NFL Draft and went on to be a starter for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1999-2003,

4. Donald Trump Has a Big Choice to Make for Secretary of State

Why isn't Steve Biegun on the short list? Former DEPSECSTATE, Russia expert but also with extensive experience in Asia after being the special representative for north Korea (to include extensive dealings with China). Principled, values based, and leader with integrity. Also extensive experience on the Hill and international business at Ford and Boeing. And he was one of the few officials (also like former SECSTATE Pompeo) who was not fired by the President Elect in his previous administration so he should be able to work in the new administration. (I have never heard him utter a negative remark about anyone, Republican or Democrat).

Donald Trump Has a Big Choice to Make for Secretary of State

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Brent M. Eastwood · November 8, 2024

The Treaty

President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks at the 450th mile of the new border wall Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, near the Texas Mexico border. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Who Will Be Trump’s Secretary of State? President-elect Donald Trump has come into office declaring again that he will stop endless wars. He wishes to avoid World War Three by creating a ceasefire in Ukraine and ending the fighting in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. He wants NATO members to pay more for their defense. He aims to continue the “Maximum Pressure” program on Iran. Trump wants Taiwan to invest more in its military and China to quit stealing intellectual property.

Donald Trump Back in 2016.

Trump’s Policies Make This Job Difficult

This means he will need a competent and strong Secretary of State. The U.S. political party system has been re-aligned. Many Republicans believe they are the party of peace, and the Democrats are the party of war. This may not be completely true, but Trump was the first Republican candidate for president in 2015 to come out against the Second Gulf War and the decision to invade Iraq. He also was in favor of certain plans to leave Afghanistan.

Trump has also made inroads and diplomatic advancements with authoritarian leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Trump believes that the current wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East would have never happened on his watch. He favors peace through strength and thinks that the best military is one that doesn’t have to be used.

No Room For Mistakes in This Choice

This raises the need for a Secretary of State who has backbone and toughness, but who also has a velvet touch for diplomacy and negotiation. Trump does not want to make a mistake with his choice this time around. Rex Tillerson, his original Secretary of State during the first term, was a disaster. Mike Pompeo was better but still brittle around the edges. This time Trump is going for someone who can step in and immediately make a difference with no controversy.

Three Favorites for the Position Have Been Thrust Forward.

The first frontrunner is Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Rubio ran for president and has shown that he can succeed in the intense scrutiny that the position requires. He has also served in important roles on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Intelligence Committee. Rubio is smart and articulate. He is tough on China, especially on its abysmal human rights record. He is a bit more hawkish than Trump and may not agree with stopping the war in Ukraine without Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces ejecting the Russians completely from his country. Rubio has been loyal to Trump and knows when to stay in the background and when it is the appropriate time to make a stand in the media. He also looks good on television – a quality that Trump loves.

The second candidate is Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty. Hagerty’s best experience has been serving as the Ambassador to Japan. He is a Make American Great Again conservative. Hagerty is a smooth operator. The senator from the Volunteer State is strong on trade and international economics. He was an economic aide to President George W. Bush and worked on financial policy in Tennessee and has experience in private equity. Hagerty has used his position of ambassador to learn East Asia well. He is mindful of the defense situation in the Indo-Pacific and would be a stalwart China hawk. But Hagerty may instead be chosen for Secretary of the Treasury or Commerce instead of Secretary of State.

The third choice is Robert C. O’Brien. Of the three, O’Brien has worked the most closely with Trump. O’Brien was a hostage negotiator before becoming National Security Advisor. He was Trump’s favorite NSA and served the position well. O’Brien is confident and smart and made the NSA position look easy. O’Brien has the stamina for all the travel that is required for Secretary of State and having served in the White House, he is experienced with the global threat environment.

All three are very qualified. Trump is not sure that Rubio has the hard edge and toughness that can fulfill the America First foreign policy agenda. Rubio could be seen as a “globalist” which is the ultimate insult from the MAGA faithful. Hagerty is not well known and while the ambassador experience is helpful, he has not worked directly with Trump.

My Choice Is Robert C. O’Brien

That leaves Robert C. O’Brien, and he is my choice for Secretary of State. The National Security Advisor position is great training for a Secretary of State. Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell were both NSAs before leading the State Department. O’Brien has Trump’s total confidence and has the White House experience with a West Wing perch right by the Oval Office. He looks great on television and is even more articulate than Rubio and Hagerty.

But Trump could still go with a senator and Rubio and Hagerty have a good shot at getting the role since they would likely be confirmed by the full senate with ease. O’Brien would perhaps get more scrutiny in the confirmation process, and he could make mistakes in hearings.

So, the jury is still out, but O’Brien should be seen as the favorite.

About the Author: Dr. Brent M. Eastwood

Brent M. Eastwood, PhD, is the author of Don’t Turn Your Back On the World: a Conservative Foreign Policy and Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare plus two other books. Brent was the founder and CEO of a tech firm that predicted world events using artificial intelligence. He served as a legislative fellow for U.S. Senator Tim Scott and advised the senator on defense and foreign policy issues. He has taught at American University, George Washington University, and George Mason University. Brent is a former U.S. Army Infantry officer. He can be followed on X @BMEastwood.

In this article:

Written By Brent M. Eastwood

Dr. Brent M. Eastwood is the author of Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare. He is an Emerging Threats expert and former U.S. Army Infantry officer. You can follow him on Twitter @BMEastwood. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Foreign Policy/ International Relations.

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Brent M. Eastwood · November 8, 2024

5. Peggy Noonan: On Loving America

I really like the Free Press. (both our first amendment right and this web site that has emerged on the scene in recent years as a good news and commentary site.)

Peggy Noonan: On Loving America

‘We are a people that has experienced something epic together. We were given this brilliant, beautiful thing, this new arrangement,’ says the star of our next Book Club.

By Peggy Noonan

November 9, 2024

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Peggy Noonan wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan. She helped get George H. W. Bush elected. She’s consulted on The West Wing. And she’s been a weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal for nearly a quarter of a century, writing columns that have won her a Pulitzer—and have now been partially collected in a forthcoming book called A Certain Idea of America.

“What is that idea?” Peggy writes in the excerpt we’re publishing today. “That she is good. That she has value. That from birth she was something new in the history of man, a step forward, an advancement.” After a week of doomerism about our democracy, we thought our readers deserved to read her hopeful words about what she describes as “our continuing miracle, America.”

From the power-hungriness of Joe Biden to the magic of Taylor Swift and, yes, the insanity of Donald Trump, A Certain Idea of America examines the most powerful forces that have shaped our nation over the last decade. It’s out November 19, and we’re thrilled to announce that Peggy has chosen to spend publication day with us, as our next Free Press Book Club guest. Bari Weiss will be hosting in New York City—and you’re all invited. There’s going to be an open bar. What are you waiting for? We’re expecting this one to sell out fast, so reserve your ticket now by clicking here.

But first: Peggy’s essay. Part of the aim of The Free Press Book Club is to reflect on older books that speak to new ones, and in this piece, Peggy recommends three that, she writes, “touch on the why, how, and what of loving America.” We hope you love reading about them as much as we did. —The Editors

The famous first sentence of Charles de Gaulle’s War Memoirs most happily translates as: “All my life I have had a certain idea of France.” It struck me when I first read it many years ago and stayed with me because all my life I have had a certain idea of America.

What is that idea? That she is good. That she has value. That from birth she was something new in the history of man, a step forward, an advancement. Its founders were engaged in the highest form of human achievement, stating assumptions and creating arrangements whereby life could be made more: just. In the workings of its history, I saw something fabled. The genius cluster of the Founders, for instance: How did it happen that those particular people came together at that particular moment with exactly the right, different but complementary gifts? Long ago I asked the historian David McCullough if he ever wondered about this. He said yes, and the only explanation he could come up with was: “Providence.” That is where my mind settles, too.

A Certain Idea of America by Peggy Noonan. (via Portfolio)

De Gaulle said his thoughts on France were driven as much by emotion as reason, and it is the same for me. I’m not really big on purple mountain majesties. I’d love America if it were a hole in the ground, though yes, it’s beautiful. I don’t love it only because it’s “an idea.” That strikes me as a little bloodless. Baseball didn’t come from an idea, it came from us—a long cool game punctuated by moments of high excellence and utter heartbreak, a team sport in which each player operates on his own. The great movie about America’s pastime isn’t called Field of Ideas, it’s called Field of Dreams. And the scene that makes every grown-up weep is when the dark-haired young catcher steps out of the cornfield and walks toward Kevin Costner, who suddenly realizes, That’s my father.

The great question comes from the father: “Is this Heaven?”

The great answer: “It’s Iowa.”

Which gets me closer to my feelings on patriotism. We are a people that has experienced something epic together. We were given this brilliant, beautiful thing, this new arrangement, a political invention based on the astounding assumption that we are all equal, that where you start doesn’t dictate where you wind up. We’ve kept it going, father to son, mother to daughter, down the generations, inspired by the excellence, and in spite of the heartbreak. Whatever was happening, depression or war, we held high the meaning and forged forward. We’ve respected and protected the Constitution. And in the forging through and the holding high we’ve created a history, traditions, a way of existing together.

It’s all a miracle. I love America because it’s where the miracle is.

In celebration of that miracle: Three books that touch on the why, how, and what of loving America.

1. On Democracy, by E.B. White

Start with E.B. White on why.

America should be loved, tenderly, for a large and obvious reason: because it is a democracy. In July 1943, at the height of World War II, White tried to define what that means. “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time,” he wrote in The New Yorker. “It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.”

This short essay, “The Meaning of Democracy,” is included in a recent collection of White’s work, On Democracy. In the introduction, Jon Meacham notes that Franklin D. Roosevelt loved White’s words. One of his speechwriters recalled that FDR read the essay aloud at gatherings, in his unplaceably patrician accent, often adding a homey coda at the end: “Them’s my sentiments exactly.”

There’s a lot of sweetness in this collection.

2. What So Proudly We Hail, edited by Amy and Leon Kass and Diana Schaub

Here’s an argument on how to love America.

There was a young man in 1838, an aspiring politician almost too shy to admit his ambition to himself or others, who gave a talk to a Midwestern youth group. It was a speech about public policy, but it showed a delicate appreciation of psychology, of how people feel about what’s happening around them.

America’s Founders—“the patriots of ’76,” this aspiring politician called them—were now all gone, James Madison having died 19 months before. In their absence Americans felt lost. Those men stood for this country, they modeled what it was in their behavior. Admiration for them had united the country. Now, without them, people felt on their own. First principles were being forgotten, mob rule was rising. In Mississippi, they were hanging gamblers even though gambling was legal. It was madness, and it threatened the republic.

The aspiring politician had an answer. Transfer reverence for the Founders to reverence for the laws they devised. “Let reverence for the laws,” he said, “become the political religion of the Nation.” Let all agree that to violate the law “is to trample on the blood of his father.”

You have already guessed the speaker was Abraham Lincoln, then only 28. He was addressing the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois. This speech is a small part of a stupendous compilation of the best things said by and to Americans called What So Proudly We Hail. Its diverse contributors include Philip Roth, Ben Franklin, Willa Cather, and W.E.B. Du Bois. My friend Joel, an America-loving New York intellectual, gave me the book as a gift. He opens it every night at random and always finds something valuable. Now so do I.

As I read, I thought of those who today oppose illegal immigration. They are often accused of small and parochial motivations. But I believe at the heart of their opposition is a delicate understanding that when the rule of law collapses, as it does daily on the southern border, everything else can collapse. Many things are more delicate than we think, and those most inclined to see that delicacy are most dependent on responsible leaders who will keep the laws of the nation strong and operable.

3. The Pioneers, by David McCullough

Now, quickly, on what you love when you love America.

Twenty years ago the historian David McCullough was asked to be commencement speaker at the 200th anniversary of Ohio University. In researching the school’s background and the area’s history, he came upon a rich trove of stories of the largely unknown Americans who in 1788 went to the Northwest Territory and settled “the Ohio.”

The speech set him on the road to publishing, 15 years later, a book. The Pioneers is about the remarkable New Englanders who went to Ohio and insisted from the beginning that in this unknown America there would be absolute freedom of religion, that there would be a major emphasis on public education, and that slavery would be against the law.

It is an inspiring story; harrowing, too. They suffered and caused some suffering, too. And yet, McCullough notes, historians would see that the ordinance that allowed the pioneers into Ohio “was designed to guarantee what would one day be known as the American way of life.”

To read it is to feel wonder at all the sacrifice that went to the making of: us. And our continuing miracle, America. With all her harrowing flaws—we have always been a violent country, for instance—she deserves from us a feeling of profound protectiveness. Our great job as citizens is to shine it up a little, make it better, and hand it on, safely, to the generation that follows, and ask them to shine it up and hand it on.

Peggy Noonan is a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, where a version of this essay originally appeared. Follow her on X @PeggyNoonanNYC, and preorder A Certain Idea of America today.

This is an edited excerpt from A Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings by Peggy Noonan, to be published November 19, 2024, by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright 2024 by Peggy Noonan.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

6. Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are

Michael Smerconish used this column for his show this weekend.

Vote on his poll question here: 

Has Donald Trump changed America or revealed it?

https://www.smerconish.com/daily-poll/?utm_source=aweber&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=voteherebuttonfullsize

Carlos Lozada

Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/opinion/trump-wins-harris-loses.html

Nov. 6, 2024

Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

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By Carlos Lozada

Opinion Columnist

I remember when Donald Trump was not normal.

I remember when Trump was a fever that would break.

I remember when Trump was running as a joke.

I remember when Trump was best covered in the entertainment section.

I remember when Trump would never become the Republican nominee.

I remember when Trump couldn’t win the general election.

I remember when Trump’s attacks on John McCain were disqualifying.

I remember when Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape would force him out.

I remember when Trump was James Comey’s fault.

I remember when Trump was the news media’s fault.

I remember when Trump won because Hillary Clinton was unlikable.

I remember when 2016 was a fluke.

I remember when the office of the presidency would temper Trump.

I remember when the adults in the room would contain him.

I remember when the Ukraine phone call went too far.

I remember when Trump learned his lesson after the first impeachment.

I remember when Jan. 6 would be the end of Trump’s political career.

I remember when the 2022 midterms meant the country was moving on.

I remember when Trump’s indictments would give voters pause.

I remember when Trump’s felony convictions would give voters pause.

I remember when Trump would win because Joe Biden was old.

I remember when Kamala Harris’s joy would overpower Trump’s fearmongering.

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I remember when Trump was weird.

I remember when Trump was not who we are.

There have been so many attempts to explain away Trump’s hold on the nation’s politics and cultural imagination, to reinterpret him as aberrant and temporary. “Normalizing” Trump became an affront to good taste, to norms, to the American experiment.

We can now let go of such illusions. Trump is very much part of who we are. Nearly 63 million Americans voted for him in 2016. Seventy-four million did in 2020. And now, once again, enough voters in enough places have cast their lot with him to return him to the White House. Trump is no fluke, and Trumpism is no fad.

After all, what is more normal than a thing that keeps happening?

In recent years, I’ve often wondered if Trump has changed America or revealed it. I decided that it was both — that he changed the country by revealing it. After Election Day 2024, I’m considering an addendum: Trump has changed us by revealing how normal, how truly American, he is.

Throughout Trump’s life, he has embodied every national fascination: money and greed in the 1980s, sex scandals in the 1990s, reality television in the 2000s, social media in the 2010s. Why wouldn’t we deserve him now?

At first, it seemed hard to grasp that we’d really done it. Not even Trump seemed to believe his victory that November night in 2016. We had plenty of excuses, some exculpatory, some damning. The hangover of the Great Recession. Exhaustion with forever wars. A racist backlash against the first Black president. A populist surge in America and beyond. Deaths of despair. If not for this potent mix, surely no one like Trump would ever have come to power.

If only the Clinton campaign had focused more on Wisconsin. If only African American turnout had been stronger in Michigan. If only WikiLeaks and private servers and “deplorables” and so much more. If only.

Now we’ll come up with more, no matter how contradictory or consistent they may be. If only Harris had been more attuned to the suffering in Gaza, or more supportive of Israel. If only she’d picked Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, as her running mate. If only the lingering fury over Covid had landed at Trump’s feet. If only Harris hadn’t been so centrist, or if only she weren’t such a California progressive, hiding all those positions she’d let slip in her 2019 campaign. If only Biden hadn’t waited so long to withdraw from the race, or if only he hadn’t mumbled stuff about garbage.

Harris decried Trump as a fascist, a petty tyrant. She called him divisive, angry, aggrieved. And that was a smart case to make if, deep down, most voters held democracy dear (except maybe they didn’t) and if so many of them weren’t already angry (except they were). If all America needed was an articulate case for why Trump was bad, then Harris was the right candidate with the right message at the right moment. The prosecutor who would defeat the felon.

But the voters heard her case, and they still found for the defendant. A politician who admires dictators and says he’ll be one for a day, whom former top aides regard as a threat to the Constitution — a document he believes can be “terminated” when it doesn’t suit him — has won power not for one day but for nearly 1,500 more. What was considered abnormal, even un-American, has been redefined as acceptable and reaffirmed as preferable.

The Harris campaign labored under the misapprehension, as did the Biden campaign before it, that more exposure to Trump would repel voters. They must simply have forgotten the mayhem of his presidency, the distaste that the former president surely inspired. “I know Donald Trump’s type,” Harris reminded us, likening him to the crooks and predators she’d battled as a California prosecutor. She even urged voters to watch Trump’s rallies — to witness his line-crossing, norm-obliterating moments — as if doing so would inoculate the electorate against him.

It didn’t. America knew his type, too, and it liked it. Trump’s disinhibition spoke to and for his voters. He won because of it, not despite it. His critics have long argued that he is just conning his voters — making them feel that he’s fighting for them when he’s just in it for himself and his wealthy allies — but part of Trump’s appeal is that his supporters recognize the con, that they feel that they’re in on it.

Trump has long conflated himself with America, with the ambitions of its people. “When you mess with the American dream, you’re on the fighting side of Trump,” he wrote in “The America We Deserve,” published in 2000.

The Democrats tried hard to puncture those fantasies in this latest campaign. They raised absurd amounts of cash. They pushed the incumbent president, the standard-bearer of their party, out of the race, once it became clear he would not win. They replaced him with a younger, more dynamic candidate who proceeded to trounce Trump in their lone presidential debate.

None of it was enough. America had voted early, long before any mail-in ballots were available, and it has given Trump the “powerful mandate” he claimed in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

This time, that choice came with full knowledge of who Trump is, how he behaves in office and what he’ll do to stay there. He hasn’t just shifted the political consensus on a set of policy positions, though by moving both parties on trade and immigration, he certainly has done that. The rationalization of 2016 — that Trump was a protest vote by desperate Americans trying to send a message to the establishment of both parties — is no longer operative. The grotesque rally at Madison Square Garden, that carnival of insults against everyone that the speakers do not want in their America, was not an anomaly but a summation. It was Trumpism’s closing argument, and it landed.

The irony of one of the more common critiques of Harris — that her “word salad” moments and default platitudes in extended interviews made it hard to know what she believed — is that Trump manages to seem real even when his positions shift and his words weave. Authenticity does not require consistency or clarity when it is grounded in pitch-perfect cynicism.

We don’t call this period “the Trump era” just because the once and future president won lots of votes and has now prevailed in two presidential contests. It remained the Trump era even when Biden exiled him to Mar-a-Lago for four years. It is the Trump era because Trump has captured not just a national party but also a national mood, or at least enough of it. And when Democrats presented the choice this year as a referendum on Trumpism more than an affirmative case for Harris, they kept their rival at the center of American politics.

Harris gave it away whenever she called on voters to “turn the page” from Trump. Didn’t we do that in 2020 when we chose Biden and Harris? Not really. Trump was still waiting in the epilogue.

For those who have long insisted that Trump is “not who we are,” that he does not represent American values, there are now two possibilities: Either America is not what they thought it was, or Trump is not as threatening as they think he is. I lean to the first conclusion, but I understand that, over time, the second will become easier to accept. A state of permanent emergency is not tenable; weariness and resignation eventually win out. As we live through a second Trump term, more of us will make our accommodations. We’ll call it illiberal democracy, or maybe self-care.

“We’re not going back,” Harris told us. The tragedy is not that this election has taken us back, but that it shows how there are parts of America’s history that we’ve never fully gotten past.

In her book “America for Americans,” Erika Lee argues that Trump’s immigration policies and statements are part of a long tradition of xenophobia — against Southern Europeans, against newcomers from Asia, Latin America and the Middle East — a tradition that has lived alongside our self-perception as a nation of immigrants. In his book “The End of the Myth,” Greg Grandin warned of the “nationalization of border brutalism” under Trump, whereby harsh policies at the U.S.-Mexico border would spread elsewhere, an “extremism turned inward, all-consuming and self-devouring.”

When Trump first began his ascent into presidential politics, some readers turned to Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel, “It Can’t Happen Here,” about homegrown authoritarianism in the United States. In the story, Doremus Jessup, a liberal-minded newspaper editor, marvels at the power of Buzz Windrip, a crudely charismatic demagogue who captivates the country and imposes totalitarian rule. The stylistic similarities between Trump and Windrip are evident, but Lewis’s real protagonists are the well-meaning, liberal-minded citizens, like Jessup, who can’t quite bring themselves to grasp what is happening.

Jessup tells his readers that the insanity won’t last, that they can wait it out. “He simply did not believe that this comic tyranny could endure,” Lewis wrote. When it does endure, Jessup blames himself and his class for their obliviousness. “If it hadn’t been one Windrip, it’d been another. … We had it coming, we Respectables,” he laments.

For too long, today’s Respectables have insisted on Trump’s abnormality. It is a reflex, a defense mechanism, as though accepting his ordinariness is too much to bear. Because if Trump is normal, then America must be, too, and who wants to be roused from dreams of exceptionalism? It’s more comforting to think of Trumpism as a temporary ailment than a pre-existing condition.

When Hillary Clinton described half of Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” in September of 2016, she did more than dismiss a massive voting bloc and confirm her status as a Respectable in good standing. What she said about those voters moments later was even more telling: “Some of those folks, they are irredeemable. But, thankfully, they are not American.”

It’s a neat move: Rather than accept what America was becoming and who Americans could become, just write them out of the story.

Are we what we say, or what we do — are we our actions or our aspirations? From America’s earliest moments, we have lived this tension between ideals and reality. It may seem more honest to dismiss our words and focus on our deeds. But our words also matter; they reveal what we hope to do and who we want to be. That yearning remains vital, no matter in what direction our national reality points.

The way to render Trump abnormal is not to insist that he is, or to find more excuses, or to indulge in the great and inevitable second-guessing of Democratic campaign strategy. It begins by recognizing that who we are is decided not only on Election Day — whether 2024 or 2016, or 2028 for that matter — but every day. Every day that we strive to be something other than what we’ve become.

I remember when I thought Trump wasn’t normal. But now he is, no matter how fiercely I cling to that memory.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Carlos Lozada is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the weekly “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times, based in Washington, D.C. He is the author, most recently, of “The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians.”  @CarlosNYT

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 10, 2024, Section SR, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

7. Legos, Cocoa, and Coloring Books for Georgetown Students

I thought this would be from the Onion or the Duffleblog.

Just as a reminder, we do send our military officers in the JCS intern program to the McCourt School for their masters degree. I wonder what Omar Bradley is doing in his grave right now.

JCS Internship renamed Bradley Fellowship

Each year, 20 mid-career Army officers attend the McCourt School’s Master of Policy Management program and receive an internship placement at the Pentagon before returning to service.

 https://mccourt.georgetown.edu/news/bradley-fellowship/

I think Jerry Seinefild is correct below.

Legos, Cocoa, and Coloring Books for Georgetown Students

At the McCourt School of Public Policy, officials are offering ‘mindfulness’ options to cope with the election. The only thing missing is a blankie.

https://www.thefp.com/p/georgetown-election-safe-space-trump-kamala

By Frannie Block

November 4, 2024

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On Wednesday, the day after the election, most of us are going to roll out of bed, have our breakfast, and get on with our day—no matter which presidential candidate wins. But students at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy—where diplomats and policymakers are molded—have another option: They can play with Legos. Seriously.

In an email to McCourt students, Jaclyn Clevenger, the school’s director of student engagement, introduced the school’s post-election “Self-Care Suite.” 

“In recognition of these stressful times,” she wrote, “all McCourt community members are welcome to gather. . . in the 3rd floor Commons to take a much needed break, joining us for mindfulness activities and snacks throughout the day.” 

Here’s the agenda (and no, you can’t make this up): 

10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.: Tea, Cocoa, and Self-Care

11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.: Legos Station

12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.: Healthy Treats and Healthy Habits

1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.: Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises

2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.: Milk and Cookies

4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.: Legos and Coloring

5:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.: Snacks and Self-Guided Meditation

I wanted to ask Clevenger why college and graduate students needed milk and cookies to recover from their stress—and how being coddled in college might someday affect American diplomacy—but she didn’t respond to my calls or emails.

Of course, Georgetown is hardly the only school fearful that their students will be traumatized after the election. At Missouri State University, the counseling center has set up a post-election “self-care no phone zone space” with calm jars, coloring pages, and sensory fidgets. 

And just last week, The New York Times reported that Fieldston, the elite New York City private school, was making attendance the day after Election Day optional for “students who feel too emotionally distressed.” Fieldston has also eliminated all homework requirements that day, and is even providing psychologists for “Election Day Support.”

Jerry Seinfeld told the Times that his family found such decisions so aggravating that it caused his youngest son to withdraw from Fieldston and switch to a different school in the eighth grade. “What kind of lives have these people led that makes them think that this is the right way to handle young people?” he said. “To encourage them to buckle. This is the lesson they are providing, for ungodly sums of money.” 

I couldn’t agree more.

Frannie Block is a reporter for The Free Press. Read her story, “College Students Plan to Skip Class for Palestine” and follow her on X @FrannieBlock.

For more coverage of the 2024 election, click here.

To support more of our work, subscribe to The Free Press:

8. Trump’s Promises and Threats: A Guide to What’s Possible

This may be a useful "scorecard" from the Wall Street Journal.

Regarding this excerpt:

Pledge

Get rid of the “woke generals.”

Can He Do It?

It is a dangerous precedent to fire generals who don’t align politically with the president, given that the U.S. military is supposed to be apolitical.

Obstacles

All generals serve at the pleasure of the president, so he can fire them at any time.

I served during the Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama terms. I cannot recall once ever having a discussion about the political views of our general/flag or any officers appointed over me. You might hear some grumbling comments at the officer's club (back in the day when we used to frequent them) but I can never recall ever knowing what the political views of general and flag officers were. Of course the assumption is always that they are conservative and/or republican but we have been surprised to learn the political views of some generals after retirement. That indicates to me that they were apolitical while on active duty.

What is troubling is a perception that a general/flag officer (or any officer) is a "holdover" from a previous administration and therefore should be "suspect." If anything this should illustrate the patriotism of the general/flag officer (and all officers) and their oath to the Constitution to serve honorably for the good of the nation and defense of the Constitution regardless of which party is in the White House. Our leaders will execute the lawful orders and implement the policies of our political leaders in charge. Just because they do not resign in disagreement does not mean they agree with those policies or will not support new policies from a new administration.

Trump’s Promises and Threats: A Guide to What’s Possible

How the president-elect could turn his plans for taxes, climate policy and other areas into reality—and what could stand in the way

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-president-campaign-promises-immigration-economy-climate-9468426a?mod=hp_lead_pos2

Photo Illustration: Alexandra Citrin-Safadi/WSJ; Photos: John Taggart/Getty

By WSJ Staff

Nov. 9, 2024 5:30 am ET

President-elect Donald Trump has made a series of promises, proposals and threats during his campaign, on issues ranging from tax cuts to mass deportations. Here is a rundown of some of these vows, with a look at their prospects.

Table Of Contents

• Climate
• Defense and Foreign Policy
• Justice Department
• Energy
• Federal Reserve and Finance
• Health and Education
• Immigration
• Taxes
• Trade

Show All Sections

Climate

Pledge

Pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.

Can He Do It?

Trump took the U.S. out in his first term, President Biden rejoined the deal, and Trump attacked the accord in his June debate with Biden. He would need to give the United Nations one-year notice.

Obstacles

None.

Pledge

Repeal unspent Inflation Reduction Act funds.

Can He Do It?

The president can’t block funds already appropriated. Eliminating a green tax credit would need a change in the tax code. 

Obstacles

Any such steps would require congressional approval, and some Republicans may not be on board.

Pledge

Repeal Environmental Protection Agency pollution rules.

Can He Do It?

It would be possible for Trump to roll back rules on vehicles, coal plants and leaks from petroleum facilities through administrative action, although some rules don’t take effect until after Trump finishes his term. 

Obstacles

None.

Defense and Foreign Policy

Pledge

Use troops against “the enemy within.”

Can He Do It?

The U.S. active-duty military is usually deployed for threats from outside the U.S., not within.

Obstacles

Under the Posse Comitatus act of 1878, the active-duty troops can’t participate in civilian law enforcement on American citizens unless authorized by Congress.

Pledge

Get rid of the “woke generals.”

Can He Do It?

It is a dangerous precedent to fire generals who don’t align politically with the president, given that the U.S. military is supposed to be apolitical.

Obstacles

All generals serve at the pleasure of the president, so he can fire them at any time.

Pledge

Ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza before even taking office.

Can He Do It?

Trump may have luck encouraging Ukraine, which has been losing ground, to the negotiating table, but Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hamas and Israel have shown no signs they want to end the fighting.

Obstacles

Ceasing hostilities depends on whether the warring parties are willing to negotiate.

Justice Department

Pledge

Fire special counsel Jack Smith.

Can He Do It?

As head of the executive branch, Trump can select a Justice Department leader who will dismiss Smith and drop the federal charges the special counsel’s office brought in Florida and Washington. Smith’s team is evaluating how to wind down the cases given the Justice Department’s longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president, and it is unclear whether the special counsel will remain in office come Jan. 20.

Obstacles

Trump has virtually unfettered power to have his federal charges dropped.

Pledge

Pardon Jan. 6 “hostages.”

Can He Do It?

Trump repeatedly pledged on the campaign trail to pardon the members of the pro-Trump mob who have faced charges stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. It is unclear precisely how Trump will approach a pardon process for Jan. 6 defendants, whom he has described as “hostages.” Lawyers said Trump’s options range from a blanket pardon covering all Jan. 6 defendants to a more selective approach, perhaps excluding those convicted of assaulting police.

Obstacles

The pardon power is among the president’s most absolute, allowing Trump to wipe away convictions. Mass pardons would draw protest from Congress and the judiciary, but those branches could do little to stop Trump from granting clemency to the defendants.

Pledge

Prosecute political enemies.

Can He Do It?

Trump is looking for an attorney general who is willing to do his bidding, after feeling let down by his first-term picks.

Obstacles

Internal dissent within the Justice Department and judges unwilling to sign off on arrest warrants could derail these plans.

Energy

Pledge

“Drill baby drill” and cut energy prices in half.

Can He Do It?

While administration policy can affect demand and supply at the margins, energy prices are mostly driven by market forces. Trump can offer more leases on federal lands and waters with few restrictions, but that doesn’t mean companies will bid on them or increase drilling.

Obstacles

The federal government has little authority to set commodity prices. Companies are unlikely to increase production, which already hit all-time highs under Biden, in large part because investors want companies to spend on buybacks and dividends, not drilling.

Pledge

Block some offshore wind projects.

Can He Do It?

Trump promised to end a wind project off the coast of New Jersey during a May campaign event, and he could follow through.

Obstacles

The executive branch is responsible for offshore lease sales and regulatory reviews of projects, giving Trump wide latitude here.

Federal Reserve and Finance

Pledge

The president should have greater say in how the Fed sets interest rates.

Can He Do It?

Current Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s record suggests he will resist political pressure on monetary-policy decisions. Trump appointed Powell as Fed chair in 2018, then later demanded he stop raising rates, and subsequently that he cut them. Powell resisted those entreaties. Powell said this week that he wouldn’t resign if asked to by Trump and that it’s “not permitted under the law” for the president to fire or demote him.

Obstacles

Congress designed the Fed to operate with considerable autonomy, giving it a number of legal and structural protections against interference by elected leaders. The idea, shared by major economies around the world, is to empower central bankers to respond to high inflation by raising interest rates—often an unpopular measure.

Pledge

Fire Gary Gensler as Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and “end the persecution” of cryptocurrencies.

Can He Do It?

Trump picks the SEC’s head. A new chair can ease the regulatory heat crypto faces but can’t deliver the legal framework the industry wants.

Obstacles

Congress would need to legislate a new regulatory framework for crypto.

Health and Education

Pledge

Ban gender-affirming care for minors.

Can He Do It?

Trump has said he would ban gender-affirming care for minors, including surgeries and hormones that can help halt the effects of puberty. He said he would do so by threatening to cut off Medicaid funding for hospitals that provide such care and by trying to pass federal legislation.

Obstacles

States have wide latitude to regulate medical care and any attempt by the federal government to intervene is likely to face legal challenges. A case before the Supreme Court this term will also determine whether transgender youth have a constitutional right to access medical care. Some two dozen states have bans on such care.

Pledge

Let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on health policy.

Can He Do It?

Trump has embraced Kennedy’s goal to “make America healthy again.” Even before Kennedy endorsed him, Trump had promised to establish a “special presidential commission” that is “not bought and paid for by Big Pharma” to investigate chronic illnesses. How exactly Kennedy’s ideas—such as his skepticism of pesticides, fluoride, food additives and vaccines—will translate into policy is still unknown.

Obstacles

Kennedy is drawing up a list of potential leaders for health agencies and the Agriculture Department and may himself seek a post. But many of those picks would need to be confirmed by the Senate.

Pledge

Get rid of the Education Department.

Can He Do It?

Congress would need to pass a law to eliminate the department, which would be possible if Republicans control both the House and Senate.

Obstacles

Democrats could filibuster such a measure in the Senate.

Immigration

Pledge

Deport 20 million immigrants.

Can He Do It?

It is certainly possible to increase deportations from current levels, and the Trump administration can do so by changing existing policies and moving money from other programs to help pay for more arrests and detention space. But, without an infusion of tens of billions of dollars, it will be difficult for the Trump administration to deport the volume of people it has promised. During Trump’s first term, the government deported just about 1.2 million people—and most of them were newly crossing the border, not already living in the country. Trump will also meet stiff opposition from blue states, who are unlikely to cooperate with helping find and arrest immigrants.

Obstacles

Congress will likely need to provide the administration additional funding to make mass deportations a reality. Also expect nearly every individual policy to be challenged in court.

Pledge

End the “migrant invasion” on day one.

Can He Do It?

Illegal crossings at the southern border have remained low this year, and the Trump administration’s proposed policies—including keeping a version of Biden’s asylum ban and renegotiating Remain in Mexico—are likely to keep crossings down at least in the short term. But crossings are driven by an array of factors, including the health of the U.S. economy and instability in other countries, and may not always be controllable by the incoming administration.

Obstacles

The president has wide latitude on immigration policy, but ultimately lasting changes to the nation’s immigration and asylum systems would need to be made by Congress. Expect nearly every immigration policy Trump issues to be challenged in court.

Taxes

Pledge

No tax on tips, overtime pay or Social Security benefits.

Can He Do It?

Making tips tax-free could be the easiest to accomplish, because it has a smaller deficit impact at an estimated $300 billion over a decade, compared with more than $1 trillion each for making overtime pay or Social Security benefits tax free. Lawmakers may want to limit the exemption to set an income cap or to prevent people from recharacterizing wages or business income as tips.

Obstacles

Would require approval of Congress, which will be looking for ways to trim the price tag of a tax bill that extends Trump’s expiring 2017 tax cuts and includes his newer ideas.

Pledge

Restore the state and local tax deduction.

Can He Do It?

Trump and Republicans in Congress were responsible for capping the state and local tax deduction at $10,000 in 2017 as a way to pay for tax cuts. Most Republicans favor the cap because they see it as limiting a federal subsidy for high-tax states, but the cap is unpopular among Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California. Restoring the full SALT deduction without a cap could eliminate a way for Trump and Republicans to pay for renewing tax cuts expiring at the end of 2025.

Obstacles

Congress would have to approve a new SALT deduction with or without a cap. Trump adviser Stephen Moore told The Wall Street Journal he expects the cap to go up to at least $20,000 in Trump’s second term as president. 

Trade

Pledge

Sixty percent or higher levies on goods from China.

Can He Do It?

A version of “60% or higher” on imports from China seems to be a priority for Trump. He has been a vocal opponent of China’s trade practices since he ran for president in 2016 and made targeting Chinese imports a theme of his latest campaign.

Obstacles

Trump has the authority to implement these tariffs after he gets sworn in as president.

Pledge

Across-the-board tariffs of 10% to 20% on every other U.S. trading partner, and tariff rates as high as 100%, 200% or 1,000% in other circumstances.

Can He Do It?

Trump has been making this promise throughout the campaign, but his allies have been labeling his tariff policy as being more “strategic” than wide ranging. If he were to move ahead with wide-ranging tariffs on imports from U.S. trading partners, that could lead to tensions with longstanding allies.

Obstacles

Trump will have unilateral power to enact tariffs on imports from anywhere around the world once he becomes president without the approval of Congress.

Elizaveta Galkina and Juanje Gomez contributed to this article.

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9. A Xi Enforcer Is Revving Up China’s Spy Machine—and Alarming the West

I heard a very useful comment this week at a conference (which is clearly a BFO - blinding flash of the obvious) which simply to is ask, why are we only on the defensive? What aren't we on the offensive? That means more than just trying to recruit informants through social media.

The information and influence battle here:

The U.S. emerged as a key target for the MSS’s WeChat broadsides. A series of posts denounced American espionage efforts against China, disclosed two cases of Chinese nationals allegedly recruited as spies by the CIA, and noted that the first CIA officer to die in the line of duty had been working under diplomatic cover in China. 

One post accused the U.S. and other Western countries of waging “cognitive warfare” against China by attacking its culture and besmirching its image. “The times and trends of historical development aren’t on America’s side,” a separate post said.

The messaging reflected Xi’s broad definition of national security. One WeChat post claimed that foreign powers were collaborating with Chinese nonprofits to fabricate evidence of illegal practices and environmental abuses in China’s fisheries industry. Another article alleged that foreign “bears” and short sellers were trying to “trigger financial turmoil” in China.

The MSS also tapped into pop culture trends, such as China’s booming “microdrama” industry, which has resonated with younger audiences who prefer watching short-format videos on mobile devices. One recent effort was a nearly 8-minute short film that depicted how a Chinese scientific researcher was duped into a romantic relationship with a female spy masquerading as a consultant. The researcher realized his errors and turned himself in, securing a lighter punishment.

Another theme was the consequences for treason. In a pair of WeChat posts this month, the MSS described how two former government workers, convicted in separate cases, were sentenced to death and life imprisonment respectively for selling state secrets to foreign intelligence.

The MSS’s publicity push mirrors similar efforts by U.S. counterparts. The CIA recently launched a social-media drive to recruit informants in China, Iran and North Korea, while the FBI has produced videos to raise awareness about security threats.

In a speech marking the WeChat account’s first anniversary, Chen described the MSS’s social-media work as a “project of paramount importance.” Officials, he said, must be “good at transforming the mysterious, miraculous and divine nature of national-security work into strengths in communication, penetration and influence.” 

A Xi Enforcer Is Revving Up China’s Spy Machine—and Alarming the West

Agency accused of vast cyberattacks on U.S. has grown more powerful with trusted protégé of Chinese leader at the helm

By Chun Han WongFollow

Updated Nov. 9, 2024 12:02 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/a-xi-enforcer-is-revving-up-chinas-spy-machineand-alarming-the-west-6b87999f?mod=Searchresults_pos2&page=1

The Chinese intelligence agency accused of likely steering vast cyberattacks on the U.S. has made rapid gains in power and profile, driven by leader Xi Jinping and the protégé he put in charge of China’s espionage efforts against the West.

In the two years since Xi installed Chen Yixin at the helm of the Ministry of State Security, a secretive organization whose mandate includes intelligence gathering and counterespionage, Chinese spying has swelled to what Western officials describe as a formidable threat. The expansive effort, officials say, has mobilized security agencies, private firms and civilians to amass troves of information.

Chen brought the spy agency into the spotlight with a crackdown on perceived security threats from foreign firms, a social-media campaign urging vigilance against alleged U.S. efforts to subvert China and, American officials believe, an increasingly sophisticated hacking enterprise that included the recently discovered attacks linked to a group known as Salt Typhoon.

The mission, as Chen describes it, is to help China prevail in an escalating great-power competition against the U.S. The country that best marshals its resources “can win the initiative in the struggle,” he wrote in April. 

As China’s spy chief, Chen has pushed the MSS well beyond its traditional domain of intelligence, airing publicly its views on security threats related to the country’s economy, foreign policy and even culture. He has sought to mobilize citizens to join a national struggle against foreign espionage—a throwback to Cold War-era appeals for a public vigilance to help catch spies.

An image of Chinese leader Xi Jinping at an exhibition in Beijing. Xi has said he wants to build a ‘new security landscape.’ Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In the Salt Typhoon breach, hackers infiltrated U.S. telecom networks and compromised the cellphone lines of the Trump and Harris campaigns and of senior U.S. government officials, potentially accessing communications between thousands of Americans and causing serious harm to U.S. national security, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

U.S. investigators have identified a Chinese contractor that they believe carried out the attack on behalf of a Chinese intelligence agency, likely the MSS, which has often used contractors for hacking missions, according to people familiar with the inquiry. Beijing has denied involvement.

Chen’s emergence as a hard-line enforcer on security affairs reflects Xi’s preference for picking loyal lieutenants. While his predecessors at the MSS had typically specialized in security or intelligence, Chen was a long-serving official in a prosperous industrial province, including stints as a close aide to Xi and then a pro-business administrator.

“He’s a key figure in Xi’s inner circle and he’s demonstrated unwavering loyalty to Xi—unwavering,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The MSS, once beset by corruption scandals and considered less politically influential than some other Chinese security agencies, has gained clout under China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

When Xi started his third term as party chief in 2022, he brought his then state-security minister, Chen Wenqing, into the elite 24-member Politburo as the party’s security czar—the first time since the Mao era that a spy chief was elevated to such a rank.

Xi also named Chen Yixin as the next head of the MSS, whose foreign and domestic roles make it China’s rough equivalent to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

In one of his first public remarks as spy chief, Chen pledged to carry out Xi’s vision to build a “new security landscape” that can safeguard China’s development by all means necessary.

Officials must combat hostile forces at home and abroad that seek to subvert China’s political system and suppress the nation’s rise, Chen wrote in April 2023.

“Create more advanced means of attack and defense, and strive to improve our ability to use science and technology to safeguard national security,” he wrote.

The Ministry of State Security has urged ordinary Chinese to help build a ‘people’s line of defense.’ Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

During Chen’s tenure, authorities have conducted raids and probes against U.S. consulting and due-diligence firms. Legislators rewrote China’s counterespionage law to tighten state control over a wider swath of data and digital activities, unnerving foreign executives about what they saw as growing risks for businesses operating in the world’s second-largest economy. A senior expert on the U.S. at the MSS’s main research institute became a vice minister of state security—signaling a closer focus on strategic threats from Washington.

When Xi ran the eastern province of Zhejiang as its party chief two decades ago, Chen was a senior aide who helped bolster his boss’s image as a business-friendly politician. Chen went on to become a municipal leader in two Zhejiang cities, including a famed cradle of entrepreneurship, where he championed private industry and drummed up foreign investment.

Xi brought Chen to Beijing in 2015, giving him a role in a powerful Communist Party panel that oversees economic and political overhauls. A state-run magazine likened the appointment to “entering the capital by imperial decree.”

The following year, Chen became the party boss of Wuhan, the city in central China where Covid-19 later emerged. There he styled himself as a tech-savvy official who used digital technologies to improve governance, such as by using the WeChat app to communicate directly with subordinates.

“We leaders must not only understand and use the internet, but also be good at using such modern and information-based things,” he said.

Chen tested his mettle in security affairs in 2018, when he took a senior post in the party’s top commission overseeing security, law enforcement and judicial work. There he directed a three-year campaign against organized crime and a broad purge targeting allegedly corrupt and disloyal cadres in China’s security apparatus—a crackdown that Chen likened to a 1942-1945 drive that Mao used to consolidate control over the party.

When Wuhan was locked down in early 2020 as Covid-19 ravaged the city, Chen went there to help direct virus-containment efforts—spearheading what would become the draconian zero-Covid policy that Xi imposed nationwide. “I can again do battle alongside all of you,” Chen told local officials through WeChat. “We must unify our thinking, implement it resolutely, and secure victory.” 

Chen Yixin helped direct virus-containment efforts in Wuhan, China, in 2020. Photo: Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Chen also trumpeted Xi’s security agenda, including the assessment that the U.S.—despite its relative decline—still posed a threat to China’s rise. It was around this time that Chen ramped up references to security matters in his public writings, typically in relation to Xi’s “holistic approach to national security.”

Sharpened public messaging became one of Chen’s calling cards. In a 2018 seminar, he said the security apparatus should strengthen its abilities to wage “online combat” and shape opinion.

“The internet is the new battlefield, and new media is the new combat power,” Chen said. He drove a multifold surge in the law-enforcement commission’s digital audiences, reaching about 190 million followers across various social-media and video apps in 2022.

Chen brought his publicity skills to the MSS, an agency long shrouded in secrecy with no official website or spokesperson. He took the ministry onto social media for the first time, launching a WeChat account in the summer of 2023. Its debut WeChat post urged ordinary Chinese to help advance Xi’s vision by building a “people’s line of defense for national security.”

The U.S. emerged as a key target for the MSS’s WeChat broadsides. A series of posts denounced American espionage efforts against China, disclosed two cases of Chinese nationals allegedly recruited as spies by the CIA, and noted that the first CIA officer to die in the line of duty had been working under diplomatic cover in China. 

One post accused the U.S. and other Western countries of waging “cognitive warfare” against China by attacking its culture and besmirching its image. “The times and trends of historical development aren’t on America’s side,” a separate post said.

The messaging reflected Xi’s broad definition of national security. One WeChat post claimed that foreign powers were collaborating with Chinese nonprofits to fabricate evidence of illegal practices and environmental abuses in China’s fisheries industry. Another article alleged that foreign “bears” and short sellers were trying to “trigger financial turmoil” in China.

The MSS also tapped into pop culture trends, such as China’s booming “microdrama” industry, which has resonated with younger audiences who prefer watching short-format videos on mobile devices. One recent effort was a nearly 8-minute short film that depicted how a Chinese scientific researcher was duped into a romantic relationship with a female spy masquerading as a consultant. The researcher realized his errors and turned himself in, securing a lighter punishment.

Another theme was the consequences for treason. In a pair of WeChat posts this month, the MSS described how two former government workers, convicted in separate cases, were sentenced to death and life imprisonment respectively for selling state secrets to foreign intelligence.

The MSS’s publicity push mirrors similar efforts by U.S. counterparts. The CIA recently launched a social-media drive to recruit informants in China, Iran and North Korea, while the FBI has produced videos to raise awareness about security threats.

In a speech marking the WeChat account’s first anniversary, Chen described the MSS’s social-media work as a “project of paramount importance.” Officials, he said, must be “good at transforming the mysterious, miraculous and divine nature of national-security work into strengths in communication, penetration and influence.” 

Warren P. Strobel contributed to this article.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com

10. I Study Guys Like Trump. There’s a Reason They Keep Winning.

Expected from Ben Rhodes but this one is very very important and explains everything. Some will not like the comparison of Obama and Trump as outsiders. But the key point is Biden's inability to fill the role of narrating what is happening in our nation and the world.

Excerpt:

As a former speechwriter, I am sympathetic to the challenge of weaving these threads together. But for all his many strengths, over the last four years, Mr. Biden — in part because of his age, in part because of social media — could not fill that intangible presidential role of narrating what was happening in our nation and world. Democratic leaders in Congress tended to be old hands who’d spent decades in Washington, making them imperfect messengers for an electorate demanding change. It is no coincidence that two outsiders as different as Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump have dominated politics for 20 years.

Guest Essay

I Study Guys Like Trump. There’s a Reason They Keep Winning.

Nov. 8, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/opinion/republicans-democrats-trump.html

Credit...Mark Peterson for The New York Times

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By Ben Rhodes

Mr. Rhodes was deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama.

In December 2019, I traveled to Hong Kong, where a heavy unease hung in the air. For months, young people had taken to the streets to protest the encroachment of the Chinese Communist Party on what was supposed to be a self-governing, democratic system. On walls they had scrawled: “Save Hong Kong! If we burn you burn with us!” All the protesters I spoke to knew their movement would fail; it was a last assertion of democratic identity before it was extinguished by a new order that saw democracy as the enemy within.

I met with a government official preparing to resign and told him I was writing a book about the rise of authoritarian nationalism. “The nationalism in the U.S. and Europe is somewhat different,” he told me. “Yours started with the financial crisis in 2008. That’s when liberalism started to lose its appeal, when people saw this wasn’t working. The narrative of liberalism and democracy collapsed. This spilled over into China, too. This is when China started to think — should we really follow a Western model?” We were sitting in a hotel lounge, the invisible forces he described surrounding us: capitalism, but not democracy; cultural elites cloistered away from the working class. “The nationalist movements in East and West were both a response to the collapse of the Western model,” he added.

Everything I’d experienced told me he was right. Eight years serving in the Obama White House after the financial crisis felt like swimming upstream, against the currents of global politics. A radicalized Republican Party rejected liberal democracy at home, mirroring far-right leaders like Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary who spoke about installing “illiberal democracy” (a polite term for “blood and soil” nationalism) across Europe. In Russia, Vladimir Putin set out to undermine — if not dismantle — the liberal order helmed by the United States. In China, Xi Jinping began to shift Beijing’s strategy from rising within that order to building a separate one, drained of democratic values. Barack Obama’s political skills and cultural appeal allowed him to navigate those currents, but they didn’t always transfer to other Democrats.

Donald Trump’s first victory challenged my liberal assumptions about the inevitability of a certain kind of progress: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” For eight years outside of government, I have talked to opposition figures around the world and heard versions of the same story everywhere. After the Cold War, globalization chipped away at people’s sense of security and identity.

In the West, neoliberalism — that blend of free trade, deregulation and deference to financial markets — hollowed out communities while enriching a global oligarchy. Meanwhile, a homogenized and often crass popular culture eroded traditional national and religious identities. After 9/11, the war on terror was embraced by autocrats such as Mr. Putin, who used it as a frame to justify power grabs while forever wars fueled mass migration. The financial crisis came through like a hurricane, wrecking the lives of people already struggling to get by while the rich profited on the back end. Then social media’s explosion offered a vehicle to spread grievance and conspiracy theories, allowing populist leaders to radicalize their followers with the precision of an algorithm.

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The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.

The persistent anti-incumbent mood was so strong that it even (narrowly) swept Mr. Trump out of office in 2020, aided by his bungling of a pandemic. But even after the shock of Jan. 6, heavy unease hung over American politics: There was no return to pre-Trump normalcy.

As president, Joe Biden embraced protectionism, organized labor and industrial policy, and his administration made investments in hollowed-out communities through executive orders and legislation. Democrats relentlessly communicated the threat Mr. Trump posed to democracy, with the removal of abortion rights as proof. When they fought a mediocre collection of Republican candidates to a draw in the 2022 midterm elections, many in the party — including Mr. Biden — drew the lesson that this approach was working.

Yet now Mr. Trump has decisively won back the presidency. I would never claim to have all the answers about what went wrong, but I do worry that Democrats walked into the trap of defending the very institutions — the “establishment” — that most Americans distrust. As a party interested in competent technocracy, we lost touch with the anger people feel at government. As a party that prizes data, we seized on indicators of growth and job creation as proof that the economy was booming, even though people felt crushed by rising costs. As a party motivated by social justice, we let revulsion at white Christian nationalism bait us into identity politics on their terms — whether it was debates about transgender athletes, the busing of migrants to cities, or shaming racist MAGA personalities who can’t be shamed. As a party committed to American leadership of a “rules-based international order,” we defended a national security enterprise that has failed repeatedly in the 21st century, and made ourselves hypocrites through unconditional military support for Israel’s bombardment of civilians in Gaza.

Democrats told true stories about Mr. Trump’s unfitness, about the legislative achievements of the Biden-Harris administration, about bodily autonomy for women. But when talking about middle-class economics, it was often in the familiar poll-tested language of the consultant class.

As a former speechwriter, I am sympathetic to the challenge of weaving these threads together. But for all his many strengths, over the last four years, Mr. Biden — in part because of his age, in part because of social media — could not fill that intangible presidential role of narrating what was happening in our nation and world. Democratic leaders in Congress tended to be old hands who’d spent decades in Washington, making them imperfect messengers for an electorate demanding change. It is no coincidence that two outsiders as different as Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump have dominated politics for 20 years.

Kamala Harris brought new energy and remarkable discipline to the campaign’s final months, revitalizing the collaborative joy essential to Democratic politics. But her ties to an unpopular incumbent — and a global post-pandemic backlash against any incumbent — held her back. Democrats understandably have a hard time fathoming why Americans would put our democracy at risk, but we miss the reality that our democracy is part of what angers them. Many voters have come to associate democracy with globalization, corruption, financial capitalism, migration, forever wars and elites (like me) who talk about it as an end in itself rather than a means to redressing inequality, reining in capitalist systems that are rigged, responding to global conflict and fostering a sense of shared national identity.

Yes, this is unfair: Republican policies from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush did far more than Democrats to create this mess. But Mr. Trump’s crusade against the past elites of his own party — from the Bush family to Mitch McConnell — credentialed him with a public hungry for accountability, while the Harris campaign’s embrace of Dick Cheney conveyed the opposite message.

Donald Trump has won the presidency, but I don’t believe he will deliver on his promises. Like other self-interested autocrats, his remedies are designed to exploit problems instead of solving them, and he’s surrounded by oligarchs who want to loot the system instead of reforming it. Mass deportation and tariffs are recipes for inflation. Tax cuts and deregulation will exacerbate inequality. America First impulses will fuel global conflict, technological disruption and climate conflagration. Mr. Trump is the new establishment in this country and globally, and we should emphasize that instead of painting him as an outlier or interloper.

Out of the wreckage of this election, Democrats must reject the impulse to simply be a resistance that condemns whatever outrageous thing Mr. Trump says. While confronting Mr. Trump when we must, we must also focus on ourselves — what we stand for, and how we tell our story. That means acknowledging — as my Hong Kong interlocutor said — that “the narrative of liberalism and democracy collapsed.” Instead of defending a system that has been rejected, we need to articulate an alternative vision for what kind of democracy comes next.

We should merge our commitment to the moral, social and demographic necessity of an inclusive America with a populist critique of the system that Mr. Trump now runs; a focus more on reform than just redistribution. We must reform the corruption endemic to American capitalism, corporate malfeasance, profiteering in politics, unregulated technologies transforming our lives, an immigration system broken by Washington, the cabal of autocrats pushing the world to the brink of war and climate catastrophe.

After he lost an election in 2002, Mr. Orban spent years holding “civic circles” around Hungary — grass-roots meetings, often around churches, which built an agenda and sense of belonging that propelled him back into power. In their own way, the next generation of Democratic leaders should fan out across the country. Learn from mayors innovating at the local level. Listen to communities that feel alienated. Find places where multiracial democracy is working better than it is in the rest of the country. Tell those stories when pitching policies. Foster a sense of belonging to something bigger, so democracy doesn’t feel like the pablum of a ruling elite, but rather the remedy for fixing what is broken in Washington and our body politic.

We are not living in Hong Kong, where a democratic movement could be extinguished. A midterm election looms. Mr. Trump is term-limited. The next four years will be trying and dangerous — especially for the more vulnerable among us. But if we understand the global trends that got us here, we can swing the political pendulum back in our direction and seize that moment with a new vision of liberalism and democracy.

Ben Rhodes was deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama and author of “After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We Made.”

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A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 10, 2024, Section SR, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Walked Into a Trap Republicans Set for Them. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

11. Why America Stopped Winning Wars

So much to discuss. Hopefully this will generate discussion in PME and graduate schools as well as among policy makers the highest level. As well, the American people need to understand these issues.

Excerpts:

If the primary objective of all military operations is the absolute protection of civilian populations, the purpose of these operations is lost.

...

Yet, in contemporary American military and government understanding, proportionality means that every Israeli action should be examined from the point of view of whether “disproportional harm”—often meaning, any harm—has been inflicted on noncombatants. This is insane in the literal sense, as there is no way for Israel to apply this principle in practice and at the same time destroy Hamas.

The reason why the U.S. managed to spend the extraordinary sum of $2.3 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other, associated operations, is largely “proportionality.” Careful assessment of what is and is not a proportional attack, or a proportional campaign, is incredibly expensive. It requires the constant collection of a vast amount of detailed intelligence on such subjects as the number of civilians likely to be present in a particular building. In its implementation, proportionality is taken to require the use of guided “smart” low-impact munitions in almost all circumstances, another enormous drain on the budget. Repeated attacks on the same target with expensive munitions often substitute for single attacks with cruder weapons, whose death tolls might be higher—but which will not exhaust America’s financial strength and are more likely to lead to victory. If the Union had spent the Civil War obsessing about the proportionality of its actions instead of annihilating the Confederacy, the war would likely have ended in a stalemate, and the continuation of slavery in the South.

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America cannot afford to fight long wars against its enemies, both because of the cost, and because any long campaign inevitably teaches the enemy to adapt and adjust, and thereby become at least partially immune to attack. What the United States should do instead is carry out sudden crushing attacks, which can be repeated without warning. America’s nature as a distant power with a large air force and navy makes this approach ideally suited to its strengths, while avoiding its weaknesses. If you don’t want to suffer the consequences of such an attack, then don’t do things like attack shipping in the Red Sea or take Americans hostage.

For the moment, America has no strategy, no operational approach, not even a clear sense of the tactics it should employ, even in simple situations where America’s interests are clear—like keeping shipping lanes open or keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of an Iranian regime that regularly promises “Death to America.” What America has, in overabundance, are empty soundbites. As long ago as Jan. 17, 2005, President Bush said of Iran’s nuclear program, “I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table.” Two decades later, Vice President Harris says on that same topic, “diplomacy is my preferred path … but all options are on the table.” After two decades of continuing inaction, such rhetoric, on both sides of the aisle, is a portent of further failures to come.

Why America Stopped Winning Wars

Since 1945, the U.S. has adopted patterns of thought and action that make victory impossible. Israel cannot afford to follow that example.

by

Dan Zamansky

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/why-america-stopped-winning-wars?utm

November 07, 2024

Tablet · by Dan Zamansky · November 8, 2024

To find a way out of its current security crisis, the United States must recognize some hard truths. Most important among these is understanding why America stopped winning wars. The last American war to date ended, in substance, a decade ago, when the U.S. formally concluded its combat operations in Afghanistan. Since then, a country forged in war, and sustained to a large degree by victories in numerous highly consequential wars which followed, has lost sight of the fundamental fact that there is often no alternative to war, and no alternative to victory.

For the United States to emerge as a country in the first place, of course, it needed to gain its independence from the British Empire, which was not inclined to let the Colonies go. On April 19, 1775, the colonists took to their muskets at Lexington and Concord, and began the multiyear Revolutionary War. It was in this war that America’s Declaration of Independence was born, and its excoriation of the king includes the charge that he “has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.”

Within less than two months of the declaration’s signing, British regulars nearly destroyed George Washington’s Continental Army on Brooklyn Heights, and forced him to retreat hastily in the dead of night. The war only ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. If the colonists had not persevered, for years, against what was then the world’s richest empire, there would have been no United States of America.

America’s example quickly proved infectious abroad. On July 14, 1789, barely more than a year after the ratification of the Constitution, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille. The fall of the absolutist monarchy, the Old Regime, initiated a very slow and bloody, but nonetheless irreversible, spread of republican institutions through most of Europe.

Perfecting America itself would also require war, on a greater scale than the War of Independence. President Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of Sept. 22, 1862, came five days after the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history. The 13th Amendment, which finally abolished slavery, was passed on Jan. 31, 1865, as the Union Army was at long last gripping the Confederacy’s throat on the siege lines of Petersburg. More Americans died in the Civil War than in all the rest of America’s wars combined.

If the primary objective of all military operations is the absolute protection of civilian populations, the purpose of these operations is lost.

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This is the most basic pattern not just of American history, but of the history of the world. The greatest of political disputes, over fundamental questions of policy and morality, are not settled by negotiation, eventually leading to peaceful diplomatic compromise. Rather, they are resolved in bloody battle, in which one side imposes its view of what is right upon the other. American colonists imposed their independence on Britain at the point of a gun. The Union states imposed the liberation of the slaves upon the Confederate states in the same way.

Both world wars, the worst catastrophes so far in human history, happened in large part because the United States watched from afar, year after year, before acting decisively to win wars that directly threatened its national security. The aggressive ambitions of kaiser’s Germany were already on display at the beginning of the First Moroccan Crisis in March 1905. Yet, it took two and a half years of a gigantic war starting in August 1914, a German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, and the extraordinary Zimmermann Telegram in which Germany’s foreign minister offered Mexico parts of American territory, for America to finally abandon neutrality and join the war in April 1917. Without fresh American forces, there would have been no Allied victory. With them, victory was won, and an Armistice was forced upon Germany on Nov. 11, 1918.

Victory having been won, isolationism was again triumphant in the U.S. On Jan. 10, 1923, President Harding ordered the withdrawal of the last American troops from Germany, thereby making the terms of Versailles, or any other alternative peace arrangement, unenforceable. Ten years and 20 days after American troops were redeployed back home, Adolf Hitler became German chancellor. Without American involvement, Britain and France could not find the strength to act against him.

Hitler began the Second World War in September 1939 and by June 4, 1940, France was in a state of collapse. Only the extraordinary efforts of Winston Churchill, who in his famous speech on that day declared that “we shall go on to the end,” prevented Britain from either coming to an arrangement with Hitler, or pursuing a long, ineffectual phony war against him while he and his Axis allies conquered the rest of the Eastern Hemisphere.

Churchill ended his speech with an appeal to “the New World, with all its power and might” to rescue the Old. But it wasn’t until another aggressor state, Japan, attacked America at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that the U.S. joined the war against the Axis powers in the Pacific. American involvement in the European war theater might have taken a considerable additional amount of time, had Hitler not taken the initiative by declaring war on America on Dec. 11. With a certain lack of self-reflection, he accused President Roosevelt of seeking “unrestricted world domination and dictatorship.”

America, rather than initiating and controlling events, had been dragged out of years of slumber into both world wars. However, even before the country was fully mobilized for war, its industrial strength made a decisive contribution to Allied victory. On the Eastern front of the European war, almost 18 million metric tons of Allied lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union, most of it American, were a pillar of the Soviet war effort. On other fronts, America’s enormous strength combined directly with that of her Allies to put in the field forces of hitherto unimaginable size. By the end of the war, the U.S. Navy alone had 6,768 ships, including 23 battleships and 99 aircraft carriers. Little wonder that within less than four years of America’s entry into the war, the Axis powers were obliterated.

Yet when America marks the 80th anniversary of VE-Day and VJ-Day next year, it will also mark eight decades since it has won a decisive victory in war. The reason is that since 1945, America has adopted patterns of thought and action that make victory impossible.

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First and foremost, the U.S. has adopted a set of laws and practices which it did not, and could not, follow in the world wars. The protection of civilians is now, and has been for decades, an essential consideration in U.S. military operations. The latest formal document on this subject is the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan of Aug. 22, 2022, which claims that “mitigating … civilian harm … makes us the world’s most effective military force.” Of course, the opposite is true. When the U.S. armed forces are required to “integrate civilian protection into our mission objectives from the start,” as the plan directs, attaining objectives that are essential to victory becomes impossible.

Senseless and wanton attacks on civilians are indisputably immoral. But if the primary objective of all military operations is the absolute protection of civilian populations, the purpose of these operations is lost. Military leaders are turned into second-rate lawyers, and instead of defeating the enemy decisively and winning the war, they focus instead on following rules that make war interminable. This ethos, which leads to years of inconclusive military engagements that in the end do little to reduce civilian death totals, was a central cause of America’s expensive and demoralizing military failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

As anyone who understands military operations knows, war by its very nature often involves terrible harm to civilians. When America was pursuing the essential objective of defeating Japan as rapidly as possible in 1945, it was deemed necessary to incinerate much of Tokyo with cluster bombs filled with napalm bomblets. That led to a horrific number of civilian deaths—more than in any other air raid in history, including America’s subsequent nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet this merciless way of waging war achieved the objective of bringing the Second World War to a victorious end, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and millions of Japanese civilians, and allowing the United States to transform Japanese politics and society in a manner that has benefited the lives of hundreds of millions of Japanese since.

Because the mass armies of dictatorships are drawn from civilian populations, and are necessarily supported by them at every level of society, it is not possible to defeat them without a large number of civilian casualties. In a dictatorship, many civilians serve the regime in a wide variety of ways, from working in vast government organizations to informing the dictatorship’s police and intelligence services about its current or potential opponents, to the manufacture of armaments.

Control of a territory by an extremist movement necessarily means that the majority of the civilian population either actively sustains it or else tacitly accepts its activities. Those whom the extremists perceive as threats are murdered, or else driven into voluntary or involuntary exile. Many of those who remain are beneficiaries of the terrorists’ efforts to maintain wide public support. This is especially the case in sectarian societies such as Lebanon, where the Shia, who are represented in the state by Hezbollah, benefit from the group’s social foundations. It is impossible to win a war against such an enemy by maintaining a false pretense that the population at large is fully distinct from the terrorists.

It should be clearly understood, and publicly stated, that if a population lives in a territory controlled by a hostile force, especially a densely populated territory like parts of Iraq and much of Gaza, it will suffer serious and continuous losses during a war. Any other approach gives murderous criminals an extraordinary and intolerable freedom to wage war and murder others.

The purpose of wars waged by democracies, including America, is to remove acute military danger, not anything else. Protecting the population of a hostile territory or state in a manner compatible with the removal of the acute military danger is appropriate. What is neither appropriate nor acceptable is taking such measures to protect the population that it becomes impossible to achieve the purpose of the war, the defeat of the enemy.

Another reason for America’s failure to win wars is the poorly defined and easily manipulated doctrine of proportionality, which holds in the version appearing in the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual, that “force may be used … only to the extent that it is required to repel the armed attack and to restore the security of the party attacked.” Applied to individual military actions, it implies that a military should “refrain from attacks in which the expected harm incidental to such attacks would be excessive in relation to the concrete … military advantage.”

As with all law on controversial subjects, this legal doctrine is a very flexible servant of the meaning attached to it in practice. As the world can see in the case of America’s feeble fighting with the Houthis, proportionality becomes the bedrock of a practice of avoiding decisive action. Proportionality becomes the policy of not doing more than beating back the latest enemy attack—they shoot at us, we shoot back, the incident ends. The enemy is allowed to retain the initiative, to choose when, where, and how to launch the next attack, all while gaining experience and adapting to defeat American tactics more effectively. Instead of deterring the enemy, proportionality encourages the enemy in the belief that with proper preparation, America can and will be forced to retreat.

America used to be defined, with the confidence of stating a self-evident fact, as a superpower. In fact, Americans still like to use the term. A sober view shows that America has spent decades in a manner which have drained away its resources on strategically questionable wars that resulted in failure and led to strategic gains by America’s enemies.

Israel, a country of just 10 million with no friendly population on any of its borders, cannot afford to follow America’s example. America might be able to avoid national suicide by correcting its policy errors, because of the great physical distance that separates it from its enemies. Israel’s enemies are right on the border, and Israel has neither a moment nor a square foot to spare.

The events of Oct. 7 demonstrated that Hamas indeed posed and continues to pose a catastrophic threat to Israel’s citizens. If Hezbollah’s forces poised on Israel’s northern border had followed through on its own invasion plans for the Galilee on Oct. 7, for which we now know it was amply prepared, the result might well have been three or four times the scale of mass killings, perhaps precipitating the collapse of Israel. Proportionality, in its true sense, would therefore dictate the annihilation of Hamas in response, to remove an existential threat.

Control of a territory by an extremist movement necessarily means that the majority of the civilian population either actively sustains it or else tacitly accepts its activities.

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Yet, in contemporary American military and government understanding, proportionality means that every Israeli action should be examined from the point of view of whether “disproportional harm”—often meaning, any harm—has been inflicted on noncombatants. This is insane in the literal sense, as there is no way for Israel to apply this principle in practice and at the same time destroy Hamas.

The reason why the U.S. managed to spend the extraordinary sum of $2.3 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other, associated operations, is largely “proportionality.” Careful assessment of what is and is not a proportional attack, or a proportional campaign, is incredibly expensive. It requires the constant collection of a vast amount of detailed intelligence on such subjects as the number of civilians likely to be present in a particular building. In its implementation, proportionality is taken to require the use of guided “smart” low-impact munitions in almost all circumstances, another enormous drain on the budget. Repeated attacks on the same target with expensive munitions often substitute for single attacks with cruder weapons, whose death tolls might be higher—but which will not exhaust America’s financial strength and are more likely to lead to victory. If the Union had spent the Civil War obsessing about the proportionality of its actions instead of annihilating the Confederacy, the war would likely have ended in a stalemate, and the continuation of slavery in the South.

A third and final reason why America stopped winning wars is its misunderstanding of democratization, which is not at all limited to the actions of President George W. Bush, or the ideas of so-called “neoconservatives.” Predictably, relying on democratization as a long-term solution to a foreign threat has proved a misguided and exceptionally expensive approach.

A poster of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah stands among the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in Beirut, on Oct. 11, 2024Fadel Itani/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

A dangerous regime like Saddam Hussein’s is a proper target for war. Those who are inclined to suggest that Saddam was not dangerous, or no longer dangerous, by 2003, are invited to consider what a vicious dictator like him would have done with Iraq’s vast oil revenue over time. Iran, a very dangerous regime, earns much less money exporting oil than Iraq, partly because it is much simpler to extract and export Iraqi oil. Thus, making sure that Saddam was not left permanently sitting on top of a vast revenue stream to support future aggression was a legitimate military objective.

Imposing democracy on Iraq was not a legitimate military objective, because it could not be reasonably achieved in a limited period of time through force. A society which has existed as a tyranny for decades cannot suddenly be turned into a democracy, especially if the society is not very sophisticated, either technologically or socially, simply by means of military invasion and occupation. It is worth remembering that West Germany had previously been a democracy, however flawed, during the Weimar Republic. It was also an advanced industrial power. Under direct occupation by the Western Allies after a catastrophic military defeat, and with massive Marshall Plan aid, West German society was capable of again sustaining democracy—which was already a familiar form of government. Nothing of the kind was possible in Iraq.

Seeking democracy, or even some substantively democratic form of government, is futile in places like Iraq and Gaza, because democratic governance requires a preexisting institutional and social basis. What should be done, and what America can do, is to rapidly destroy military threats to its national security and economy—as was in fact done in America’s initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. Instead of attempting to police Iraq into the future, America should have then maintained forces in safe areas in close proximity, like Iraqi Kurdistan and Kuwait, to make sure that the old regime could not return to power.

America cannot afford to fight long wars against its enemies, both because of the cost, and because any long campaign inevitably teaches the enemy to adapt and adjust, and thereby become at least partially immune to attack. What the United States should do instead is carry out sudden crushing attacks, which can be repeated without warning. America’s nature as a distant power with a large air force and navy makes this approach ideally suited to its strengths, while avoiding its weaknesses. If you don’t want to suffer the consequences of such an attack, then don’t do things like attack shipping in the Red Sea or take Americans hostage.

For the moment, America has no strategy, no operational approach, not even a clear sense of the tactics it should employ, even in simple situations where America’s interests are clear—like keeping shipping lanes open or keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of an Iranian regime that regularly promises “Death to America.” What America has, in overabundance, are empty soundbites. As long ago as Jan. 17, 2005, President Bush said of Iran’s nuclear program, “I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table.” Two decades later, Vice President Harris says on that same topic, “diplomacy is my preferred path … but all options are on the table.” After two decades of continuing inaction, such rhetoric, on both sides of the aisle, is a portent of further failures to come.

Tablet · by Dan Zamansky · November 8, 2024

12. A New Strategic Service for a New Cold War

Perhaps Rob Greenway may be the next ASD SO/LIC where he may then have a chance to implement this proposal. (though I think there will be pushback from the IC)

I would sign up for this organization.

What is old is new again.

Conclusion:

It is time to complete the consolidation of Defense Special Operations and sensitive activities and refocus them to prevail in the new Cold War with China. In short, it is time to rebuild the OSS—not as it was, but as it now ought to be—based on the ever-evolving nature of conflict and our experience since the OSS’s dissolution.

A New Strategic Service for a New Cold War

heritage.org · by Robert Greenway

Issue Brief Defense

November 8, 2024 12 min read Download Report

Robert Greenway

@RC_Greenway

Director, Allison Center for National Security

Robert Greenway is Director of the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation.

Summary

The neglect of our armed services since the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the emergence of the People’s Republic of China as peer competitor make it necessary to consolidate strategic assets within the Department of Defense to reduce the risk of conventional confrontation and buy the time required to reconstitute our armed forces and our strategic deterrent. This consolidation would make conflict less likely by ensuring a more effective and adaptive deterrent across the spectrum of conflict. Our current capabilities are distributed across the department and are not leveraging existing authorities or emerging capabilities optimally. It is time to consolidate Defense Special Operations and sensitive activities and refocus them to prevail in the new Cold War with China.

Key Takeaways

Consolidating irregular and unconventional warfare capabilities would buy the time needed to reconstitute our conventional armed forces and strategic deterrent.

Distribution of capabilities and authorities for special operations and sensitive activities across the Defense Department constrains their effective employment.

Special operations and sensitive activities beyond those already within Special Operations Command can be consolidated without revising existing law or allocating ne

Select a Section 1/0

What Is Old Is New Again

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was established by President Franklin Roosevelt on July 11, 1941, to consolidate capabilities distributed across the U.S. government to prevail in the Second World War. After the war, the National Security Act of 1947REF dissolved the OSS and redistributed its components across departments and agencies with mixed results during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Threats have evolved, and so should our strategic capabilities.

The challenge of a new Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party CCP)REF requires that the Department of Defense (DOD) consolidate and expand its unique capabilities, authorities, and infrastructure to conduct a global campaign to deter conflict and, if necessary, defeat threats to our interests. No other department or agency of our government has the capability and capacity to do so.

The systematic neglect of our armed servicesREF since victory in the Cold War with the Soviet Union makes it necessary that a new strategic service be created that can reduce the risk of conventional confrontation and buy the time required to reconstitute our armed forces and strategic deterrent: both the bridge to and a complement for a more viable deterrent. Far from making conflict more likely, this initiative will make conflict less likely by ensuring a more effective deterrent. We possess tremendous capabilities, but they are dispersed across fractured organizations, which limits their effectiveness, and are not fully leveraging existing authorities.

Defense capabilities are uniquely suited to the conduct of special operations and sensitive activities that the nation needs and can be better organized, resourced, and employed both to reduce the risk of conventional conflict, thereby making it less likely that it will occur, and to prevail in the new Cold War with the CCP and manage the risk from rogue states that threaten our interests and whose actions could cause us to divert our critical resources.

The National Security Act of 1947 presumed that the successful conclusion of the Second World War allowed for an evolution that relieved the War Department (now Department of Defense) of the responsibility for many OSS activities and operations with the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The division of labor was a recurring challenge and may no longer be viable.REF Meanwhile, those agencies that can engage in a broader range of activities against the CCP now lack the scale, organization, and in some instances the culture, expertise, and experience to conduct the full range of special operations and sensitive activities that this conflict requires so that we can avoid, not propel ourselves into, a larger conventional conflagration.

The CCP publicly claims that it does not want a “new Cold War” but has been actively engaged in unrestricted warfare against the U.S. and other Western economies, societies, corporations, and scientific establishments—on an industrial scale—for at least the past decade. Conversely, U.S. policymakers and military leaders talk publicly about how we are already in a new Cold War but have done little of a practical nature to meet the threat from China.

The Past Informs the Present

Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. struggled to compete with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or Soviet Union), and “hot” wars would often result from the USSR’s asymmetric advantage as it employed surrogates like Vietnam and Cuba to confront the U.S. and its allies. While the DOD resurrected its special operations capabilities in the 1950s, their scope was mostly limited to direct support for conventional operations in armed conflict.REF

The Vietnam War expanded the scope of DOD’s ability to support unconventional warfare and improve partners’ capabilities to defend against lawlessness and insurgency.REF By the 1980s, significant military resources supported an unconventional warfare campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan, contributing to their withdrawal and ultimate collapse.REF

A series of failures to anticipate and prevent significant threats to our interests—for example, the fall of the Shah in Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its collapse, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan and North Korea—were unaddressed and became systemic. The Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986REF and the Nunn–Cohen Amendment sought to address the lack of unity of effort within DOD following the sub-optimal results">REF identified by the Holloway CommissionREF after Operation Eagle Claw, the failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran, and internal DOD reviews after Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada in October 1983. Special Operations Command was established as a Unified Combatant Command and consolidated many of the capabilities distributed across the department after the dissolution of the OSS in 1947. Many capabilities, including those related to sensitive intelligence collection in denied areas, remained outside the command.

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (or 9/11) the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA) compelled closer post-9/11 coordination between defense and intelligence agencies but has not successfully aligned resources and authorities and has left tremendous capabilities underemployed, focused on lower priorities, and unintegrated with emerging capabilities such as cyber and space. As a result, we are unable to address the risk and range of threats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran, and North Korea effectively.REF

The 9/11 Commission report identified the gap and recommended that paramilitary capabilities be returned to and consolidated within DOD,REF but this was abandoned. The scope of the challenges that confront us exceeds the scope of those that resulted in the recommendation, and it should be reviewed.

As indicated above, the OSS was established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 to collect and analyze information for the Joint Chiefs and conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies. This model recognized that the scope and scale of its activities exceeded those of all other departments and agencies and required significant support and coordination in support of wartime military objectives. With a scale and infrastructure that made it uniquely capable of supporting, sustaining, and effectively conducting a global campaign, the OSS was responsible for “the planning, development, coordination and execution of the military program for psychological warfare” and “the compilation of such political, psychological, sociological and economic information as may be required by military operations.”REF

The OSS “was given authority to operate in the fields of sabotage, espionage, and counterespionage in enemy-occupied or controlled territory, guerrilla warfare, underground groups in enemy-occupied or controlled territory and foreign nationality groups in the United States.”REF The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in a shift across much of Defense Special Operations toward counterterrorism.REF

As we enter a new Cold War with the CCP, we might well consider a more practical distribution of our resources toward counterproliferation and unconventional and irregular warfare while retaining a counterterrorism focus according to the constellation of threats we face. Consolidating our forces would reduce redundancy and enable greater efficiency. This would include the still-developing capabilities in the space and cyber domains, which would allow for innovation and integration with existing special operations and sensitive activities on the emerging frontiers of conflict.REF Naturally, the resulting operations and activities would be conducted in coordination with and would fully support the work of other departments and agencies such as the Departments of State, Commerce, and Treasury as appropriate.

What Needs to Be Done

The challenge from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the emerging “Axis of Evil” requires consolidation and expansion so that we can employ our unique capabilities to conduct special operations and sensitive activities more effectively to deter conflict and successfully manage competition to prevail in the new Cold War with China.

The National Security Act of 1947REF dissolved the OSS and redistributed its components across departments and agencies. A great deal of coordination was required to guide and effectively employ capabilities and authorities on an ad hoc basis amid competing agendas and conflicting priorities among divided hierarchies. Threats have evolved, and so should our national security apparatus just as it did during the previous Cold War.

After the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and the resulting investigation led by General Maxwell Taylor,REF it was determined that the scope of the endeavor grew beyond the CIA’s capacity and capability, thereby contributing to its failure. A comprehensive review of activities resulted in Operation Switchback and the transfer of CIA paramilitary activities in Vietnam to the newly formed Military Assistance Command Vietnam’s Studies and Observation Group, established in January 1964. The resulting partnership demonstrated the effectiveness and limitations of combined operations.REF

The Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986REF took critical steps but remains imperfect. For example, the Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (ASD SOLIC) does not control special operations resources and personnel and cannot challenge the generals it purports to oversee. Similarly, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004REF addressed significant shortfalls that contributed to the 9/11 attacks but fell short of the recommendations made by the commission that was created to investigate the attacks.REF Both legislative efforts sought to correct the deficiencies introduced in the dispersal of strategic capabilities following the Second World War, but more remains to be done.

Our ability to conduct special operationsREF and sensitive activitiesREF has yielded results greater than the resources committed and would be vital in deterring conflict and prevailing if deterrence were to fail. Consolidation of the elements responsible for conducting them is required—and can be operational—immediately without revision of existing law or allocation of new resources. This will not exclude other departments or agencies but will provide a more comprehensive effort in collaboration with other components of our government and those of our partners and allies, which DOD is uniquely capable of conducting.

Conclusion

It is time to complete the consolidation of Defense Special Operations and sensitive activities and refocus them to prevail in the new Cold War with China. In short, it is time to rebuild the OSS—not as it was, but as it now ought to be—based on the ever-evolving nature of conflict and our experience since the OSS’s dissolution.

Robert Greenway is Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation.

Authors

Robert Greenway

Director, Allison Center for National Security

heritage.org · by Robert Greenway

13. Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders

Controversial is not necessarily illegal. The Department should not need anything other than its routine ethics and legal training that is conducted regardless of who is the Commander in Chief.

This does not bode well for civil military relations at the start of a new administration. If these reports are true the military is going to be starting off on the wrong foot. The uniformed military and the professional civil service corps must remain apolitical.

Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders | CNN Politics

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky · November 8, 2024

These are the scenarios the Pentagon is gaming out once President Trump takes office

01:36 - Source: CNN

CNN —

Pentagon officials are holding informal discussions about how the Department of Defense would respond if Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of apolitical staffers, defense officials told CNN.

Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.

Trump in his last term had a fraught relationship with much of his senior military leadership, including now-retired Gen. Mark Milley who took steps to limit Trump’s ability to use nuclear weapons while he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president-elect, meanwhile, has repeatedly called US military generals “woke,” “weak” and “ineffective leaders.”

Officials are now gaming out various scenarios as they prepare for an overhaul of the Pentagon.

“We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.

Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.

“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”

It’s unclear at this point who Trump will choose to lead the Pentagon, though officials believe Trump and his team will try to avoid the kind of “hostile” relationship he had with the military during his last administration, said a former defense official with experience during the first Trump administration.

“The relationship between the White House and the DoD was really, really bad, and so … I know it’s top of mind for how they’re going to select the folks that they put in DoD this time around,” the former official said.

Defense officials are also scrambling to identify civilian employees who might be impacted if Trump reinstates Schedule F, an executive order he first issued in 2020 that, if enacted, would have reclassified huge swaths of nonpolitical, career federal employees across the US government to make them more easily fireable.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday that “I totally believe that our leaders will continue to do the right thing no matter what. I also believe that our Congress will continue to do the right things to support our military.”

‘The enemy from within’

Top of mind for many defense officials is how Trump plans to wield American military power at home.

Trump last month said the military should be used to handle what he called “the enemy from within” and “radical left lunatics.”

“I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen,” he added, referring to potential protests on Election Day.

Several former senior military officials who served under Trump have sounded the alarm in recent years about his authoritarian impulses, including Milley and retired Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff. Kelly said before the election that Trump fits “into the general definition of fascist” and that he spoke of the loyalty of Hitler’s Nazi generals.

There is not much the Pentagon can do to pre-emptively shield the force from a potential abuse of power by a commander in chief. Defense Department lawyers can and do make recommendations to military leaders on the legality of orders, but there is no real legal safeguard that would prevent Trump from deploying American soldiers to police US streets.

A former senior Defense Department official, who served under Trump, said he believes it is likely that additional active-duty forces will be tasked with assisting Customs and Border Protection at the southern border.

There are already thousands of forces at the border, including those with active duty, National Guard, and the Reserves. The Biden administration sent 1,500 active duty forces last year, and later sent several hundred more.

But it is also possible, the former official said, that forces could be sent into American cities if asked to help with the mass deportation plan Trump mentioned repeatedly on the trail.

Domestic law enforcement agencies “don’t have the manpower, they don’t have the helicopters, the trucks, the expeditionary capabilities” that the military brings, he said. But he emphasized that the decision to send active-duty forces into American streets cannot be taken lightly.

“You can never water that down, you can never say with a straight face that it’s not a big deal. It is a big deal,” the former senior official said. “But it’s the only way to address issues at scale.”

Separately, an Army official told CNN they could imagine a Trump administration ordering several thousand more troops to support the border mission but warned it could hurt the military’s own readiness to deal with foreign threats.

The president’s powers are especially broad if he chooses to invoke the Insurrection Act, which states that under certain limited circumstances involved in the defense of constitutional rights, a president can deploy troops domestically unilaterally.

A separate law – the Posse Comitatus Act – seeks to curb the use of the military to enforce laws unless authorized by Congress. But the law has exceptions for rebellion and terrorism, which ultimately gives the president broad leeway in deciding if and when to invoke Insurrection Act.

Trump reportedly considered invoking the Act in 2020 to quell protests after the death of George Floyd.

“If the city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residence, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” he said at the time.

Civilian employees at risk

In a video posted last year, Trump said if elected he would “immediately re-issue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats…we will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them.”

The Pentagon is already bracing for the policy change.

“My email has been inundated on this topic,” one defense official said of Schedule F. “Definitely going to be a busy couple months.”

After Trump issued Schedule F the first time, late into his last term, the Pentagon and other federal agencies were tasked with making lists of which employees would be moved into that category. At the time, defense officials tried to include as few civilian employees as possible to limit the impact to the workforce, sources said. The department is making similar lists now.

The Office of Personnel and Management issued a rule in April that aimed to strengthen guardrails protecting federal employees. But “there are still ways a new administration could work around these protections,” a defense official said, even if it might take several months to do so.

Austin has warned repeatedly about the risk of political abuse of the military. In July, he said in a memo that it is “necessary to secure the integrity and continuity of the civilian workforce by ensuring that DoD career civilian employees, like their uniformed counterparts, are shielded from unlawful and other inappropriate political encroachments.”

He added that career civil servants are tasked with “maintaining strict political neutrality focused on loyalty to the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

And on Wednesday, he wrote in a message to the force that the US military will obey only lawful orders.

“As it always has, the US military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next Commander in Chief, and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command,” he wrote. “You are the United States military-the finest fighting force on Earth-and you will continue to defend our country, our Constitution, and the rights of all of our citizens.”

In the State Department, Secretary Antony Blinken said in an email to members of the workforce Friday that he will make clear to the incoming Trump administration that “you are all patriots.”

The message, obtained by CNN, acknowledged that “transitions can be periods of uncertainty that raise questions about what comes next for our work around the world, for the State Department itself, and for its people.”

It is a seemingly pointed message. The State Department saw some of its top career officials targeted as part of Trump’s first impeachment and there was a significant departure of career diplomats during the first Trump administration.

CNN’s Oren Liebermann and Jennifer Hansler contributed reporting.

CNN · by Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky · November 8, 2024

14. Mastering Human-Machine Warfighting Teams

While only humans can understand why we make war, is a robot capable of ever saying "make love, not war?" (sorry for the attempt at humor).

Excerpts:

Finally, the Defense Department should ensure that humans remain the dominant partner in any human-machine team. The strength of human-machine teams derives from their ability to leverage the complementary skills of their members to achieve performance superior to either humans or machines alone. In this partnership, humans will retain the dominant role because the knowledge and context they bring to the team add the greatest value. War is an inescapably human endeavor. An AI algorithm can learn how to optimally achieve an objective, but only humans will understand which objectives are the most important to achieve and why those objectives matter.

Only humans understand why we make war — thus, humans will remain the most important part of any human-machine team in warfare.

Mastering Human-Machine Warfighting Teams - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by James Ryseff · November 8, 2024

Many of America’s top military commanders predict that mastering teaming between humans and increasingly capable AI algorithms and autonomous machines will provide an essential advantage to the warfighters of the future. The chief of staff of the Air Force has stated that “the military that masters human-machine teaming is going to have a critical advantage going forward in warfare.” Similarly, the commanding general of Army Futures Command believes that the integration of human beings and machines will result in a dramatic evolution — and possibly a revolution — in military operations.

Most of the discussion about human-machines teams has focused on the use of machines to replace humans in combat. Future Army doctrine hopes to avoid trading “blood for first contact” by using autonomous machines for dangerous reconnaissance missions or breaching operations. Wargamers exploring the use of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft often employed them as decoys, jammers, active emitters, and other missions that risked their loss in highly contested environments. Similarly, Navy aspirations for unmanned ships and aircraft often involve risky activities such as delivering supplies in contested environments or mine countermeasure operations. These concepts seek to remove humans from the most hazardous parts of the battlefield by using fearless and tireless machines in their place.

While reducing the risk American servicemembers face in combat is always a worthy objective, simply performing the same tasks with robots instead of humans would not result in a revolutionary change to future warfare. Instead, if military leaders hope to achieve dramatic improvements on the battlefield, human-machine teams will need to learn how to effectively leverage the complementary skillsets of their members.

To accomplish this, the military’s approach to human-machine teaming should change in three ways. First, efforts to train the human component of human-machine teams should focus on the instinctive brain instead of the reasoning brain. Attempts to have AI algorithms explain how they reason result in ineffective human-machine teams. Instead, leveraging people’s innate ability to unconsciously identify patterns in behavior seems to yield superior results. Second, the military should ensure AI developers do not simply pick the lowest-hanging fruit to improve the accuracy of their models. Instead, they should develop products that have complementary — not duplicative — skillsets within a human-machine team. Finally, we should avoid becoming overwhelmed by AI hype. For all the breathtaking advancements AI researchers have achieved, war is fundamentally a human activity with immense tacit knowledge only held by humans. Humans remain the most important part of the human-machine team.

Become a Member

The Need For Teams

Because the mechanics behind how machine intelligences work greatly differ from the underpinnings of biological intelligence, humans and machines bring different strengths and weaknesses to a combined human-machine team. When these differences are optimally combined, human-machine teams become more than the sum of their parts — outperforming both human performance and machine performance at accomplishing their assigned tasks.

Unfortunately, human instincts about how to interact with AI and autonomous machines on combined teams often lead them astray. These misalignments result in human-machine teams that perform worse on a task compared to an AI algorithm acting without human involvement — teams that are less than the sum of their parts. If ineffective techniques for collaboration result in human-machine teams that similarly underperform when executing military tasks, it could present the Defense Department with a dilemma. The department’s leadership would have to choose between allowing AIs to act without human oversight or ceding combat advantage to adversaries without the same moral reservations about the technology. China’s recent refusal to sign a joint declaration at the 2024 summit on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain calling for humans to maintain control over military AI applications vividly illustrates the risks this dilemma poses for the U.S. military. Consequently, overcoming these challenges and teaching humans how to leverage the complementary skillsets found within human-machine teams could prove essential to ensuring that human operators can effectively choose and control outcomes when employing AI-enhanced tools and thus ensure that AI is used ethically and responsibly in future military conflicts.

Understanding the divergent strengths of human and machine intelligence provides the foundation for successfully integrating humans with intelligent machines. Machines often outperform humans on tasks that require the ability to analyze and remember massive quantities of data, repetitive tasks that require a high degree of accuracy, or tasks that benefit from super-human response rates. For example, AI that is optimized for playing computer strategy games dominate their human opponents by coordinating the activities of thousands of widely dispersed units to achieve a singular strategic purpose. In these games, AI can “march divided, fight united” on a truly massive scale — beyond the ability of any single human brain to comprehend or counter.

In contrast, humans often hold an advantage over machine intelligence for tasks that require tacit knowledge and context, or where human senses and reasoning still retain superiority over sensors and algorithms. For example, an AI may be able to analyze imagery to locate a battalion of enemy vehicles, but it will not understand why those vehicles have been positioned at that location or what mission their commander has most likely tasked them to accomplish. Grand strategy will be an even greater mystery to a machine — today’s AI algorithms can calculate that an adversary can be defeated, but they will never understand which potential adversaries should be defeated and why. Warfare is an intrinsically human activity — consequently, the conduct of warfare is filled with tacit human knowledge and context that no data set will ever fully capture.

Current Efforts

Many defense research initiatives investigating how to form effective human-machine teams have focused on understanding and enhancing human trust in machine intelligence by developing AI algorithms that can explain the reasoning behind their outputs. As the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s XAI program explains, “Advances in machine learning … promise to produce AI systems that perceive, learn, decide, and act on their own. However, they will be unable to explain their decisions and actions to human users. This lack is especially important to the Department of Defense, whose challenges require developing more intelligent, autonomous, and symbiotic systems. Explainable AI will be essential if users are to understand, appropriately trust, and effectively manage these artificially intelligent partners.” The life-or-death stakes of many military applications for AI would seem to enhance this requirement that servicemembers understand and trust the reasoning behind any actions taken by AI applications.

Unfortunately, experimental studies have repeatedly demonstrated that adding explanations to AI increases the likelihood that humans will defer to the AI’s “judgement” without improving the accuracy of the team. Two factors seem to underpin this result. First, humans typically believe that other humans tell the truth by default — if they do not detect indications of deception, they will tend to trust that their teammate is providing correct information. Because AIs never exhibit typical human indicators of deception, when an AI that has proved reliable in the past explains how it arrived at its answer, most humans unconsciously assume that it is safe to accept that result or recommendation. Second, AI explanations only provide the human with information about how the AI arrived at its decision — they do not provide any information about how one should arrive at the correct answer. If the human does not know how to determine the correct answer, the primary effect of reading the AI’s explanation will be to increase their belief that the AI has rigorously applied itself to the problem. On the other hand, if the human already knows how to determine the correct answer, any explanation from the AI is unnecessary — the human will already know whether the answer is right or wrong.

A Better Way

Instead of relying on explainable AI to deliver effective human-machine teams, the Defense Department should consider two alternative approaches. One promising approach focuses on helping humans develop effective mental models to guide their interactions with their machine counterparts. Effective mental models often play a similar role in human teams — when you have worked with a teammate for a long time, you develop a strong understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and instinctually understand how to collaborate with them. Repeated interactions with machine intelligences under realistic conditions can similarly develop effective human-machine teams. Integrating prototype AIs into military exercises and training (with safety protocols such as minimum safe distances between dismounted humans and robotic vehicles or limitations on the complexity of maneuvers allowed for AI-controlled equipment) could help the human element of human-machine teams learn how to work with their machine “teammates.” Postponing this learning until AI tools show greater maturity risks falling behind potential enemies with greater real-world experience, such as Russia, and forcing American soldiers to catch up while under enemy fire.

Additionally, when the Defense Department intends for an AI model to assist humans rather than replacing them, it needs to ensure that these AIs have complementary skillsets with their human teammates. Sometimes, the easiest tasks to teach AI to accomplish are tasks that humans already perform well. For example, if an AI model is designed to identify improvised explosive devices, the simplest task will be to train it to identify images of such devices that have not been well camouflaged. However, the greatest value for a human-machine team might be to teach the model to identify improvised explosive devices that are only detectable through complicated analysis of multiple sensor types. Even if this second AI model can detect a much smaller percentage of devices in a training set compared to an AI model optimized to identify the easiest cases, the second model will be more useful to the team if all of the devices it detects would go undetected by humans. The Defense Department should ensure that metrics used to judge AI models measure skills needed by the combined human-machine team and do not merely judge the performance of the AI model in isolation.

Finally, the Defense Department should ensure that humans remain the dominant partner in any human-machine team. The strength of human-machine teams derives from their ability to leverage the complementary skills of their members to achieve performance superior to either humans or machines alone. In this partnership, humans will retain the dominant role because the knowledge and context they bring to the team add the greatest value. War is an inescapably human endeavor. An AI algorithm can learn how to optimally achieve an objective, but only humans will understand which objectives are the most important to achieve and why those objectives matter.

Only humans understand why we make war — thus, humans will remain the most important part of any human-machine team in warfare.

Become a Member

James Ryseff is a senior technical policy analyst at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by James Ryseff · November 8, 2024

15. NATO allies ready sea drones for the task of repelling enemy warships

NATO allies ready sea drones for the task of repelling enemy warships

Defense News · by Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo · November 8, 2024

PARIS — A number of NATO countries are pursuing new naval concepts based on sea drones programmed to keep adversaries out of allied waters, a nod to Ukraine’s pursuits with such weapons against Russian ships.

The alliance nations belong to the so-called Joint Capability Group for Maritime Unmanned Systems, or JCGMUS. The group, created following the 2018 NATO summit in Brussels, comprises more than a dozen nations considered full members, partners or observers.

Every September, member countries stage one of the largest experimentation exercises with naval unmanned systems – the drill is abbreviated REPMUS – in concert with the Portuguese Navy to help accelerate drone technology testing and interoperability among allies.

Next year, the emphasis will fall on using unmanned systems to keep adversary forces at a distance, a new tack for the group.

“The roadmap of REPMUS will focus in 2025 on non-traditional sea denial – that is limiting an adversary’s maritime freedom of action, including through anti-access, area denial and disruptive and dispersible capabilities, based in part on of what we’ve seen in Ukraine,” Craig Sawyer, chair of JCGMUS said during a panel discussion at the Euronaval defense exhibition here on Nov. 5.

One of the elements that allowed the Ukrainian Navy to create an anti-access perimeter was the deployment of different types of unmanned surface vessels, which in some cases drove straight into Russian vessels at sea or in port to neutralize them.

The NATO official also added that one of the ambitions for next year’s drill will be to deliver an anti-submarine warfare barrier project demonstrator, an initiative established in 2020 and led by the United Kingdom.

“The ASW barrier seeks to develop a technical demonstrator comprising both legacy and interoperable maritime uncrewed systems to securely provide a force multiplying anti-submarine warfare capability,” Sawyer said during his presentation.

The project involves 12 other countries, including Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the U.S., Portugal, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Australia.

The widespread use of drones seen in Ukraine across all domains has spurred greater investments in these technologies, with many countries having launched national tenders to acquire new platforms.

While procuring more unmanned assets is a necessity for many nations, Sawyer warned of the risk of tackling them alone.

“The need for standards and interoperability becomes critical when you realize the mass and scale UxS [unmanned systems] represent – we will never be able to manage thousands of assets as individual cases and programs,” he said.

Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.

16. The US needs to get real about maneuver warfare in space

Excerpts:

The current technology at our disposal, coupled with less expensive lift, heavy lift, and soon to be super heavy lift rockets, means there are ways to get small constellations of SGWs deployed around Earth, capable of achieving five-minute target revisit rates with little defense to stop them. The Chinese have already demonstrated they are pursuing similar capability through their Fractional/Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) system. Therefore, we should position our space forces into the front of the line to ensure decisiveness in such a conflict.

There is no need for US forces to attack using an old 20th Century method of terrestrial concentration of force and lose, when we can negate the A2/AD advantage/barriers to entry for terrestrial air, land, and maritime forces through orbital strike forces. Granted, this advantage would only last as long as the adversary lacks an effective counter-force, but those issues can be addressed as well by a proper organizational and budgetary perspective grounded in the strategic reality of the current threat environment.

This is the role the Space Force should be accomplishing-providing for the decisive advantage over enemy terrestrial force advantage through maneuver warfare in and from space.

The US needs to get real about maneuver warfare in space - Breaking Defense

"It’s time for America to put real investments into space weapons capable of targeting earth-bound targets," writes Christopher Stone in this op-ed.

breakingdefense.com · by Christopher Stone · November 8, 2024

An upgraded Ground Based Interceptor with a Capability Enhanced-II Block 1 Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) is launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, during Flight Test Ground-based Midcourse Defense Weapon System-12, or FTG-12, on December 11, 2023

Recently, senior Space Force commanders have been articulating support for the use of maneuver warfare in space deterrence and warfighting operations. While laudable, upon further review, it appears that these statements are not speaking about maneuver warfare as much as they are about rapid movement of spacecraft to avoid intercept by an enemy spacecraft or ground-based threats.

These passive defensive actions are not true maneuver warfare. And if the Space Force wants to get serious about being able to defeat enemy nations in space, it needs to stop tip-toeing around the issue. It’s time for America to put real investments into space weapons capable of targeting earth-bound targets.

As defined by Robert Leonhard in his book, The Art of Maneuver, “maneuver warfare” as “the means of defeat[ing] … the enemy.” The objective is to achieve victory, not the sustainment of competition. To achieve this victory requires an aggressiveness that under current DoD space policy and strategy, is considered irresponsible. As Leonhard proclaims, “maneuver warfare is, to put it simply, a kick in the groin, a poke in the eye, a stab in the back. It is quick, violent for a moment and unfair. It is decisive, even pre-emptive, at the expense of protocol and posturing.” To use Chinese military terms in their strategy document, The Science of Strategy, this type of attack should be “rapid and destructive.”

Second, in implementation, Leonhard correctly states that maneuver warfare “puts a premium on being sneaky rather than courageous, … because it typically flees from the enemy’s strength.” By maneuvering for the “kick in the groin” or a “rapid and destructive” strike, instead of attacking the enemy’s advantage — its concentration of forces arrayed against friendly forces — the space force can hit the decisive points to win against the enemy. It means that a space warfighting force needs to render an enemy force irrelevant at the decisive point, whether that be “a theater (area of responsibility), an area of operations, or on a battlefield.”

Here’s a real world scenario for how this could play out.

It’s not hard to figure out where China has put its heaviest investments: numerous open-source intelligence reports show China now has a very robust, multi-layered system of air, land, and maritime based weapons to achieve counter-intervention or in Western parlance, anti-access/area-denial, in the first and second island chains of the Indo-Pacific.

Beijing has large numbers of ships and missiles, interior lines between mainland China and Taiwan, industrial capacity that harkens back to the United States in World War II, and a centralized command structure sitting atop a authoritarian state. Its space deterrence and warfighting strategy and capability are proactive, pre-emptive and follow the principles of “rapid and destructive” maneuver warfare to seek and sustain the advantage all the way to victory.

In fact, according to the Army War College, wargames indicate that the United States, in a traditional, air, maritime, and land-based terrestrial fight, will lose significant combat power quickly. This is because terrestrial US military forces are too small, their supply lines are too vulnerable, and “American’s defense industrial capacity is far too eroded to keep up with the material demands of a high-intensity conflict.”

The way to beat this situation and to render the enemy force irrelevant terrestrially through attack operations within the space AOR, is to re-frame the Space Force from a mere support service into the primary door kicking, maneuver force for the United States.

To do this requires the development of space-to-ground weapons (SGWs), whose focus would be to make Chinese concentrations of terrestrial and space counter-intervention forces in the Western Pacific irrelevant by holding them at risk. Once deployed, SGWs would provide enhanced space deterrence during peacetime and crisis, and if necessary, destroy threats to US terrestrial forces by rolling back barriers to entry for our smaller air, land, and maritime forces.

The current technology at our disposal, coupled with less expensive lift, heavy lift, and soon to be super heavy lift rockets, means there are ways to get small constellations of SGWs deployed around Earth, capable of achieving five-minute target revisit rates with little defense to stop them. The Chinese have already demonstrated they are pursuing similar capability through their Fractional/Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) system. Therefore, we should position our space forces into the front of the line to ensure decisiveness in such a conflict.

There is no need for US forces to attack using an old 20th Century method of terrestrial concentration of force and lose, when we can negate the A2/AD advantage/barriers to entry for terrestrial air, land, and maritime forces through orbital strike forces. Granted, this advantage would only last as long as the adversary lacks an effective counter-force, but those issues can be addressed as well by a proper organizational and budgetary perspective grounded in the strategic reality of the current threat environment.

This is the role the Space Force should be accomplishing-providing for the decisive advantage over enemy terrestrial force advantage through maneuver warfare in and from space.

Christopher Stone is Senior Fellow for Space Deterrence at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies in Washington, D.C. He is the former Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy. The views and positions are those of the author and do not reflect the positions and opinions of the Department of Defense or the author’s employer.

17. SMDC team launches Black Dagger Zombie during test

The headline caught my eye because I thought the article  was talking about the USASOC Command Parachute team, the Black Daggers.

But this is an important capability to support our missile defense efforts.

Excerpts;

“Testing these systems with realistic strategic missile targets not only contributes to winning the current fight – it stops future battles from occurring by demonstrating that their weaponry will be ineffective against our defenses,” Novak said. “This increases confidence in our armed forces and allied nations to conduct operations at a time and place of our choosing.”

Olivia Miller, who served as pad chief for the LTZ-2 mission, maneuvered the launcher to its nominal launch angle and elevation as well as made any necessary adjustments due to changing winds.

“This mission was very successful,” Miller said. “We flew a nominal trajectory, and the program under test tracked, identified and intercepted our target. This mission was a crucial step in validating LTAMDS radar performance and brings them one step closer to getting systems out in the field.”

Miller said the LTZ-2 mission was particularly special.

“This was the first Black Dagger to be launched from Fort Wingate since 2022, so everyone worked exceptionally hard to ensure we had a successful return to flight,” Miller said. “Additionally, this was the first mission launched from our Fixed Target Launcher, which was installed and certified throughout 2023. Seeing a clean launch followed by a successful intercept was the perfect culmination of the years of work dedicated to this mission.

SMDC team launches Black Dagger Zombie during test

By Jason Cutshaw, USASMDCNovember 8, 2024

army.mil · November 8, 2024

A Black Dagger Zombie missile target, designed to fly a ballistic flight path and demonstrate defensive protection capability, launches from Fort Wingate, New Mexico, Nov. 2. The flight served as a search track to test the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor system. (U.S. Army photo) (Photo Credit: Courtesy) VIEW ORIGINAL

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. – A U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command Technical Center team’s low-cost target served as a search track to test the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor system.

A Black Dagger Zombie missile target, designed to fly a ballistic flight path and demonstrate defensive protection capability, launched from Fort Wingate, New Mexico, into White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, Nov. 2.

Justin Novak, Target Test director for the mission, said the system under test required a threat representative, high performance, Black Dagger Zombie strategic missile target. He added the launch verified that the system under test could perform as designed against a strategic missile threat.

“The target launched within the required timeframe and presented a representative strategic missile threat environment to the system under test,” Novak said. “Launching targets is a team effort, and we are fortunate to have a proficient and dedicated team that consistently delivers healthy targets to the systems under test.”

Novak said the test and evaluation of missile defense systems against strategic missile threats builds confidence that these systems will perform as designed to ensure the safety and security of the U.S. and allied partners.

“Testing these systems with realistic strategic missile targets not only contributes to winning the current fight – it stops future battles from occurring by demonstrating that their weaponry will be ineffective against our defenses,” Novak said. “This increases confidence in our armed forces and allied nations to conduct operations at a time and place of our choosing.”

Olivia Miller, who served as pad chief for the LTZ-2 mission, maneuvered the launcher to its nominal launch angle and elevation as well as made any necessary adjustments due to changing winds.

“This mission was very successful,” Miller said. “We flew a nominal trajectory, and the program under test tracked, identified and intercepted our target. This mission was a crucial step in validating LTAMDS radar performance and brings them one step closer to getting systems out in the field.”

Miller said the LTZ-2 mission was particularly special.

“This was the first Black Dagger to be launched from Fort Wingate since 2022, so everyone worked exceptionally hard to ensure we had a successful return to flight,” Miller said. “Additionally, this was the first mission launched from our Fixed Target Launcher, which was installed and certified throughout 2023. Seeing a clean launch followed by a successful intercept was the perfect culmination of the years of work dedicated to this mission.

“So many entities have to work together seamlessly to launch one of these targets,” she added. “Every launch I participate in, I learn a little bit more about everyone’s roles before and during countdown. I’m continually blown away by the talent and experience we have in this program, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn from my teammates.”

Stephanie Chrisley, mission assistant test director, said Fort Wingate has a dedicated team that makes sure USASMDC’s team had everything they needed.

“They always take exceptional care of us,” Chrisley said. “We appreciate the Fort Wingate and White Sands Missile Range’s teams that work together to make everything happen.”

Chrisley said the Zombie program provides low-cost target solutions to the warfighter to support all training requirements.

“The Zombie program provides low-cost target solutions to the warfighter to support all training requirements,” Chrisley said. “These missions allow us to exercise our equipment and train our people in a variety of conditions. Missions such as these allow us to reinforce our ever-ready stance.

“The Targets Team has been working toward this launch for a long time and demonstrated great teamwork to make this a success,” she added. “It was phenomenal to be back on console as the assistant test director, and I look forward to our next mission.”

army.mil · November 8, 2024

18. The National Security Imperative for a Trump Presidency

Excerpts:

In his first term, Trump, to his credit, hewed closely to the ideas he campaigned on and kept faith with what voters endorsed. Despite his seeming attraction to the madman theory of international relations—the historian Lawrence Freedman has described Trump as “delighted by his own unpredictability and impulsiveness”—the former president actually has rather predictable policy views. He thinks that the globalized economy and immigration are bad for American workers and that allies take advantage of the United States. He admires authoritarian leaders, and tariffs are his favorite bludgeon.

Given those views, some elements of traditional Republican foreign policy are unlikely to reemerge under Trump. Free trade is out of the question in the foreseeable future, even though, according to a 2023 Chicago Council survey, three-quarters of Americans consider international trade good for the economy. The Trump administration is sure to shun multilateral trade deals and make bilateral agreements that are heavy on tariffs and focus on restricting U.S. market access and leveling the balance of trade. Trump is also unlikely to value alliances. American support will come with higher expectations of allies, in terms of both spending on their own defense and alignment with U.S. policies. Eventually, however, Trump may come to appreciate the need for healthy alliances if the United States is to assemble enough military and political power to confront the convergence of its adversaries.

On both deterrence and defense spending, by contrast, the Trump administration could be poised to address glaring vulnerabilities from the start. During the campaign, Trump vowed, “I would tell Putin, if you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give [Zelensky] a lot. We’re going to [give Ukraine] more than they ever got if we have to.” Turning that promise into policy would go a long way to reestablish American deterrence. Trump’s willingness in his first term to take offensive action, such as by striking the Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and having U.S. troops attack Russian mercenaries in Syria in February 2018, suggests that he could once again use U.S. military force purposefully. Coupling that determination with investment in American defenses could dramatically improve U.S. national security—in other words, restoring peace through strength.

These changes, however important, won’t solve all the problems a Trump administration will face or create. Trump may make deals with authoritarians over the heads of allies. Allies that feel exposed may make choices that damage their own security and that of the United States. Deploying U.S. troops for domestic law enforcement, border patrol, or deportations may fracture the bond between the American public and the military, as well as sow discord within the military itself. But a second Trump administration could also harness the country’s brilliant and sometimes brutal motion in productive ways, taking meaningful steps to make the United States more secure in a perilous world.

The National Security Imperative for a Trump Presidency

How His Administration Can Shore Up the Foundations of American Power

By Kori Schake

November 8, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Safe Passage: The Transition From British to American Hegemony · November 8, 2024

Most U.S. allies are sure to be worried by the choice Americans made on November 5. Many observers are confounded by voters’ willingness to roll the dice and reelect the intemperate Donald Trump as president. But Americans have long had an outsize risk tolerance, a characteristic that is integral to both the dynamism of the country’s economy and the vibrance of its society. As the poet Robert Pinsky wrote in 2002, American culture is “so much in process, so brilliantly and sometimes brutally in motion, that standard models for it fail to apply”—an analysis the election result only reaffirms.

Since his arrival a decade ago on the national political stage, Trump has broken the Republican Party and rebuilt it in his image. The GOP is no longer the party of figures such as Senator Mitt Romney and the late Senator John McCain (for whom I once worked), both of whom ran unsuccessful presidential bids on traditional Republican platforms. In their place are figures such as JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, and Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, who hew more closely to Trump’s brand of populist politics. American voters delivered a resounding victory for this new brand of conservative leadership. It is right and proper that Trump now get a chance to enact the policies he campaigned on and the latitude to respond to events as they happen, supported by a cabinet and an executive-branch bureaucracy that are responsive to his direction. It is in the United States’ interest that its president succeed.

But making Trump’s presidency successful does not mean simply adopting his ideas wholesale. Any new administration needs to square its sweeping campaign rhetoric with the realities of market behavior, fiscal constraints, and the actions of U.S. adversaries. In Trump’s case, the former president’s unpredictable, even erratic approach to decision-making could lead to foreign policy choices that reduce American power and increase the risk of conflict. It is therefore especially important to find ways to pursue Trump’s goals while avoiding potential harm.

A number of thinkers have grappled with how to do this, including Nadia Schadlow, who served in Trump’s first administration and recently advocated in Foreign Affairs for an approach she termed “a strategy of overmatch,” which would help Washington “retain or develop sizable advantages in military power, political influence, and economic strength over its adversaries.” I have argued for a revival of “conservative internationalism,” an approach that would extend U.S. power abroad and U.S. influence in international institutions such as NATO in order to deter foreign aggression that might otherwise disrupt the U.S. economy.

Although that will be unappealing in the coming administration, some tenets of conservative internationalism would serve Trump’s objectives in cost-effective and politically achievable ways. In particular, his administration is well positioned to advance two crucial objectives that the Biden administration (and Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign) neglected: reestablishing deterrence and raising defense spending. A second Trump term is not without its dangers, but it also presents an opportunity to shore up these foundations of American security.

SHOW OF STRENGTH

U.S. deterrence has suffered under President Joe Biden. The administration’s shamefully botched withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the timidity of its support for Ukraine in the face of Russian threats of escalation rewarded challenges to U.S. security commitments. In Biden’s tenure, U.S. adversaries have grown increasingly brazen in their provocations and ramped up cooperation with each other. Washington, meanwhile, has not offered an adequate response.

In Ukraine, the Biden administration has yet to recognize the shortcomings of the West’s policies, including those of the Obama and Trump administrations, in the years leading up to the full-scale Russian invasion. Biden’s unwillingness or inability to grasp this has made his response too cautious as well. The United States should be taking more risks to ensure that Russia’s war fails. Biden’s strategy of slowly dispensing allied weapons stocks telegraphs to U.S. adversaries the limits of Washington’s support and the fragility of its commitment to Kyiv’s success. His administration has allowed Russia to deter the United States from delivering weapons at the pace Ukraine needs, from putting more Russian territory at risk, and from turning the threat of escalation back on Russia.

Washington should spend less time worrying about what Russia might do and more time on getting Russia to worry about what the United States might do. Instead of loudly agonizing about the prospect of World War III, the U.S. president should sternly and publicly warn the Kremlin that unless Russian forces withdraw from Ukrainian territory, the United States will provide Ukraine with everything it needs to not just take back its occupied lands but also challenge Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule. Washington’s message should be that, if Russia attacks a NATO country or uses a nuclear weapon, then the United States will deploy its own troops and rally its NATO allies to do the same to both defend Ukraine and hunt down all the Russian officials who made and executed the orders.

The United States’ failure in Ukraine is creating deterrence problems in other parts of the world, too. China is watching closely as the Russian strategy of waiting out Western interest in the war proves effective, which raises the prospect that China might adopt a similar strategy in pursuit of its ambitions to rule Taiwan and absorb the maritime zones of its neighbors. China has treated the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to gain operational and technological insights, reverse engineer U.S. weapons recovered from the battlefield, and find ways to circumvent Western economic sanctions. The longer the war in Ukraine drags on, the more the cost of deterring China goes up.

Of course, the downside of bolder U.S. action to deter Russia is that it runs a greater risk of getting drawn into the fighting. Putin might even welcome this outcome, preferring to lose a war to the United States than to Ukraine. But Russian forces, already struggling to gain ground in Ukraine, would be decimated by the U.S. military. Stressing to Putin that such a humiliation could cost him his rule—or even his life—would likely stay his hand. In the end, the United States must be so strong and determined that Russia and other adversaries don’t want to hazard actions that compel it to carry out its threats. That is successful deterrence, and it is the best and cheapest policy option, despite the inherent risk. If the United States is unwilling to make that gamble, it is letting the bad guys win.

SHORT OF FUNDS

The weakening of U.S. deterrence under the Biden administration is compounded by a failure to properly resource the U.S. military for the current security environment. Bipartisan congressional commissions have warned that the U.S. military and its industrial base are in urgent need of major investment. And Congress has more broadly recognized the deficiency of U.S. defense spending, with legislators from both parties voting to add $28 billion to the president’s first defense budget in 2022 and $45 billion to his second in 2023, and likely adding between $21.5 billion and $37.4 billion to Biden’s final budget submission, which is now pending.

But this is still not enough. The United States currently commits roughly the equivalent of three percent of GDP to defense, which is a historic low. This figure is particularly alarming given the rising threats the country faces today. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are increasingly belligerent and increasingly operating in concert. China’s navy is growing rapidly, and its shipbuilding industry has a capacity 250 times that of the United States. In a potential conflict in Asia, the U.S. Navy is already at a disadvantage, as it would need to traverse an ocean. Reconstituting a war-winning navy should be the top priority of the U.S. defense program.

But a fight in the Pacific is not the only scenario the United States must be prepared for (and, ideally, deter), and readiness in other arenas will require addressing other deficiencies. The United States must also restock ammunition and air defenses, modernize its nuclear forces, and create redundancies in its communications channels. To make all of this possible, the Trump administration should advance a plan along the lines of one that Roger Wicker, the Republican senator from Mississippi, has proposed, which would increase defense spending to more than five percent of GDP.

Critics of this approach argue that the United States cannot afford more defense spending. This is manifestly untrue. Washington devised emergency spending mechanisms during the financial crisis and the pandemic; today, the country faces a defense shortfall of similar consequence. Arguments against defense spending increases often cite the ballooning of the national debt—but even though the debt is unquestionably a problem, defense spending is not its primary cause: entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are. In the absence of changes to entitlement spending, which Trump has promised not to make, the best way to afford necessary upgrades to U.S. defenses is to expand GDP with growth-friendly policies on taxes and regulation.

A STEP TOWARD SECURITY

In his first term, Trump, to his credit, hewed closely to the ideas he campaigned on and kept faith with what voters endorsed. Despite his seeming attraction to the madman theory of international relations—the historian Lawrence Freedman has described Trump as “delighted by his own unpredictability and impulsiveness”—the former president actually has rather predictable policy views. He thinks that the globalized economy and immigration are bad for American workers and that allies take advantage of the United States. He admires authoritarian leaders, and tariffs are his favorite bludgeon.

Given those views, some elements of traditional Republican foreign policy are unlikely to reemerge under Trump. Free trade is out of the question in the foreseeable future, even though, according to a 2023 Chicago Council survey, three-quarters of Americans consider international trade good for the economy. The Trump administration is sure to shun multilateral trade deals and make bilateral agreements that are heavy on tariffs and focus on restricting U.S. market access and leveling the balance of trade. Trump is also unlikely to value alliances. American support will come with higher expectations of allies, in terms of both spending on their own defense and alignment with U.S. policies. Eventually, however, Trump may come to appreciate the need for healthy alliances if the United States is to assemble enough military and political power to confront the convergence of its adversaries.

On both deterrence and defense spending, by contrast, the Trump administration could be poised to address glaring vulnerabilities from the start. During the campaign, Trump vowed, “I would tell Putin, if you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give [Zelensky] a lot. We’re going to [give Ukraine] more than they ever got if we have to.” Turning that promise into policy would go a long way to reestablish American deterrence. Trump’s willingness in his first term to take offensive action, such as by striking the Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and having U.S. troops attack Russian mercenaries in Syria in February 2018, suggests that he could once again use U.S. military force purposefully. Coupling that determination with investment in American defenses could dramatically improve U.S. national security—in other words, restoring peace through strength.

These changes, however important, won’t solve all the problems a Trump administration will face or create. Trump may make deals with authoritarians over the heads of allies. Allies that feel exposed may make choices that damage their own security and that of the United States. Deploying U.S. troops for domestic law enforcement, border patrol, or deportations may fracture the bond between the American public and the military, as well as sow discord within the military itself. But a second Trump administration could also harness the country’s brilliant and sometimes brutal motion in productive ways, taking meaningful steps to make the United States more secure in a perilous world.

• KORI SCHAKE is a Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Safe Passage: The Transition From British to American Hegemony. She served on the National Security Council and in the U.S. State Department under President George W. Bush.

Foreign Affairs · by Safe Passage: The Transition From British to American Hegemony · November 8, 2024

19. Democracy Without America?

​Perhaps we should reflect on Twain and Nietzsche. 

 “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

– Mark Twain

“Out of life's school of war—what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.” 

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Excerpts:

Those who have seen their own countries bend to authoritarian ambition know that the second Trump term will put American democracy to a more serious test. If Trump, enabled by the Supreme Court’s recent decision granting sweeping presidential immunity, comes close to fulfilling his campaign pledges and following through on the plains laid out in his allies’ Project 2025, the United States will see the most intense assault on checks and balances and civil liberties in its peacetime history. This will be a much more carefully strategized, comprehensive, and relentless assault on the country’s democratic norms and institutions than anything in Trump’s first term, save for the January 6, 2021 riot. The history of challenged and failed democracies across more than a century points consistently to a common lesson: for liberal democracy to survive this challenge, citizens in positions of responsibility, civilian and military, must honor the oath they have sworn to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It is an oath to a principle, not a leader or a party.

For all the encouraging signs from the global year of elections, the most important question—whether American democracy can withstand four years of attempts to subvert it—remains contested. It will take years to answer.

Democracy Without America?

What Trump Means for Global Democratic Momentum

By Larry Diamond

November 8, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Larry Diamond · November 8, 2024

Since the beginning of this historic “year of elections” worldwide, it was apparent that none would be more important in shaping global democratic prospects than the presidential contest in the United States. Across a broad span of countries and partisan leanings, people who value freedom, democracy, and the rule of law—including leaders of government, opposition parties, civic activists, businesspersons, journalists, or ordinary citizens—watched with growing trepidation as political polarization intensified in the United States and Donald Trump drew closer to retaking the White House. With Trump’s decisive victory in the election, these admirers of the long arc of the United States’ democratic journey, if not necessarily all its global policies, now fear what might come next for the country and, by extension, democracies across the world.

The rise of autocratic regimes across the world over the last decade and a half has put democrats on high alert. In the last year, successful efforts to beat back antidemocratic movements and governments have provided some indication that this protracted “democratic recession” could be reversed. But Trump’s victory has dealt a blow to these hopes. His triumph in the Electoral College and the popular vote leaves democratic friends and allies of the United States wondering: Will a Trump presidency demand more burden-sharing from them, or even abandon them altogether? And will the United States remain a liberal democracy, or will its institutions gradually erode beyond recognition or repair?

Early analysis of the election results suggests that Trump’s victory was more attributable to issues like the economy and immigration rather than an endorsement of his autocratic tendencies. And yet whatever the reason Americans may have had for supporting Trump, his campaign made it clear that he will be unencumbered by any global checks on his and his administration’s antidemocratic impulses. As has been the case in other backsliding democracies in the last decade, the defense of democratic norms in the United States will therefore depend on the actions of other leaders of government and society in Congress, state and local governments, the civil service, the armed forces and local police, business, civic institutions, and perhaps most of all, the courts. Their success or failure in upholding the Constitution and the rule of law will heavily determine global democracy’s outlook in the coming years.

BOOMS AND BUSTS

In the United States, support for the spread of freedom and democracy around the world has not reflected any partisan affiliation. From the late 1970s, with President Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on global human rights, through the presidency of George W. Bush in the early 2000s, pro-democracy parties, politicians, and movements around the world gained ground with both Democrats and Republicans in the White House. These gains were most dramatic during the presidencies of two Republicans (Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush) and one Democrat (Bill Clinton).

Toward the end of the second George W. Bush presidency, however, global democratic progress ground to a halt. With the failed U.S. intervention in Iraq, a global financial crisis that began in the United States, and a surge in the power and self-confidence of authoritarian rivals such as China and Russia, global politics shifted in the direction of autocracy. Since 2006, according to Freedom House’s annual measurements, freedom and democracy have been on the decline. Authoritarian populists have won at the ballot box and then weaponized their power to eliminate checks and balances and decimate their opponents. Beginning in the early years of this century with Turkey and Venezuela, a number of emerging and even seemingly durable democracies have seen the rise of self-styled defenders of “the people” against “corrupt elites” and “enemies within.” These populist leaders have taken their election victories as mandates to pack the judiciary, shackle the press, cow the business community, silence and prosecute critics, and assert political dominance over the civil service, prosecutors, tax authorities, the security apparatus, and the military. This process has strangled democracy not just in countries with longstanding democratic traditions but also in countries such as Bangladesh, Benin, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Serbia, and Tunisia, which had turned toward democracy in the post–Cold War era. Some larger countries, such as India, Indonesia, Mexico, and the Philippines have experienced significant democratic backsliding, but experts don’t agree on whether they still meet the minimal standards of electoral democracy. Others, such as Sri Lanka, have oscillated back and forth, with more democratic presidents and corrupt populist autocrats alternating as leaders.

With the rising tide of democratic setbacks, the growing assertiveness of Russia and China, and the electoral gains of illiberal populist parties and candidates in Europe and the United States, many observers feared the authoritarian trend was becoming a juggernaut. Yet over the past two years, it has faltered. Brazil’s right-wing populist strongman Jair Bolsonaro sought to undermine the country’s democratic institutions after his election as president in 2018 but narrowly lost his bid for reelection in 2022 (and failed in his extralegal effort to overturn the result). In May 2023, the Turkish opposition came within a few points of beating a long-ruling populist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, despite fielding an uninspiring candidate who failed to offer a convincing agenda for economic improvement. In a presidential run-off election held three months later in Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, an anticorruption reformer, decisively defeated the country’s venal political establishment, represented by former first lady Sandra Torres, an outcome that has opened up new possibilities for democratic change. And in Poland’s parliamentary election last October, a broad-based alliance led by the center-right Civic Platform defeated the illiberal populist Law and Justice party and halted the country’s eight-year slide toward autocracy.

OUT WITH A WHIMPER?

Although the results of this “year of elections” have until now been mixed in their implications for democracy, they have offered many glimmers of hope. On the strength of a bold strategy of “radical love” to transcend the country’s political polarization, Turkey’s political opposition made stunning gains in municipal elections in March. That same month, Senegal reversed democratic backsliding with an opposition presidential victory by 44-year-old Bassirou Diomaye Faye, after two-term incumbent president Macky Sall failed to lift term limits. In May, the African National Congress, South Africa’s increasingly corrupt ruling party, got its comeuppance at the polls when it lost its parliamentary majority and was forced to form a coalition with the Democratic Alliance, the country’s principal opposition party. India’s strongman prime minister, Narendra Modi, secured a third term in national elections staged over several weeks in April and May, but the strength of his ruling BJP party was significantly reduced in parliament.

And most stunningly, Venezuela’s democratic opposition overcame massive repression, fear, and resource deficits, as well as its own divisions, to defeat Nicolás Maduro after a decade of despotic rule in the July presidential election. When Maduro refused to concede defeat, the opposition demonstrated impressive vigilance and organization, presenting copies of the official tallies from over 80 percent of the country’s polling stations to demonstrate that their candidate, Edmundo González, had won in a landslide. (All that is missing to complete the opposition’s triumph is a coherent strategy from the world’s democracies to compel the Maduro regime to accept the results and transfer power, in exchange for amnesty from prosecution at home or abroad.)

These outcomes—along with Bangladesh’s student-led revolution in August, which toppled the regime of Sheikh Hasina, the world’s lone female autocrat—did not end the global democratic recession, but they brought it closer to a possible tipping point. That point drew closer still in late October, when the Umbrella for Democratic Change, Botswana’s principal opposition party alliance, defeated the abusive and corrupt incumbent Botswana Democratic Party, which had held power continuously since the country gained independence in 1966. The result sent shock waves across much of Africa, where Botswana has long been seen as a model of development success despite its small size.

But throughout 2024, all eyes remained trained on the U.S. election as the most important indicator of global democracy’s future. It was unclear which direction the Republican Party would take: toward Trump, the illiberal populist, or toward an internationalist Republican in the mold of Ronald Reagan, such as Nikki Haley? After Trump’s resounding victory in the Republican primary, the question was whether Trump would enter a downward spiral of grievance, intolerance, xenophobia, and conspiracy theorizing or try to broaden his base with a positive focus on economic growth and national strength. Pro-democracy advocates all over the world watched with disappointment and alarm as Trump took the former course, plumbing the depths of bigotry and fear, and vowing to take vengeance.

Throughout 2024, all eyes remained trained on the U.S. election as the most important indicator of global democracy’s future.

But the U.S. election should not be interpreted as a vote for autocracy. Only 17 million Americans voted for Trump in the Republican primary—a landslide against his Republican opponents but barely ten percent of registered voters and seven percent of eligible voters. An AP survey of 120,000 voters in the week before the election showed that the key drivers of support for Trump were anxieties about the economy, including the persistent effects of inflation, and immigration. Economic concerns especially drove his astonishing inroads with young and minority voters. These kinds of policy concerns were so powerful that, among the majority of all voters who said Trump lacked the moral character to be president, one in ten voted for him anyway. And of the near majority of voters who said they were “very concerned” that a Trump presidency would “bring the U.S. closer to authoritarianism,” a tenth of them also voted for him anyway. Analysts had been arguing for months that it was a “change election” in which two-thirds of voters judged that the country was heading in the wrong direction. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris failed to present policies that would address voters’ anxieties about high consumer prices, unaffordable housing, and retreating prospects for good-paying jobs, and she failed to convince the electorate she represented real change after serving as vice president under Joe Biden. Thus, she violated a core lesson of numerous efforts to defeat authoritarian populists at the polls: victory requires programmatic appeals to material concerns beyond just defending democracy.

Nevertheless, when voters elect authoritarian-minded leaders for instrumental reasons, they typically get the baggage of revenge, intimidation, and lust for power that accompanies their candidates’ policy promises. Over the course of an increasingly dark 2024 campaign, Trump promised to unleash presidential power on the Justice Department, other federal agencies, and even the military, to persecute his critics, punish unfriendly media, purge and politicize the civil service, and round up and deport masses of immigrants. These are all actions autocrats take when they win power at the ballot box. Candidates who borrow the language of fascists and strongmen to denounce their opponents as “vermin” and “the enemy within” do not suddenly evince the democratic virtues of compromise and moderation when they take office. And politicians who reject the legitimacy of any election they do not win try to use political power to tilt the rules and institutions so they will never lose. Autocrats like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Orban in Hungary, and Erdogan in Turkey followed this script when they came to power.

After an initial four-year term as prime minister, Orban was defeated in his bid for reelection in 2002. He resolved not to allow the opposition to win again when he returned to office. He won back power in 2010, and he has so far made good on his promise by heavily gerrymandering elections, stacking the judiciary, stoking fear, and throttling the media and civic institutions. The United States is a much older and deeper democracy than Hungary was in 2010, at that point just two decades removed from the fall of communism. Power is more dispersed, and checks and balances are stronger. But in the end, constitutions are only as strong as the willingness of people—politicians, judges, civil servants, business leaders, and ordinary citizens—to defend them.

Those who have seen their own countries bend to authoritarian ambition know that the second Trump term will put American democracy to a more serious test. If Trump, enabled by the Supreme Court’s recent decision granting sweeping presidential immunity, comes close to fulfilling his campaign pledges and following through on the plains laid out in his allies’ Project 2025, the United States will see the most intense assault on checks and balances and civil liberties in its peacetime history. This will be a much more carefully strategized, comprehensive, and relentless assault on the country’s democratic norms and institutions than anything in Trump’s first term, save for the January 6, 2021 riot. The history of challenged and failed democracies across more than a century points consistently to a common lesson: for liberal democracy to survive this challenge, citizens in positions of responsibility, civilian and military, must honor the oath they have sworn to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It is an oath to a principle, not a leader or a party.

For all the encouraging signs from the global year of elections, the most important question—whether American democracy can withstand four years of attempts to subvert it—remains contested. It will take years to answer.

• LARRY DIAMOND is William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

Foreign Affairs · by Larry Diamond · November 8, 2024

20. Houthis’ lesson for the US Army: how a land force can fight a maritime war

​Excerpts:

A key aspect of Houthi operations has been the use of one-way attack drones—in effect propellor-driven cruise missiles that are extremely cheap and numerous, presenting unsustainable economic challenge, given the cost of defensive interceptors like SM-2s and SM-6s. Here too, the US Army can learn from the Houthis and adapt to use similar tactics. DARPA’s work, for instance, on offensive swarming drones will be a vital advance in how US thinks about and executes offensive maritime operations and sea control or denial.

To Houthi tactics, add strategic mobility. Here, the utility of the US Air Force’s heavy airlifters comes into play. They can deploy ground units almost anywhere that has even a rough airfield, greatly reinforcing the army’s ability to participate in an island-based maritime war. US and allied exercises should routinely practice rapid loading and unloading of systems such as HIMARS missile launchers on and off C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft.

A valuable effect of such exercises would be honing interoperability between US services and between them and allied militaries. Indeed, highly capable US allies, such as Australia, should play a major role in how the US Army and broader joint forces think about fighting in the Western Pacific.

The US Army and allied forces can achieve a war-altering advantage if they learn from and apply the Houthi tactic of controlling the sea from the shore with inexpensive drones and long-range precision strike weapons and if they blend this technique with air mobility.

The Houthis are unlikely teachers but teachers nonetheless. Houthi operations have demonstrated that shore-based sea control and sea denial can be highly effective. They have shown how the US Army and US partners and allies should incorporate new tactics and weapons systems into their forces before the next war comes.

Houthis’ lesson for the US Army: how a land force can fight a maritime war | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Andrew Rolander · November 7, 2024

The US Army should consider borrowing a page from the playbook of Yemen’s Houthi militants.

The character of war is always changing, and the Houthis’ ongoing attacks against shipping in the Red Sea may prove to be one of the more significant inflection points in military history.

The change involves sea control and sea denial through the application of long-range precision missile fire and autonomous drone employment from the shore. The Houthis effectively blend a mix of anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and one-way attack drones to contest control over maritime lines of communication in the Red Sea littoral. They have so far damaged at least 30 merchant ships, sunk two and killed or detained several merchant sailors.

The US Army should aim for much the same capability in a contested littoral environment against an adversary such as China. Technically and tactically, the service is moving in this direction, but it needs to fully embrace the strategy to avoid becoming largely irrelevant in the major war in which the US is most likely to become involved. Army heavy formations almost certainly won’t be available in the initial fighting in a Western Pacific war.

The army can draw on efforts that are already underway in the US military. It can, for example, take inspiration from the US Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) concept, in which ships are widely separated but act in unison. Army units might operate similarly in the Western Pacific.

The navy is developing DMO for forces that find themselves in combat against an adversary, such as China, that can detect, track and attack US and allied assets at great distances with a variety of different weapon systems.

The army’s own Typhon or Strategic Mid-Range Fires (SMRF) program, in which it is fielding its Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs) and navy SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles for strike missions, should contribute, as should research into drone technology by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

In a maritime war in the Western Pacific, the army would likely have to operate on distant island bases and attack shipping in much the same way the Houthis are doing from the interior of Yemen. Geographic dispersal will be a vital aspect of survivability in the next war.

The SMRF program is already well adapted for shore-based sea control operations. So is the army’s new Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF), in which units are tailored to specific theatres for long-range precision effects, including cyber, electromagnetic warfare and precision strike using weapons systems like PrSM and SM-6.

The army should apply the DMO concept to SMRF-equipped MDTFs and deploy them on bases outside the First Island Chain, the string of islands from Japan to Indonesia that hems in China.

This forward presence would contribute to integrated deterrence by forcing the Chinese military to cope with multiple operational dilemmas. It would, for example, have to track multiple distant targets simultaneously and defend against firing batteries distributed across the Western Pacific. Those batteries would demand attention because they’d have the range and lethality to strike and destroy high-value targets throughout the region.

A key aspect of Houthi operations has been the use of one-way attack drones—in effect propellor-driven cruise missiles that are extremely cheap and numerous, presenting unsustainable economic challenge, given the cost of defensive interceptors like SM-2s and SM-6s. Here too, the US Army can learn from the Houthis and adapt to use similar tactics. DARPA’s work, for instance, on offensive swarming drones will be a vital advance in how US thinks about and executes offensive maritime operations and sea control or denial.

To Houthi tactics, add strategic mobility. Here, the utility of the US Air Force’s heavy airlifters comes into play. They can deploy ground units almost anywhere that has even a rough airfield, greatly reinforcing the army’s ability to participate in an island-based maritime war. US and allied exercises should routinely practice rapid loading and unloading of systems such as HIMARS missile launchers on and off C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft.

A valuable effect of such exercises would be honing interoperability between US services and between them and allied militaries. Indeed, highly capable US allies, such as Australia, should play a major role in how the US Army and broader joint forces think about fighting in the Western Pacific.

The US Army and allied forces can achieve a war-altering advantage if they learn from and apply the Houthi tactic of controlling the sea from the shore with inexpensive drones and long-range precision strike weapons and if they blend this technique with air mobility.

The Houthis are unlikely teachers but teachers nonetheless. Houthi operations have demonstrated that shore-based sea control and sea denial can be highly effective. They have shown how the US Army and US partners and allies should incorporate new tactics and weapons systems into their forces before the next war comes.

Andrew Rolander is an irregular warfare and strategic competition analyst. He is particularly interested in maritime strategy and security. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Department of Defense or the US government.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Andrew Rolander · November 7, 2024

21. Army’s new Pacific commander has decades-deep roots in Hawaii

Congratulations to General Clark. The Chinese curse is fitting here: "May you live in interesting times." I expect his entire commend tenure will be an interesting time.

Army’s new Pacific commander has decades-deep roots in Hawaii

Stars and Stripes · by Wyatt Olson · November 9, 2024

Gen. Ronald Clark speaks to reporters at Fort Shafter, Hawaii, on Nov. 8, 2024, shortly before taking command of U.S. Army Pacific. (Wyatt Olson/Stars and Stripes)

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — The newest commander of U.S. Army Pacific can trace by decades his roots in Hawaii.

“If you turn back the clock, our daughter, who was born at Tripler [Army Medical Center], is 30 now,” Gen. Ronald Clark said during a news conference at Fort Shafter on Friday, shortly before a ceremony in which he assumed command from Gen. Charles Flynn.

Flynn, who led the Pacific forces since 2021, is retiring after serving almost 40 years.

Clark was a company commander in the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks at the time his daughter was born. He returned to Hawaii years later to lead that entire division, followed by a stint as chief of staff at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Most recently, Clark was the top military aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Clark’s move to Hawaii was briefly delayed in September when Sen. Tommy Tuberville placed a hold on his nomination. The Alabama Republican had questions concerning Clark’s role in the secrecy surrounding Austin’s hospitalization in January for complications arising from prostate cancer surgery. Tuberville dropped the hold after meeting with Clark.

“Welcome back to the operational world,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Clark during an address at the ceremony.

Paparo deemed the West Point graduate “tailor made for this duty.”

“But you also know that the security environment has worsened since the last time you were here just three short years ago,” Paparo said.

“Given this dangerous security environment — the increasingly connected, transactional symbiosis of our would-be adversaries, [China’s] increasingly aggressive behavior, the increasing connections between Russia and North Korea — we need the team to be ready,” he said.

Paparo told Clark he is precisely the right leader for this assignment.

“And hand-picked,” he said. “We’ll value your strategic understanding of the global environment, your intimate knowledge of the Indo-Pacific.”

Gen. Charles Flynn, right, relinquishes command of U.S. Army Pacific as he hands the combatant command’s flag to Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, at Fort Shafter, Hawaii, on Nov. 8, 2024. Gen. Ronald Clark, left, awaits assumption of command. (Wyatt Olson/Stars and Stripes)

Gen. Randy George, chief of staff of the Army and the highest ranking official to speak at the ceremony, also warned of rougher seas ahead.

“Today, our adversaries are working together to challenge us in every theater,” he said. “Russia, China, Iran and North Korea represent an axis of upheaval that is increasingly collaborating to threaten the free world. We understand how the battlefield is changing, and we have a sense of urgency about transforming our Army to meet the needs of our nation in today’s volatile operating environment.”

George credited Flynn with bolstering U.S. Army Pacific’s formation with its roughly 106,000 personnel stationed from Alaska and the West Coast to Japan and South Korea.

“Under Gen. Charlie Flynn’s leadership, USARPAC has transformed our expectations of what a theater army is capable of,” George said. “In the past four years, they have planned, coordinated and executed more than 200 bilateral and multilateral military exercises in more than 90 countries.”

Flynn’s oversight of the reflagging of units in Alaska as the 11th Airborne Division in 2022 demonstrated “organizational agility and commitment to dominating ground combat in the harsh terrain of the Arctic,” George said.

Under Flynn, the 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force was stood up in 2022, which aims to integrate and coordinate cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence and long-range weapons by land, air or sea.

Flynn also helmed the creation in 2022 of the Joint Pacific Multinational Training Center, which allows soldiers based in Hawaii and Alaska to undergo combat readiness training in their respective climates and terrain rather than at centers in Louisiana and California.

There is also a mobile version of the training center, which has been deployed to Indonesia and the Philippines.

George lauded the centers for enhancing the joint force’s relationships with militaries in allied and partner nations in the region.

“There is no better partner than the U.S. Army, and while our adversaries are increasingly working together, it is the troopers of U.S. Army Pacific who are continuously transforming to build lethal and cohesive teams that contribute to deterrence,” he said.

Stars and Stripes · by Wyatt Olson · November 9, 2024

22. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea threaten the world order

​A threat, yes. But is there also an opportunity? Does this solidify, identify, and allow us to focus on the threat so that we can create policies and strategy to deal with this.  

We can make light of this with names like the Axis of Evil or axis of authoritarians, totalitarians, dictators. Or a new one I heard this week: a "fusion of foes" (which I actually like). Or we can see the opportunities that their alignment provides to develop strategies and policies.

Yes the alignment, collaboration, and possible synchronization of activities and strategies of these actors is potentially very dangerous. It is obvious they seek to attack the rules based international order and shape it for their own ends.

But we cannot build a strategy and policies on simply defending the rules based international order. It is of course in our interest to protect it and make sure it continues to function for the good of all.

However, defense is not enough. we must go on the offense and execute two lines of efforts.

First we must attack the alliance themselves. We must remember they are built on fear, weaknees, desperation, and envy. They fear the silk web of the US and alliances and relationships of like minded democracies around the world. They are weak due to their internal contradictions and the potential for internal resistance among their populations. They are desperate for aid and assistance - from money, to warfighting systems and ammunition, to advanced technology, particularly, Russia, north Korea, and Iran. And they envy the Alliances and relationships of the US and like minded democracies. We need to develop courses of action that lead to divisions of these alliances. They are transactional and do not have the strength of shared values and mutual trust. We must exploit that. 

We must recognize that these countries are conducting political warfare against the US. 

Therefore, second, we must attack the individual strategies of each of these countries. This takes political warfare strategies that are superior to theirs. 

But the key question is what does winning look like? What is the acceptable durable political arrangement that will serve, protect, and advance US national interests and those of our friends, partners, and allies?

Over time, this means that these alliances are split and fail to achieve the desired effects of the members of the axis. And the rules based international order continues to function in our interests.

Over time this means the country's individual strategies are defeated. And the rules based international order continues to function in our interests.

However, as long as these dictators/totalitarian leaders remain in power they will continue to attack the rules based international order on their own or in concert with each other. 

It is sad, controversial, and politically incorrect (to some) to say that ultimately winning looks like these countries no longer have such leaders in power.  That of course does not mean that the US and our allies will or should attack them and force regime change. But we can contribute to helping the populations within those countries create the conditions for their own political change. This is political warfare. Ironically, this is what the State Department, USAID (with its democracy programs), the Intelligence Community, and with DOD in a supporting role did during the Cold War. But this is not a politically correct suggestion to make.

Where is George Kennan when we need him?

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea threaten the world order

washingtontimes.com · by Joseph R. DeTrani

By - Saturday, November 9, 2024

OPINION:

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea pose an immediate threat to the world order. Each is a dictatorship fomenting unrest in East Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Each tried to influence our presidential elections. Each of them failed.

How ironic, however, that the official Chinese Communist Party news wire service, Xinhua, ran a series of essays highlighting what it described as eight problems with the U.S. election cycle, according to The Washington Times’ Threat Status.

There is no democracy in China. There are no elections permitting the people to elect their representatives and their leader, Xi Jinping. Nonetheless, China criticizes our democratic system where the people make these leadership decisions.

The same can be said for Russia with its bogus elections, Iran with its ruling theocracy and North Korea with the ruling Kim dynasty.

The New York Times published a piece last Wednesday on 10 takeaways from the election asserting that “the relative stability on domestic and international affairs during the past four years is about to be gone, replaced by a volatile president who often operates without regard to national precedent.”

I must be missing something — relative stability in international affairs?

Russia’s war in Ukraine continues into its third year, reportedly with over 1 million casualties on both sides. China continues trying to intimidate Taiwan with naval and air military exercises mimicking a blockade. Chinese naval exercises are an effort to restrict freedom of navigation in international waters in the South China Sea, most recently directed at the Philippines and that nation’s sovereignty over Second Thomas Shoal, according to a finding from the U.N. arbitral tribunal.

Iranian leader Ali Khamenei’s stated goal is to eradicate Israel. Iran’s support of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen is part of Iran’s strategy to confront and eventually eliminate Israel.

The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 men, women and children were killed and 254 hostages were taken, has inflamed the region, with Israel confronting Iran and attempting to destroy Hamas while also taking on Hezbollah and the Houthis. Efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza have failed amid concern that hostilities could escalate and engulf the region in war.

North Korea is now aligned with Russia, with a mutual defense treaty that commits each to defend the other if attacked. North Korea is providing Russia with significant quantities of artillery shells and ballistic missiles. North Korea reportedly sent 10,000 special forces troops to Russia recently to aid Russia in its war of aggression in Ukraine.

Indeed, North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs continue to grow exponentially, with North Korea’s launch of an Intercontinental ballistic missile — the Hwasong-19 — capable of reaching anywhere in the United States. North Korea’s Constitution has been amended to make South Korea and the U.S. the nation’s principal enemies, with North Korea eschewing reunification with South Korea while destroying all roads and rail lines that connect the two.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, now aligned with Russia, may be emboldened to incite conflict on the peninsula. From 1950 to 1953, Korean War resulted in significant U.S., South Korea, Chinese and North Korean casualties. The 1953 armistice stopped the fighting, yet hostilities continue.

The possibility of another war on the Korean Peninsula is greater now than any time since 1953. This time, however, a North Korea aligned with Russia, committed to come to the defense of North Korea if attacked, reportedly has tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, and Mr. Kim has threatened to use them.

In short, the administration of President-elect Donald Trump will inherit a multitude of foreign policy challenges that will require his immediate attention. And based on his first term as president, it’s likely Mr. Trump will personally interact with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Un in an effort to resolve some or all of these issues.

• Joseph R. DeTrani is the former director of East Asia operations at the CIA, former special envoy for talks with North Korea (2003-2006) and former director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views expressed here are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.

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washingtontimes.com · by Joseph R. DeTrani

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