Quotes of the Day:

"More is lost by indecision than by wrong decision."

– Marcus Tillius Cicero

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."

– John Ruskin

"Self education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."

– Isaac Asimov

1. Clash in the Gray Zone: China’s System to Win Without Fighting

2. Trump Says He Will Nominate Kash Patel to Run F.B.I.

3. The Kash Patel Principle

4. Trump Picks Kash Patel as FBI Director

5. On Brief Stop in U.S., Taiwan President Sends Signal to Both China and Trump

6. China Is Studying Russia’s Sanctions Evasion to Prepare for Taiwan Conflict

7. How a Young Chinese Nationalist Turned Her Back on Beijing

8. The Whiz Kid Who Made Billions for Yale Is Rethinking His China Strategy

9. Strategic and Operational Considerations for Military Action Against Mexican Drug Cartels

10. Zelensky suggests ending 'hot phase' of war in exchange for NATO membership without occupied territories

11. Opinion The Iron Man of America’s op-ed pages

12. In silence and bluster, a shadow Trump foreign policy haunts Biden’s final acts

13. What female veterans think of Pete Hegseth’s views about combat roles

14. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 30, 2024

15. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 30, 2024

16.  China Has a New Playbook to Counter Trump: ‘Supply Chain Warfare’

17. Setbacks for Russia, Iran and Hezbollah Turn Into a Catastrophe for Syria’s Assad

18. The Heartland Theory: More Relevant Than Ever? – Analysis

19. Zelensky wants to ‘work directly’ with Trump on ending Ukraine’s war with Russia

20. US general Jeffers arrives in Beirut to help enforce Israel-Lebanon ceasefire

21. Who is Jasper Jeffers, the US army general co-monitoring the Lebanon ceasefire?

1. Clash in the Gray Zone: China’s System to Win Without Fighting

Excerpts:

For the United States to apply these lessons requires an adjustment to its own system. The United States, with its exquisite capabilities, ready force, expansive economy, and network of allies and partners, has the tools available to counter gray-zone operations. According to Hal Brands, however, “it is not simply a matter of resources. It is a matter of orienting ourselves organizationally and conceptually to the challenge.”99 This case, alongside Chinese actions globally, demonstrates the significance of the challenge. The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy states that in terms of competition with the PRC, “the next ten years will be the decisive decade. We stand now at the inflection point, where the choices we make and the priorities we pursue today will set us on a course that determines our competitive position long into the future.”100

Those choices must be informed by a holistic understanding of the Chinese approach to war—from wholesale use of force to peacetime use of force. Their system thrives against disjointed allies, circumspect governments, isolated institutions, and uninformed populations. Before Galwan, India’s reluctance to commit to regional partnerships, careful maintenance of Sino-trade ties, complex political discourse, and diverse demographics theoretically presented the Chinese an ideal operational environment for gray-zone operations. Galwan changed that environment. Indian passions were inflamed, and strategic vulnerabilities were identified and hardened. According to a former senior Indian security official, the border clashes marked a “very fundamental change” that drove revisions in India’s “whole policy and discourse around China.”101 Given the scope and scale of China’s system, the adjustment to the U.S. system should also be fundamental.

The United States is capable of fundamental change. In 1986, the United States passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act after Operation Eagle Claw in Iran and Operation Urgent Fury in Granada exposed the military’s inability to collectively form a unified joint force.102 The congressional act fundamentally reshaped the Department of Defense’s (DOD) organizational structure and culture from the previous system established by the 1947 National Security Act. Before the Packard Commission exposed the depth of the problem, many in the services were calling for change.103 However, history shows that militaries, bureaucracies, and governments often possess organizational inertia that stifles change. Even when the environment demands adaptation, social impetuses present barriers.104 “Orienting organizationally and conceptually” must be a collective process among the DOD and every other component of the U.S. government that holds a tool or resource for countering China’s gray-zone strategy.

Clash in the Gray Zone

China’s System to Win Without Fighting

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/Nov-Dec-2024/Gray-Zone/

Maj. Dustin Lawrence, U.S. Army

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Chinese and Indian troops clash in the Galwan Valley during a 15 June 2020 incident at the Line of Actual Control—the de facto border between the two countries—in the mountainous Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. (Screenshot from China State Television)

Folded in the wrinkles of the highest plateau on Earth, two battle formations met on opposite sides of a mountain tributary. Armed with clubs, spiked batons, and stones, they drew their battle lines on either side of a mountain stream. The two fought in the thin air for six hours. In the end, blood soaked the valley floor and flowed through the turbulent waters. Both sides claimed prisoners as the battle closed with the onset of the bitterly cold mountain night.1 The brutal scene, characteristic of countless skirmishes throughout the earliest pages of the historical record, was not a medieval bout or gang violence. Rather, it was a clash of two of the modern world’s largest nuclear-armed states, each with a dynamic economic reach extending the world over.

The clash erupted between Chinese and Indian troops on 15 June 2020 over a long-standing border dispute at a key junction in the Galwan Valley. While the event itself marked a significant point in the history of Sino-Indian relations, the context surrounding it sheds light on China’s approach to warfare. Despite the rudimentary weapons used that day, the violence was a component of a sophisticated global system wielded by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers were employed in harmony with China’s other instruments of national power in pursuit of strategic objectives. Even though PLA actions led to bloodshed, the corollary approach was tailored to remain below the threshold of armed conflict. It was a component of China’s strategy in the gray zone.

Many describe gray-zone activities as actions that violate international norms without venturing into the realm of armed conflict. This categorical approach is ambiguous and misses the purpose behind conducting gray-zone activities. Revisionist actors have reasons for breaking with international norms. Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, expands the definition in “Paradoxes of the Gray Zone”: “Gray zone conflict is best understood as activity that is coercive and aggressive in nature, but that is deliberately designed to remain below the threshold of conventional military conflict and open interstate war.”2 Its goal, Brands expanded, “is to reap gains, whether territorial or otherwise, that are normally associated with victory in war.”3 In other words, gray-zone operations offer alternative “ways” for China to accomplish the ends that have conventionally been associated with war.

Framing China’s gray-zone activities is essential because they are systematic. That is, they are open, purposeful, multidimensional, and emergent. Because of these qualities, they can produce counterintuitive results.4 To frame the Chinese gray-zone approach against India, this article divides activities by four categories—geopolitical, economic, cyber and information, and military. These are further divided by international, bilateral, and grassroot-level targets to contextualize the broader Chinese approach.5 Extrapolated across the leadup and aftermath of Galwan, the model shows the system in context.

Analyzing China’s gray-zone system against a partner with a diverse population, a stable democracy, global economic reach, and a functioning nuclear arsenal offers the United States valuable insights. As the United States confronts China globally, these lessons should inform a system to counter China in the gray zone.

Figure 1. Sino-Indian Border Map

Note: Represented on the map is the site of the Galwan Valley clash. The red circles show areas of conflict at the height of 2020–21 tensions. (Figure by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Kashmir Region [Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2004]; modified by author)

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Border Tension

The 2020 border clashes marked the first time since 1975 that violence led to a loss of life along the Sino-Indian line of actual control (LAC; figure 1 shows the LAC and the historic 2020 clash). At Galwan, twenty Indians and an unknown number of Chinese were killed.6 Tensions rose early that summer when Chinese officials objected to road construction in the Galwan Valley. Small units of PLA troops increased the frequency of their patrols and ventured further into the disputed region. By late May, however, the PLA operations transitioned to occupying key tactical positions tied to infrastructure, chokepoints, and overlooks.7 On 15 June 2020, Indian troops responded to reports of Chinese troops camped at a bend on the Galwan River. While Chinese reports claimed India instigated the confrontation when it confronted the PLA in Chinese-controlled territory, India accused the PLA of drawing-in and deliberately ambushing its troops.8 By 7 September 2020, both sides accused the other of firing small arms—marking the first time in forty-five years that shots were fired along the LAC.9 Experts from both sides designated the violence an inflection point, decades in the making.10

In 1962 and 1975, China and India engaged in armed conflict for control over the LAC. Following these conflicts, the status of the border remained unresolved, and both countries were nuclear powers. In the following decades, both sides often patrolled the border unarmed to prevent escalation. By 2020, China changed its approach.

Winning without Fighting

The foundation for Chinese gray-zone operations rests in the classics. Most famously, Sun Tzu stated, “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest excellence; the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy’s army without fighting at all.”11 Many other axioms placed a weight on the actions before armed conflict. This idea was pervasive beyond the Art of War. Ancient stories captured in the Wiles of War can be seen as lessons on operating within the gray zone, such as “watch a fire from across the river,” “beat the grass to frighten the snake,” or “remove wood from under the cauldron.”12

Foundational to ancient precepts of winning-without-fighting was the concept of shi. Lao Zi, who was likely an amalgamation of many ancient Taoist philosophers, used the metaphysical concept to holistically define reality.13 Followers of Zi saw shi as “the external shaping force of the environment that molds each object contained within that environment.”14 In policy and war, it was often used to describe the disposition that leads to a position of relative advantage.15 Over the course of two millennia, the concept of shi transcended the lexicon, becoming a model to describe immeasurable complexity.16 Contemporary Chinese writers continue to use shi to describe the political, and by extension military, disposition during and between armed conflict.

The most pervasive example of this is Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America. The influential work, first published in 1999 by Qiao Lang and Wang Xiangsui, explores how a weaker China could challenge a hegemonic United States and conceptualize a way of war befitting China’s disposition. They determined the battlefield had expanded beyond the typical three-dimensional understanding into outer space, across the electromagnetic spectrum, and into the psychological space of the human mind. Their theory dismissed any bifurcation of war and peace and instead assumed a state of constant competition. “The battlefield is omnipresent. Just think, if it is even possible to start a war in a computer room or a stock exchange that will send an enemy country to its doom, is there non-battlespace anywhere?”17

Following the publication of Unrestricted Warfare, this paradigm began to permeate PLA literature. In 2003, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) published The Political Work Guidelines of the People’s Liberation Army. Formalizing concepts from Unrestricted Warfare and expanding on pervasive ideas from earlier literature, the guidelines introduced the concept of “Three Warfares”—public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare.18 Public opinion warfare would establish a foothold in the adversary’s minds. Gaining dominance would facilitate psychological warfare, which aimed to disrupt decision-making by sapping the will and eroding support. Legal warfare operated as a subset of the previous two, further raising doubts across neutral parties and in adversarial populations.19 The three warfares would have a symbiotic relationship and represent a new age of “informatized warfare.”

Subsequent policies, white papers, and journals embraced “informatized warfare.” The PLA guidance for “local wars under informatized conditions” emphasized concepts and capabilities to respond to a technologically superior adversary, emphasizing “system-of-system operations” and setting conditions to degrade opponent systems.20 Beginning in 2005, this vision was operationalized through the “systems confrontation” approach.21 This “leap” fused historical concepts such as shi with technological advancements observed during the U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and NATO operations in Serbia and Kosovo.22 Parallel to the shift from a mechanized to an informatized force was the shift from “active defense”—never attack first but respond if attacked—to a preemptive approach. This idea was especially pervasive in the information category, where blowback for such operations was politically reduced. Calls for cyber formations or “net forces” under the control of the PLA began to echo in military journals.23

A 2009 white paper on national defense further expanded the role of the military beyond state-on-state armed conflict. Informatization tagged the military to politically important missions such as peacekeeping, antiterrorism, and military diplomacy. Such activities were captured under the term non-war military activities (NWMA).24 By 2011, NWMA was officially adopted in the People’s Liberation Army’s Military Terms: “Military activities that the armed strengths carry out to protect the nation’s security and developmental interests but do not constitute warfare.”25 In 2013, the PLA published the Science of Military Strategy (SMS) and devoted a chapter to NWMA. The SMS stated that these activities “are continually expanding. They are being used more and more broadly in social, political, and economic life and in international relations, and their importance is growing ever stronger.”26

Concurrently, the Chinese began to use informatized tactics more broadly. This was evident in the cyber domain. By 2009, at least thirty-five Trojan horse programs were directed by the CCP, and over two hundred and fifty hacktivist groups were operating freely in China.27 Under the precept of Mao Tse-tung’s “people’s war,” China expanded programs like the Network Crack Program Hacker to establish an informal army of plausibly deniable hacktivists.28 Keeping with their previous doctrine, the Chinese would target centers of gravity in adversary systems, including leadership institutions, command and control systems, and information nodes.29

Figure 2. The Chinese Use-of-Force Spectrum

(Figure by author)

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In 2016, President Xi Jinping addressed the dialectical nature of war and peace with his concept on the “overall planning for war operations and the use of military forces in peacetime.”30 Here, Xi aligned China’s means—political, economic, and military—to achieve national objectives during peace. (Figure 2 shows the Chinese use-of-force spectrum.) China’s capacities, born of the leap to informatization, would be used to “manage crisis and prevent wars through the use of military forces in peacetime.”31 The weight of these capacities would be applied on a use-of-force spectrum ranging from “peacetime use of military force” to “wartime wholesale use of force” (see figure 2). In between these lay China’s new modus operandi [low-intensity use of force in peacetime].”32

Figure 3. Chinese Use-of-Force Spectrum with “Means” and “Ways”

(Figure by author)

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Underpinning this was the broader concept of “bottom-line thinking.” This amounted to using force to prevent relevant actors from crossing China’s “line in the sand.” Xi described this mode of thought as driving away from war, toward “harmony.”33 The “bottom-line thinking” underlying Xi’s spectrum would act as a counterbalance to Indian transgressions—when the situation along the LAC gravitates to war, “low intensity use of force” would return it to peace. (Figure 3 shows the “means” and “ways” of this approach across the Chinese use of force spectrum.)

From this perspective, the 2020 border clashes may not be a failure of Xi’s approach. The Chinese incursion into Indian territory was an attempt to change the status quo according to the Indian government.34 Assuming this, the incursion marked a more deliberate approach. The bottom in the “bottom-line thinking” could be raised, in essence, redrawing a line in the opponent’s sand. Although changing the norms would invite chaos to the system, the CCP’s “low intensity use of force” would return it to harmony. Strategic adjustment of the bottom-line would demand follow-on actions in the geopolitical, economic, and cyber-information spaces to return the environment to equilibrium. China would stay in the “gray zone,” and win without fighting.

Geopolitical

Geopolitics represent the interplay of politics across space. Given the size and significance of these actors, Sino-Indian politics converge in multiple geophysical arenas. While the LAC may be the geopolitical epicenter, China’s approach spans the globe, and it presses multiple geopolitical points in the gray zone at the international, bilateral, and grassroots levels. Like a game of Weiqi, the efforts across the board ultimately support the larger objective.

Internationally, India’s most important strategic lines of communication extend over the Indian Ocean region (IOR). Historically, those lines were interwoven with other nations and great powers in an intricate tapestry of culture and trade.35 Ports in Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Mauritius, and Maldives were crucial to the flow of imports and exports from Indian markets. By 2016, 95 percent of India’s trade by volume and 68 percent by value came via the Indian Ocean.36 Nearly 80 percent of India’s crude oil requirement was imported across the IOR.37 Chinese policymakers understood this and attempted to shape the IOR’s ecosystem to their advantage. Indian political scientist Mohan Malik described three core elements of the Chinese strategy: encirclement, envelopment, and entanglement.38

Figure 4. The String of Pearls

(Figure by author)

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All three are seen through the “string of pearls,” visual (see figure 4), which conceptualizes China’s Belt and Road Initiative as the string with IOR trade hubs as the “pearls.” At the string’s center is Sri Lanka. The island nation, located fifty-five kilometers from India’s southeast coast, is a strategically significant waypoint for trade across the IOR. Although both China and India could benefit from relations in Sri Lanka, China maintained a zero-sum approach. It pressed on diplomatic and economic pressure points to ensure its strategic positions and deny Indian influence.39 This was evident in the struggle for the Colombo and Hambantota Ports. PLA investments in Colombo extend back to 2011, when a consortium led by a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) signed a thirty-five-year agreement to develop and operate the deep-water Colombo International Container Terminal. This promised an 85 percent stake of the terminal in exchange for $500 million in development.40 The port serves a broader strategic purpose for China. According to Western analysts, “for the ‘Quad [Quadrilateral Initiative of India-Australia-Japan-US]’ to be meaningful, India or Japan requires a place in Colombo Port.”41

Sri Lanka’s other deep-water port, the Hambantota Port, is currently under a ninety-nine-year lease to a Chinese SOE. Given the expansion of Colombo, the economic rationale for Hambantota’s construction is weak. Many see the development of the former fishing port as a shell of a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) operating base aimed at further control over maritime lines of communication. During the contract negotiations, India pursued a joint venture to port construction. However, China aggressively leveraged its debt positions to maintain control of infrastructure projects. These debt positions were also used to ensure Sri Lanka voted in line with Chinese interests in intranational bodies.42

Another significant pearl strung on the Belt and Road string is the Gwadar Port. The port serves as a critical component of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a three thousand-kilometer infrastructure project that allows Chinese energy to bypass the Straits of Malacca. Construction on the port began when the Sino-Indian modus vivendi began to deteriorate as both countries expanded their economic reach. The port, however, caused significant Indian concern upon inception, not only because of its development with India’s historical enemy but because it also completed the envelopment of India from the west. By Gwadar’s inauguration in 2016, it was clear the port would link China’s land lines of communication through Pakistan and the Himalayas with maritime lines of communication. With a Chinese SOE conducting port operations, Gwadar could serve as a gateway to the IOR from Western China.

As CPEC encircled from the west, the Chinese-Myanmar Economic Corridor looked to do the same in the east. Rail and road projects were proposed to extend from Yunnan Province to the port at Khaukpyu. This would mark an eastern “pearl,” completing the string around the Indian subcontinent. However, Myanmar, concerned with excessive borrowing from China, proceeded cautiously. Before the Sino-Indian border clashes in June 2020, none of the proposed projects had commenced.43 Even without the proposed deep-water port at Khaukpyu, China maintains influence over port operations and lines of communication through the straits of Malacca to connect operations in the SCS.44

Where PLA military presence is an established reality is in the pearl of Djibouti. Jutting into the main arteries of the world’s most important trade routes, the Horn of Africa offered China opportunities to protect its interests in Africa and project power across the IOR. When China began investing in infrastructure projects in 2013, India saw the projects as largely commercial and continued to look east toward the South Asian littorals. However, China developed a new port, two airfields, an underground basing complex capable of housing ten thousand troops, and defense agreements with Djibouti’s government.45 By 2020, expansion of the base’s capabilities supported the full range of PLAN capabilities, including nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.46

The Himalayas crown the Indian subcontinent and China’s string of pearls. Here too, China inlaid jewels. These include terrain with military and political significance. PLA troops in the 1950s circulated pamphlets declaring that “Tibet is the palm of China’s hand and that all that remains to be done is to win back the fingers: the Northeast Frontier Agency, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan.”47 The sentiment appears to live on. At the disputed junction border with India and Bhutan, China injected its entanglement strategy through development projects and policing efforts. Tension peaked in 2017 when Indian forces confronted the PLA. This raised the political stakes on India’s historic support of Bhutan’s territorial integrity. Despite the resolution in 2017, China had completed four villages in Bhutan-claimed Doklam territory after the 2020 disputes.48 China has taken a similar approach in Nepal, encroaching on its borders. In both cases, Chinese incursions against Indian allies eroded a coherent approach from an Indian-led political bloc. For years, China entangled itself with India’s rival Pakistan, exerting pressure on New Delhi.

Grassroots-level geopolitical actions further complicated Indian regional concerns. In Sri Lanka, local power brokers and national figures were often approached in China’s bid to control their strategic ports. In the initial phases of Gwadar and Khaykpyu, key influencers were targeted to push development. Grassroot efforts, however, were not limited to India’s periphery. China actively pursued influence in Indian politics. One obvious target was the Communist Party of India-Marxist, which routinely hosted Chinese officials and maintained active dialogue in the leadup to the 2020 border tensions. More directly, Chinese efforts targeted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), one of India’s two major political parties, which represents right-wing, traditional Hindu nationalist politics. Following a BJP delegation in 2019 to China, one member acknowledged that CCP officials “wanted to know how we have built the party, especially in the past five years. How we use the party machinery for elections.”49 However, neither party maintained ties after June 2020. Following the death of Indian soldiers on the border, Chinese ties represented a political liability to both the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the BJP.

Economic

Celebrated economist Lionel Robbins, in his landmark essay on the nature of economics, defined the subject as the “science which studies human behavior as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.”50 As many of the earlier examples show, China reinforces its gray-zone actions with economic weight. Since liberalizing trade policies in 1979, China’s annual gross domestic product has grown by an average of 9.5 percent, what the World Bank described as “the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history.”51 India’s growth during the same time increased, albeit at a pace well behind its bourgeoning neighbor. However, China’s meteoric rise has waned since its peak in 2007.52 By 2020, the global pandemic hammered domestic markets and stymied trade as tensions mounted along the border. In this environment, Robbins’s emphasis on human behavior becomes evident as the critical variable in “given ends” and “scarce means” formula.

At the international level, economic gray-zone activities involve controlling or reducing the availability of resources to induce a cognitive effect on a target. Similarly economic activity at the bilateral level involves reducing trade or the flow of specific goods for the same ends. Actions at both levels are facilitated by geopolitical maneuvering. In China’s case, its domestic capacity and economic hubs across the Pacific and IOR provided additional options to the PLA in and out of the gray zone. While limiting exports to the massive Indian market would have resulted in blowback for China, the massive trade imbalance tilted toward Beijing, levying hardships disproportionally on India.53 Before the 2020 border tensions, there were multiple sectors of India’s economy at risk. From 2018 to 2019, of the 375 categories of products imported to India, 80 percent came from China.54

In 2020, China appeared to deliberately target several key sectors, most notably pharmaceuticals. Generic pharmaceutical production had made India the “pharmacy of the world.”55 However, acquiring this status brought vulnerabilities to India’s markets. Between 90 and 100 percent of certain active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) were imported from China in 2019.56 Turning off the flow of APIs represented an extreme option for China, not just because of the imports of lifesaving drugs, but because the downstream effect across the global market would have galvanized a significant international response. CCP restraint in leveraging their hold on Indian pharmaceuticals may have been about retaining gray-zone options. Still, strategic options have shelf lives. Following the border crisis, India developed a series of policies to limit dependence on APIs.

Chinese actions in the cyber and information dimensions are often uninhibited, viral, and persistent. Cyber actions are most often designed to be nonattributional while tailored to specific systems.

Often international and bilateral actions come with the risk of blowback because the downstream effects extend beyond the target country or costs in the domestic markets. This is why China often surges economic actions at the grassroots level, where the PRC often use SOE to advance efforts. This was evident in Sri Lanka, where the Colombo port alone handles 40 percent of Indian transshipped cargo.57 Six months after Galwan, China signed a deal to further develop Colombo’s financial district. Up to that point, China developed $1.4 billion of a planned $13 billion in the port city. With China’s control over the Colombo International Container Terminal deep water port, India and Japan signed a tripart memorandum of cooperation in 2019 to develop Colombo’s East Container Terminal.58 Seven months after Galwan, the deal collapsed, even though Sri Lankan officials offered an alternate proposal of their West Container Terminal. Multiple Indian news outlets cited rumors of Chinese interference in the negotiations, with one citing anonymous officials claiming China influenced the West Container Terminal counteroffer.59

Although India remained Sri Lanka’s largest trading partner through the border crisis, China maintained insurmountable debt position investment packages. In addition to these were the decades of local projects accepted by key Sri Lankan officials for temporary bumps in political capital.60 Through the border crisis, Sri Lankan currency reserves were plummeting. Rather than turning to the International Monetary Fund, which requires institutional reforms in exchange for assistance, Sri Lankan officials continued to incur debt from China. Even as the domestic population voiced concerns, and India offered assistance, officials remained wed to China.61

Cyber and Information

Chinese actions in the cyber and information dimensions are often uninhibited, viral, and persistent. Cyber actions are most often designed to be nonattributional while tailored to specific systems. Because of this, they primarily exist at the bilateral or grassroots levels. While bilateral actions consist of cyber operations against governments or targeted economic activities, grassroots action is characterized by information operations. Like economics, human behavior is the dependent variable at stake in both cyber and information activity.

This theme was echoed through the informatization literature before the 2020 border clashes and operationalized after Galwan. Nearly in sync with the incursion of PLA troops, a surge of malware flooded Indian systems. These cyber activities clustered around key infrastructure nodes. Malware linked to a PLA-affiliated hacker group targeted at least ten regionally important nodes in India’s power grid and two seaports.62 These clusters gravitated around geopolitically significant objectives. Most clusters were in proximity to the LAC and compromised state load dispatch centers, an Indian subsidiary of a multinational logistics company, and a national emergency response system. The minimal espionage value of these targets led Recorded Future, a U.S.-based intelligence company, to assess the Chinese goal was pre-positioning to “support several potential outcomes, including geostrategic signaling during heightened bilateral tensions, supporting influence operations, or as a precursor to kinetic escalation.”63 The two targeted seaports substantiate this. The first was the Jawaharlal Nehru port, which handles most of India’s containerized cargo and offers the most direct route to Pakistan’s port at Gwadar.64 The other was India’s southernmost port at Thoothukudi whose main competitor is Sri Lanka’s Colombo port.65

On 13 October 2020, the Chinese cyber incursions may have gone beyond seeding. Blackouts rolled through Mumbai that Tuesday, halting trains, closing the Indian stock market, and forcing hospitals to turn to generators amid a spike in coronavirus cases.66 Initial reports from the Indian media cited state officials who claimed malware had been discovered that may have caused the blackouts. Indian officials later rolled back these statements. Still, reports from Recorded Future suggested a coordinated cyberattack occurred at the same time as the blackouts.67 “I think the signaling is being done [by China to indicate] that we can and we have the capability to do this in times of a crisis,” said retired Lt. Gen. D. S. Hooda, an Indian cyber expert who oversaw India’s borders with Pakistan and China. “It’s like sending a warning to India that this capability exists with us.”68

PLA cyber activity ventured beyond messaging. In the first half of 2021, as the border dialogue continued, groups affiliated with the PLA cyber espionage groups continued to target the Indian aerospace industry, defense contractors, and telecommunication companies.69 The patterns of these bilateral cyber actions—their timing, locations, and targets—directly linked to their objectives along the border. Chinese information actions at the grassroots level follow the same patterns. Cognitive effects were seeded in advance of the clashes at the Galwan border. This approach exudes lines of effort across India’s media ecosystem—in social media, news aggregation, and content and messaging.

Chinese state media outlets maintained active accounts on social media in Hindi, Bangali, Tamil, and Urdu, amassing a significant number of followers before the clashes. For example, China Media Group Hindi’s Facebook page had 7.2 million followers (the BBC’s Hindi page had ten million).70 Following the clashes, the extent of Chinese influence over X (Twitter) became apparent when anti-Indian misinformation spiked on the platform. In June, #ChinaComesModiRuns became one of the top trending hashtags with the help of Chinese bots.71 These efforts were assisted from Pakistan, from which hundreds of fake X and Telegram accounts spread misinformation.72

China also made massive investments into major news aggregator apps before the clashes, the largest being a Chinese firm’s investment into Dailyhunt—a news content platform designed to merge local and national content in regional languages. After a twenty-five-million-dollar investment in 2016, Chinese investors landed on the executive board.73 Shortly afterward, a Chinese firm launched Newsdog, another aggregator website. The company, completely controlled from China, aimed to open an office in every Indian state. By 2020, it had gained nearly one hundred million users.74 A month after the clashes, the Army ordered its soldiers to delete eighty-nine apps from their smartphones because of data mining concerns. The list included Chinese apps like Newsdog, global social media apps like X and China’s TikTok, and even Indian apps like Dailyhunt.

The Indian government feared social media and news aggregators seeding Chinese narratives amongst soldiers. These narratives, however, were also carried through Chinese journalists and agents to the general population. Numerous articles ran in national and local Indian papers following a boycott of Chinese goods after the border clashes that questioned the decision and recounted the benefits of Chinese businesses. Many of the authors had previously written pro-Chinese articles. In isolation, this reflects the diversification of an independent media. However, since 2012, China’s Foreign Ministry’s Chinese Public Diplomacy Association ran fellowship programs for journalists from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and other IOR nations.75 On these fellowships, journalists were provided luxury housing, a sizable stipend, a degree from a Chinese University, and according to one source, iPhones that stored iCloud data in Chinese servers.76 While journalists involved in the Chinese fellowships proclaimed their objectivity following backlash amid the border tensions, other journalists were arrested for espionage. Freelance journalist Rajeev Sharma was arrested and later admitted to passing on “sensitive information” to Chinese handlers.77

Where journalists could not be bought off, China opted to purchase full-page advertisements supporting their narrative of Indian border aggression and advocating appeasement. These ads were deceptively formatted to mimic news coverage with subtle messaging. One such example ran in The Hindu with the title, “A Strategic Dealing with China: India Must Engage with China Economically Even as It Confronts It Militarily.”78 These efforts extended across broadcast medians as well. China Radio International, for instance, actively broadcasted pro-Chinese narratives across Tamil-speaking populations. After the clashes, China Radio International criticized the Indian army actions leading to the tensions.79

In addition to media, education centers and think tanks have been grassroots targets. These platforms, typically seen as sources of credibility, offer salient positions to turn public opinion and influence policymakers. The list of organizations with direct ties ranges from the Confucius Institute to pro-China youth leagues that maintained active memorandums of understanding with the youth wing of the CCP.80 At multiple universities across India, China has promoted pro-China discourses through language programs, academic circles, and fellowships.81

Military

Gray-zone activities avoid the onset of armed conflict, yet paradoxically, the military plays a central role in gray-zone operations. Serving as more than just the deterrence force, the PLA actively synchronizes the instruments of national power to achieve strategic objectives.

At the border, the PLA proved active before and after the clashes at the tactical and operational levels. After 2017, despite the ongoing annual Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination, China continued to expand its military basing in the Tibetan Autonomous Region.82 From 2017 to 2020, the number of heliports and airbases doubled.83 After Galwan, the military buildup ramped up. The PLA moved long-range strategic bombers to those airbases in 2021.84 Around the same time, they built “militarized village[s]” that positioned electronic warfare and air defense stations close to India.85 PLA tactical actions on the ground appeared to nest with these strategic moves. In late 2020, a Chinese academic in Beijing claimed the Chinese used microwave weapons to turn two key hilltops that had been occupied by Indian soldiers “into a microwave oven.”86 The effects caused the Indians to withdraw, enabling the PLA to occupy the hilltops “without any exchange of gunfire,” constituting tactical-level gray-zone maneuvering.87

Tactical gray-zone maneuver has been a staple of Chinese activities in the SCS well before the border clashes. People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia ships provide support to maneuvering commercial vessels as they cross into territorial waters. Rather than the physical effects from supporting microwave emitters, the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia provides a cognitive effect on adversaries attempting to enforce their maritime borders. In the IOR, China used this tactic with commercial vessels to prod Indian exclusive economic zones.88 These incursions were backed by PLAN warships just outside the exclusive economic zone.

A political organization at its core, the PLA often synchronizes these operations, applying a whole-of-government framework to link geopolitical, economic, information, and cyber activities. The PRC’s “Land Border Law, drafted during the standoff along the LAC and ratified after the 13th rounds of talks failed to reach a resolution, codified this mantle. The law organized various bureaucracies under the Central Military Commission and elevated the role of the PLA and the People’s Armed Police in enforcing Chinese territorial claims. Further, the Land Border Law prohibited the construction of permanent facilities near the border without Chinese consent.”89 The language is aimed at India and suggests that additional defensive improvements along the LAC marks a trigger for the PLA to respond with the collective weight of its national apparatus. In other words, India building capacity to defend its sovereign territory crosses Xi’s “bottom line.”

An Uncalibrated System

Tagging Chinese actions with the gray-zone qualifier is frivolous if removed from the broader context. That is, if actions are viewed in temporal or spatial isolation. Only some of the actions presented in this case study stand-alone as gray-zone actions. Offensive cyber operations that target civilian infrastructure to degrade a military response or microwave emitters that deny adversaries key terrain are clear examples of gray-zone operations. They defy international norms and achieve objectives normally won through established warfare. Others, when viewed through a narrower lens, could be subjectively seen as normal statecraft. China leveraging debt positions to acquire port rights, for instance, could loosely be compared to U.S. basing acquisitions following World War II. It could also be argued that China’s geopolitical encirclement of India only presents a security threat once the two cross the threshold of war. However, context matters. Chinese geopolitical, economic, information, cyber, and military actions should not be viewed in isolation. They must be viewed as a whole.

Faustin-Archange Touadéra (center), president of the Central African Republic, arrives 28 August 2024 for the Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing. (Photo by Chen Yehua, Xinhua)

Carl von Clausewitz, in his opening chapter of On War, implored his audience to take the broader perspective on warfare: “We must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.”90 In the context of the Chinese understanding of warfare, the parts construct a whole anchored by the political objectives that often constitute Xi’s “bottom line.” Proliferating control across the string of pearls links to the seeding of malware in India’s competing ports, offering further means to disrupt India’s sea lines of communication. Retaining the threat over the vitally important pharmaceutical sector links to the invasive narrative of an Indian dependency on Chinese markets. Seeding doubt of India’s response to border incursions within policymakers, influencers, and soldiers’ links to the PLA buildup along the contested border and sending small units of unarmed PLA soldiers across that border links to the historically disputed territorial claims and the coercive “bottom line.” All these actions form a purposeful whole designed, sequenced, and directed at the highest levels of the CCP. (Figure 5 depicts this system in isolation.)

Figure 5. Mapping the Gray-Zone System

(Figure by author)

Enlarge the figure

However, the CCP system is still a component of the more complex and adaptive global system. The 2020 border clash and the Chinese gray-zone actions surrounding it altered that environment but not necessarily in ways anticipated by the CCP. Despite their online information campaigns, a 2021 public opinion survey found that 77 percent of young Indians distrust China more than any leading country, expressing concerns about its military, economic reach, and interference in the politics of India’s neighbors.91 The same percentage saw the United States as the most trustworthy.92 After the clash, the Modi government transitioned from seeking more ties with China to imposing Chinese-focused security directives and restricting Chinese activities within India. In the fallout from Galwan, Vijay Gokhale, India’s former top diplomat, said, “The ambiguity that prevailed in India’s decision-making and strategic circles as to whether China is a partner—or a rival has been replaced by strategic clarity. China’s behavior is now perceived as adversarial, and few are willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.”93

Despite the CCP’s economic carrot and the PLA’s multidomain stick, India further militarized its northern territory. By 2022, the Chinese-India LAC looked more like the India-Pakistan LAC.94 Most significantly for the United States, India increased its commitment to the Quad. Since Galwan, the multilateral dialogue has yielded initiatives to increase COVID-19 vaccine access, increase cyber security, and combat illegal fishing.95 The Indian army also expanded its annual training exercises with the U.S. joint force. In November 2022, U.S. troops conducted exercises alongside Indian troops in the Himalayas one hundred kilometers from the LAC.96

A Future System

Chinese actions in the gray zone, the Galwan clash, and the corollary system expose key considerations for the United States as it adjusts to the future environment. First, the lines of effort stratified from Chinese political objectives expand across time and space by their own logic. Gray-zone actions were likely seeded before the tenure of a combatant commander, ambassador, or senior executive and continue well after. They link to actions beyond their geographical area of responsibility, regionally focused bureaus, or functional areas. This was evident in the decade before Galwan, when China was shoring up control across the IOR and in the Himalayas. Even though the clash may have shaken India, conditions were already manipulated in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Djibouti, and Nepal.

Second, the Chinese gray-zone system is not perfectly calibrated to the complexity of the global system. Despite the assiduity and harmony of Chinese actions, the global environment is replete with chaos and emergence. Market dynamics, information trends, pandemics, and national passions cannot be perfectly anticipated. After Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt and inflation rose to 60 percent in May 2022, protests erupted. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country, upending years of Chinese political and economic efforts.97 Emergence disrupts the most well-laid plans. Even as the Chinese calculus extends decades and across every corner of the globe, shi is immeasurable and can refract actions across an endless array of potential outcomes.

Third, the Chinese are not monolithically tied to their own historic literature. One of the most well-known Chinese stratagems, which underpins their concepts of gray-zone operations, is “a victorious army only enters battle after having first won the victory, while the defeated army only seeks victory after having first entered the fray.”98 The clash at Galwan may have represented an army battling before winning. Emergence can strike when China’s fondness for gray-zone actions yields to the hard-liners’ desire to battle. In such a scenario, perspectives and resources from interagency and multinational partners are crucial to holistically analyzing the situation and forming an appropriate response. Just as too passive a response could undermine the confidence of partners, too strong of a response may unnerve them. Too passive may feed subsequent Chinese gray-zone actions. Too strong may embolden resolve.

The final lesson is that China’s gray-zone system has vulnerabilities. Targeting the geopolitical, economic, cyber, information, or military nodes can undermine that system. An approach spanning horizontally across these dimensions and vertically at the international, bilateral, and grassroots levels can erode it. But to decouple these actions from their objectives, the approach must also be synchronized across time and space and nested in purpose. Just as gray-zone actions should not be viewed in isolation, their counters should not be planned in isolation. A whole-of-government construct must underpin a counter-gray-zone strategy in such a way that detailed actions, reactions, and counteractions utilize the resources of the U.S. joint force, interagency, partners, and allies. Even when the military does not lead such an approach, it must operate in concert with the other elements of national power to both maximize effectiveness and appropriately adjust to changing conditions.

For the United States to apply these lessons requires an adjustment to its own system. The United States, with its exquisite capabilities, ready force, expansive economy, and network of allies and partners, has the tools available to counter gray-zone operations. According to Hal Brands, however, “it is not simply a matter of resources. It is a matter of orienting ourselves organizationally and conceptually to the challenge.”99 This case, alongside Chinese actions globally, demonstrates the significance of the challenge. The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy states that in terms of competition with the PRC, “the next ten years will be the decisive decade. We stand now at the inflection point, where the choices we make and the priorities we pursue today will set us on a course that determines our competitive position long into the future.”100

Those choices must be informed by a holistic understanding of the Chinese approach to war—from wholesale use of force to peacetime use of force. Their system thrives against disjointed allies, circumspect governments, isolated institutions, and uninformed populations. Before Galwan, India’s reluctance to commit to regional partnerships, careful maintenance of Sino-trade ties, complex political discourse, and diverse demographics theoretically presented the Chinese an ideal operational environment for gray-zone operations. Galwan changed that environment. Indian passions were inflamed, and strategic vulnerabilities were identified and hardened. According to a former senior Indian security official, the border clashes marked a “very fundamental change” that drove revisions in India’s “whole policy and discourse around China.”101 Given the scope and scale of China’s system, the adjustment to the U.S. system should also be fundamental.

The United States is capable of fundamental change. In 1986, the United States passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act after Operation Eagle Claw in Iran and Operation Urgent Fury in Granada exposed the military’s inability to collectively form a unified joint force.102 The congressional act fundamentally reshaped the Department of Defense’s (DOD) organizational structure and culture from the previous system established by the 1947 National Security Act. Before the Packard Commission exposed the depth of the problem, many in the services were calling for change.103 However, history shows that militaries, bureaucracies, and governments often possess organizational inertia that stifles change. Even when the environment demands adaptation, social impetuses present barriers.104 “Orienting organizationally and conceptually” must be a collective process among the DOD and every other component of the U.S. government that holds a tool or resource for countering China’s gray-zone strategy.

This collective process could start with the gaps presented by the United States’ own geopolitical construct. The U.S. Unified Campaign Plan drew the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility to include thirty-six countries, including the most populous nation in the world (China), the largest democracy (India), and a tenth of the fourteenth smallest nations in the world.105 Meanwhile the State Department draws its regional bureaus to oversee embassies and consulates and coordinate regional issues. These include the Bureaus of Near Eastern Affairs, African Affairs, and South and Central Asian Affairs.106 This means in the IOR there are three combatant commands and four regional bureaus. Given the first lesson from Galwan, this geographic misalignment between the State Department and DOD presents seams for China’s global gray-zone system to exploit.

It also prevents the United States from capitalizing on the second lesson. While China may be constrained from a rigorous system-of-systems approach, the United States suffers a systems-in-systems problem. In the late 1980s, John Boyd highlighted that horizontal command channels, present multiple centers of gravity.107 Targeting these horizontal command channels can lead to “non-cooperative centers of gravity,” causing “strategic paralysis.”108 However, “non-cooperative centers of gravity” can develop organically. A horizontal system that delineates by government function and geographical alignment becomes fraught with constraints. Competition for resources, institutional heuristics, organization specific language, and fragmented discourse arise naturally. These bureaucratic barriers, wedged into a system that strives for whole-of-government in an environment that demands unity of action, fractures the strategic approach. The third lesson arises from humans breaking from the confines of an authority. Inversely, humans can work against each other in a disjunctive system. In the gray zone, this noncooperation presents strategic targets.

Fundamental change is required to apply the final lesson and forge an adaptable whole-of-government approach to exploit the vulnerabilities of the Chinese gray-zone system. Many have offered solutions. These range from concepts of regionally based joint interagency commands to dissolving geographical combatant commands and reassigning military engagement missions to interagency leads or the joint staff.109 Aligning to the threat offers another model. This would involve the iterative inputs from strategic documents to regularly guide the ratio of diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement capabilities against the threat. In China’s case, it would allow the United States to regularly calibrate its system against China’s gray-zone system. Aligning against purpose, rather than geography and function, would also address the institutional stove-piping that presents “non-cooperative centers of gravity.”110 Enhancing education, either through a model such as the professional military education or utilizing private institutions, would further develop cultural connective tissue amongst departments and agencies.

Like the Packard Commission and Goldwater-Nichols Act, a collective analysis and subsequent synthesis of the current system must be driven from the highest levels of the U.S. government. This process requires academic, social, and bureaucratic drivers—processes which are themselves gray-zone targets. While a bloody clash on some disputed frontier may spur collective action in the United States, the Chinese have already learned from Galwan. Time is of the essence.

Notes

1. Russell Goldman, “India-China Border Dispute: A Conflict Explained,” New York Times (website), 17 June 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/asia/india-china-border-clashes.html.
2. Hal Brands, “Paradoxes of the Gray Zone,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, 5 February 2016, https://www.fpri.org/article/2016/02/paradoxes-gray-zone/.
3. Ibid.
4. Jamshid Gharajedaghi, Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A Platform for Designing Business Architecture, 3rd ed. (Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann, 2011), 29, 48–49.
5. Bonny Lin et al., A New Framework For Understanding and Countering China’s Gray Zone Tactics (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2022), 4, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA594-1.html.
6. The sources range from zero to thirty-five Chinese soldiers and officers killed in the clash. Most of the sources cited in this article state at least four People’s Liberation Army soldiers were killed.
7. Ashley J. Tellis, Hustling in the Himalayas: The Sino-Indian Border Confrontation (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2020), 1–2, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2020/06/hustling-in-the-himalayas-the-sino-indian-border-confrontation.
8. Paul D. Shinkman, “U.S. Intel: China Ordered Attack on Indian Troops in Galwan River Valley,” U.S. News and World Report, 22 June 2020, https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2020-06-22/us-intel-source-china-ordered-attack-on-indian-troops-in-galwan-river-valley. U.S. News cited an unnamed U.S. intelligence official supporting India’s claim of an ambush.
9. “India and China Have Their First Deadly Clashes in 45 Years,” Economist (website), 18 June 2020, https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/06/18/india-and-china-have-their-first-deadly-clashes-in-45-years.
10. Hemant Adlakha, “Chinese View: India Thinks It Has Got the Better of China, So It Can Dare China,” Indian Defence Review (website), 28 September 2020, https://indiandefencereview.com/india-thinks-it-has-got-the-better-of-china-so-it-can-dare-china/.
11. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Roger T. Ames (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 111.
12. Sun Wu, The Wiles of War: 36 Military Strategies from Ancient China (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1996), 77, 115, 170.
13. Livia Kohn, Daoism Handbook (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2000), 4.
14. Qi Zhu, “Shi in Architecture: The Efficacy of Traditional Chinese Doors” (PhD diss., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2008), 13–14, https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/27733/Chapter_1.pdf.
15. Ibid., 14.
16. Ibid., 57–62.
17. Qiao Lang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America (Naples, IT: Albatross Publishers, 2020), 32.
18. Abhijit Singh, “China’s ‘Three Warfares’ and India,” Journal of Defence Studies 7, no. 4 (October-December, 2013): 28.
19. Dean Cheng, Winning Without Fighting: Chinese Legal Warfare (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 21 May 2012), https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/winning-without-fighting-chinese-legal-warfare.
20. Edmund J. Burke et al., People’s Liberation Army Operational Concepts (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020), 5, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA394-1.html.
21. Ibid., 8.
22. Timothy L. Thomas, The Dragon’s Quantum Leap: Transforming from a Mechanized to an Informatized Force (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, 2009), 8.
23. Ibid., 174.
24. James Char, “Understanding China’s Military Operations Other Than War,” The Diplomat (website), 25 June 2022, https://thediplomat.com/2022/06/understanding-chinas-military-operations-other-than-war/.
25. Fan Gaoyue and James Char, Introduction to China’s Military Operations Other Than War (Singapore: Nanyang Technological University, February 2019), 4.
26. Chinese Academy of Military Science, The Science of Military Strategy (2013), trans. Luis Ayala (pub. by author, 2018), 153.
27. Thomas, Dragon’s Quantum Leap, 185.
28. Ibid.
29. Jeffrey Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and Systems Destruction Warfare (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020), 10-15.
30. Yang Ying, “What Is the Purpose of the Use of Military Power in Peacetime [in Chinese],” China Military Network, 17 November 2022, http://www.81.cn/jwzl/2016-11/17/content_7364178.htm.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Jeffrey Gettlemen, Hari Kumar, and Sameer Yasir, “Worst Clash in Decades on Disputed India-China Border Kills 20 Indian Troops,” New York Times (website), 8 September 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/asia/indian-china-border-clash.html.
35. Robert Kaplan, Monsoon (New York: Random House, 2011), 134.
36. Dhruva Jaishankar, “Indian Ocean Region: A Pivot for India’s Growth,” Brookings Institution, 12 September 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/indian-ocean-region-a-pivot-for-indias-growth/.
37. Ibid.
38. Mohan Malik, “How China Brings India and America Closer,” Open (website), 17 July 2020, https://openthemagazine.com/essays/how-china-brings-india-and-america-closer/.
39. N. Manohran, “China and Its Peripheries: Beijing and India-Sri Lanka Relations,” Issue Brief #217 (New Delhi: Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, 7 May 2013), http://www.ipcs.org/issue_select.php?recNo=506.
40. Anita Inder Singh, “China’s Port Investment in Sri Lanka Reflect Competition with India in the Indian Ocean,” China Brief 21, no. 9 (May 2021), https://jamestown.org/program/chinas-port-investments-in-sri-lanka-reflect-competition-with-india-in-the-indian-ocean/.
41. “Nationalism and Geo-Politics Stall Colombo Port’s Development,” Hellenic Shipping News, 30 December 2020, https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/nationalism-and-geo-politics-stall-colombo-ports-development/.
42. Ishaan Tharoor, “China Has a Hand in Sri Lanka’s Economic Calamity,” Washington Post (website), 20 July 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/20/sri-lanka-china-debt-trap/.
43. Syah Vaghji, “What’s Behind the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor ‘Plus’ Initiative,” The Diplomat (website), 10 August 2022, https://thediplomat.com/2022/08/whats-behind-the-china-myanmar-economic-corridor-plus-initiative/.
44. Girish Linganna, “China’s Myanmar Kyaukpyu Port Sits Uncomfortably Close to the Indian Nuclear Submarine Base,” Frontier India, 24 December 2022, https://frontierindia.com/chinas-myanmar-kyaukpyu-port-sits-uncomfortably-close-to-the-indian-nuclear-submarine-base/.
45. Abhijit Singh, “China’s Military Base in Djibouti: Strategic Implications for India,” War on the Rocks, 21 August 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/chinas-military-base-in-djibouti-strategic-implications-for-india/.
46. Sankalp Gurjar, “Djibouti: The Organizing Principle of the Indo-Pacific,” Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs (website), 18 November 2021, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/JIPA/Display/Article/2847095/djibouti-the-organizing-principle-of-the-indo-pacific/.
47. Lorna Morley, India, China, Tibet (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1959), http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1959102100.
48. Jagannath P. Panda, “Foreseeing the China-India Boundary Dispute: 2022 and Beyond,” China Brief 21, no. 24 (2021), https://jamestown.org/program/foreseeing-the-china-india-boundary-dispute-2022-and-beyond/.
49. Neelam Pandey, “‘Shocked’ by BJP Membership Numbers, China’s Communist Party Wants to Know about Its Rise,” The Print, 11 September 2019, https://theprint.in/india/shocked-by-bjp-membership-numbers-chinas-communist-party-wants-to-know-about-its-rise/289705/.
50. Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1935), 16.
51. Emma Charlton, “Six Things to Know about China’s Historic Rise,” World Economic Forum, 1 October 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/china-economy-anniversary/.
52. Wayne M. Morris, China’s Economic Rise: History Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States, Congressional Research Service (CRS) No. RL33534 (Washington, DC: CRS, June 2019), 1, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL33534.
53. Krzyzstof Iwanek, “In Trade, China Has a Sharp Edge Over India, and Sharp Things Can Be Weaponized,” The Diplomat (website), 28 March 2022, https://thediplomat.com/2022/03/in-trade-china-has-a-sharp-edge-over-india-and-sharp-things-can-be-weaponized/.
54. Santosh Pai, “Deciphering India’s Dependency on Chinese Imports,” Institute of Chinese Studies, no. 120 (October 2020): 1, https://www.icsin.org/publications/deciphering-indias-dependency-on-chinese-imports.
55. Krishnakali Sengupta, “The Rise and Rise of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain in India,” Maersk, 27 February 2024, https://www.maersk.com/insights/growth/2024/02/27/pharmaceutical-supply-chain-in-india.
56. Iwanek, “In Trade, China Has a Sharp Edge.”
57. Yaruqhullah Khan, “Any Port in a Storm: India May Benefit from Sri Lanka’s Problems,” Moneycontrol, last updated 13 April 2022, https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/any-port-in-a-storm-india-looks-set-to-benefit-from-sri-lankas-problems-8357491.html.
58. Prakash Katoch, “Beijing’s Shadow on Indo-Japanese Project in Sri Lanka,” Indian Defence Review, 2 September 2024, https://indiandefencereview.com/beijings-shadow-on-indo-japanese-project-in-sri-lanka/.
59. P. Manoj, “Chinese Hand Seen Behind Blocking India’s Bid to Develop ECT at Colombo Port,” Hindu Business Line, 6 December 2021, https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/logistics/chinese-hand-seen-behind-blocking-indias-bid-to-develop-ect-in-colombo-port/article33760430.ece.
60. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2022 Annual Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review (Washington, DC: U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2022), 528–29, https://www.uscc.gov/annual-report/2022-annual-report-congress.
61. Ibid., 532–34; “Wang Yi Speaks with Sir Lankan Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena on the Phone,” Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Republic of Poland, 24 February 2021, http://pl.china-embassy.gov.cn/pol/zgyw/202102/t20210226_9847587.htm.
62. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2021 Report to Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review (Washington, DC: U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2021), 314, https://www.uscc.gov/annual-report/2021-annual-report-congress. These attacks may have been partially enabled by cyberespionage activities extending back to 2017 when Chinese hackers began targeting foreign ministries across the globe. For example, nearly five gigabytes of information was stolen from India’s Hindustan Petroleum Corp.
63. Insikt Group, China-Linked Group RedEcho Targets the Indian Power Sector Amid Heightened Border Tensions (Somerville, MA: Recorded Future, 28 February 2021), https://go.recordedfuture.com/redecho-insikt-group-report.
64. “JNPA Info,” Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority, accessed 3 October 2024, https://www.jnport.gov.in/page/overview/MzZYdVM4U0d4dFhMN0hKVlk4OStqQT09.
65. “Know Your Port,” V.O. Chidambaranar Port Authority, accessed 3 October 2024, https://www.vocport.gov.in/knowyourport.aspx.
66. David E. Sanger and Emily Schmall, “China Appears to Warn India: Push Too Hard and the Lights Could Go Out,” New York Times (website), 28 February 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/28/us/politics/china-india-hacking-electricity.html.
67. Insikt Group, China-Linked Group RedEcho Targets the Indian Power Sector amid Heightened Border Tensions, 7; Sahil Joshi and Divyesh Singh, “Mega Mumbai Power Outage May Be Result of Cyber Attack, Final Report Awaited,” India Today (website), 20 November 2020, https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/mumbai-power-outage-malware-attack-1742538-2020-11-20.
68. Sanger and Schmall, “China Appears to Warn India.”
69. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2021 Report to Congress, 314.
70. Antara Ghosal Singh and Sarah Cook, “Beijing’s Global Media Influence 2022,” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/country/india/beijings-global-media-influence/2022.
71. N. C. Bipindra, Mapping Chinese Footprint and Influence Operations in India (New Delhi: Law and Society Alliance, August 2021), 35.
72. Ibid.
73. Aparna Mishra, “News and Ebooks App DailyHunt Secures $25 Mn Funding,” Inc42, 15 October 2016, https://inc42.com/flash-feed/dailyhunt-25mn/.
74. Bipindra, Mapping Chinese Footprint and Influence Operations in India, 24.
75. Ananth Krishnan, “China Is Buying Good Press Across the World One Paid Journalist at a Time,” The Print, 24 November 2018, https://theprint.in/opinion/china-is-paying-foreign-journalists-including-from-india-to-report-from-beijing/154013/.
76. Bipindra, Mapping Chinese Footprint and Influence Operations in India, 21–25. Journalists involved in the program publicly maintained their independence following the backlash from the Galwan clashes.
77. “Police Arrested a Local Journalist Alleging Spying for China,” Reuters, 19 September 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/india-china/police-arrested-a-local-journalist-alleging-spying-for-china-idUSKCN26A0N6.
78. Bipindra, Mapping Chinese Footprint and Influence Operations in India, 29.
79. Ibid., 24.
80. ACN Correspondent, “CYL Coins ‘TICK’ Idea at SCO Youth Summit in China,” Asian Community News, 4 May 2019, https://www.asiancommunitynews.com/cyl-coins-tick-at-sco-youth-summit-in-china/.
81. Bipindra, Mapping Chinese Footprint and Influence Operations in India, 45–46.
82. Panda, “Foreseeing the China-India Boundary Dispute: 2022 and Beyond.”
83. Sim Tack, “A Military Drive Spells Out China’s Intent Along the Indian Border,” Stratfor Worldview, 22 September 2020, https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/military-drive-spells-out-chinas-intent-along-indian-border.
84. Jack Detsch, “Pentagon Worries About Chinese Buildup Near India,” Foreign Policy (website), 15 December 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/15/pentagon-india-china-border-buildup/.
85. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2021 Report to Congress, 313.
86. Aakriti Sharma, “Has India Finally Acknowledged That Chinese PLA Used Microwave Weapons against Indian Soldiers in Ladakh,” The Eurasian Times, 10 December 2022, https://eurasiantimes.com/has-india-finally-acknowledged-that-chinese-pla-used-microwave-weapons-against-indian-soldiers-in-ladakh/; Didi Tang, “Turns Ladakh Battleground with India into a ‘Microwave Oven,’” The Times (website), 17 November 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-turns-ladakh-battleground-with-india-into-a-microwave-oven-6tlwtrtzz. After initially denying the encounter, the Indian Ministry of Defense later admitted to the Chinese use of “unorthodox weapons.”
87. Jennifer Zeng (@jenniferzeng97), “#CCP expert, Prof #JinCanrong, Dean of the School of International Studies, #Renmin University of #China, revealed on Nov 11, in a TV program that the #PLA used directed-energy weapon (#MicrowaveWeapons) to attack #Indian soldiers at #Pangong Lake area,” X, 15 November 2020, 5:19 a.m., https://x.com/jenniferzeng97/status/1327934220967292929.
88. Nishtha Kaushiki, “Maritime Concerns with Big ‘Fish,’” The Pioneer, 4 October 2021, https://www.dailypioneer.com/2021/columnists/maritime-concerns-with-the----big-fish---.html.
89. Shuxian Luo, “China’s Land Border Law: A Preliminary Assessment,” Brookings Institution, 4 November 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/11/04/chinas-land-border-law-a-preliminary-assessment/.
90. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 75.
91. Harsh V. Pant et al., The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2021: Young India and the World (New Delhi: The Observer Research Foundation, August 2021),25..
92. Ibid., 25.
93. Vijay Gokhale, A Historical Evaluation of China’s India Policy: Lessons for India-China Relations (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2022), 23.
94. Tanvi Madan, “China Has Lost India: How Beijing’s Aggression Pushed New Delhi to the West,” Foreign Affairs (website), 4 October 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-has-lost-india.
95. Sheila A. Smith, “The Quad Is Getting More Ambitious in the Indo-Pacific,” Council on Foreign Relations, 27 May 2022, https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/quad-getting-more-ambitious-indo-pacific.
96. Anjana Pasricha, “India Dismisses Chinese Objections to India-US Military Drills Near Border,” VOA News, 1 December 2022, https://www.voanews.com/a/india-dismisses-chinese-objections-to-india-us-military-drills-near-border/6858186.html.
97. Lauren Frayer, “Why a Chinese Ship’s Arrival in Sri Lanka has Caused Alarm in India and the West,” National Public Radio, 19 August 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/08/19/1118113095/sri-lanka-china-ship-hambantota-port.
98. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 116.
99. Brands, “Paradoxes of the Gray Zone.”
100. The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White House, 2022), 24.
101. James Crabtree, “Why a Trade War With China Is a Bad Idea for India,” Foreign Policy (website), 29 June 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/29/trade-war-china-bad-idea-india-border-skirmish-boycott/.
102. Richard W. Stewart, American Military History, Volume II: The United States Army in a Global Era, 1917-2008 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2010), 406–7.
103. Ibid., 406.
104. Richard Simpkin, Race to the Swift (London: Brassey’s Defence, 1985), 4–8.
105. “About USINDOPACOM,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, accessed 27 August 2024, https://www.pacom.mil/About-USINDOPACOM/.
106. “Regional Offices,” U.S. Department of State, accessed 27 August 2024, https://www.state.gov/other-legal-advisor-offices/regional-offices/.
107. Fans P. B. Osinga, Science, Strategy, and War (New York: Routledge, 2007) 146.
108. John Boyd, “Patterns of Conflict,” ed. Chet Richards and Chuck Spinney (PowerPoint presentation, Defense and the National Interest, January 2007), slides 115–17.
109. Wilson Vorndick, “Home and Forward Commands Should Replace the Geographic Combatant Commands,” War on the Rocks, 12 July 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/07/home-and-forward-commands-should-replace-the-geographic-combatant-commands/; Jeffrey Buchanan, Maxie Y. Davis, and Lee T. Wight, “Death of the Combatant Command? Toward a Joint Interagency Approach,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 52 (1st Quarter, 2009): 92, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/portals/68/documents/jfq/jfq-52.pdf; Benjamin H. Friedman and Harvey M. Sapolsky, “Shut Down the US Combatant Command,” CATO Institute, 30 September 2013, https://www.cato.org/commentary/shut-down-us-combatant-commands.
110. David S. Fadok, John Boyd, and John Warden, Air Powers Quest for Strategic Paralysis (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1995), 20.

Maj. Dustin Lawrence, U.S. Army, is the operations officer at 1st Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment Airborne (Geronimo). He holds a BA from Valparaiso University, an MMAS from the Command and General Staff College, and an MA in military arts from the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Prior to joining the Army, he worked as a journalist. During his career, he served in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, 199th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, the Maneuver Capability Development Integration Directorate, V Corps, and Geronimo.

2. Trump Says He Will Nominate Kash Patel to Run F.B.I.

Trump Says He Will Nominate Kash Patel to Run F.B.I.

President-elect Donald J. Trump turned to a firebrand loyalist to become director of the bureau, which he sees as part of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy against him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/30/us/politics/trump-replace-christopher-wray.html?smtyp=cur&smid=bsky-nytimes

Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in July.Credit...Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times

By Devlin Barrett and Maggie Haberman

Reporting from Washington

Nov. 30, 2024, 7:00 p.m. ET

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he wants to replace Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, with Kash Patel, a hard-line critic of the bureau who has called for shutting down the agency’s Washington headquarters, firing its leadership and bringing the nation’s law enforcement agencies “to heel.”

Mr. Trump’s planned nomination of Mr. Patel has echoes of his failed attempt to place another partisan firebrand, Matt Gaetz, atop the Justice Department as attorney general. It could run into hurdles in the Senate, which will be called on to confirm him, and is sure to send shock waves through the F.B.I., which Mr. Trump and his allies have come to view as part of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.

Mr. Patel has been closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s belief that much of the nation’s law enforcement and national security establishment needs to be purged of bias and held accountable for what they see as unjustified investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump and his allies.

Mr. Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability and the Constitution,” Mr. Trump said in announcing his choice in a social media post.

He called Mr. Patel “a brilliant lawyer, investigator and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American people.”

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Mr. Patel, a favorite of Mr. Trump’s political base, has worked as a federal prosecutor and a public defender, but has little of the law enforcement and management experience typical of F.B.I. directors.

He served in a series of administration positions at the tail end of Mr. Trump’s first term, including posts on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon. Before leaving office in early 2021, Mr. Trump floated the idea of making Mr. Patel deputy director of either the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. William P. Barr, the attorney general at the time, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Patel would have become deputy F.B.I. director only “over my dead body.”

The announcement also underscores Mr. Trump’s intense dislike of Mr. Wray, the current director, whose 10-year term does not expire until 2027. Mr. Trump, who appointed Mr. Wray to the job, suggested earlier this year that Mr. Wray resign. In declaring well before being sworn into office that he wants a new director, Mr. Trump was pushing Mr. Wray to resign before he is fired.

Current and former law enforcement officials have worried that a second Trump term would feature an assault on the independence and authority of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and for many of them, the selection of Mr. Patel would confirm the worst of those fears.

Mr. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the F.B.I. and Justice Department in a book, “Government Gangsters,” calling for clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called “a threat to the people.” He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” telling through fantasy the story of the investigations into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russians.

He has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute journalists once he is back in government, adding that he would “follow the facts and the law.”

“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he said last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

In planning to remove Mr. Wray from atop the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, Mr. Trump would be echoing one of the most defining acts of his first term, his dismissal of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director as investigations of Trump associates began to heat up.

Mr. Patel became enmeshed in one of the federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump directed by Jack Smith, the special counsel. He was called to testify before the grand jury hearing evidence about Mr. Trump’s possession of highly classified documents after leaving office, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a secret proceeding.

Mr. Patel’s testimony was sought to help prosecutors understand what defense, if any, Mr. Trump and his associates could offer that the former president might have declassified some of the material.

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

3. The Kash Patel Principle

I think we can say without any doubt that big changes are ahead for the US government.

The Kash Patel Principle

Donald Trump’s choice for FBI director speaks volumes about his real second-term agenda.

By Tom Nichols

The Atlantic · by Tom Nichols · December 1, 2024

Donald Trump has been releasing names of his nominees for the Cabinet and other senior posts in waves. He began with some relatively conventional choices, and then unloaded one bombshell after another, perhaps in an attempt to paralyze opposition in the Senate with a flood of bad nominees or to overwhelm the public’s already limited political attention span. He’s chosen a Fox News host with a sordid personal history to lead the Pentagon, an apologist for dictators in Russia and Syria to be the director of national intelligence, and an anti-vax, anti-science activist to be the nation’s top health official.

Trump has now added yet another dangerous nomination to this list. In a Saturday-night post on his social-media site, Truth Social, he announced that he is nominating Kash Patel, a former federal prosecutor, to serve as the director of the FBI. A Patel nomination to some position in the law-enforcement or intelligence spheres has always been lurking out there as a possibility, and Trump may have held off announcing it until he felt he had protracted enough outrage (and exhaustion) with his other nominations.

Patel’s nomination is shocking in many ways, not least because the FBI already has a director, Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed to a 10-year term only seven years ago and whom he would have to fire almost immediately to make way for Patel. Worse, Patel is a conspiracy theorist even by the standards of MAGA world. Like other senior Trump nominees, his primary qualification for the job appears to be his willingness to do Trump’s bidding without hesitation. Patel will likely face a difficult path to confirmation in the Senate.

For Trump, naming Patel to the post serves several purposes. First, Trump is taking his razor-thin election win as a mandate to rule as he pleases, and Patel is the perfect nominee to prove that he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Even knowing what they know, Americans chose to return Trump to office, and he has taken their decision as a license to do whatever he wants—including giving immense power to someone like Patel.

Second, Trump wants to show that the objections of senior elected Republicans are of no consequence to him, and that he can politically flatten them at will. Some of his nominations seem like a trollish flex, a way to display his power by naming people to posts and daring others to stop him. Trump has always thought of the GOP as his fiefdom and GOP leaders as his vassals—and if the Senate folds on Patel and others, he may be proved right on both counts.

This approach backfired when Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general flamed out quickly in the face of likely defeat in the Senate, but Trump seems confident that he can get most of his other picks across the finish line, even nominees who would have stood little chance of confirmation in previous administrations. And Trump always keeps pushing limits: In place of Gaetz, he sent forward the more competent but equally committed MAGA loyalist Pam Bondi, who has aroused far less opposition.

Trump has made clear how much he hates the FBI, and he has convinced his MAGA base that it’s a nest of political corruption. In a stunning reversal of political polarity, a significant part of the law-and-order GOP now regards the men and women of federal law enforcement with contempt and paranoia. If Trump’s goal is to break the FBI and undermine its missions, Kash Patel is the perfect nominee. Some senior officials would likely resign rather than serve under Patel, which would probably suit Trump just fine.

Of course, this means the FBI would struggle to do the things it’s supposed to be doing, including fighting crime and conducting counterintelligence work against America’s enemies. But it would become an excellent instrument of revenge against anyone Trump or Patel identifies as an internal enemy—which, in Trump’s world, is anyone who criticizes Donald Trump.

The Russians speak of “power ministries,” the departments that have significant legal and coercive capacity. In the United States, those include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community. Trump has now named sycophants to lead each of these institutions, a move that eliminates important obstacles to his frequently expressed desires to use the armed forces, federal law-enforcement agents, intelligence professionals, and government lawyers as he chooses, unbounded by the law or the Constitution.

If you want to assemble the infrastructure of an authoritarian government, this is how you do it.

The early-20th-century Peruvian strongman Óscar R. Benavides once stated a simple principle that Trump now appears to be pursuing when he said: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” It falls now to the Republican members of the Senate to decide whether Trump can impose this formula on the United States.

The Atlantic · by Tom Nichols · December 1, 2024

4. Trump Picks Kash Patel as FBI Director

Trump Picks Kash Patel as FBI Director

President-elect chooses loyalist as he looks to force out the current director, Christopher Wray

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-picks-kash-patel-as-fbi-director-06a1cdc2?mod=latest_headlines

By Sadie Gurman

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Updated Nov. 30, 2024 9:44 pm ET

Kash Patel speaking at an October 2022 rally in Nevada. Photo: José Luis Villegas/Press pool

WASHINGTON—Donald Trump has chosen Kash Patel to be Federal Bureau of Investigation director, moving to force out the bureau’s current leader, Christopher Wray, before the end of his 10-year term in favor of a fierce loyalist who has promised to upend the nation’s premier law-enforcement agency.

His selection, which could face an uphill confirmation fight next year in the Senate, marks the start of what the president-elect hopes will be a major shake-up of an agency with which he has constantly sparred. Patel has said he would fire its senior leaders and prosecute agents he thinks abused their authority, as part of a far-ranging plan to shrink its size and power.

In a post on Truth Social on Saturday evening, Trump said Patel, 44 years old, has “spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.” Trump said Patel will “bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.”

Trump late Saturday also announced he wants Hillsborough County, Fla., Sheriff Chad Chronister to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, to replace Anne Milgram, a Biden appointee who was expected to leave at the start of Trump’s term.

The selection of Patel means Trump effectively is firing Wray, whom he appointed during his first term in 2017 after dismissing Wray’s predecessor, James Comey. And it signals other major changes lie ahead for the bureau. The president-elect has threatened to seek retribution against political rivals.

FBI Director Christopher Wray during a Justice Department meeting in September. Photo: roberto schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

 The FBI didn’t directly address Wray’s future in a statement Saturday night.

“Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing array of threats,” the bureau said in a statement. “Director Wray’s focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we do the work with, and the people we do the work for.”

While Trump had long been considering Patel for top national-security roles, including at the FBI, his selection as director came as a surprise to some within the Justice Department. Trump had been also considering more-mainstream choices such as former Rep. Mike Rogers, who had worked as a special agent, and Chris Swecker, who worked in the bureau for 24 years, including in senior roles.

“The agents and lawyers who think they can hide in the shadows while abusing their positions will be put on immediate notice,” Patel wrote in his book “Government Gangsters.” Trump called it a “brilliant road map” for his second term in the White House. 

The position, which requires Senate confirmation, would be a huge step in Patel’s rapid career ascension, which includes stints as a public defender, a federal prosecutor, a top House staffer and an aide in Trump’s first White House and Pentagon.

But his nomination could run into the same turbulence as some other Trump picks. Republicans will control the Senate, 53-47, next year and can afford no more than three defections for any nominee if all Democrats are opposed. Already, Trump’s initial attorney general selection, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration after it became clear he faced significant Republican opposition.

By tapping Patel, Trump would be pushing out Wray, the bureau’s restrained and circumspect director who has tried to steer the agency through years of political storms. In his place, he would put a swaggering campaign surrogate who has become one of the president-elect’s most trusted lieutenants. Trump would be doing so about three years before the end of Wray’s 10-year term. He seeks an ally willing to wield the bureau as a weapon against perceived enemies—including some within its ranks.  

Republicans for years have accused the FBI of overzealously targeting conservatives, a charge Wray, a Republican who served as a top Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, called “somewhat insane to me considering my own personal background.” But Patel has long articulated views that are outside the mainstream. Some inside the bureau—including those who have been critical of some of its decisions—have been dreading the prospect of Patel at its helm.

Patel, one of the FBI’s sharpest attackers, said in a September interview on the conservative podcaster Shawn Ryan’s show that he would “shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.” He suggested that the bureau had become too powerful and that he would strip it of its intelligence-gathering role and purge it of employees who refuse to go along with Trump’s agenda.

A person close to Wray said recently that he had been planning with his team to lead the agency at least through next year. But some FBI and Justice Department officials privately acknowledged that it was hard to see how Wray could stay on the job for a second Trump term, given how quickly Trump soured on Wray during years of federal investigations into the former president’s conduct. 

Trump’s allies have proposed FBI changes that include potentially giving political appointees at the Justice Department greater oversight of the bureau and its traditionally independent director, shrinking the size and power of its Washington headquarters and affording more resources instead to agents in the field. Some people in Trump’s orbit have suggested reviewing all of the FBI’s investigations and terminating those they find objectionable, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Trump has sought to overhaul the FBI since its probe into whether his campaign had worked with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, an investigation that spurred the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller. While his probe dogged Trump’s presidency, Mueller didn’t find a criminal conspiracy. 

The Justice Department, under the direction of special counsel Jack Smith, prosecuted Trump on charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election and mishandled classified documents after he left office. With Trump elected again, Smith successfully moved recently to drop both federal cases.

Patel has long been known as an ardent booster of causes that Trump favors. As an aide to then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he played a leading role in attempting to discredit investigations of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. Patel was a primary author of a 2018 memo, released by Nunes over the objections of the FBI, that accused federal investigators of bias against Trump and his team.

Since then, Patel has been known for pushing theories on social media that echo many of Trump’s own false claims about stolen elections and Covid vaccines.

In the final year of Trump’s first term, White House advisers floated a plan to replace Wray with another official and install Patel as the FBI’s deputy director. In his memoir, former Attorney General William Barr recalled abruptly leaving a meeting that he viewed as a setup to try to have him agree to a leadership change.

“Trump brought up the idea of changing FBI leadership a time or two again,” Barr wrote, adding, “Eventually the subject died.”

After the FBI’s unprecedented search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022 for classified documents that Trump was keeping there, Patel advanced a theory that the former president had declared the documents he kept as “declassified” while he was still in the White House and so it wouldn’t be a crime that he had them. 

Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com

5. On Brief Stop in U.S., Taiwan President Sends Signal to Both China and Trump

Excerpts:

The U.S. provides Taiwan with vital defensive assistance by selling it weapons, and President Biden has promised to support the island democracy in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The day before Lai’s trip, the departing Biden administration approved a $320 million sale of spare parts and advanced radars for U.S.-made F-16 jets, along with an additional $65 million sale of improved tactical communications equipment.

In response, China’s Foreign Ministry expressed strong opposition to the arms sales and said it has lodged a complaint with Washington. 

“This sends the wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists, harms U.S.-China relations, and undermines the stability of the Taiwan Strait,” the ministry said, vowing to take countermeasures.

Over the past three days, China has sent more than 60 warplanes and several additional warships near Taiwan, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. It also conducted a new round of joint combat-readiness patrols the day before Lai’s departure for the Pacific.

In a rare video directly addressing China’s People’s Liberation Army, Taiwan’s military showcased its jet fighters and warships firing missiles, vowing to “safeguard democracy” and saying it is ready to confront “peace disrupters threatening the region.”  

“If someone tries to disrupt regional stability or take away Taiwan’s democracy and freedom, we’ll stand firm and say no,” says a narrator, as text on screen refers to the Chinese army.

On Brief Stop in U.S., Taiwan President Sends Signal to Both China and Trump

In Hawaii, Lai Ching-te indicates Taipei isn’t seeking war with China, even as it counts on U.S. support to deter Beijing

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/on-delicate-trip-to-u-s-taiwan-president-sends-signal-to-both-china-and-trump-67e67286?mod=latest_headlines

By Joyu Wang

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Dec. 1, 2024 5:58 am ET

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te visited a World War II memorial at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Sunday. Photo: Akio Wang/AFP/Getty Images

HONOLULU—On the first day of a highly sensitive visit to the U.S., Taiwan President Lai Ching-te sent a firm but conciliatory message to both China and the incoming Trump administration: While Taipei doesn’t seek a war with Beijing, it is counting on U.S. support to deter any aggression from its larger neighbor.

“Peace is priceless, and war has no winners, we have to fight, fight together to prevent war,” Lai said at a speech in Honolulu, in the presence of members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, former U.S. officials and state lawmakers. 

Lai’s two-day stopover in Hawaii is part of a Pacific tour that is his first international trip as president. While the U.S. doesn’t have formal relations with Taipei—having severed them in 1979 when Washington established ties with Beijing—the U.S. is Taiwan’s staunchest ally.

As a result, Taiwan officials visit the U.S. in what are officially referred to as transits, careful arrangements between Washington and Taipei to allow its leaders to engage with each other on American soil.

Lai’s transit comes as the threat of Chinese aggression looms—Beijing condemned the trip and could launch military drills near Taiwan in response—and as questions swirl around the support the Trump administration would offer Taipei in case of an invasion.

The choreography of Lai’s trip reflected the delicate balance Taiwan must strike, maintaining the support of the U.S. while not provoking China. The Chinese Communist government, which considers Taiwan a part of China despite having never ruled there, has pledged to take it by force if necessary. Beijing opposes any official communication between Washington and Taipei. 

Earlier in the day, the Taiwanese president paid tribute to American soldiers at a World War II memorial marking the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a stark reminder of the dangers of a war of aggression. And in a speech he gave before departing Taiwan, Lai emphasized Taiwan’s democratic values—an implicit rebuke to China’s system.

“The world can see that Taiwan is not only a model of democracy but also a key force in promoting global peace, stability and prosperity,” he said.

Lai, in a photo released by his office, greeted Taiwanese people based in Hawaii on Sunday. Photo: Liu Shu Fu/Taiwan Presidential Office/Shutterstock

The choice of Lai’s itinerary highlights the support that Taiwan hopes to receive from the U.S. in case of a Chinese invasion. Lai will also stop in Guam; together with Hawaii, the island is home to American military installations that could be involved in any conflict over Taiwan. 

Not far from Pearl Harbor sits the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the American unified combat command for the region, part of a dozen key military installations across the state.

Lai avoided a visit to the U.S. mainland that could have generated more friction with Beijing during the current presidential transition. In 2023, then Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen conducted a tour of the U.S. that brought her to California and New York, where she met with a bipartisan group of senators, as well as then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.). China denounced the visit.

The U.S. provides Taiwan with vital defensive assistance by selling it weapons, and President Biden has promised to support the island democracy in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The day before Lai’s trip, the departing Biden administration approved a $320 million sale of spare parts and advanced radars for U.S.-made F-16 jets, along with an additional $65 million sale of improved tactical communications equipment.

In response, China’s Foreign Ministry expressed strong opposition to the arms sales and said it has lodged a complaint with Washington. 

“This sends the wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists, harms U.S.-China relations, and undermines the stability of the Taiwan Strait,” the ministry said, vowing to take countermeasures.

Over the past three days, China has sent more than 60 warplanes and several additional warships near Taiwan, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. It also conducted a new round of joint combat-readiness patrols the day before Lai’s departure for the Pacific.

In a rare video directly addressing China’s People’s Liberation Army, Taiwan’s military showcased its jet fighters and warships firing missiles, vowing to “safeguard democracy” and saying it is ready to confront “peace disrupters threatening the region.”  

“If someone tries to disrupt regional stability or take away Taiwan’s democracy and freedom, we’ll stand firm and say no,” says a narrator, as text on screen refers to the Chinese army.

Upon landing at Honolulu International Airport, Lai was greeted on the plane by Ingrid Larson, managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s Washington office—the U.S. office that handles ties with Taiwan. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green also met him.

On Saturday afternoon, Lai visited the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, his first visit to a U.S. government agency during this trip. According to Lai’s spokeswoman, the aim was to strengthen collaboration with the U.S. on disaster resilience. Since he took office in May, ramping up civil-defense preparedness—including a response to Chinese aggression—has been one of Lai’s key priorities. 

During his Pacific tour, Lai is scheduled to visit the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau—three of Taiwan’s 12 official remaining diplomatic allies. The number of countries that have maintained official relations with Taiwan has diminished over the years, sometimes under pressure from Beijing.

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

6. China Is Studying Russia’s Sanctions Evasion to Prepare for Taiwan Conflict

The real fight may be an economic warfare fight.

Excerpts:

“For the Chinese, Russia is really a sandbox on how sanctions work and how to manage them,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who focuses on China-Russia relations. “They know that if there is a Taiwan contingency, the tool kit that will be applied against them will be similar.”

People close to Beijing’s decision-making cautioned that the study group doesn’t mean the country is readying an invasion. Rather, Beijing is preparing for the “extreme scenario” of an armed conflict and its economic repercussions, the people said. 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the country “has always been committed to conducting normal exchanges and cooperation with all countries in the world, including Russia, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.”

China Is Studying Russia’s Sanctions Evasion to Prepare for Taiwan Conflict

Officials report back to Beijing with lessons it can use in the event of war and Western penalties

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-is-studying-russias-sanctions-evasion-to-prepare-for-taiwan-conflict-5665f508?mod=latest_headlines

By Georgi Kantchev

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 and Lingling Wei

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Updated Dec. 1, 2024 12:01 am ET

A Moscow storefront in mid-November displayed exchange rates for the ruble, which has slumped in the wake of sanctions. Photo: Yuri Kochetkov/Shutterstock

China has been supporting Russia’s economy since the start of the Ukraine war by buying its oil while supplying it with everything from microelectronics to washing machines.

Meanwhile, Beijing has been getting its own strategic benefit: a real-world case study in how to circumvent Western sanctions.

An interagency group, set up by China in the months following the full-scale invasion, has studied the impact of sanctions and produced reports regularly for the country’s leadership, according to people familiar with the matter. The goal is to draw lessons about how to mitigate them, particularly in case a conflict over Taiwan prompts the U.S. and its allies to impose similar penalties on China, the people said.

As part of the effort, Chinese officials periodically visit Moscow to meet with the Russian Central Bank, the Finance Ministry and other agencies involved in countering sanctions, the people said.

The Chinese study effort, which hasn’t previously been reported, is emblematic of the new age of economic warfare unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where the lines between economic policy and geopolitical strategy are increasingly blurred. That trend is only likely to be amplified by Donald Trump’s second presidential term, where he plans to turbocharge the use of tariffs as a tool for negotiation and coercion.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, pictured with Vladimir Putin, has consulted officials as to how to shield Beijing’s foreign reserves. Photo: Maxim Shipenkov/Shutterstock

Russia’s economy has been surprisingly resilient throughout the Ukraine war, but it has shown fresh signs of cracking under Western pressure recently. In the past week, the Russian ruble plunged to its lowest point since the early days of the conflict after the U.S. imposed new banking sanctions.

Moscow owes much of its economic durability to its oil exports and its cooperation with Beijing, as the leaders of both countries seek to challenge the U.S.-led world order. The group that was established shows how deep that collaboration has been, and that Beijing’s support hasn’t entirely been a one-way street with Moscow as the beneficiary.

“For the Chinese, Russia is really a sandbox on how sanctions work and how to manage them,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who focuses on China-Russia relations. “They know that if there is a Taiwan contingency, the tool kit that will be applied against them will be similar.”

People close to Beijing’s decision-making cautioned that the study group doesn’t mean the country is readying an invasion. Rather, Beijing is preparing for the “extreme scenario” of an armed conflict and its economic repercussions, the people said. 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the country “has always been committed to conducting normal exchanges and cooperation with all countries in the world, including Russia, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.”

The Russian Central Bank and the Russian Finance Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

The Chinese island of Pingtan lies just across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan’s main island. Photo: Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

One area of particular concern for China is its more than $3.3 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, the world’s largest. The moves by the U.S. and its allies to freeze Russian assets abroad following the Ukraine invasion prompted Beijing to more actively look for ways to diversify its stockpile away from dollar-denominated assets, such as U.S. Treasury bonds. 

In a sign of heightened top-level attention on sanction risks associated with the reserves, China’s leader Xi Jinping paid a rare visit to China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange in the fall of 2023, the people close to Beijing’s decision-making said. During the visit, Xi raised the question of how to safeguard the reserves, the people said.

The Chinese interagency group on Russian sanctions reports to He Lifeng, China’s vice premier overseeing economic and financial affairs. He, who has a direct line to Xi, has been the chief architect for ringfencing China’s economy from Western sanctions.

Beijing is “very interested in practically everything: from ways of circumventing them to all sorts of positive effects, such as incentives for the development of domestic production,” said a person familiar with China’s outreach to Russia on sanctions. 

The Russia-China relationship has blossomed since the invasion. Bilateral trade reached a record $240 billion last year, juiced by Russian oil sales. Around 60% of newly sold cars in Russia are Chinese, according to Russian data provider Autostat.

But the relationship has been lopsided: While China accounts for around a third of Russia’s overall trade, Russia makes up a small part of China’s. Much of Russia’s exports is made up of oil and natural gas that China can get elsewhere.

That means that, if the tables were turned, Moscow wouldn’t be able to provide as much support to China’s economy. That is why Xi has been directing officials to promote trade and deepen economic ties with Russia to achieve a greater “internal driver” for the relationship, according to the people close to Beijing’s decision-making.

While the U.S. has already imposed sanctions on China, including export restrictions on advanced semiconductors and measures against telecommunications giant Huawei, a crisis over Taiwan could lead to an economic war of a different magnitude.

Full-scale financial sanctions by the West would disrupt the country’s financial system, interrupt trade and put $3.7 trillion in Chinese overseas bank assets and reserves at risk, according to a report last year by the Atlantic Council and Rhodium Group think tanks.

U.S. restrictions on exporting advanced semiconductors to China have affected companies such as Nvidia. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Russia reacted to Western sanctions by redirecting commodity flows, injecting massive fiscal stimulus into the economy and evading export controls via neighboring countries. These measures stabilized the Russian economy and enabled Moscow to continue prosecuting its war, even as sanctions have hampered the long-term growth outlook for the country.

One major lesson for China from Russia’s experience has been the importance of preparation, analysts say. Before the war, Russia had sought to diversify its foreign reserves, de-dollarize its economy and build domestic financial plumbing. Even though its success was mixed, those moves helped shield the Russian economy and buy it time to adapt. 

Another lesson for China is the value—and limits—of coalitions. The U.S., the U.K., the European Union and other allies worked in unison to expel major Russian banks from the Swift financial network and impose an oil price cap, while Russia countered by strengthening ties with China, Iran and North Korea.

“China learned that the West can get their act together on sanctions when they have to,” said Agathe Demarais, senior policy fellow for geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Meanwhile, Russia has found its own allies.”

At the same time, disagreements in the Western coalition, especially over oil sanctions due to inflation concerns, have hampered their response. And with China having a much larger footprint in the world economy, the global costs of sanctions are expected to be much higher. At least $3 trillion in trade and financial flows—roughly the equivalent of France’s annual gross domestic product—would be at risk of disruption, according to estimates by the Atlantic Council and Rhodium Group.

Nevskiy Prospect, shown in 2020, is among the Russia-linked tankers that have sailed under other countries’ flags during the Ukraine war. Photo: Yoruk Isik/Reuters

“One of the lessons from the sanctions on Russia is that once you start imposing them on a large economy there are economic and political ramifications at home,” said Edward Fishman, a former State Department sanctions official and author of the forthcoming book “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare.”

China, a major manufacturer, also learned from Russia’s experience about the potential pitfalls of being connected to global supply chains. 

For years, Russia had tried—and mostly failed—to make its economy self-sufficient. When sanctions hit, Moscow found itself deeply reliant on Western parts it suddenly couldn’t get. That led to shortages and temporary shutdowns of whole industries, such as carmaking. When they later rebooted, Russian carmakers initially made cars without air bags and other safety features because they didn’t have the parts they needed. 

“Sanctions can be really disruptive for any production sector that is enmeshed in global supply chains,” Fishman said. “That makes China highly vulnerable.”

How Russia found ways around such restrictions, however, provides yet another lesson for Beijing, even though China’s vastly larger economy would require a far greater evasion effort.

To bypass the oil price cap, for example, Moscow uses a network of tankers not owned by Western countries or insured by Western companies. More than half of Russia’s seaborne oil is now transported with this so-called shadow fleet, analysts say, and the U.S. and its allies have been racing to target vessels with sanctions.

Meanwhile, Russia found a route through ex-Soviet republics to acquire banned Western goods from luxury cars to dual-use goods with military applications such as microchips in what has come to be known as the “Eurasian roundabout.”

Write to Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com and Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com

7. How a Young Chinese Nationalist Turned Her Back on Beijing

The truth will set you free.

Soft power influence?

Excerpts:

U.S. leaders had long hoped that educational exchanges that brought hundreds of thousands of Chinese students to American campuses would mean democratic ideas would flow back to China and lead to a more open society. Those hopes never quite materialized. 

Nonetheless, many young Chinese while abroad get their first uncensored insights into controversies in China’s past, such as the Tiananmen massacre, and current ones, including the suppression of Uyghurs or the demonstrations that mushroomed across major Chinese cities in 2022.

For many little pinks, the patriotic zeal doesn’t go all that deep and sometimes gives way in the face of such exposure, said Weirong Guo, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University who studies the Chinese diaspora. 

Guo found that half of the 93 students she interviewed between 2019 and 2021 embraced liberal and democratic ideals. Within this group of liberal-leaning students, a third said they had previously been supportive of China’s governance. 

For many, a trigger in their turnaround was Beijing’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Stringent, monthslong lockdowns ultimately led to large-scale protests in late 2022. Overseas, thousands of young Chinese attended demonstrations to support protesters in China. 

Zhu, who then lived in Seattle, attended a rally at the University of Washington. “It was shocking to hear so many Chinese chant, ‘Xi Jinping, step down!’ ” Zhu recalled.

She wore a face mask but still worried that she would be recognized. For years, Chinese international students were cautious about expressing criticism of Beijing on university campuses for fear of being harassed by their nationalist peers. 

How a Young Chinese Nationalist Turned Her Back on Beijing

Studying overseas, a former ‘little pink’ started questioning her patriotic education

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/how-a-young-chinese-nationalist-turned-her-back-on-beijing-69bea291?mod=latest_headlines

By Shen Lu

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 | Photographs by Kaylee Greenlee for WSJ

Updated Dec. 1, 2024 12:03 am ET

When Alex Zhu, a native of China’s Shandong province, studied in Europe in 2017, she had many fights with her classmates about the Dalai Lama. 

Her best friend, a Danish student, admired the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet as a symbol of peace. Zhu considered him an extremist working to wrest Tibet from China. She thought her friends were brainwashed; they were amused by her venom against the Buddhist spiritual leader. 

Zhu, now in her early 30s, was one of many outspoken Chinese students around the world who were quick to defend China. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s talk of a “China Dream,” what he has called “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” helped fuel nationalistic fervor among young Chinese. Groups of Chinese students in the U.S. made headlines as they defended Beijing’s human-rights record or denounced Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters. 

They became known as “little pinks.” Zhu is one of many who have since made a 180-degree turn, becoming fierce critics of the Communist Party. The pandemic was a turning point for many Chinese, who grew increasingly angry over Beijing’s heavy-handed Covid-19 restrictions and suppression of information.

Even though she lives abroad, she preferred using her English first name for this article for fear of repercussions should she return to China. 

Zhu describes herself as a little pink when she arrived in Europe with an undergraduate degree from a Chinese university and immense pride in her home country. She grew up during China’s economic boom and a wave of patriotic education in schools to prevent a repeat of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. 

Alex Zhu is one of many Chinese who have made a 180-degree turn, becoming critics of the Communist Party.

In Europe, all that she had believed came into question—especially after she fell in love with an American.

At the time, the West started accusing Chinese authorities of a mass detention of Uyghurs in China’s far-western Xinjiang region, part of its forced-assimilation campaign of mostly Muslim minorities. Beijing denied the allegations, describing the camps as vocational training centers to “deradicalize” people suspected of extremism. Zhu and her boyfriend argued about it constantly. He printed out articles about the camps; she refused to read each one.

“I thought that just glancing at them meant I would be brainwashed by Western capitalism,” Zhu said.

Within months, the couple was on the verge of a breakup. “I loved this person so much I started doing my own research,” she said. Reading accounts by Uyghurs online and in Western media, she was shaken: “One Uyghur in exile might be telling a lie, but when 100 or more people come forward to share their stories, you just start to believe it is credible.”

The arguments continued after Zhu moved back to China with her boyfriend in tow. In 2019, when they were living in Shanghai, the relationship came close to collapse over the pro-democracy protests taking place in Hong Kong.

Zhu, who was reading the nationalist Chinese tabloid Global Times, published by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, saw the protesters as rioters attacking police and residents. Her boyfriend, by contrast, was moved by the energy of the protests. She thought he was crazy, asking, “How can you support such violence?” 

Demonstrators in a cloud of tear gas during a 2019 standoff with police in Hong Kong. Photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters

In July 2019, the couple took a trip to Hong Kong. Zhu avoided the protests but was exposed to pepper spray while waiting for her cheung fun rice noodle rolls at a food stand. As she started coughing and tearing up, a team of demonstrators carrying first-aid kits arrived, offering eye drops and helping to regulate the breathing of those sprayed. 

“I felt an electric current in the air, making me feel both tense and a bit excited,” Zhu said. Hong Kongers’ grievances started to make sense to her. “My suspicion was cast aside by tear gas,” she said.

When the pandemic hit, Zhu, like many Chinese, was upset to learn how authorities in Wuhan, the epicenter of Covid, covered up early signs of the virus. Like others, she grieved the death of Li Wenliang, a doctor who had been interrogated by authorities after he issued early warnings about the virus, and then succumbed to it.

Zhu started seeing a surge of social-media posts from desperate Wuhan residents seeking help. Then the posts vanished. She began taking screenshots of everything that might be prone to censorship, even creating a Telegram channel broadcasting to a small group of friends and colleagues the archived information about the suffering.

In spring 2020, Zhu and her boyfriend left Shanghai for the U.S. Her first American job was at an independent publication monitoring China’s internet, archiving news and information prone to censorship.

U.S. leaders had long hoped that educational exchanges that brought hundreds of thousands of Chinese students to American campuses would mean democratic ideas would flow back to China and lead to a more open society. Those hopes never quite materialized. 

Nonetheless, many young Chinese while abroad get their first uncensored insights into controversies in China’s past, such as the Tiananmen massacre, and current ones, including the suppression of Uyghurs or the demonstrations that mushroomed across major Chinese cities in 2022.

For many little pinks, the patriotic zeal doesn’t go all that deep and sometimes gives way in the face of such exposure, said Weirong Guo, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University who studies the Chinese diaspora. 

Alex Zhu reaches over her shoulder to a shadow of her husband’s hand.

Guo found that half of the 93 students she interviewed between 2019 and 2021 embraced liberal and democratic ideals. Within this group of liberal-leaning students, a third said they had previously been supportive of China’s governance. 

For many, a trigger in their turnaround was Beijing’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Stringent, monthslong lockdowns ultimately led to large-scale protests in late 2022. Overseas, thousands of young Chinese attended demonstrations to support protesters in China. 

Zhu, who then lived in Seattle, attended a rally at the University of Washington. “It was shocking to hear so many Chinese chant, ‘Xi Jinping, step down!’ ” Zhu recalled.

She wore a face mask but still worried that she would be recognized. For years, Chinese international students were cautious about expressing criticism of Beijing on university campuses for fear of being harassed by their nationalist peers. 

Around the same time, a former Berklee College of Music student, Xiaolei Wu, stalked and threatened someone who was posting fliers around campus supporting democracy in China. Wu was later convicted by a federal jury and sentenced to nine months in prison over his threats. The news was widely circulated on Chinese social media. 

In the past few years, Chinese students critical of Beijing have become more vocal, according to some professors. “I’m seeing more openness to liberal ideas among some of my Chinese students,” said Thomas Kellogg, who teaches Chinese law and governance at Georgetown University. He said some students are starting to embrace public protest as a response to the closing space for expression in China.

In 2023, after a Chinese art student scrawled Communist Party slogans on a graffiti wall in London, others soon covered the slogans with Chinese references to the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and criticism of Xi and his handling of Covid.

Since 1979, more than eight million people in China have studied abroad, according to official Chinese government data. More than 70% eventually returned to China, where, at least during China’s boom years, many saw better job prospects. While most still go back, university professors said they are seeing more Chinese students who have sought ways to stay on.

Alex Zhu said the process of throwing out everything she learned in China has been draining and painful.

In the past two years, more Chinese from different backgrounds have fled China, wary of the gloomy economic outlook or tightening political suppression. For some, a student visa is a ticket out. 

Yingyi Ma, a sociologist at Syracuse University and author of “Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education,” said most Chinese undergraduate students in a class she teaches plan to pursue advanced degrees so they can stay in the U.S. for a while.

The process of Zhu’s throwing out everything she learned growing up in China has been draining and painful, with each fact-check a shock to her belief system. “It was a process of breaking yourself,” she said. “Because you had to admit that you had been dumb all these years and you’d never questioned what you were told.”

Zhu married her boyfriend in mid-2020. This past summer, she left her job monitoring Chinese social media. She deleted X from her phone and is spending more time with her friends in the U.S. 

In the wake of what Zhu sees as her political awakening, a divide has grown between her and her mother. The two now have the kind of arguments Zhu once had with her boyfriend. Zhu feels she has to counter her mother’s growing hostility toward Japan and the U.S., countries Beijing portrays as bullies. 

But she picks her battles carefully, remembering her own nationalist fervor not that long ago. “Look, I was there myself,” she said.

Write to Shen Lu at shen.lu@wsj.com

8. The Whiz Kid Who Made Billions for Yale Is Rethinking His China Strategy

It is a complicated world.

The Whiz Kid Who Made Billions for Yale Is Rethinking His China Strategy

Lei Zhang helped university endowments and foundations make big returns in his native country, then the U.S. soured on China

https://www.wsj.com/business/lei-zhang-yale-china-hillhouse-whiz-kid-investor-baa4ec75?mod=Searchresults_pos5&page=1

By Rebecca Feng

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 and Juliet Chung

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Nov. 29, 2024 9:00 pm ET

More than two decades ago, Lei Zhang, then a student at Yale’s School of Management, landed an internship with David Swensen, the legendary manager of the university’s endowment.

He was an unusual candidate for that time. He grew up in the middle-most part of the Middle Kingdom in China. In 1990, he scored first place in Henan province in liberal-arts subjects on the national college-entrance exam. That earned him entry to top-ranked Renmin University of China in Beijing where he studied international finance.

Swensen was so impressed by Zhang as an intern that a few years later, after a visit to Beijing, he handed over $20 million of the university’s money to Zhang to manage. It was the first time anyone had entrusted investment decisions to Zhang, then in his early 30s and working in Asia. He named his fledgling investment firm Hillhouse after the tree-lined street in New Haven, Conn., where Yale’s endowment office was located when he interned there.

Zhang invested much of the $20 million in Tencent, a Chinese company with a messaging app and a market value of less than $2 billion. Poking around a local wholesale market, he had noticed the app was popular among Chinese merchants.

It was the gamble that made a career. Tencent, which introduced its do-everything app WeChat in 2011, exploded in popularity and became one of China’s two internet giants, alongside Alibaba. Tencent’s market value is now more than $470 billion. 

U.S. endowment and foundation leaders, including many who trained under Swensen, lined up to hand his Chinese protégé money. The long list of Hillhouse investors in recent years includes the Ford Foundation, the Metropolitan Opera and top universities such as Princeton and Stanford.

Zhang became one of the most successful Chinese investors of his generation with prescient bets on up-and-coming Chinese technology and consumer companies. But now the U.S. is turning a cold shoulder to China amid slowing growth and geopolitical tensions.

Hillhouse was an early investor in Tencent, which now runs the do-everything app WeChat. Photo: str/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Zhang is now increasingly roaming across Asia, Europe and beyond to find the most lucrative investing prospects. Hillhouse’s China staff has shrunk and it has removed many explicit mentions of China from its website; a person close to Hillhouse said the website was changed two years ago to reflect changes in Hillhouse’s team and strategies. The firm has also beefed up its team in Japan and added hires in London and Singapore, where a person close to Zhang says he obtained citizenship more than a decade ago.

Other Chinese money managers might boast of how many Communist Party members are in their Rolodexes. U.S. investors praised Zhang’s keen eye for American business models that could be adapted to China and his understanding, rare among his peers at the time, of what Western investors wanted.

As Zhang made one savvy bet after another on Chinese ride-hailing, e-commerce and internet-search companies, he delivered double-digit returns for U.S. endowments year after year. Hillhouse expanded from a single hedge fund called Gaoling into a family of funds investing in public and private equity markets, credit and real estate.

“He was able to articulate what he does in a way that was very compelling,” said Scott Malpass, the former chief investment officer at the University of Notre Dame, who met Zhang in the early 2000s in Beijing. “One of the best things we ever did was to invest with them.” 

Zhang wrote in a book published in 2020 that by the end of April that year, Hillhouse had generated $2.4 billion in investment profit for Yale, which had continued to invest with Hillhouse in the intervening years. 

Zhang’s own net worth soared into the billions of dollars. He took up extreme sports such as heli-skiing, sailed his own boat in Hong Kong and bought a resort in Japan’s ski mecca of Niseko. 

Because of investments in funds like Zhang’s, until recently some U.S. universities had more than 10% of their endowment portfolios in China, according to people familiar with the matter.

A 19th century Peck Brothers Albumen print showing Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, Conn. Zhang named his investment firm after the tree-lined street. Photo: Heritage Images via Getty Images

But times have changed: Geopolitical tensions mean Washington is making it unattractive to invest in China, while China is making it difficult for Chinese companies to list overseas, raising concerns among investors that their money could be stranded. The Chinese economy’s growth potential has shrunk as the real-estate market has slumped and consumers pull back on spending.

“Many endowments are highly overweight relative to what they now think is a safe exposure to China,” said Roger Vincent, founder of Summation Capital and the former head of private equity at Cornell University’s endowment. “They’ve got a long way to go to get down to a comfortable percentage, and the fastest way to get there is to stop putting more money into new China funds.” 

A spokesman for Hillhouse declined to make Zhang available for an interview.

The shift away from China means Zhang’s old business model is dead. At 52, he isn’t the whiz kid of yore.

But he has a plan.

The vehicle for his evolution is a new buyout fund, the sixth in its line of private-equity funds. Hillhouse plans to start formal fundraising for the fund next year. Hillhouse executives told clients at the firm’s recent annual meeting in Hong Kong they hope to raise $8 billion or more for investing in Asia, largely outside of China, including in Japan.

American Dream

The campus of Yale University, where Zhang was a student more than two decades ago. Photo: Jessica Hill/Associated Press

In Henan, where Zhang was born, his father worked in the local trade bureau, and his mother was a lawyer. Zhang was entrepreneurial at an early age, renting comic books to people waiting for the train near his home.

He got the internship with Swensen at Yale by being forthright. During the interview, Zhang later recalled, “He asked me a lot of questions about investing and was somewhat surprised by my honesty when I answered ‘I don’t know’ to most of them.”

Hillhouse made early investments in many prominent Chinese internet and consumer companies including search engine Baidu and e-commerce site JD.com. It also took minority stakes in ride-hailing giants Uber Technologies and Didi, and helped Peet’s Coffee open its first store in China.

In 2010, Zhang donated $8,888,888 to Yale’s business school; the number eight is considered to carry good fortune in Chinese culture. Six years later, he was the first Chinese-born person to become a Yale trustee, a position he cherished. “Look at this card I have,” he said, holding up his trustee card, to a Chinese state-television crew filming him at Yale in 2018. “It can open almost any door on this campus.”

By the 2020s, he had assembled some $100 billion in assets under management. At Swensen’s memorial celebration in 2022, Zhang was one of a handful of protégés who delivered remarks.

The pivot

Today, China’s internet gold rush has ended. Many Chinese companies are finding it difficult to go public in Hong Kong and the U.S., making it hard for funds to cash out their investments and return profits to investors.

Beijing’s crackdown in 2021 and 2022 on tech companies erased more than $1 trillion in market value and left deep scars, say investment chiefs of U.S. endowments and foundations. It suggested the government was willing to sabotage its own markets for political purposes. Combined with the geopolitical tensions, many U.S. institutional investors started looking for a way out.

Notre Dame’s current investment chief, Tim Dolezal, in a statement called Zhang “one of the most talented investors globally over the last few decades.” But he said Notre Dame had “aggressively reduced our exposure years ago” to Hillhouse as investing in China became less attractive.

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas in 2022 requested a full redemption of its money from Hillhouse’s China Value fund, according to a spokesman for the $209 billion pension.

For the fiscal year ended in June 2023, Hillhouse wasn’t on Yale’s disclosure of its highest-paid independent contractors, after making the list the two prior years. Yale’s investment chief declined to comment on whether Yale had withdrawn any money from Hillhouse or if the disclosure change reflected poor performance on Hillhouse’s part.

Last year, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, which acts as the trustee for a $1.5 billion endowment for public colleges and universities in the state, approved a full redemption from Gaoling, Hillhouse’s flagship hedge fund, at the recommendation of its investment consultant, Mercer. The decision followed a 23% loss by Gaoling in 2022; a person familiar with Gaoling said that from its 2005 launch through late this year, it has returned an average 21% annually.

A Mercer consultant said Hillhouse was one of the most impressive investment firms Mercer had met but geopolitical risks called for reducing exposure to China, according to minutes of a September 2023 investment committee meeting. The Oklahoma endowment remains invested in another Hillhouse fund. 

‘Make time your friend’

Zhang is one of the most successful Chinese investors of his generation. Photo: Anthony Kwan for WSJ

On a visit Zhang made to Shanghai in October, China made clear Zhang is in its good graces—and a useful figure to sell the country’s openness to investment. Wearing a pair of On running shoes—Hillhouse is an investor in the Swiss apparel company—Zhang was welcomed by the Shanghai Communist Party secretary.

For his part, Zhang and members of his team have been sounding out investors informally about the planned buyout fund.

In discussions in the past few years when Zhang was looking to gather funds, several longtime investors were noncommittal, partly because they were unsure of what edge Zhang would have investing predominantly outside China, said people familiar with the discussions.

The person close to Hillhouse said the firm has a long history of investing profitably outside China, including in the U.S., South Korea, Australia and Europe. One private-equity investment it made, in e-commerce company Magento Commerce in 2017, sold to Adobe Systems the following year for $1.8 billion, more than doubling Hillhouse’s money. In a competitive 2021 deal, Hillhouse bought the home appliances business of Dutch firm Philips for a total of 4.4 billion euros, equivalent to $4.7 billion; Hillhouse has yet to exit.

At Hillhouse’s annual meeting, executives said that they expect to have fewer American endowments as clients going forward and that they have been spending more time fundraising in the Middle East and in Asia.

In his book, a Chinese-language memoir and investing guide titled “The Value,” Zhang wrote that he looked to the long term and tried to maintain peace of mind through up-and-down cycles. 

“Walk alongside people with a broad horizon,” he said, “and make time your friend.”

Liza Lin and Raffaele Huang contributed to this article.

9. Strategic and Operational Considerations for Military Action Against Mexican Drug Cartels

Excerpts:

The prospect of deploying the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels presents a complex interplay of strategic, operational, and diplomatic challenges. While the risks are substantial, including potential retaliation and strained U.S.-Mexico relations, the stakes are equally high, as the cartels’ activities continue to claim countless lives and threaten national security. A carefully planned, well-coordinated campaign, rooted in international partnerships and supported by robust risk mitigation strategies, could significantly disrupt cartel operations and advance U.S. security objectives.

Former President Trump’s call to “take matters into our own hands” underscores the urgency of addressing the cartel crisis. However, any military action must be guided by strategic clarity, adherence to international law, and an unwavering commitment to protecting civilian lives. The U.S. can effectively combat this transnational threat by leveraging a combined approach that integrates joint operations with unilateral precision actions while upholding its principles and alliances.

Strategic and Operational Considerations for Military Action Against Mexican Drug Cartels

By Jeremiah Monk 

strategycentral.io · December 1, 2024

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/strategic-and-operational-considerations-for-military-action-against-mexican-drug-cartels?postId=d3e421ea-67d9-4af9-ab07-a68756038caf&utm

"The drug cartels are waging war on America—and it's now time for America to wage war on the cartels," Trump said in a statement in 2023. "The drug cartels and their allies in the Biden administration have the blood of countless millions on their hands. Millions and millions of families and people are being destroyed. When I am back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again."

- President-Elect Donald Trump, December 22, 2023.

INTRODUCTION

The idea of deploying the U.S. military to combat Mexican drug cartels has surfaced prominently in recent years, driven by the desire to curb the flow of drugs and human trafficking into the United States. While such an approach raises significant strategic and operational challenges, the potential use of military force against cartels remains a topic of intense debate, blending national security issues, international diplomacy, and operational feasibility.

President-elect Trump has stated his intent to attack the cartels. In anticipation of such an order, Strategy Central ran a mission analysis of a hypothetical order to the U.S military to degrade and dismantle the capabilities of Mexican drug cartels. The objectives would include neutralizing cartel leadership, disrupting supply chains, and undermining the cartels’ capacity to traffic drugs and humans. At the same time, these operations would aim to safeguard American lives, enhance border security, and limit the likelihood of cartel retaliation. However, to achieve these outcomes effectively, planners would need to consider a range of diplomatic, legal, and operational factors.

STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS

Mission Purpose and End State: The overarching purpose of such a mission would be to weaken the operational effectiveness of Mexican drug cartels and reduce the flow of illegal drugs and human trafficking into the U.S. This would also address a critical national security issue, given the devastating impact of fentanyl and other illicit substances on American communities. The desired end state would see the cartels’ operational networks significantly disrupted, U.S. borders more secure, and an enduring cooperative framework established with regional allies to prevent the resurgence of trafficking networks.

Diplomatic Challenges and Requirements: A military operation in Mexico would require robust diplomatic engagement. Mexico’s government is likely to perceive unilateral military actions as a breach of sovereignty, triggering widespread political backlash. Coordinating with the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies would enhance legitimacy, but it might require substantial negotiations to ensure mutual objectives and operational alignment. Framing the mission as a counter-terrorism and anti-trafficking initiative could help garner international support while addressing domestic and foreign criticisms.

Risks of Retaliation: One of the most significant risks is cartel retaliation. Cartels could target U.S. interests through asymmetric warfare, including violent attacks on border cities, kidnappings of American citizens, and strikes on symbolic or high-value targets within the U.S. Internationally, cartels may exploit their transnational networks to attack U.S. assets or personnel abroad. These risks underscore the need for comprehensive contingency planning and enhanced intelligence gathering to anticipate and mitigate potential threats.

OPERATIONAL OPTIONS

To accomplish the mission, three primary operational approaches emerge, each with distinct advantages, challenges, and implications:

Option 1: Unilateral Direct Action

The U.S. military could conduct unilateral operations targeting cartel leadership, infrastructure, and supply networks without involving the Mexican government. Precision strikes and special operations could focus on high-value targets, including drug production facilities, warehouses, and financial centers.

Advantages:

• Full operational control enables rapid decision-making and execution.
• Removes the need for prolonged diplomatic negotiations.

Challenges:

• Likely to provoke a severe diplomatic crisis with Mexico, potentially alienating an important trade and security partner.
• Limited access to local intelligence, reducing operational effectiveness.

Option 2: Joint Operations with the Mexican Military

A collaborative approach would involve the U.S. military working alongside the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies. This strategy would leverage local intelligence, align objectives, and ensure operations remain within the framework of international law.

Advantages:

• Enhanced legitimacy through cooperation with Mexico’s government.
• Access to local intelligence networks improves target identification and operational success.

Challenges:

• Political and logistical constraints in Mexico could hinder the speed and scope of operations.
• Risk of corruption or infiltration of Mexican forces by cartels.

Option 3: Border-Focused Campaign

This approach emphasizes bolstering border security and conducting limited cross-border strikes targeting cartel logistics near the U.S.-Mexico border. It would focus on preventing trafficking operations from entering the U.S. rather than targeting cartels at their core.

Advantages:

•  Minimal diplomatic fallout, as operations remain largely within U.S. territory or immediate border regions.
• Focuses on enhancing U.S. security infrastructure.

Challenges:

• Limited impact on the cartels’ broader networks and production capabilities.
• Potential for prolonged conflict at the border with no resolution to root causes.

STRATEGIC RISKS AND MITIGATION

Cartel Adaptation and Resilience: Mexican drug cartels are highly adaptable and resilient, with decentralized structures that allow them to recover quickly from disruptions. Military planners must anticipate the need for sustained pressure to prevent cartels from reorganizing and regaining strength. Regular assessments and adaptive operational strategies will be essential.

Collateral Damage and Humanitarian Concerns: Operations in populated areas risk collateral damage and civilian casualties, which could erode public support and fuel anti-American sentiment in Mexico. Precision targeting, strict rules of engagement, and coordination with humanitarian organizations would be necessary to minimize these risks.

Escalation into Broader Conflict: Unilateral military actions could escalate into broader conflict if Mexican government forces oppose U.S. operations or if cartels seek to exploit nationalist sentiments to rally support against perceived foreign aggression. Clear communication channels and contingency planning for de-escalation would be critical.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Among the three operational options, joint operations with the Mexican military offer the most balanced approach. By partnering with Mexico, the U.S. can enhance legitimacy, leverage local intelligence, and mitigate diplomatic fallout. This strategy would require significant preparatory work, including joint training, the establishment of a shared command structure, and diplomatic agreements to align objectives and operational priorities.

Risk mitigation measures must accompany this approach. Bolstering domestic intelligence capabilities will help preempt cartel retaliatory actions, while public messaging campaigns can counter cartel propaganda. Additionally, strengthening partnerships with other regional allies can help contain the cartels’ transnational influence and ensure a coordinated response to spillover effects.

CONCLUSION

The prospect of deploying the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels presents a complex interplay of strategic, operational, and diplomatic challenges. While the risks are substantial, including potential retaliation and strained U.S.-Mexico relations, the stakes are equally high, as the cartels’ activities continue to claim countless lives and threaten national security. A carefully planned, well-coordinated campaign, rooted in international partnerships and supported by robust risk mitigation strategies, could significantly disrupt cartel operations and advance U.S. security objectives.

Former President Trump’s call to “take matters into our own hands” underscores the urgency of addressing the cartel crisis. However, any military action must be guided by strategic clarity, adherence to international law, and an unwavering commitment to protecting civilian lives. The U.S. can effectively combat this transnational threat by leveraging a combined approach that integrates joint operations with unilateral precision actions while upholding its principles and alliances.

10. Zelensky suggests ending 'hot phase' of war in exchange for NATO membership without occupied territories

Zelensky suggests ending 'hot phase' of war in exchange for NATO membership without occupied territories

kyivindependent.com · by Kateryna Denisova · November 29, 2024

To end the "hot phase of the war," NATO would have to offer membership to Ukrainian territory under government control, with the invitation recognizing the country's internationally recognized borders, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Sky News

"If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should quickly take under NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That's what we need to do first, and then Ukraine can get back the other parts of its territory in a diplomatic way," Zelensky said during the interview, which was published on Nov. 29.

According to the president, Kyiv has never considered such a proposal, since "no one has ever offered that to us officially."

Donald Trump's election has intensified uncertainty around Ukraine's war effort. He criticized U.S. military support provided to Ukraine by Joe Biden's administration. Some reports also indicate this would entail forcing Ukraine to cede territory and at least temporarily give up on its NATO accession plans.

Zelensky's latest remarks are somewhat at odds with his previous statements. He said that the signals of Ukraine's accession to NATO in parts is "nonsense," and Ukraine "will never exchange any status for any of our territories."

The president's comments to Sky News imply that territories currently occupied by Russia would not fall under the "NATO umbrella" in this scenario.

Trump’s pick for Ukraine envoy backs ‘peace through strength,’ security guarantees

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Nov. 27 decision to choose Keith Kellogg as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia is not ideal for Kyiv but is an acceptable and reasonable choice for Ukraine, analysts say. Kellogg has co-authored a peace plan that would freeze the front line in Ukraine,

The Kyiv IndependentOleg Sukhov

Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts are partially controlled by Russian troops. Russia claims to have annexed the whole territory of those regions in 2022 despite not controlling two regional capitals — Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Moscow also controls all of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.

Throughout 2024, Ukraine has faced a challenging situation in its defense of the front line, particularly in Donetsk Oblast, where Russia has consistently concentrated its offensive potential.

Ukraine applied for NATO membership in September 2022 but has yet to receive a formal invitation.

Despite high expectations in Kyiv, the last two allied summits brought only new steps toward deepening Ukraine-NATO cooperation and a declaration that the country's membership path is "irreversible."

Can Russia sustain its war effort as ruble plummets, inflation soars?

With the purchasing power of the Russian ruble hitting the lowest point since March 2022, the economic toll of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine becomes glaring. Russia’s expanding spending on the war has fueled inflation, prompting Russia’s Central Bank to hike its interest rate to the highest le…

The Kyiv IndependentOleg Sukhov

kyivindependent.com · by Kateryna Denisova · November 29, 2024

11. Opinion The Iron Man of America’s op-ed pages

We forget what real conservatism looks like.

But this is the key excerpt in this very nice account of George Will:

Excerpts:

“The primary purpose of American conservatism,” Will asserted, is “conserving the principles of the Founding.” He is open-eyed about the hypocrisy of enslavers extolling liberty, and the misogyny of a society in which women could not vote. At the same time, he valued the seedbed planted by the Founders with the ideas of equal dignity and equal access to an upward path of one’s own choosing.

Will has consistently contrasted his conservative philosophy with the progressive tradition in American politics, with Woodrow Wilson — another Princeton man — as the epitome and spokesman. Will’s ideal government has limited powers, and those limits are enforced by constitutional checks and balances. Wilson’s ideal government, by contrast, required expansive powers to fill an ever-greater role in the lives of the people. Will champions a nation of individuals pursuing their own happiness; progressivism, in his view, seeks to create a government that defines happiness and then provides it.

What Wilson began, Franklin D. Roosevelt supercharged with his New Deal, which “encourage[d] actively the conception of government as deliverer of material well-being,” as Will put it.

Readers of Will’s columns have never been required to know the philosophical design behind the chugging factory of his prolific output. But the fact that he has had, from the start, a carefully thought-out view of life and politics is essential to his originality and distinction. Most columnists start with the news and go from there. Will starts with ideas, which he embraced early and never abandoned, and finds in the news opportunities to illustrate them.

Opinion  The Iron Man of America’s op-ed pages

George F. Will’s conservative outlook and cheerful erudition have been the hallmarks of an extraordinary career.

20 min

2020

(Wayne Brezinka for The Washington Post/Based on a photo by Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)

By David Von Drehle

November 22, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. EST

Gordon Allott’s loss was journalism’s gain.

History-minded Coloradans might recall the three-term Republican U.S. senator from the prairie crossroads of Lamar. Running for a fourth term in 1972, Allott faced a former Republican named Floyd Haskell, a state legislator from Denver who switched parties over President Richard M. Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. Haskell bludgeoned Allott with the increasingly unpopular war in Southeast Asia.

Nixon felt little of this. He was an incumbent president matched against a weak foe and had strength that Allott could only envy. Yet the president wouldn’t lend his coattails. Nixon was on his way to a massive landslide; a single appearance with his loyal Republican ally could have made the difference in a race rocked by Nixon’s own decisions.

The president flew right over Colorado on his last campaign swing, but he didn’t bother to land. Allott lost by fewer than 10,000 votes.

This lack of loyalty, of respect, was unforgivable to a young intellectual on Allott’s staff — and unforgettable. When George F. Will left the defeated senator’s office to become a writer, he had taken the measure of the president’s character. As Nixon’s fortunes rapidly sagged and Will’s explosively soared, a compelling new voice on the Washington scene poured enfilading fire on the Watergate White House from the president’s right flank.

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“A year ago the reigning philosophy was survival of the fittest, and Mr. Nixon and his agents were feeling remarkably fit,” Will wrote in 1973 as a columnist for National Review, the conservative bible. “Today, Mr. Nixon has all the friends he has earned and deserves.”

Nixon was gone a year later, friendless.

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And the extraordinary career of George F. Will, columnist, had begun.

George F. Will, William F. Buckley Jr. and James Burnham take part in a 1978 debate televised on WETA-TV in which they argued for ratifying treaties turning the Panama Canal over to Panama. On the opposing side were Ronald Reagan, Adm. John McCain and Patrick Buchanan. (Courtesy of George F. Will)

Will’s ensuing half-century of columns is a remarkable feat in journalism history. The Post is commemorating the achievement in this special section for much the same reason that Major League Baseball took heightened notice of a game between the Orioles and the Angels on Sept. 6, 1995. Baltimore shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. on that day trotted to his familiar station between second and third for the 2,131st time without a miss — breaking the seemingly invincible record set by the great Lou Gehrig.

Journalism careers are not quantified with the passion and precision of baseball seasons. No one knows who holds the column-writing record, or even how such a record might be defined in a world of gossip columns, advice columns, sports columns and opinion columns. What can be said with confidence is that Will is the Iron Man of America’s op-ed pages as surely as Ripken was the Iron Man of baseball, and for many of the same reasons: native talent, self-discipline, devotion to craft, conscientious preparation and enthusiasm for the contest. Some people are born to do something and content to keep doing it. For Ripken, that was fielding and hitting a baseball; for Will, it is thinking and writing about things that matter.

Though credentialed as an academic with a Princeton PhD, Will taught only briefly before feeling the tug of his true calling after Allott’s defeat. Like many conservative writers before and after him, he sought out William F. Buckley Jr., proposing to write a regular column from Washington for National Review. The weekly handbook of the respectable right, Buckley’s magazine was feeling its way painfully through the Watergate debacle, in which a Republican president who had never been entirely trusted by conservatives fought for political survival against a Democratic Congress and the liberal press.

Will’s independent course caught the eye of Washington Post deputy editor Meg Greenfield, the rising power of The Post’s editorial pages. At Greenfield’s invitation, Will began publishing twice weekly through the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicated his columns to newspapers around the country.

Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee with deputy managing editor Richard Harwood, deputy editorial page editor Meg Greenfield, managing editor Howard Simons and editorial page editor Philip Geyelin in 1977. Greenfield invited George F. Will to publish columns twice weekly through the Washington Post Writers Group. (Craig Herndon/The Washington Post)

First lady Nancy Reagan with George F. Will and an unidentified guest at a dinner at the Will residence in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in January 1982. (Karl Schumacher/Courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

From the beginning, he confounded philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s famous taxonomy of thinkers. According to Berlin, foxlike thinkers know many things. Hedgehog thinkers know one big thing. Will is a crossbreed, neither and both. The many things he knows about — baseball, the Federalist Papers, Supreme Court jurisprudence, Bruce Springsteen, Joan of Arc, gerrymandering, criminal justice, macroeconomics, “the pleasure … of dry martinis at dusk” (really, the list seems endless) — march smartly through his copy thanks to the one big thing that organizes his ideas. He knows that Thomas Jefferson was onto something essential when he wrote that individual humans have certain unalienable rights, and that James Madison was uncommonly astute in constituting a government to protect and serve those rights. With a dollop of Heraclitus mixed in (“Nothing is permanent except change,” which Will sometimes pares down to “nothing lasts”), the essential point emerged. America’s birth of freedom is in eternal tension with the threat of too much government. To preserve the former, one must resist the latter.

“Conservatism has always been defined by its insistence on limits to the claims the collectivity — the public sector — could make on the individual,” Will wrote in his magnum opus of 2019, “The Conservative Sensibility.” “Contemporary American conservatism was born in reaction to the New Deal and subsequent excessive enlargements of the state.”

Having seen the salience of his philosophy wax under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s — a period during which Will became an informal White House adviser and a national celebrity — and wane steadily ever since, he concluded: “Today, this conservatism is a persuasion without a party, a waif in a cold climate.”

President Ronald Reagan walks with George F. Will along the White House Colonnade in February 1982. (Karl Schumacher/Courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

“The Conservative Sensibility” returned Will to his roots. At more than 500 closely reasoned pages, it is, as political journalist Matthew Continetti put it, “a definitive statement, a summation of his remarkable career in journalism and politics.” Where many venerable commentators write memoirs full of anecdotes and famous names, Will’s summing up was a work of philosophy. He is a journalist for whom ideas come first.

Born May 4, 1941, in Champaign, Illinois, Will was literally a child of philosophy. His father, Frederick L. Will, was a professor at the University of Illinois who came up in the distinctively American philosophical tradition known as Pragmatism. Son George followed his father into the family business, pursuing advanced studies in political philosophy at Oxford University and Princeton. He received his PhD in 1968 with a dissertation on the tension between guaranteed individual rights and the power of democratically elected lawmakers. He never lost interest in the question.

George F. Will and his sister, Katherine, in 1945. (Courtesy of George F. Will)

For purposes of the doctorate, he unpacked the landmark 1943 Supreme Court opinion in which Justice Robert H. Jackson defended the right of Jehovah’s Witness children to sit quietly while their classmates saluted the flag and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The West Virginia Board of Education had made such behavior grounds for expulsion from school and fines — even jail time — for parents. “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy,” Jackson wrote, “to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.”

In other words, freedom is a birthright, not a grant from government. A corollary followed close behind: Free people are more likely to improve themselves than to be improved by government initiatives.

Will traced this principle to the English philosopher John Locke and his disciples among the American Founders. Their philosophy — he called it “classical liberalism” in “The Conservative Sensibility” — “is the distinction between the public and the private spheres of life. On this distinction, freedom depends.” Strong and independent courts — another of Will’s foundational commitments — are necessary to defend private life against the whims and excesses of elected branches of government.

The first question for every self-described conservative is: conserving what? This was a hot debate when Will was starting out and is still disputed now. Flavors of conservative thought in the 1960s ran from the hierarchical — even authoritarian — conservatism of a bygone Catholic Europe, to the populist and cultural conservatism of white nationalists. Will chose the libertarian strain of conservative ideas associated with Barry Goldwater, the Arizona senator whose failed presidential bid in 1964 was the fire from which Reagan’s phoenix arose in 1980.

Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) with supporters at the Texas Republicans' convention in June 1964. George F. Will favored his libertarian strain of conservative ideas. (Ferd Kaufman/AP)

Will rejected the vaguely royalist conservatism epitomized by Russell Kirk and Whittaker Chambers, early influences on National Review, as “throne-and-altar, blood-and-soil nostalgia.” Describing himself as “an amiable, low-voltage atheist,” Will felt government could respect religious faith without preferring religious faith. The conservatism of populists like Patrick Buchanan was even less viable. Populism, Will wrote, was about emotions and movements, which tend to be antithetical to individual human rights.

“The primary purpose of American conservatism,” Will asserted, is “conserving the principles of the Founding.” He is open-eyed about the hypocrisy of enslavers extolling liberty, and the misogyny of a society in which women could not vote. At the same time, he valued the seedbed planted by the Founders with the ideas of equal dignity and equal access to an upward path of one’s own choosing.

Will has consistently contrasted his conservative philosophy with the progressive tradition in American politics, with Woodrow Wilson — another Princeton man — as the epitome and spokesman. Will’s ideal government has limited powers, and those limits are enforced by constitutional checks and balances. Wilson’s ideal government, by contrast, required expansive powers to fill an ever-greater role in the lives of the people. Will champions a nation of individuals pursuing their own happiness; progressivism, in his view, seeks to create a government that defines happiness and then provides it.

What Wilson began, Franklin D. Roosevelt supercharged with his New Deal, which “encourage[d] actively the conception of government as deliverer of material well-being,” as Will put it.

Readers of Will’s columns have never been required to know the philosophical design behind the chugging factory of his prolific output. But the fact that he has had, from the start, a carefully thought-out view of life and politics is essential to his originality and distinction. Most columnists start with the news and go from there. Will starts with ideas, which he embraced early and never abandoned, and finds in the news opportunities to illustrate them.

George F. Will during his years at Princeton. (Courtesy of George F. Will)

A Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Robert H. Jackson, shown in February 1942, was the subject of Will's doctoral dissertation at Princeton University. (AP) (AP)

His philosophical consistency is married to a consistency of style that gives Will his distinctive writer’s voice. Countless readers over the years have found the huge vocabulary of his columns and his seemingly bottomless supply of apt quotations remarkable and a bit intimidating at the same time. But there is more to Will’s signature than Bartlett’s plus Roget’s.

A January 2018 column examined an Oregon law requiring that gasoline in cities be pumped by service station employees; self-service was permitted only in rural areas. This classic example of a special interest (full-service gas station owners) using government to block competition was dressed up in a comedy of high-flown justifications — the first of which, Will reported with a written eye roll, was reducing the hazard of fires.

“This presumably refers to the many conflagrations regularly occurring at filling stations throughout the 48 states where 96 percent of Americans live lives jeopardized by state legislators who are negligent regarding their nanny-state duty to assume that their constituents are imbeciles.”

Chosen nearly at random from decades of work, this sentence contains many distinctive markings of Will’s writing style. It is long. It contains unexpected words (conflagrations, jeopardized, negligent) that are precisely correct for their settings. It puts the reader’s brain to work cooperatively with the writer’s brain. When he refers to “the many conflagrations regularly occurring at filling stations,” Will invites his reader to think: wait — hang on, what? I’ve never seen a gas station fire outside a Hollywood movie.

The solemn tone continues until Will tips his hand with the slightly sneering phrase “their nanny-state duty.” From there it is a short road to the final gut-punch: “imbeciles.”

Like tens of thousands of others, this sentence shows that Will writes as a grandmaster plays chess, with the end in view from the opening move and each intermediate step thought out. He is never feeling his way through a column, never thinking out loud. His path might twist or turn, but it always leads somewhere, and typically announces its arrival with a snap or a bang.

It is a lofty style, a columnist’s equivalent of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. We’re not meant to think of the painter alone on his back atop the scaffolding. (Although for Will, the hard, lonely hours that go into the illusion of effortlessness are very much the point. “Cezanne, after putting a subject through 115 sittings for a single portrait, said, ‘I am not entirely displeased with the shirt front,’” Will once recounted in a column, adding: “That is how to paint, and live.”) We’re meant to behold the completed work after all signs of effort have been hauled away.

The possibility of such an elevated slightly antique, voice in the postmodern age appeared to Will as a student in 1958, when he opened a copy of the New York Post and found columnist Murray Kempton inside. “One reason I became a columnist is that, long before I did, I had in my mind’s eye a ‘role model,’” Will once wrote of that moment and of Kempton.

Newsday columnist Murray Kempton, left, chats with attorney Stanley Friedman, right, outside the federal courthouse in New York in 1987. “One reason I became a columnist is that, long before I did, I had in my mind’s eye a ‘role model,’” George F. Will wrote of Kempton. (Mel Finkelstein/New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images)

How to describe Murray Kempton? Maybe by analogy: Glenn Gould was a piano virtuoso who played everything differently from everyone else. In another musician, that would be to say that he played everything wrong. But in Gould’s case, different wasn’t wrong; it was genius.

You might say Kempton was the Gould of column writing, which he did differently from everyone else. Aristocratic in bearing, conservative in faith, he traversed New York by bicycle, hawk-nosed and regal with a faint Virginia drawl. Arriving at the courthouse or political protest or boxing gym, the scion of Episcopal bishops unclipped his trouser legs and readied another column as poet laureate of the city’s scoundrels, rogues and prizefighters. If you wanted a writer who might start a sentence with Suetonius or the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and end up 150 winding words later at the blood-soaked scene of a Mafia hit, Kempton was your man.

Stylistically, he was right out of the 18th century, when Joseph Addison and Richard Steele invented the newspaper column around 1710 and Samuel Johnson perfected its original form while writing twice a week from 1750 to 1752. Kempton saw no need for further updates.

A Kempton column was not a garish marquee over the Vegas Strip, begging for a reader’s attention. Nor was it admonishment from the Church of Proper Policy Prescriptions. It was a seduction, a dance of veils ultimately revealing a glimpse of naked insight — but only to the patient and carefully attentive reader.

Will’s contribution to this oldest of journalistic legacies, his conscious connection to the earliest columnists, has been to preserve the sinuous structures and slow-building rhythms of Addisonian prose, along with the erudition and surprise of Kemptonian essays, but to prune everything back for television-age readers. Creating gardens rather than jungles, he has defended the idea that reading is more satisfying — and more edifying — if the reader has skin in the game.

His success has vindicated that belief. Will has never condescended to his readers, never pre-chewed his ideas for them, never put the bowl down where the dogs can get to it, as the saying goes in politics. He respects his readers; he knows they can keep up.

Columnist George F. Will in his Georgetown office in September 2021. (Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)

To do what Will has done — to write two lively and original essays per week for more than 2,700 weeks — one must have talent enough to get spotted in one’s 30s and health enough to keep going into one’s 80s. But it’s more than that. In a recent column, Will noted a fact about the world that is especially apparent to people whose jobs require them to watch it closely day after day.

“Life is not one damn thing after another,” he wrote, “it is the same damn thing over and over.” The secret ingredient to Will’s longevity is his imperviousness to boredom, his inexhaustible curiosity, his ability to find something new to say about the same damn thing, something fresh in the familiar.

That capacity is fed by Will’s bottomless appetite for reading. “I am struck by how much I am now writing about books,” he observed in the introduction to his 1994 collection of columns, “The Leveling Wind.” “History is the history of ideas, and the more journalism I do, print and broadcast, the more convinced I become that books are still the primary carriers of ideas.”

His reading is deep and broad, a bit heavy, perhaps, on the history and public policy side, but extending to biographies, memoirs and novels new and classic. (“In one of his Palliser novels, Anthony Trollope says …”) Not to mention think tank papers, magazine articles and journal reports, all on top of his daily immersion in the news.

From the start of September this year, until the middle of November when this is being written, Will has shared his gleanings from: “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” by Jonathan Turley; “How Everything Became National Security,” an article in Foreign Affairs by Daniel W. Drezner; “The New Bioweapons,” also in Foreign Affairs, by a science professor and two Rand leaders; “The Light of Battle,” by Michel Paradis; “The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism,” by John Gray; another Foreign Affairs essay, this one by Margaret MacMillan, great-granddaughter of British prime minister David Lloyd George; “Hot Dog Money: Inside the Biggest Scandal in the History of College Sports,” by Guy Lawson; an article by Jerry Hendrix on nuclear submarines in American Affairs; a think-tank paper on workforce training; another article from Foreign Affairs, by Nicholas Eberstadt on the topic of falling global population; a post on artificial intelligence from the blog Grumpy Economist; a report from the Economic Innovation Group on transfer payments; and “The Price of Power,” a biography of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) by Michael Tackett.

And once Will reads something, it stays read. “Who, besides Bill Clinton and George Bush, is responsible for Ross Perot’s remarkable political rise?” Will asked during the 1992 presidential campaign. “Owen Wister is. Ninety years ago this week he published a novel, ‘The Virginian.’ It pioneered a literary genre, the Western; it invented the cowboy of popular imagination, and it defined a region, the West, as a repository of American yearnings and regrets.”

Who knows how many years he kept Wister’s book handy on the shelf of his well-stocked mind, waiting for the events that it would perfectly illuminate?

From left, Vice President George H.W. Bush, Bryce Harlow, George F. Will, Irving Kristol and President Ronald Reagan at a private White House dinner in 1983. (Mary Ann Fackelman/Courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)

He gives no hint of slowing down. Quite the opposite. New columns are constantly arriving. Sometimes they stack up on the Opinions department schedule like United flights at Dulles. Many longtime fans recall Will’s most popular book, the 1990 smash bestseller “Men at Work,” in which he put his love for baseball on exquisite display. But it was not just the game he loved; the book celebrated the fierce dedication and austere habits of his chosen subjects; it is an ode to hard labor. At 83, Will lives the message — just last month, he was on the scene at the shipyards of Newport News, Virginia, to report on the condition of the U.S. submarine fleet. (Not good, he opined.)

Still wearing the traditional blazers, neatly knotted neckties and schoolboy haircut that have made him look eternally ready for the class photo at a prep school in 1957, Will would seem to be the refutation of his own maxim that nothing lasts. Yet this anniversary finds him changed in a way no one could have imagined when he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977 on his way to the Reagan era. He is thoroughly estranged from a Republican Party in thrall to Donald Trump.

This is a man who was so thoroughly associated with the Reagan Revolution that the defeated incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, wrongly accused Will of stealing Carter’s debate prep book and leaking it to Reagan. (Carter later apologized.) His persona, in print and on television, was so well-known that he became an occasional target of cartoonist Garry Trudeau in his widely syndicated strip “Doonesbury.” In July 1986, Trudeau introduced a new character, young T. Hamilton Tripler, who was thrilled to be interning for “Dr. Will” as “quote boy.”

Tripler’s supervisor, sitting at a Victorian desk with a quill pen, explained: “We provide the flourishes of erudition so indispensable to a George Will commentary.” By 1990, Will was sufficiently famous to have comedian Dana Carvey lampoon him on “Saturday Night Live.”

Readers at more than 450 news organizations — an average of nine per state — have enjoyed Will’s syndicated column (or been infuriated by it). For many years, he also wrote for a nationally prominent weekly magazine, Newsweek, owned by The Washington Post Co. He has been a fixture on television news roundtables and is a favorite of documentary filmmakers, knowledgeable and well-spoken on a catalogue of topics. Few Americans in recent generations have lived beyond reach of his written or spoken voice.

As Reagan said of the Democrats, Will can say of his Republican tribe: I didn’t leave the party. The party left me. He has proof — millions of words of proof.

We mark this milestone fully aware that Cal Ripken Jr., after celebrating his record, continued to play at shortstop and third base for the Baltimore Orioles in an additional 501 consecutive games. May it be thus with George F. Will.

George F. Will and Ronald Reagan on July 4, 1988. (Courtesy of George F. Will)

See how artist Wayne Brezinka created the portrait collage of George Will at the top of this piece.

12. In silence and bluster, a shadow Trump foreign policy haunts Biden’s final acts

This has to be the most unique presidential transitions in our history. Do we have one president or two?

Musk's comment below shows we are in for a wild ride with him.

Except:

At the same time, Musk — who has been on the line during Trump phone calls with foreign leaders such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — has shown little inclination to hold his tongue on other matters that could affect security relationships. In social media posts over the past week, he ridiculed “idiots [who] are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35,” the newest generation U.S. combat aircraft that has been purchased by a number of U.S. allies and partners. Calling the planes “obsolete” in the “age of drones,” he suggested they were useful only in “helping Air Force officers get laid.”

In silence and bluster, a shadow Trump foreign policy haunts Biden’s final acts

While the White House attempts to lock in policy priorities with international partners, Mar-a-Lago is becoming a magnet for foreign leaders eager to win Trump’s good graces.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/30/trump-foreign-policy-biden-musk-waltz-rubio/

President-elect Donald Trump attends the America First Policy Institute Gala at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 14 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

By Karen DeYoung

November 30, 2024 at 6:18 p.m. EST

President-elect Donald Trump’s threat Monday to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico — one of a barrage of shots fired daily from Mar-a-Lago since his election victory — landed like a bombshell in Ottawa.

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On Friday, after days of angst and an emergency “Team Canada” meeting with all 10 provincial premiers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jumped on a plane and flew to Palm Beach, Florida. He spent three hours at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and golf club, one of 11 others crowded around Trump at a table in the middle of the busy members dining room.

David McCormick, the Republican senator-elect from Pennsylvania, posted a photo of the dinner on X, writing how “honored” he was to be there, and declaring they were ready to “shake things up” in Washington. He made no mention of Trudeau’s presence among them.

In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump called the meeting “very productive.” He said Trudeau had made a commitment to “work with us” on the border, trade and other issues that “I will be addressing on my first days back in Office, and before.”

But for Trudeau, who faces an election next year, the mission to Mar-a-Lago was unfavorably compared at home to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who instead struck back at Trump with a letter threatening counter-tariffs.

While Canada spent the week stewing, attention in Trumpworld had already moved on.

The president-elect made appointments to his economic team and announced more plans to dismantle the “deep state.” Just days after he threatened the United States’ top two trading partners via social media, he posted an AI-generated video of him popping out of a turkey and dancing on President Joe Biden’s Thanksgiving table.

This hyperactive flow of events during the transition has overshadowed the reaction of outsiders to Trump’s pronouncements and their impact — intended or not — on other international actors.

In Israel, Trump’s strong support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and supposedly leaked accounts of their post-election conversations have led to widespread speculation there that the new cease-fire deal with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was less a result of painstaking diplomacy by Biden’s emissaries than a giveaway to lighten Trump’s load once he takes office. There are similar suggestions that Netanyahu will continue to stymie Biden’s efforts to end the conflict in Gaza to let the new U.S. president declare a diplomatic victory after his inauguration on Jan. 20.

In Ukraine, there is consternation that Trump has said he will immediately seek to negotiate a peace agreement that will probably allow Russia to continue occupying parts of its neighbor. The prospect of a deal has led many to suspect Biden’s timing in finally lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons and shoveling as much money as possible into military assistance for Kyiv before the new administration takes over.

Trump has challenged the oft-quoted adage of “one president at a time” in new ways. Tweets and declarations that may or may not become policy have set some foreign governments on edge, while delighting others. Traditions and standards to ensure the smooth transfer of power — ethics agreements, expressions of fealty to treaties and international agreements, FBI vetting of nominees for senior positions — have been ignored.

During his first transition, Trump’s team regularly released lists of dozens of foreign leaders he spoke with. This time around, such announcements have been few and sporadic.

“The last time, they … wanted to show how important they were,” said Philip Zelikow, a former diplomat and presidential scholar who helped manage George W. Bush’s first transition. “They’re not so insecure about that this time. They don’t need to say ‘See, world leaders call me.’”

Trump made no secret of his foreign policy plans during his 2024 campaign, but it’s been hard to read a transition team that has felt little apparent need to explain actions such as an apparent secret meeting between Trump confidant Elon Musk and Iran’s top U.N. diplomat or reported conversations between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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At the same time, Musk — who has been on the line during Trump phone calls with foreign leaders such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — has shown little inclination to hold his tongue on other matters that could affect security relationships. In social media posts over the past week, he ridiculed “idiots [who] are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35,” the newest generation U.S. combat aircraft that has been purchased by a number of U.S. allies and partners. Calling the planes “obsolete” in the “age of drones,” he suggested they were useful only in “helping Air Force officers get laid.”

Despite the bawdy tone, neither a newcomer’s attempts to undercut the incumbent’s policies, nor an incumbent’s efforts to straitjacket an incoming administration’s plans are new in the history of presidential transitions. As vice president-elect a week before Barack Obama replaced Bush, Biden traveled to the wartime hot spots of Afghanistan and Pakistan for policy meetings with local leaders and U.S. military commanders.

The Obama administration cried foul when Trump, just a month before his first inauguration, fired off email and social media demands that it veto a U.N. resolution denouncing Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Obama didn’t listen: The United States abstained, allowing the symbolic measure to pass.

Just as Biden is now trying to lock in policies in Ukraine and the Middle East, Trump, in the final days of his first term, put Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, declared China guilty of genocide against the Uyghurs, tried to expand the U.S. relationship with Taiwan and designated Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis a terrorist organization — all designed to thwart Biden campaign promises.

Both friends and foes have traditionally tried to get ahead of an upcoming U.S. power shift. At the end of the Harry S. Truman administration, as his Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote in a memoir, foreign representatives “treated us with the gentle and affectionate solicitude that one might show to the dying, but asked neither help nor advice nor commitment for a future we would not share with them.”

Decades later, Henry Kissinger observed that during the final days of any administration, foreign governments “reserve their best efforts and their real attention for the new teams.”

But unlike Michael Flynn, the national security adviser Trump fired just weeks after his first inauguration for lying to the FBI about transition talks with Russia’s U.S. ambassador, Kissinger was careful to make official records of at least two conversations he held with a Soviet diplomat during the transition from the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson to Republican Richard M. Nixon.

“Boris Sedov, officially counselor of the Soviet Embassy, but in fact a member of Soviet intelligence, called on me today at his request,” Kissinger wrote in a Jan. 2, 1969 memo now in the archives of the State Department Historian. Subjects of that discussion, he wrote, included a U.S. warning against “surprises” in the Middle East, Vietnam, strategic arms talks and even a Soviet suggestion for Nixon’s inaugural address.

In recent weeks, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), Trump’s newly designated national security adviser, has spoken out on a number of occasions about current foreign policy issues, claiming that some adversaries are already shaking in their boots over Trump’s reoccupation of the Oval Office. Dubbing it “The Trump Effect,” Waltz wrote on X that “dictators” in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba were panicking. “This is what leadership looks like,” he said.

After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant 10 days ago, Waltz warned: “You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC and UN come January.” When a Biden-negotiated cease-fire in Lebanon was announced this week, Waltz declared: “Everyone is coming to the table because of President Trump.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Trump’s pick for secretary of state, has had at least one phone conversation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but the two have yet to sit down together. The Trump team’s refusal to sign transition and ethics documents or submit to FBI vetting has prevented current national security officials from sharing classified briefings with Trump officials without existing security clearances.

But Waltz this week dismissed any suggestion that Trump was conducting a shadow foreign policy. Biden national security adviser “Jake Sullivan and I have had discussions,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity, that they can play one administration off the other, they’re wrong, and we are hand-in-glove. … We are one team.”

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By Karen DeYoung

Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for The Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she has served as bureau chief in Latin America and in London and as correspondent covering the White House, U.S. foreign policy and the intelligence community. follow on X @karendeyoung1

13. What female veterans think of Pete Hegseth’s views about combat roles

Conclusion:

The military’s future isn’t male or female; it’s about who gets the job done. Women have proved time and again that they do. Leaders should stop questioning their value and instead focus on creating the conditions for all warriors to thrive.

What female veterans think of Pete Hegseth’s views about combat roles

Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary says women shouldn’t serve in combat. These vets say his attitude is outdated, uninformed and inaccurate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/30/pete-hegseth-military-women-combat/

From left, military veterans Jaclyn “Jax” Scott, Jasmine Walker Motupalli and Riane Donoho. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post; Defense Department; Parker Michels-Boyce for The Washington Post)

By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

November 30, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EST

The Army veteran and Fox News Channel host who could be the country’s next defense secretary has strong views on a decade of women serving in combat positions in the U.S. military — strong and negative.

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“I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles,” Pete Hegseth said on a podcast in early November, just days before President-elect Donald Trump nominated him for the crucial Cabinet post. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”

That’s far different from how women who have filled such roles see their achievement. These are veterans who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during the wars there. Some were part of specialized female teams; at times, their gender enabled them to do searches and gather intelligence that their male counterparts couldn’t.

With thousands of women in combat units past and present, Hegseth’s “notions” — as one Army veteran recently labeled them — could affect many futures. The Washington Post spoke to numerous female veterans whose careers benefited from the Pentagon’s decision to expand the jobs they could do, including with the country’s most elite forces. While acknowledging that conversations about military readiness are always important, they called Hegseth’s views on what women in uniform contribute outdated, uninformed and inaccurate.

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Here are three of those veterans. Their remarks have been edited for clarity and length.

Riane Donoho, a former Marine Corps corporal, at her home in Virginia. (Parker Michels-Boyce for The Washington Post)

Riane Donoho, 35, Richmond

Donoho is a former Marine Corps corporal who was part of a Female Engagement Team in Afghanistan and adjunct to a male infantry unit before women could officially serve in such capacity. She now hosts The Dollhouse Institute: War Women, A[n] Historic Record.

I’ll just be candid with you, it’s a mixed bag in our community as far as how people feel. And I think that that’s okay. I mean, I want people to have their own opinions, and all these women have their own personal experiences that draw them to those opinions.

A lot of women, myself included, do not think that the readiness of America’s fighting force should be diminished. The standards certainly should not be diminished so we can say that women can [serve in combat positions]. I think our priority should be having a fighting force.

Not all men can meet the standards. It is very, very difficult. A lot of men won’t try for it; they don’t meet the qualifications. And a lot of men who try for it don’t make the cut. [But] the truth is, there are women who can meet those standards, and they should be celebrated. There are females who can complete infantry courses. I know women who would have been great at it if they had the opportunity 15 years ago.

Donoho, right, takes a break with another soldier in a village in Afghanistan's Helmand Province during a medical outreach mission. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

A couple of weeks ago, I was at Fort Liberty and there was a woman who is still active duty and in the Army, who is the first to receive her ranger job. She’s a petite little thing — a total powerhouse. And there is a female Marine who graduated from infantry officer course in like 2017. There are chicks out there who can do it. I applaud them.

Our team had four female Navy corpsmen. Not only did they carry their own weight, they carried the weight of medical supplies — lifesaving supplies — that you would need in combat. One in particular wouldn’t just carry all her weight plus all her medical kit and everything else, but she would also carry a gun.

You want to know that you have confidence in the person next to you, to the left and to the right of you, having the best capabilities that you could possibly have. Training, training and more training is really what prepares you for combat. So celebrate the women who can do the supreme.

Jasmine Walker Motupalli, photographed when she was an Army captain. (Defense Department)

Jasmine Walker Motupalli, 40, Centennial, Colorado

A West Point graduate and former Army major, Motupalli commanded combat units during deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan — receiving a Purple Heart for injuries suffered during one of those tours. She later worked in Army intelligence at the Pentagon.

As a company commander and the sole woman among 32 commanders in a light infantry brigade, I couldn’t ignore the ways I stood out. Unlike my peers, who were all infantrymen, I came from an intelligence officer background — an unconventional path in a combat-heavy environment. But I realized I had to lead with the strength of my differences.

There was an initial assumption that women couldn’t pull their weight. That assumption was quickly dispelled. We could hang with any patrols and, what’s more, we were value added to any operation. We moved away from the traditional female engagement team dynamic and just fully integrated women into the formation — as gunners, squad leaders, team leaders, medics, etc. This change made us more agile, approachable and impactful overall.

Motupalli poses with civilians in Afghanistan's Logar province. (Jasmine Walker Motupalli)

I think if you asked men who served with women in combat roles and you took a survey, it would be a big net positive. There was at first a pushback, yes, but when you are together every day, and you watch each other try to pass physical tests, a connection is formed. And as the women proved themselves time and again in combat and leadership roles, resistance and skepticism gave way to respect and camaraderie. Inclusion strengthens military effectiveness.

Hegseth’s statement that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles stems from outdated assumptions about physical capability, cohesion and mission effectiveness. These views ignore both historical and contemporary evidence of women excelling in these roles. That’s something Hegseth would have to see to recognize.

In a world where so many can discount the abuse of women, where organizations trying to close an equity gap are sued for their work, where diversity has become a dirty word, then it isn’t surprising that we are now seeing rhetoric that aims to knock women down a few pegs, to undo the amazing progress we’ve made.

There seems to be a rise in rhetoric that “because you are doing well, it must mean that I am doing worse.” But this has never been my belief. I believe that all ships rise with the tide.

Jaclyn “Jax” Scott, who deployed as part of Army Special Forces, at the U.S. Capitol. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

Jaclyn ‘Jax’ Scott, 41, Raleigh, North Carolina

Scott did two rotations in Afghanistan as part of Army Special Forces teams. She was in more than 20 combat operations and received a Bronze Star Medal and Combat Action Badge. She still serves in the Army Reserve as a chief warrant officer but spoke to The Post as a civilian, not a member of the military.

In the military, you give your life — not just in the literal sense but through your commitment when you sign on those dotted lines. I knew that going to war meant I could die, and I accepted that. The mission was always at the forefront of my mind, above anything else. Being a combat veteran is one of my proudest accomplishments of my life. Being a veteran is rooted deep inside me.

Hegseth’s recent claim that women shouldn’t be in combat roles reeks of ignorance and outdated thinking, ignoring the realities of modern warfare and the invaluable contributions of female operators. Women have been a cornerstone of success in unconventional and conventional operations. They have consistently proved they’re not just capable but often critical in roles where men fall short.

Programs like the Army’s Cultural Support Team highlight this. Female CST operators embedded with Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and broke cultural barriers that male soldiers couldn’t, gathering lifesaving intelligence. One member uncovered a hidden cellphone on a local woman during a raid, which led directly to the capture of a high-value target.

Such results aren’t hypothetical. They’re documented successes that would have been impossible without women on the front lines.

Scott, center, speaks with a mother in northern Afghanistan while deployed as an Army cultural support team leader. (Defense Department)

For Hegseth to dismiss the value of female soldiers also shows a refusal to adapt to the realities of asymmetrical warfare, where diversity in skill sets often determines victory. Critics like him often lean on archaic stereotypes, but here’s the reality: Women bring unparalleled advantages to the fight. They exploit implicit biases to remain undetected, engage communities to extract intelligence and navigate complex environments with nuance and empathy — skills increasingly vital in modern warfare.

The military’s future isn’t male or female; it’s about who gets the job done. Women have proved time and again that they do. Leaders should stop questioning their value and instead focus on creating the conditions for all warriors to thrive.

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By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux

Emily Wax-Thibodeaux is a National staff writer who covers national news, with a focus on gender issues and social movements for the America desk. She is an award-winning former foreign correspondent who covered Africa and India for nearly a decade.follow on X @emily_wax

14. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 30, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 30, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-30-2024

Kremlin officials responded to Syrian opposition forces' offensive into Syrian regime-held territory on November 29 and 30 and expressed interest in using the Astana Process to respond to the situation. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed on November 29 that the Syrian opposition forces' offensive is an "encroachment on Syria's sovereignty" and that Russia advocates for Syrian authorities to restore "constitutional order."[1] Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke on the phone with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on November 30 to discuss the situation in Syria.[2] The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) claimed that both parties expressed serious concerns about the "dangerous developments" in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. Lavrov and Fidan reportedly discussed the need to coordinate joint Russian-Turkish actions to stabilize the situation, primarily through the Astana Process that Russia, Turkey, and Iran launched in December 2016. (The Astana Process is a rival political process to the United Nations [UN]-led Geneva Process under UN Security Council Resolution 2254.) Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also reportedly initiated a telephone conversation with Lavrov on November 30, during which Lavrov and Araghchi expressed "extreme concern" about the "dangerous escalation" in Syria.[3] Lavrov reportedly reaffirmed Russia's strong support for Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and both agreed to intensify joint efforts to stabilize and review the situation through the Astana Process. It remains unclear whether the Kremlin will be able to deploy additional assets to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime given the high tempo and operational requirements for Russia to continue conducting operations in Ukraine – the Kremlin’s priority theater. Russia withdrew S-300 systems from Syria back to Russia in 2022, likely to support Russian operations in Ukraine.[4]  ISW collected unconfirmed reports in March 2022 that Russia withdrew Russian soldiers and Wagner militants from Syria, likely to support Russian operations in Ukraine.[5]

Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un during his unannounced trip to Pyongyang on November 30.[6] Belousov and Kim discussed the Russia-North Korea strategic partnership and relations between the Russian and North Korean militaries.[7] Kim reiterated support for Russia's war in Ukraine and boilerplate rhetoric that the Kremlin uses to forward its reflexive control campaign aimed at forcing the West into self-deterrence.[8]

Key Takeaways:

• Kremlin officials responded to Syrian opposition forces' offensive into Syrian regime-held territory on November 29 and 30 and expressed interest in using the Astana Process to respond to the situation.
• Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un during his unannounced trip to Pyongyang on November 30.
• Ukrainian forces recently regained lost positions north of Kharkiv City, and Russian forces recently advanced near Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and Vuhledar.
• Russian milbloggers continued to criticize poor Russian military command decisions and poor training and discipline among Russian personnel.

15. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 30, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 30, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-30-2024

Syrian opposition forces seized Aleppo City and advanced toward Hama City on November 30. Opposition forces made this progress after launching their surprise offensive only three days prior. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) acknowledged that its forces have withdrawn from Aleppo City to “strengthen” defensive lines and “prepare for a counterattack.” The SAA also acknowledged that opposition forces have entered “large parts of Aleppo [City].” A pro-Syrian regime social media account reported that the SAA suffered command-and-control problems in Aleppo City, possibly leading to the rapid collapse of SAA defenses. Fateh Mubin—one of the main opposition groups leading the offensive—announced on November 29 that opposition forces had separately taken control of Khan Sheikoun, which is about 20 miles from Hama City. Geolocated footage posted on November 30 similarly showed opposition forces advancing through towns en route to Hama City. CTP-ISW cannot verify whether opposition forces are operating in Hama City at the time of this writing.

Pro-regime forces have failed to mount an effective defense against the surprise offensive by opposition forces. The Syrian regime and affiliated sources claimed that the SAA was preparing defensive lines in northern Hama Province on November 30. It appears that opposition forces have advanced past northern Hama Province at this time, however. Russian forces have separately conducted multiple airstrikes—some in cooperation with the SAA—targeting opposition forces in Aleppo City. Russian and Syrian airstrikes have continued to target opposition positions in the Aleppo, Hama, and Idlib countrysides as well.

Syrian opposition forces have likely captured valuable military equipment that the SAA and other pro-regime forces abandoned amid disorderly withdrawals. Social media accounts claimed that opposition forces have captured armored vehicles and heavy artillery pieces. Opposition forces also entered the Abu al Duhur and Nairab military airports in Idlib Province and Aleppo City, respectively.

Key Takeaways:



• Syria: Syrian opposition forces seized Aleppo City and advanced toward Hama City. Pro-Syrian regime forces have failed to mount an effective defense against the opposition offensive.

• The Turkish-backed SNA launched a separate offensive into Syrian regime-held territory. The SNA captured a military airport from the joint control of the SAA and SDF.

• The opposition offensive in northeastern Syria may be inspiring anti-regime activity in other parts of the country, particularly restive Daraa and Suwayda provinces.

• The Syrian regime may struggle to rally the same support from the Axis of Resistance and Russia that they previously provided, which will impede pro-regime counteroffensives.

• Gaza Strip: A Hamas delegation traveled to Cairo for further ceasefire-hostage negotiations and has indicated that it will drop its demand for the IDF to withdraw from parts of the Gaza Strip.

• Hamas published a video of an American-Israeli hostage giving what appears to be a coerced testimony in order to pressure the United States and Israel to support a ceasefire.

16. China Has a New Playbook to Counter Trump: ‘Supply Chain Warfare’

Just another line of effort in economic warfare which is part of unrestricted warfare.

China Has a New Playbook to Counter Trump: ‘Supply Chain Warfare’

A series of swipes at American companies show how China could take the initiative in a new trade war, using its economic dominance to exact pain.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/business/china-retaliation-skydio.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

Skydio offered autonomous drones free of China’s supply chain risks. However, days before the U.S. election, Chinese sanctions cut off its vital battery supplies, exposing its vulnerabilities.Credit...Laura Morton for The New York Times

By Alexandra Stevenson and Paul Mozur

Alexandra Stevenson, based in Hong Kong, and Paul Mozur, in Taipei, Taiwan, have covered the breakdown in Chinese-U.S. trade since President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first term.

Nov. 27, 2024

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版Leer en español

In the world of cheap drones, Skydio was the great American hope. Its autonomous flying machines gave the U.S. defense and police agencies an alternative to Chinese manufacturers, free from the security concerns tied to dependence on Chinese supply chains.

But Skydio’s vulnerabilities came into sharp focus days before the U.S. presidential election, when the Chinese authorities imposed sanctions and severed the company’s access to essential battery supplies.

Overnight, the San Mateo, Calif.-based Skydio, the largest American maker of drones, scrambled to find new suppliers. The move slowed Skydio’s deliveries to its customers, which include the U.S. military.

“This is an attack on Skydio, but it’s also an attack on you,” Adam Bry, the chief executive, told customers.

Behind the move was a message from China’s leaders to Donald J. Trump, who would go on to win the election with a promise of new China sanctions and tariffs: Hit us and we’ll strike back harder.

From the campaign trail to his cabinet appointments, Mr. Trump has made it clear that he believes a confrontation with China over trade and technology is inevitable. In the first Trump administration, the Chinese government took mostly symbolic and equivalent measures after U.S. tariffs and trade restrictions. This time, China is poised to escalate its responses, experts say, and could aim aggressive and targeted countermeasures at American companies.

Image

China’s leaders sent a clear message to Donald J. Trump, who promised new China sanctions and tariffs: Hit us and we’ll hit strike harder.Credit...Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

“During Trade War 1.0, Beijing was fairly careful to meet the tariffs that the U.S. put in place,” said Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Now they are signaling their tolerance for accepting and dishing out pain,” he said. “It’s clear for political reasons that Beijing is not willing to stand by and watch as significant new waves of tariffs come in.”

China has had time to prepare. During Mr. Trump’s first term, officials in Beijing began drafting laws that mirror U.S. tactics, allowing them to create blacklists and impose sanctions on American companies, cutting them off from critical resources. The goal has been to use China’s status as the world’s factory floor to exact punishment.

Since 2019, China has created what it called an “unreliable entity list” to penalize companies that undermine national interests, introduced rules to punish firms that comply with U.S. restrictions on Chinese entities and expanded its export-control laws. The broader reach of these laws enables Beijing to potentially choke global access to critical materials like rare earths and lithium — essential components in everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.

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The new tools are part of what one Communist Party publication described as an effort to “provide legal support for countering hegemonism and power politics and safeguarding the interests of the country and the people.”

Image

Since 2019, China has instituted rules that enable it to potentially restrict global access to vital materials like rare earths and lithium, key to smartphones and electric vehicles.Credit...China Network/Reuters

Collectively, the strategy marks a calculated shift to counter Mr. Trump’s expected policies when he takes office. The fallout could significantly disrupt operations for American companies.

That raises the stakes for businesses and the economy as the new U.S. administration readies its first salvo in what could become a more ruthless second round of trade conflict between the United States and China.

Washington’s relationship with Beijing was already fraught. President Biden has largely continued Mr. Trump’s confrontational policies, punishing some Chinese companies with sanctions and restricting others from the U.S. market. This month, the U.S. government announced a ban on 29 Chinese companies over connections to forced labor in the country’s western region of Xinjiang.

On Monday, Mr. Trump went further. The president-elect said he would impose an additional 10 percent tariff on all products coming into the country from China.

China has given a preview of the lengths it is willing to go to counter U.S. government sanctions.

In September, China accused PVH, the owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, of “discriminating” against products in Xinjiang and launched an investigation under its unreliable entities list framework. It was the first time that Beijing punished a foreign company for removing Xinjiang cotton from its supply chain to meet U.S. trade rules.

A few weeks later, a think tank with ties to China’s internet regulatory agency called for a review of Intel, the American chip company, for selling products that “constantly harmed” China’s national security and interests. The last company subject to a cybersecurity review, the American chip maker Micron, was ultimately cut off from supplying chips to a significant portion of the Chinese market.

Image

After undergoing a cybersecurity review, the American chipmaker Micron was barred from supplying chips to a significant portion of the Chinese market.Credit...Steve Helber/Associated Press

The Chinese rules leave both PVH and Intel stuck in the tussle between the two global superpowers. Other companies might soon find themselves in a similar position. The conundrum for firms is whether and how to follow U.S. trade restrictions, when doing so could trigger Chinese reprisals.

Forcing companies to question their business practices might be China’s intention, experts say. At the same time, Chinese officials need to strike a balance in their punishments. If they go too far in penalizing foreign companies, they could scare away investors when financial markets are worried about China’s economy.

And in some cases, Chinese companies still need what the United States offers, including microchips in electronic devices or soybeans that Chinese farmers feed their cattle. Many of China’s state-owned enterprises still use computers powered by Intel chips.

“They have this dilemma where they want to signal to the U.S. government but they don’t want to scare foreign investors and companies too much,” said Andrew Gilholm, a China expert at Control Risks, a consulting firm. “They want companies to know that there is a cost to being too enthusiastic about complying with U.S. and other regulations.”

The strategy, he said, is evolving into one that looks more like “supply chain warfare.”

Still, for the many companies that rely more on China than China does on them, Beijing has the ability to exact major pain. Skydio, the drone maker, had spent years building a supply chain outside China but remained reliant on the country for one crucial item: batteries.

Image

This week, Mr. Trump said he would impose an additional 10 percent tariff on all products coming into the country from China.Credit...Li Ziheng/Xinhua, via Associated Press

After the sanctions by China, there is no quick fix. It can take months to make the necessary design changes and secure new suppliers. In a statement, Skydio said it would be forced to ration batteries. That means its customers, which include fire departments, can get only one battery per drone, severely limiting how long a craft can fly. The company said it planned to have new supplies by spring.

“If there was ever any doubt, this action makes clear that the Chinese government will use supply chains as a weapon to advance their interests over ours,” Skydio wrote.

An editorial in Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party tabloid, celebrated the success of the sanctions on Skydio, noting in a headline, “U.S. company sanctioned by China ‘cries out in pain,’ revealing their American mask.” The article said the reprisal was merited because Skydio was a part of U.S. government efforts to create a “non-red supply chain” outside China.

The solution for Skydio was simple, Global Times continued. Don’t “serve as a tool for the United States to contain China” or “be prepared to bear the consequences of such actions.”

Zixu Wang contributed research.

Alexandra Stevenson is the Shanghai bureau chief for The Times, reporting on China’s economy and society. More about Alexandra Stevenson

Paul Mozur is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei. Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. More about Paul Mozur

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 28, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: China Sharpens Weapon for Possible Trade War. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

17. Setbacks for Russia, Iran and Hezbollah Turn Into a Catastrophe for Syria’s Assad

So are these three setbacks and one catastrophe?

How are we exploiting this situation and how can our incoming administration exploit this?

Will Syria become the utimate proxy war?

Setbacks for Russia, Iran and Hezbollah Turn Into a Catastrophe for Syria’s Assad

The loss of Aleppo to Islamist rebels represents a stunning defeat for the Syrian regime, highlighting its dependence on enfeebled allies

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/setbacks-for-russia-iran-and-hezbollah-turn-into-a-catastrophe-for-syrias-assad-c3e693e8?mod=latest_headlines

By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow

Nov. 30, 2024 8:26 am ET

It had taken the Syrian regime and its backers—Iran, Russia and Hezbollah—more than four years to dislodge rebel forces from the country’s second-largest city of Aleppo. At the time, in 2016, they celebrated that victory as the turning point in Syria’s civil war.

Now, a surprise rebel offensive has recaptured Aleppo in just a few days, including parts of the city that the Syrian army had never surrendered before. This stunning feat is the direct consequence of new wars that have erupted outside Syria’s borders.

“It’s a tectonic shift,” said Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served as Syria director in the Trump White House. “Regional and international powers intervened in Syria over a decade ago, and now the conflicts of Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon all come together and overlap in Aleppo.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Iranian ayatollahs’ regime are all currently embroiled in conflicts that threaten their very survival, and in which Syria is a sideshow at best. To a varying degree, all three have sustained strategic blows—while the Syrian rebels’ main backer, Turkey, has taken advantage of the turmoil.

“Russia is weakened, Iran is weakened, Hezbollah is beaten—and all this has created an enormous opportunity for Turkey, which it was quick to grab,” said Asli Aydintaşbaş, a Turkey specialist at the Brookings Institution.

Cars in Aleppo were still burning in the early hours of Saturday. Photo: Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Rebel fighters gathered around a fire in the city’s center before dawn on Saturday. Photo: Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

At the very least, the latest developments will stem the flow of Syrian refugees into Turkey, a significant political problem there. Depending on how fighting develops in the coming weeks and months, the fall of Aleppo could also give Ankara a dominant role in Syria’s future—not necessarily a prospect that Israel would relish.

Syria’s President Bashar al Assad tried his best to keep a low profile ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas turned into a regional war between Israel, Iran and Iranian proxies. Yet, that maneuvering—including a recent rapprochement with Gulf monarchies that once funded the rebels—didn’t prevent Assad’s regime from getting embroiled in the maelstrom that is reshaping the Middle East.

Hailed as a miracle in videos posted from Aleppo’s ancient citadel, the city’s fall on Friday night exceeded the Islamist-led rebels’ wildest expectations. Now, after the regime’s army collapsed or fled, other offensives are under way. Fighting in coming days will show whether the Syrian military will be able to regroup and counterattack—or will continue a chaotic retreat from other major population centers.

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Islamist-led insurgents poured into the Syrian city, rebelling against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The offensive is seen as a setback for the government in Damascus and its allies Russia and Iran. Photo: AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed

The most important factor behind Assad’s loss of Aleppo is the rout inflicted by Israel on Hezbollah. Equipped by Iran and Russia, the Lebanese militia used to be the most capable infantry fighting on Assad’s behalf, and was instrumental in rolling back rebel gains in the past.

But, in October last year, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah made a strategic mistake, joining the war against Israel that was kicked off by Hamas. As the Lebanese militia redeployed its weapons and forces from Syria to fight Israel, in what it believed would be a carefully calibrated campaign, it suffered nothing short of a military catastrophe.

In recent months, Israel killed most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership, including Nasrallah himself, decimated the militia’s ranks and destroyed its weapons caches in southern Lebanon and south Beirut. Following a ground invasion, Israel has forced Hezbollah, which had pledged to keep fighting until a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, into a separate cease-fire.

“Hezbollah is crippled,” said Navvar Şaban, a researcher on Syria at the Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies in Istanbul. “This has created a huge vacuum. Though there were regime forces located in Aleppo, they were not trained, they lacked military discipline, they lacked tactics and even their retreat plan was a disaster.”

Since the Gaza war began, Iran, too, has lost some of its top Revolutionary Guard commanders in Syria and Lebanon to Israeli airstrikes. Instead of projecting strength, Iran’s retaliation against Israel—the first direct missile exchange between the two countries—resulted in the Israeli bombing of Iranian air defenses and weapons-production facilities. This was a blow to Tehran’s military power and political prestige alike.

For Russia, the 2015 intervention to rescue Assad’s regime was advertised as a major geopolitical triumph that displaced the U.S. as the Middle East’s sole dominant power. Then came the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which instead of a quick victory expected by Putin has turned into a bloody war of attrition. Regular Russian forces have taken hundreds of thousands of casualties and lost several thousand tanks and fighting vehicles since then. The Wagner paramilitary group, which had played a critical role in Syria, has been destroyed, its leadership killed in the wake of last year’s failed putsch against Putin.

Aleppo emerged badly scarred, including major damage at the historic Umayyad Mosque, after pro-government forces recaptured the city in 2016.

George Ourfalian/AFP/Getty Images, Omar Sanadiki/Reuters

The Russian air force, indispensable for the survival of Assad, hasn’t been as degraded as Russian ground troops in Ukraine, but it too has lost a significant part of its firepower and operates at a fraction of its former strength in Syria. According to open-source analysts at the Oryx consultancy, some 117 Russian warplanes were destroyed in nearly three years of the Ukrainian war, and 15 more damaged.

While the Russian air force carried out a series of bombing runs in Syria in recent days, these strikes were limited and didn’t do much to halt the rebel advances. “The Russians are very, very busy in Ukraine, and that’s a big part of it,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a group that advocates for democracy in Syria. “Thank God for the Ukrainians.”

The current rebel offensive in Aleppo was led by the Hayat Tahrir al Sham, or HTS, an Islamist militia coalition that enjoys Turkish backing. Its key leaders include Islamist fighters once associated with the Nusra Front, a one-time Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda. Though the HTS leadership has publicly disavowed al Qaeda, the group remains classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Unlike the rebel forces of a decade ago, HTS units involved in the current offensive appeared well-trained and well-armed. They also heavily relied on the drone technology that has been developed during the war in Ukraine.

In an effort to avoid the mistakes of the past and project the image of moderation, HTS military commander Abu Mohammad al Jawlani urged his Sunni Islamist followers to avoid harming Shiites and other minorities, and to maintain order in the city. “Aleppo has always been—and remains— a meeting place of civilizations and cultures, with a long history of cultural and religious diversity,” his edict said.

Anti-government forces, who had reached Aleppo’s ancient citadel by Saturday, have been urged to exercise restraint in the historic city. Photo: Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Fighting caused heavy damage to this house to the east of Idlib. Photo: Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

While the HTS rebels—and their Turkish patrons—benefited from the Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and sites in Iran and Syria, the timing of the Aleppo offensive was likely tied to the cease-fire just reached in Lebanon.

“The militants have been ready for a while. And my guess is it’s the Turks who have been holding them back,” said Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and a fellow at the Middle East Institute. “But now, once the Lebanon cease-fire is done, the attack on Aleppo doesn’t look anymore like Turkey fighting an enemy of Israel.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been among the most vociferous critics of Israel, hosting leaders of Hamas and curtailing trade and diplomatic ties with Israel after tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces.

Still, the Aleppo offensive was seen with satisfaction, if not outright gloating, by many in Israel. “It’s a net positive for Israel,” said Nadav Pollak, a former Israeli intelligence official who teaches at Reichman University in Israel. “The Iran-Hezbollah-Syria axis suffered heavy blows in recent months, and this adds another significant blow, which forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel.”

As for Russia, the rebels entering Aleppo quickly appealed to Moscow to reconsider its role, and its interests, in Syria. “The Syrian revolution has never been directed against any nation or people, including Russia,” said a statement by the HTS-led rebel administration. “It is not a party to what is happening in the Russo-Ukrainian war.”

At the same time, the rebels—whose ranks include Russian-speaking Islamists from the Caucasus and Central Asia—posted online videos of themselves killing Russian soldiers in the outskirts of Aleppo and tearing down portraits of Putin in Syrian government offices.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

18. The Heartland Theory: More Relevant Than Ever? – Analysis

I love the 1904 map of the "heartland" at the link: 

The Heartland Theory: More Relevant Than Ever? – Analysis

https://www.eurasiareview.com/01122024-the-heartland-theory-more-relevant-than-ever-analysis/?utm

eurasiareview.com · November 30, 2024

Sir Halford Mackinder’s famous Heartland Theory was first formulated in the early 20th century, but it holds renewed relevance and importance today, especially when analyzed though a critical lens of the current geopolitical system, one that emphasizes individual freedom, limited government intervention, and skepticism of centralized power.

Mackinder’s theory posits that control over the “Heartland” — roughly the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia — grants substantial power over global politics and commerce due to its geographic centrality, strategic importance and resource abundance. This seemingly simple, but potent, core idea, highlights both the dangers and opportunities posed by state power struggles and emphasizes the need for decentralized and voluntary approaches to international relations and global geopolitical power balances.

Mackinder argued that whoever controls the Heartland, also referred to as “the pivot area” in his 1904 analysis “The Geographical Pivot of History”, could eventually control the world’s very trajectory. Historically, command over this central position has allowed a nation or an alliance of nations to exert immense influence over global affairs. Clearly, for liberty-loving individuals and independent thinkers, this level of dominance raises serious concerns due to the concentrated power it affords a central authority, potentially undermining individual freedoms and self-determination.

It also raises very legitimate fears over the potential for coercive policies that threaten individual autonomy both domestically and internationally. What’s more, the fierce competition over the Heartland not only encourages interventionist policies, but also indirect hostile actions or even outright aggression, usually ending up in “unholy” alliances and in devastating and costly wars.

We’re seeing this all play out in real time in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. As opposed to what the mainstream media propaganda and Western political leaders would have the public believe, Russia didn’t invade Ukraine out of nothing or because President Putin is some kind of comic-book madman like he is so often portrayed. Without wishing to defend any sort of aggression, especially of a military nature, and without being a Moscow apologist (for it is crystal clear that the Russian government is very far from benign and freedom-loving), there is a solid case to be made against the Western allies too, for their part in instigating this war NATO’s eastward expansion and increasing U.S. presence in Eastern Europe indicate a renewed geopolitical interest in countering Russia and China in the Heartland area and reinforcing its influence in a clearly threatening way.

The West’s actions prior to and after the Ukraine invasion raise questions about interventionism’s costs and its potential for unintended consequences, as well as about the political and strategic lines that nations are willing to cross in order to expand their power and control. It goes beyond the very obvious and catastrophic impact of this war in terms of human losses (lest we forget about the more that 500,000 souls that perished after being forcibly conscripted by the Ukrainian government, many of them teenagers, civilians with little to no prior military training, or even mentally disabled individuals) and the infrastructural and economic destruction of the two warring parties.

There has also been a very high price paid indirectly by the citizens of the allied nations, who never voted for or in any way consented to participating this conflict. They all just got dragged into yet another prolonged war that has already drained resources, increased national debt, and curtailed freedoms through increased surveillance, freedom of speech restrictions, military spending and direct encroachments on individual financial sovereignty. In a world that is brutally dividing itself between East and West – the Ukraine war will likely be remembered in history books as a key catalyst.

Naturally, the desire to control the Heartland is not some bizarre obsession unique to the West, as Russia also fully recognizes and appreciates the power that comes with it. Moscow’s hold over Ukraine would allow the nation to secure critical land access points, obtain influence over transit routes for natural resources, and project power over Europe. Ukraine’s geographic position bridges Europe with the resource-rich lands of Central Asia, and it provides access to the Black Sea, making it a key strategic asset in Mackinder’s Heartland framework. A Russia with control over Ukraine and, by extension, control over more of the Heartland, would destabilize Europe and make the continent more dependent on Russian resources, thereby reducing Western influence and relevance on the global power balance.

This is especially relevant and quite clear to see when it comes to the all-important energy market. Mackinder’s theory emphasizes the strategic value of resources in the Heartland, and indeed, today, Russia uses its energy exports as a geopolitical tool, while the West uses its sanctions as a counter-offensive weapon. With control over the substantial oil and gas reserves and key pipeline routes, Russia can exert leverage over European nations that depend on its resources, especially since so many of them have for so long adopted catastrophic energy policies (premature transition to “green” initiatives) that have all but guaranteed this near-absolute dependence.

This current dynamic demonstrably confirms Mackinder’s prediction that control over the Heartland could allow a power to dominate through resource control. Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, for instance, has exposed significant energy security vulnerabilities, particularly as Russia has intermittently restricted exports in response to sanctions and military aid from the West to Ukraine.

The Heartland Theory implicitly assumes a globalist system, where powerful states vie for control and seek to influence others through centralized strategies, which clearly contradicts libertarian values, which prioritize the sovereignty and self-determination of communities and especially of the individual, the smallest minority of all. This is particularly relevant in a world where centralized, global institutions, such as the United Nations or the World Economic Forum, are forcing upon us another Cultural Revolution, and as they are increasingly involved in geopolitics, often coercing smaller nations into decisions that go against the interests of their own people, jeopardizing their security, their prosperity and regrettably, even their very existence.

Of course, none of this new or even surprising to the observant students of history. Countless lives have been lost since time immemorial due to this endless and largely vain competition between nation states and alliances to gain control over the Heartland. The last time we saw a serious escalation was, of course, WWII, and we all know how that ended… Or do we?

“The virtuous Allies crushed the evil Nazis and saved the world from fascism.” That’s pretty much the summary of every history book taught in schools all over the world, of every mainstream documentary ever produced on that period and of every political speech that seeks to criticize opposing views and rivals by accusing them of being “literally Hitler”. We see this political messaging strategy at work today, in real time, too: Victor Urban in Hungary, the AFD party in Germany, Nigel Farage in the UK, Marine LePen in France, and last but certainly not least, President Elect Trump in the US, all of them have been decided as “literal Nazis” – though the irony of the true meaning of the term, namely “National Socialist” is most of the time totally lost on the name-callers. What is also entirely lost on them are the circumstances that led to WWII and the rise of Hitler himself, namely the Heartland-theory-underpinned WWI (an effort to prevent a Russo-German alliance) , which ended with the callous humiliation of the Germans and the Treaty of Versailles that clearly sowed the seeds for the next World War.

However, unfortunately for those of us seeking to understand history, the truth is always more nuanced than a children’s bedtime story. Or as comedian Norm MacDonald concisely put it: “It says here in this history book that, luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”

Take Winston Churchill for example. There has hardly ever been a more revered, nearly deified human in modern history, to the extent that one couldn’t be blamed for forgetting that he was in fact, human. We do need to remember this though, that he was just that, human, in order to provide a balanced view, one that scrutinizes actions often overlooked or sanitized in popular narratives. For instance, for all his widely celebrated strategic genius, Churchill’s leadership was also tainted by several decisions that led to catastrophic failures, resulting in unnecessary loss of life and resources, including the Gallipoli Campaign and the The Norway Campaign.

Most shamefully, Churchill’s approval of area bombing campaigns is also often brushed aside in many historical accounts, even though they cost the lives of around 600,000 civilians and left around 800,000 seriously injured. The most (in)famous example of these is, of course, the firebombing of Dresden. Its barbarity, even though it was not the first of its kind nor the last, shook Churchill’s moral core – as he put it, immediately after the attack: “Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?…. It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. We shall not, for instance, be able to get housing materials out of Germany for our own needs because some temporary provision would have to be made for the Germans themselves. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests rather than that of the enemy.”

These raids targeted civilian populations and caused massive destruction, with questionable strategic value. One can easily argue that such actions blurred the moral distinction between the Allies and Axis powers.

Of course, the consequences of twisting or “spinning” history to match a certain narrative go far beyond the obvious, namely creating generation after generation of ill-informed, biased and naive citizens. It also shapes the policy direction of the future. As Ralph Raico explained in an analysis for the Mises Institute: “In more recent decades, the Churchill legend has been adopted by an internationalist establishment for which it furnishes the perfect symbol and an inexhaustible vein of high-toned blather. Churchill has become, in Christopher Hitchens’s phrase, a “totem” of the American establishment, not only the scions of the New Deal, but the neo-conservative apparatus as well—politicians like Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle, corporate “knights” and other denizens of the Reagan and Bush Cabinets, the editors and writers of the Wall Street Journal, and a legion of “conservative” columnists led by William Safire and William Buckley. Churchill was, as Hitchens writes, “the human bridge across which the transition was made” between a noninterventionist and a globalist America. In the next century, it is not impossible that his bulldog likeness will feature in the logo of the New World Order.”

It is vital to keep this in mind today, as we are going through an extremely important, tectonic shift in the global geopolitical order. We need to look at history through a critical lens, to question every “received wisdom” and to ask as many questions as possible, even if (or perhaps, especially if) they are uncomfortable.

Mackinder’s Heartland Theory remains highly relevant as it highlights the ongoing struggle for control over the region and all that it implies for the world at large. For freedom-loving individuals, the theory serves as a stern warning against the dangers of centralization and interventionism.

In today’s global climate, where large states aim to leverage geographic influence, military might and economic warfare, rational and decent individuals must resist convenient and simplistic narratives that paint humanity as entirely good or entirely evil, and must instead stand for non-aggression, non-intervention, decentralized cooperation, and free-market-led initiatives, as the only ways to promote stability and prosperity without the need for coercive control over any strategic “Heartland.”

eurasiareview.com · November 30, 2024

19. Zelensky wants to ‘work directly’ with Trump on ending Ukraine’s war with Russia

Zelensky wants to ‘work directly’ with Trump on ending Ukraine’s war with Russia | CNN

CNN · by Hanna Ziady · November 30, 2024

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President-elect Donald Trump meet at Trump Tower in New York City on September 27.

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters/File

CNN —

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he wants to work “directly” with US President-elect Donald Trump and is open to his ideas, highlighting Kyiv’s eagerness to keep its most important ally onside as Russia intensifies its attacks.

“Of course we will work with Trump. I want to work with him directly,” Zelensky said in an interview with Sky News released Friday, adding that he did not want people around Trump to “destroy” their communication. “I want to share with him ideas and I want to hear from him his ideas,” he added.

The United States is the single largest provider of military assistance to Ukraine and Kyiv is keenly aware that it needs to stay on Trump’s good side to secure future support. According to the US Department of State, the government has contributed $64.1 billion to Ukraine’s war effort since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Zelensky characterized his conversations with Trump during a visit to New York in September as “warm, good, constructive.” He said the discussions were an “important first step,” but that more detailed talks would be needed “until we will have a real plan where Ukraine is strong.”

Zelensky noted that his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, would travel to the US as soon as possible for meetings, including with Trump’s pick to be special envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg.

Kellogg favors a ceasefire and peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, which would include security guarantees for Ukraine to protect against future Russian invasions.

Zelensky told Sky News that Russian President Vladimir Putin was not ready to negotiate, however. “He doesn’t want to stop the war,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader added that he would like Trump to succeed and for the US to “play one of the most crucial parts” in ending the war.

Prior to winning the election, Trump repeatedly claimed that the Russia-Ukraine war would not have started if he had been president. He also vowed to end the war, sometimes even claiming he would stop the years-long conflict before taking office. In July, he said he could settle the conflict in one day, without offering further details.

NATO membership

Zelensky’s comments come as the scale and severity of the conflict escalates, as Moscow makes increasing use of non-nuclear ballistic missiles. More than one million Ukrainian households were left without power Thursday following a widespread attack on critical energy infrastructure.

On Friday, Putin threatened to strike Ukraine again. He also praised Trump, describing him as an “intelligent and experienced” politician capable of finding “solutions.”

In the interview with Sky News, Zelensky stressed that Ukraine’s US and European allies needed to better equip a greater number of its soldiers and provide more fighter jets. The country’s eastern front, where Moscow is fast advancing, “depends on the number of equipped brigades” and air defense, he added.

Kremlin/Telegram

Related article Putin threatens to strike Ukraine again with new missile after wave of attacks on energy

He also addressed widely reported calls by US officials to drop Ukraine’s minimum conscription age from 25 to 18 to address a critical shortage of manpower. “I want to ask our partners to do their part of the job and we will do our part of the job,” he said.

Asked by Sky News whether Ukraine would consider ceding some territory to Russia in exchange for NATO membership, Zelensky said that such a solution could in theory help to end the war but that it would run counter to Ukraine’s constitution.

“The invitation (to join NATO) must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognized border. You can’t give an invitation to just one part of the country… You have no right to recognize the occupied territory as territory of Russia,” he said.

Zelensky has long called for Ukraine’s unconditional accession to NATO, but it is highly unlikely that the country will be admitted to the military alliance before the war ends. During the interview, Zelensky reiterated his position that NATO membership was currently the only path to victory.

He admitted that he was afraid Ukraine might lose the war, and particularly the independence of its people. “If we will be alone, we will lose,” he said.

Maria Kostenko contributed to this report.

CNN · by Hanna Ziady · November 30, 2024

20. US general Jeffers arrives in Beirut to help enforce Israel-Lebanon ceasefire

US general Jeffers arrives in Beirut to help enforce Israel-Lebanon ceasefire

allisrael.com

Jo Elizabeth | Published: December 1, 2024

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Lebanese Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun (L), receives U.S. Major General, Jasper Jeffers, head of the Quint Supervisory Committee, at his office in Yarzeh, Lebanon, Nov. 29, 2024. (Photo: Lebanon's National News Agency)

Maj.-Gen. Jasper Jeffers of the U.S. military flew to Beirut as part of the U.S. efforts to support the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon.

According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Jeffers, who leads Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT), arrived the day after the ceasefire was announced. He will head up an international team overseeing the implementation of the cessation of hostilities, sharing the role with U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein until a permanent civilian official is named, CENTCOM reported.

The international team, referred to as the “cessation of hostilities implementation and monitoring mechanism,” will be chaired by the United States but include members of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), along with France.

Due to the increasingly volatile situation in Syria, there are concerns about escalations that could affect the entire region, given the fragility of the ceasefire agreement.

However, Ynet News reported that Israel hopes Hezbollah will now shift its focus to the Syrian regime, led by President Bashar al-Assad.

On Friday, Jeffers met with LAF commander Joseph Aoun to discuss the coordination mechanism between the involved parties in the south, according to the Arabic-language site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

“This is something we need to monitor closely to see how it unfolds,” Israeli officials said, following a special security meeting held Friday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It doesn’t necessarily impact us in the short term, but any instability in a neighboring country could eventually affect us. That said, there may also be opportunities for change here.”

Jeffers, a decorated brigadier general in the U.S. Army since 1996, was previously deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

He led a brigade within the U.S. Army Special Operations Command deployed to support "Operation Inherent Resolve," the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Read more: HEZBOLLAH | CEASEFIRE DEAL | NORTHERN FRONT

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Jo Elizabeth

Jo Elizabeth has a great interest in politics and cultural developments, studying Social Policy for her first degree and gaining a Masters in Jewish Philosophy from Haifa University, but she loves to write about the Bible and its primary subject, the God of Israel. As a writer, Jo spends her time between the UK and Jerusalem, Israel.

21. Who is Jasper Jeffers, the US army general co-monitoring the Lebanon ceasefire?

Who is Jasper Jeffers, the US general observing Lebanon truce?

newarab.com · by The New Arab Staff

Who is Jasper Jeffers, the US army general co-monitoring the Lebanon ceasefire?

Jasper Jeffers, a US army general with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, will monitor the ceasefire in Lebanon alongside Amos Hochstein.

MENA

3 min read

The New Arab Staff

30 November, 2024

A ceasefire was declared in Lebanon early on Wednesday, with US involvement in securing the deal [Getty/file photo]

The US military has appointed Major General Jasper Jeffers to oversee the implementation of the Washington-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon, which took effect in the early hours of Wednesday, CENTCOM announced.

The head of the Special Operations Command Central will carry out his mission alongside US Special envoy Amos Hochstein, who helped broker the truce between Israel and Hezbollah over the past few weeks.

Jeffers arrived in in the Lebanese capital earlier this week as part of his mission to monitor the ceasefire’s implementation, CENTCOM said.

He met with Lebanese armed forces commander Joseph Aoun on Friday, where they discussed the coordination mechanism between the involved parties in the south, the Lebanese army said, as cited by the The New Arab’s Arabic-language site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

The cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah will be chaired by the United States and include the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the Israeli army, the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), as well as France.

The New Arab takes a look at the US army's appointee for monitoring the ceasefire.

Who is Jasper Jeffers?

Jasper Jeffers’ military career began in 1996, after he graduated from Virginia Tech, where he was assigned as an infantry officer. His first assignment was as a rifle platoon commander and operations officer in the 4-31st Infantry Regiment in Fort Drum, New York State.

Jeffers then went on to serve as a platoon leader and executive officer with the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry Regiment, at Fort Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia.

He then climbed the US military ranks by serving as a company commander and air operations officer with 1-5 Infantry Regiment, 1/25 Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Fort Lewis, Washington.

He also held various command positions, including troop, squadron commander and deputy brigade commander at the US Army Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

International deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq

Jeffers' mission in Lebanon is far from his first military-related deployment in the Middle East. The Major General had participated in the US-led invasion and war in Iraq in 2003, serving as a company commander and air operations officer with 2nd Battalion, 75th Infantry Regiment.

He was also positioned in Afghanistan as advisor to the commander of Operation Resolute Support, a NATO military mission in the country.

He then went on to lead a brigade within the US Army Special Operations Command, deployed to support Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria, the US-led campaign against the Islamic State group in those countries.

All eyes will be on Lebanon in the coming weeks and Jeffers' efforts. Hezbollah, which has suffered a number of significant losses amid its conflict with Israel, said it would coordinate closely with the Lebanese army to implement the ceasefire deal.

Israel, however, warned that it would strike the group should it violate the truce, and said it will "act with full freedom" in Lebanon.

The ceasefire deal entails a number of conditions, notably the complete withdrawal of the Israeli army from south Lebanon, the deployment of the Lebanese army to the country's south and Hezbollah moving away to the north of the Litani river.

Efforts, however, have been complicated by the continuing presence of Israeli troops on Lebanese territory. Additionally, both Hezbollah and the Israeli army have accused each other of violating the ceasefire deal since.

Nearly 4,000 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli forces since the conflict began in October last year, one day after Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza. The death toll in Lebanon increased rapidly after Israel turned the low-level conflict into a full onslaught in September this year.

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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