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1. After ‘Productive’ Meeting With Ukrainian Negotiators in Florida, U.S. Officials Head to Russia

2. Opinion | Vladimir Putin Won’t Win on the Battlefield

3. Lessons From Venezuela For the Indo-Pacific

4. Haunted by History, Japanese Americans Fight Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

5. Opinion | China Revives Economic Coercion to Punish Japan

6. Congress Opens Inquiries After Report That U.S. Targeted Boat-Strike Survivors

7. Trump says Hegseth told him he didn’t order killing of boat crew

8. The Army’s latest PSYOP recruiting ad reminds you: ‘We are everywhere’

9. Suspect in National Guard Shooting ‘Radicalized’ After Entry to U.S., Noem Says

10. Top Gun Traders: Stock Bets and Crypto Culture Take Over the Military

11. America’s Tariffs Jolted the Global Economy. Its AI Spending Is Helping Save It.

12. How Venezuelan Gangs and African Jihadists Are Flooding Europe With Cocaine

13. Open Questions | Taiwan is a complicated issue, but the way out is simple: ex-PLA colonel Zhou Bo

14. Fragmented frontiers: three approaches to understanding irregular warfare

15. Running Estimate (Crawling When We Need to Run)

16. When There Is No Off-Season (training and warfighting - WFX)

17. Taiwan’s plan to acquire drone ‘takeover’ technology sparks security debate

18. The Soldier in the Illiberal State is a Professional Dead End

19. Could the PLA use long-range rockets against ships in an attack on Taiwan?

20. Are Palestinians Ready to Shed Hamas?

21. The Best of Books 2025 – This Year’s Top Picks From Foreign Affairs’ Reviewers

22. Politics and War. Reality vs Expectations (Ukraine and Russia)

1. After ‘Productive’ Meeting With Ukrainian Negotiators in Florida, U.S. Officials Head to Russia

Summary:

POTUS has reopened high level Ukraine peace talks, with Rubio, Kushner and Witkoff shaping a revised plan after criticism that earlier proposals favored Russia. Florida talks with Umerov explored elections, land swaps and security guarantees while underscoring Kyiv’s refusal to legitimize Russian gains or accept NATO exclusion. Kushner and Witkoff now go to Moscow for direct engagement with Putin’s envoy, testing whether the Kremlin is serious about compromise. Core strategic dilemmas remain: security guarantees credible enough to deter renewed aggression, territorial arrangements acceptable to Ukrainians, and elections that do not hand Russia new levers through interference.

Comment: Business deal or diplomatic negotiation? Again, what is the acceptable durable political and security arrangement that will satisfy the interests of Ukraine, Russia, NATO, and the US? Will Putin negotiate as a responsible member of the international community? (Of course his invasion of Ukraine was not very responsible).

After ‘Productive’ Meeting With Ukrainian Negotiators in Florida, U.S. Officials Head to Russia

WSJ

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner plan to travel to Moscow on Monday for more talks about a possible peace plan

By Deborah Acosta

and Robbie Gramer

Updated Nov. 30, 2025 6:19 pm ET

From left, the U.S. delegation of Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner meeting with Ukrainian negotiators during Sunday’s talks in South Florida. Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. negotiators, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner, held productive talks with Ukrainian officials on Sunday.
Discussions covered potential timetables for new elections in Ukraine and the prospect of land swaps between Russia and Ukraine.
Key issues remain unresolved, such as U.S. and Western security guarantees for Ukraine and Russia’s demand for recognition of seized territories.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

U.S. negotiators, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner, held productive talks with Ukrainian officials on Sunday.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla.—U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators said Sunday’s meeting on ending the war with Russia—which included talks on possible elections, land swaps and security guarantees—was productive, and top U.S. envoys will head to Moscow on Monday for further discussions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Ukrainian counterparts for more than four hours. Rubio said they made progress, adding that the negotiations are complex.

The talks covered possible timetables for new elections in Ukraine, and the prospect of land swaps between Russia and Ukraine, according to a senior U.S. official. Other crucial issues remain unresolved including the nature of U.S. and Western security guarantees for Ukraine and whether the Kremlin will continue to demand international recognition of the territories it has seized from Ukraine since it launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

“We don’t just want to end the war, we also want to help Ukraine be safe forever so never again will they face another invasion,” Rubio said after the meeting. “There’s more work to be done. This is delicate, it’s complicated, there are a lot of moving parts and obviously there’s another party involved here that’ll have to be a part of the equation.‘’

Kushner and Witkoff will fly to Russia on Monday to continue the talks, according to the U.S. official.

Trump said on Sunday that Witkoff will likely meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin sometime next week.

The Ukrainian delegation was led by Rustem Umerov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, in place of Andriy Yermak, one of Ukraine’s top officials who resigned amid a corruption scandal. “Our objective is a prosperous, strong Ukraine,” said Umerov, standing next to Rubio outside the negotiating room. “This meeting was productive and successful,” he said, without offering specifics. Neither took questions.

Rustem Umerov, the chief Ukrainian negotiator, speaks with the U.S. delegation. AFP/Getty Images

Sunday’s negotiations capped a whirlwind month of high-stakes diplomacy that began in Florida when Kushner and Witkoff met with Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s handpicked negotiator, to hash out an initial 28-point peace plan. The three worked together to edit the proposal over multiple days in October at Witkoff’s waterfront home in Miami Beach, Fla.

Trump has renewed his drive to end the war after months of failed negotiations and escalating Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilian targets. A day before the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations met in Florida, Russia bombarded Ukraine with a nearly 10-hour air assault with hundreds of missiles and drones that struck residential buildings and energy infrastructure.

The Trump administration’s initial peace proposal, leaked in mid-November, alarmed Ukraine and its closest European allies for offering up concessions that were seen to heavily favor Russia, including caps on the size of Ukraine’s military but not Russia’s and a proposal to bar Ukraine from ever joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

When Umerov met with Witkoff and Kushner in Miami in October to review the initial proposed 28-point plan, he bluntly said the deal favored Russia over Ukraine. At the negotiating table on Sunday, inside Witkoff’s Shell Bay golf club in South Florida, Umerov voiced appreciation for the Trump administration’s efforts.

“The U.S. is hearing us, U.S. is supporting us, U.S. is walking beside us,” he said.

Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One, President Trump said the war in Ukraine was ‘moving in one direction.’ Photo: Pete Marovich/Getty Images

Over three years into the war, it is unclear whether Putin is willing to make concessions that would get both sides to agree to peace terms. At a news conference last week, the Russian leader said he was ready for “serious” discussions to end the war but reiterated demands that Ukraine must withdraw its troops from Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region—including areas of the region not controlled by Russia.

“When Ukrainian troops leave the territories they hold, then the fighting will stop,” Putin said. “If they don’t, then we’ll achieve that through military means.”

Ukraine has previously refused to accede to those demands, countering that any withdrawal from the region will leave it vulnerable to further Russian attacks.

The discussions around land swaps as part of a peace deal have been particularly complicated. Russia and Ukraine would need to address the legality of territorial changes, because both their constitutions prohibit ceding territories without legal changes.

But unlike in Russia, where Putin wields total control, the diplomatic and legal hurdles on the Ukrainian side are significantly more complicated. Any change to Ukraine’s borders would require a nationwide referendum.

Ukraine’s wartime powers also freeze presidential and parliamentary elections. The prospect of holding new elections is a politically fraught issue in Ukraine amid the war and could open up Ukraine to election-interference campaigns from Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is under increased political pressure at home against the backdrop of the peace talks, as his government reels from the corruption scandal that pushed Yermak to resign.

Write to Deborah Acosta at deborah.acosta@wsj.com and Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 1, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. and Ukraine Discuss Thorny Issues'.

WSJ

2. Opinion | Vladimir Putin Won’t Win on the Battlefield

Summary:

Mick Ryan argues Russia’s modest 2025 gains, only about 0.8% of Ukraine despite massive casualties and adaptation, show battlefield progress is inadequate. Ukraine’s deep strikes, industrial resilience and Russia’s fuel problems constrain Moscow. Putin pursues long-term political aims, exploiting perceptions of momentum to shape peace terms despite limited military success.

Excerpt:

All of this provides a lesson about Mr. Putin’s strategic calculus. The war is much less about territorial acquisition, oil supplies or military victory than it is about his regional political aspirations. Paltry gains today still serve long-term ambition. To President Trump’s eye, moreover, they are evidence of Russia’s inevitable victory and reason enough to “stop the killing.”

Comment: If Putin cannot win on the battlefield then how can we prevent him from winning at the negotiating table?

Opinion | Vladimir Putin Won’t Win on the Battlefield

WSJ

Since January, the Russian military’s territorial gains total nearly 1,900 square miles—or 0.8% of Ukraine, writes Mick Ryan.

Mick Ryan

Nov. 30, 2025 2:12 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/vladimir-putin-wont-win-on-the-battlefield-russia-ukraine-trump-peace-28deb4da

Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Nov. 28. afp/pool/epa/shutterstock/Shutterstock

Your editorial stakes out “What a Good Ukraine Peace Looks Like” (Nov. 25), and it’s good news the Trump administration has amended its 28-point proposal. The initial draft highly favored Russia.

Vladimir Putin will doubtless reject the revision, believing he has the strategic momentum. In some respects he is right. Russia’s military has adapted systemically over the last three years and used its relationships with Iran, China and North Korea effectively. Its military has evolved its higher command arrangements, experimented with new force structures and built new drone units and tactics. All that, however, hasn’t been enough on the battlefield.

Mr. Putin has squandered the opportunity to make significant gains this year. With its advantages in manpower, firepower, misinformation operations and drones, Russia should have been able to conquer more land. Since January its territorial gains total nearly 1,900 square miles. That’s about 0.8% of Ukraine, a poor return on investment given its at least 350,000 casualties in 10 months.

The problem: Ukraine has thwarted their advance by striking deeper inside Russia, damaging its energy and military infrastructure. Russian forces have needed to rebalance its efforts to combat that threat as oil exports decrease and fuel shortages become more prevalent, both of which hurt Mr. Putin politically. Russia’s strategic aerial attacks, meanwhile, haven’t halted the increase in Ukrainian defense industrial production.

All of this provides a lesson about Mr. Putin’s strategic calculus. The war is much less about territorial acquisition, oil supplies or military victory than it is about his regional political aspirations. Paltry gains today still serve long-term ambition. To President Trump’s eye, moreover, they are evidence of Russia’s inevitable victory and reason enough to “stop the killing.”

The initial peace plan, with its heavy emphasis on Russian demands, is evidence of Mr. Putin’s skill in manipulation. He’ll need it—for on the current trajectory, Russian troops will continue to proceed at a glacial place.

Mick Ryan

Brisbane, Australia

Mr. Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian army, is a senior military fellow at the Lowy Institute.

Appeared in the December 1, 2025, print edition as 'Vladimir Putin Won’t Win on the Battlefield'.

WSJ

3. Lessons From Venezuela For the Indo-Pacific

Summary:

Washington’s confrontation with Maduro coincides with deep Chinese entrenchment in Venezuela through oil, debt, digital infrastructure, and surveillance. A likely “Maduro-lite” military transition would protect regime interests, narcotics networks, and Beijing’s leverage while offering POTUS a superficial win. The case reveals China’s preferred model: economic enmeshment, elite capture, strategic patience, no overt force. It also shows US readiness to escalate with sanctions, naval power, and covert tools. For the Indo-Pacific, the lessons are clear: weak governance invites Chinese influence, regime survival trumps democratization, and the real contest is over systems, technology dependence, and long-term alignment, not just territory.

Excerpt:

For Asia, the Venezuelan crisis is not peripheral. It is a revealing front in the global struggle for influence, demonstrating how China extends its footprint far from home and how the US responds when challenged in its own hemisphere. The test in Caracas may foreshadow the tests to come in the Indo-Pacific.

Comment: Everything is interconnected. Everyone is learning from every conflict. But we have to be careful of a symbolic short term American win with China benefiting in the long term. But fundamentally it is all about influence. Will we ever learn to lead with influence?

Lessons From Venezuela For the Indo-Pacific

asiasentinel.com · Nov 30, 2025∙ Paid

By: Khanh Vu Duc

The situation with Venezuela is entering a dangerous and uncertain phase. With the US closing Venezuelan airspace, the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group on high alert and covert operations intensifying against narcotics networks, Washington has made clear it is prepared to escalate.

This has important geostrategic implications because Beijing has already been making mischief in America’s backyard, as Asia Sentinel noted on November 28 with its foray in Brazil. Beijing has already become Venezuela’s most important economic lifeline, offering long-term oil concessions, a sweeping zero-tariff agreement, loan restructurings that cement dependency, and deep involvement in digital infrastructure and surveillance systems.

As these inroads occur, President Nicolás Maduro’s hold on power is now the most fragile it has been in years. Under mounting pressure, the Venezuelan military may soon remove him — not to restore democracy, but to save the regime. A “Maduro-lite” order, in which the man disappears but the system survives, is increasingly plausible.

This scenario raises a central question: Would President Trump accept a Venezuela without Maduro but still governed by the same authoritarian structures?

It also raises a second, more sweeping question: What does the Venezuelan crisis reveal about China’s evolving global strategy, and what lessons should the Indo-Pacific draw from it? The Chinese Foreign Ministry on November 28 has already called on the US to lift its sanctions on Caracas and to “do more to facilitate peace, stability and development in Latin America and the Caribbean region, said on Friday.

A Military-Led, Maduro-Lite Transition

For Venezuela’s armed forces, removing Maduro could be a defensive move to preserve privileges and shield themselves from US retaliation. Years of sanctions, economic collapse, and growing internal dissent have made Maduro a liability. A carefully choreographed ouster, accompanied by promises of cooperation on drug trafficking and cosmetic institutional reforms, allows the military to buy time while avoiding structural change.

This pattern is well known across the Global South. In Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces removed Hosni Mubarak in 2011 to preserve the military-led state. Myanmar’s 2010 transition created the façade of civilian governance while retaining military power behind the scenes. In both cases, the system adapted without democratizing.

Venezuela fits this model: a controlled transition designed to produce the appearance of change while protecting entrenched interests and illicit revenue flows.

Tactical Victory or Strategic Failure?

For US President Donald Trump, the removal of Maduro would represent a symbolic win. It would validate US pressure, avoid a costly war, and demonstrate that Washington can still shape outcomes in the Western Hemisphere, blunting China’s ambitions.

But a junta that inherits the Maduro system – preserving alleged narcotics networks, manipulating elections, and cultivating Beijing – presents a strategic failure.

Trump’s calculus will likely hinge on three tests, the first reduction of direct threats to US interests. If the junta cooperates meaningfully on narcotics enforcement and reduces anti-US rhetoric, Washington may tolerate an imperfect outcome. Second, optics and political narrative. A Maduro-free Venezuela is politically useful, even if deeper change stalls.

Third, great-power competition. Trump will not accept any transition that allows China to expand its leverage over Venezuelan oil, technology, and political elites. The junta must therefore offer more than symbolism. Without credible reforms, Trump may tighten pressure rather than normalize relations.

China’s Global Strategy Revealed in Venezuela

For Asia, the Venezuelan crisis is not a distant drama — it is a mirror reflecting China’s global playbook. China’s approach avoids military intervention. Instead, it works through economic enmeshment, elite capture, and strategic patience. This mirrors its tactics in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Solomon Islands, Cambodia, and Southeast Asia’s Mekong basin.

A “Maduro-lite” Venezuela is ideal for Beijing: continuity of contracts, stability for resource extraction, and a weakened US position in its own hemisphere. For Indo-Pacific governments, the lesson is clear: China does not require bases or troops to transform a country’s strategic orientation — only access, leverage, and time.

Lessons for the Indo-Pacific

Venezuela offers at least four takeaways for Asia:

China thrives where governance is weak. Fragile states — whether in Latin America, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Ocean — create openings for Beijing to embed itself economically and politically.
Regime survival often trumps democratization. Elites facing pressure frequently opt for “soft transitions” that protect their position while buying legitimacy. Myanmar, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka are familiar examples.
US willingness to escalate is back. The US closure of Venezuelan airspace and positioning of major naval assets demonstrate that Washington is increasingly prepared to combine economic, intelligence, and military tools — a reality that Asian policymakers must weigh in scenarios involving Taiwan or the South China Sea.
The global contest is no longer territorial — it is systemic. What is unfolding in Venezuela is a competition over political models, technological dependency, and long-term alignment — the same dynamics shaping Southeast Asia’s digital ecosystems and Pacific Island security pacts.

The removal of Maduro without systemic reform would be a tactical shift, not a genuine transition. Trump may claim victory, but the real contest will revolve around whether the junta moves toward reform — or deeper entanglement with China.

For Asia, the Venezuelan crisis is not peripheral. It is a revealing front in the global struggle for influence, demonstrating how China extends its footprint far from home and how the US responds when challenged in its own hemisphere. The test in Caracas may foreshadow the tests to come in the Indo-Pacific.

asiasentinel.com · Nov 30, 2025∙ Paid

4. Haunted by History, Japanese Americans Fight Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

Summary:

Japanese Americans, haunted by World War II incarceration, are mobilizing against POTUS’s immigration crackdown targeting undocumented Latinos. Activists patrol Los Angeles to monitor federal agents, support detainees, and fundraise for affected families, drawing explicit parallels between internment camps and current detention centers. Community organizations file legal briefs against use of the Alien Enemies Act, protest mass detentions at former camp sites, and fight cuts to Japanese American history programs. In alliance with Latino groups, they emphasize shared experiences of scapegoating, insisting that protecting immigrants and preserving memory of past abuses are inseparable tasks in resisting current policies and defending liberties.

Excerpts:

Japanese American groups have also rallied against what they say is the Trump administration’s attempt to erase their history.

The Japanese American National Museum — built on a site where Japanese Americans were ordered to report for removal — lost a $170,000 educational grant as part of the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Bill Fujioka, who leads the museum’s board of trustees, said that although many Japanese American leaders have been less outspoken on political issues in the past, the group was determined to speak out now. “This is our community’s legacy,” he said.

Mr. Fujioka, 73, said that his grandfather first landed in Mexico and walked to the United States from Zacatecas, tracing a path not unlike many Latin Americans.

“If anybody came to America, they didn’t leave a good situation,” he said. “They came here with hope. Every immigrant shares that dream.”

To Latino immigrant rights leaders, Japanese Americans have been both allies and examples.

Haunted by History, Japanese Americans Fight Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

NY Times · Jill Cowan ·

Japanese Americans are seeing parallels between the government’s incarceration of their families during World War II and the current detention of Latinos.

By Jill Cowan

Jill Cowan grew up in the Japanese American community of Los Angeles and has covered California for The Times since 2018.

Nov. 30, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/us/japanese-internment-camp-trump-immigration.html

Nicole Suzuki, left, and Amy Oba drive around the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles looking for immigration agents.Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Jill Cowan grew up in the Japanese American community of Los Angeles and has covered California for The Times since 2018.

Nov. 30, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

From the passenger seat of a sky blue Prius, Amy Oba craned her neck to get a look at the federal detention center, a hulking tower surrounded by a black chain-link fence and laced with barbed wire. On a recent evening, she was on patrol, part of a group of Japanese Americans who are keeping a watchful eye on the actions of immigration agents in Los Angeles.

“I definitely think about my family when we organize, when we go out on patrols, because that could have been my family in prison,” said Ms. Oba, 33. “It’s just a difference of what, like, 80 years?”

During World War II, Ms. Oba’s grandparents were among the more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were forced by the federal government to live for years in remote, hastily constructed internment camps across the West.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, backed by the Supreme Court, treated the Japanese Americans as national security threats because of their ethnicity. Families left behind communities, businesses, homes and even pets. Some of them never returned. It wasn’t until the Reagan administration that the government apologized and said it would pay compensation to families who were affected.

Now, as the Trump administration carries out its immigration crackdown, Japanese Americans see chilling similarities to what their families experienced.

The federal government’s current efforts have focused on arresting and deporting Latinos who don’t have legal status in the United States. That contrasts with the situation in the 1940s, when most of the Japanese Americans held in detention camps were U.S. citizens.

But to many Japanese Americans, the images of uniformed federal agents ushering people onto buses, the mass detentions and the dehumanizing language used by government officials stir collective memories of the trauma faced by their own parents and grandparents.

Lisa Doi, 34, a board member of the Japanese American Citizens League’s chapter in Chicago, said that people who showed up to a recent event to connect community members with local rapid response networks were already seeing the parallels.

“I think the thing people most appreciated was having next steps,” she said.

Ms. Oba, right, and her partner, Ms. Suzuki, are part of Nikkei Progressives, a group founded by Japanese American activists in 2016 to push for immigrant rights. Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Japanese Americans tend to support Democrats at the polls and did so in the 2024 election, according to AAPI Data, a research organization focused on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. But this year, some have taken more concrete action to oppose the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Japanese American groups have filed an amicus brief contesting President Trump’s recent invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a law that was also used to justify the imprisonment of Japanese Americans. They have denounced as a disgrace the government’s mass detention of immigrants at Fort Bliss, a former internment camp for Japanese Americans in Texas.

As a surge of federal agents put immigrant communities on edge in Chicago, Japanese American organizers marched, documented arrests and lined streets around schools to help protect parents who were afraid to pick up their children.

In Dublin, Calif., near San Francisco, camp survivors and Japanese taiko drummers rallied in July to oppose the proposed reopening of a federal prison to hold immigrants.

The alliance between Americans of Japanese and Mexican descents has been particularly strong in Los Angeles. Both include people who came to the United States with very little, worked as landscapers, cooks and farmers, and settled in urban neighborhoods where they were confined by redlining.

“Our neighborhood was diverse, our schools were diverse, so we had a chance to make friendships and share those stories,” said Senator Alex Padilla of California, who recalled growing up alongside children of immigrants from around the world in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley.

Mr. Padilla said something else bonded Japanese Americans and Latinos: Both groups understand what it means to be “scapegoated and villainized.”

Civilian exclusion order posters at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to a request for comment.

But in a statement to other news outlets in August, she said the agency was targeting the worst criminals for immigration enforcement. “Comparisons of illegal alien detention centers to internment camps used during World War II are deranged and lazy,” she told them.

Ms. Oba and her partner, Nicole Suzuki, are part of Nikkei Progressives, a group founded by Japanese American activists in 2016 to push for immigrant rights. The group has raised money for undocumented immigrants affected by Los Angeles’s devastating wildfires and has served as advocates for migrants held at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Adelanto, a desert community about 80 miles outside Los Angeles.

And as the Trump administration stepped up immigration raids across Southern California this year, the group started patrolling.

Ms. Suzuki, 28, said it was important to make sure that agents know that residents are watching what they do. On their weekly drives, Ms. Oba and Ms. Suzuki look out for unmarked vans, trucks with dark tinted windows or agents gathering behind the federal detention center.

“I think a lot of people lose hope that they have the power, that they can do anything about what’s happening,” Ms. Suzuki said. “But no — they could drive around their neighborhood every now and then and keep an eye out.”

Japanese American groups have also rallied against what they say is the Trump administration’s attempt to erase their history.

The Japanese American National Museum — built on a site where Japanese Americans were ordered to report for removal — lost a $170,000 educational grant as part of the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Bill Fujioka, who leads the museum’s board of trustees, said that although many Japanese American leaders have been less outspoken on political issues in the past, the group was determined to speak out now. “This is our community’s legacy,” he said.

Bill Fujioka said that although many Japanese American leaders have been less outspoken on political issues in the past, they were determined to speak out now.Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Mr. Fujioka, 73, said that his grandfather first landed in Mexico and walked to the United States from Zacatecas, tracing a path not unlike many Latin Americans.

“If anybody came to America, they didn’t leave a good situation,” he said. “They came here with hope. Every immigrant shares that dream.”

To Latino immigrant rights leaders, Japanese Americans have been both allies and examples.

Angelica Salas, the executive director of CHIRLA, one of the leading immigrant rights groups in the state, cited stories of Mexican Californians watching over the property of their Japanese neighbors. There was also the case of Ralph Lazo, a Mexican American teenager who was the only known person who wasn’t of Japanese ancestry to report to the camps, in solidarity with his classmates.

Now, Ms. Salas said, Japanese American groups have been returning the support through rapid response networks and efforts to educate the public about their history.

“They remind everybody that we aren’t enemies. We are just people living our lives, running businesses,” she said.

That has held true, even when Little Tokyo was caught in the middle of clashes between protesters and law enforcement officers.

In June, when demonstrators were protesting immigration raids and Mr. Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, law enforcement officers pushed them into Little Tokyo, which is right next to City Hall and the federal detention center. While the vast majority of the protesters were peaceful, when night fell, vandals broke windows and ransacked stores. Buildings, including the Japanese American museum, were heavily tagged.

Rumi Fujimoto at her family’s store in Little Tokyo. She blamed the president for sending National Guard troops, not the city’s Latino communities or protesters.Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

Rumi Fujimoto, 54, said that vandals smashed the front window at her family’s store, a neighborhood mainstay full of Dodgers gear and memorabilia dedicated to Shohei Ohtani. About $1,500 of rare merchandise was stolen.

Ms. Fujimoto blamed the president for sending National Guard troops, not the city’s Latino communities or protesters.

“People are like, ‘aren’t you mad?’” she said, standing in front of her shop, whose window was still boarded up. “I’m like, ‘yeah, I’m mad, but this wasn’t created by la Raza,’” using a Spanish term for the Mexican American community.

Weeks after the protests, more than a dozen heavily armed and camouflage-clad Border Patrol agents crowded into the plaza outside the Japanese American museum as Gov. Gavin Newsom held a rally inside for Proposition 50, his effort to persuade California voters to redraw congressional districts.

Ms. Fujimoto heard the commotion and tore out of the store, shouting that immigration agents were there. “I felt like Paul Revere,” she recalled.

Jill Cowan is a Times reporter based in Los Angeles, covering the forces shaping life in Southern California and throughout the state.

See more on: U.S. Politics, National Guard, Donald Trump

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NY Times · Jill Cowan ·

5. Opinion | China Revives Economic Coercion to Punish Japan

Summary:

Beijing is punishing Tokyo for PM Sanae Takaichi’s statement linking Chinese force against Taiwan to possible Japanese Self Defense Force deployment, using informal economic coercion rather than formal sanctions. China has revived travel warnings, tourism curbs, film delays and a renewed seafood import ban, hitting key Japanese sectors while claiming actions reflect public sentiment or health concerns. This ambiguous toolkit, used previously against South Korea and Australia, reduces legal and reputational costs but is hard for governments and firms to counter and risks stoking volatile nationalism. Public pressure in both countries complicates de escalation, underscoring the need for coordinated resilience.

Comment: Economic warfare. Let's call it what it is. And as noted China practiced economic warfare against both South Korea and Australia. We should learn from their malign activities (to be able to counter them).

Opinion | China Revives Economic Coercion to Punish Japan

WSJ

Beijing wields travel advisories and import bans rather than formal sanctions.

Victor Ferguson

and

Audrye Wong

Nov. 30, 2025 2:05 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/china-revives-economic-coercion-to-punish-japan-6c39ee70

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo, Nov. 25. Jiji Press/EPA/Shutterstock

Sino-Japanese relations are in freefall again after comments by new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Nov. 7 suggesting that Chinese use of force against Taiwan could lead to Japan deploying its Self Defense Forces. Beijing quickly retaliated by sending Chinese coast guard vessels into waters around disputed islands and military drones near an outlying Japanese island.

The more consequential steps have been economic. China has unearthed its old playbook of informal coercive moves. Unlike clear-cut export controls, these disguised measures are harder to manage and pose escalatory risks. Governments and companies must grapple with how to respond.

Since Nov. 14, China has issued a series of escalating restrictions: cautioning tourists and students against travel to Japan; postponing the release of at least two Japanese films; and reinstating a blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports. That ban, introduced in August 2023, had been relaxed the day before Ms. Takaichi’s comments.

Unlike recent Chinese economic restrictions, such as rare earth export controls in October, Beijing denies imposing official sanctions. It instead attributes boycotts to popular sentiment while hiding behind technical bureaucratese—the seafood ban is ostensibly required to protect public health from nuclear contamination (again).

But the economic stakes for Japan are real. Tourism is roughly 7% of gross domestic product and Chinese visitors roughly one-fifth of all arrivals. Travel agencies have stopped offering group tour packages and multiple Chinese airlines have offered flight refunds, with one estimate that half a million tickets have been canceled. Over a third of Japan’s international student population is from China, and China is Japan’s largest export market for seafood.

These moves show how Beijing continues to coerce with Chinese characteristics, contrary to recent perceptions that China has shifted to more Western-style legalistic measures because it has now developed the underlying bureaucratic architecture. Certainly, the Chinese government has begun to use new sanctioning frameworks—including the Unreliable Entity List, the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, and an expanded export-control system—that mirror those used by the United States. The October rare-earth controls drew inspiration from the U.S. foreign direct product rule and semiconductor-export controls, requiring foreign firms to obtain Chinese government approval to export products that incorporate even minimal amounts of Chinese-origin rare earths or rely on Chinese technology.

But informality and ambiguity remain a feature, not a bug, of China’s approach to coercive economic bargaining. Some Chinese analysts openly called for restrictions on rare earth exports. Yet Beijing chose to activate mechanisms that mobilize public opinion—indirectly shaping the behavior of businesses and consumers—and afford the government plausible deniability. These are hallmarks of China’s playbook.

What advantages do informal sanctions provide for Beijing? First, ambiguous measures exact fewer reputational costs. China has long criticized unilateral sanctions by Western governments, so deniable pressure helps minimize charges of hypocrisy. Ambiguity also reduces the risk of legal or diplomatic complaints that might arise from clear violations of international trade rules.

These advantages are most appealing when China lacks a strong justification for claiming its actions are lawful countermeasures, as with its continuing campaign against Japan. Beijing has preferred to use informal measures, such as arbitrary customs inspections, technical regulatory enforcement and state-fomented consumer boycotts when pressuring countries to acquiesce to its territorial claims and other political demands. It did so against South Korea in 2016 and Australia in 2020.

It is hard for governments and companies to respond to such disguised measures effectively and cohesively. While Japan and its Group of Seven partners have built mechanisms to coordinate against formal coercion, there is no clear focal point for governments to target when Chinese pressure takes the form of patriotic consumer action rather than explicit state restrictions.

But mobilizing patriotic consumerism also carries risks that official sanctions don’t. Our research has found that public opinion—unlike precision-guided export controls—can be difficult to modulate once unleashed. The recent wave of airline refunds suggests that at least some travelers are responding to official cues. There have also been early signs of nationalistic Chinese sentiment bubbling to the surface, including an incident in Tokyo involving a person waving a Chinese flag at a busy intersection.

Past China-Japan crises have triggered protests that escalated into property damage and even physical violence, such as 2012 demonstrations over a territorial dispute. Amid heightened anti-Japanese sentiment, a Japanese schoolboy was tragically murdered in Shenzhen last year.

Beijing has demanded that Ms. Takaichi retract the statement that sparked the conflict, but backing down would be politically costly for her in Japan. Public pressure in both countries makes it harder for either side to de-escalate, increasing the risk of a public incident spreading into a broader confrontation.

Even as China hones its formal sanctions toolkit, it still turns to informal methods when legal and political justification is thin. These tools offer Beijing flexibility and deniability while adding volatility that can make crises worse. Governments need to figure out how to coordinate effective responses and bolster resilience against continued Chinese coercion on many fronts.

Mr. Ferguson is an assistant professor of international relations at Hitotsubashi University and a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo. Ms. Wong is an assistant professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California and nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The week's best and worst from Kyle Peterson, Allysia Finley and Dan Henninger Photo: nicolas tucat/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Appeared in the December 1, 2025, print edition as 'China Revives Economic Coercion to Punish Japan'.

WSJ

6. Congress Opens Inquiries After Report That U.S. Targeted Boat-Strike Survivors

Summary:

Congress has opened bipartisan inquiries into a Washington Post report that a second U.S. strike targeted survivors of a Sept. 2 attack on an alleged narcotics boat in the Caribbean, an act several lawmakers say could constitute a war crime if confirmed. Armed services leaders in both chambers have requested detailed Pentagon briefings, amid broader concerns over the legal basis for more than 20 lethal maritime strikes that have killed over 80 people since September. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insists operations comply with U.S. and international law, while POTUS says he will review the incident, which Venezuela is also probing.

Comments: How will this turn out? I hate to be cynical but even if the actions are found to be a violation of the law of war (and if the reports are accurate it would seem to be so), what do we think will take place? Who would initiate disciplinary action? Or would POTUS just issue some blanket pardons to prevent any further legal proceeding?

Congress Opens Inquiries After Report That U.S. Targeted Boat-Strike Survivors

WSJ

Lawmakers from both parties say events as described in a Washington Post article, if accurate, might amount to war crimes

By Michelle Hackman

Updated Nov. 30, 2025 6:47 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/congress-opens-inquiries-after-report-that-u-s-targeted-boat-strike-survivors-34147d72

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said on X that U.S. operations in the Caribbean ‘are lawful under both U.S. and international law.’ orlando barria/epa/shutterstock

Congress launched bipartisan inquiries into a report alleging a second U.S. strike targeted survivors of a strike on an alleged drug boat.
Lawmakers from both parties raised concerns, with some suggesting the reported actions could constitute a war crime.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the lawmakers’ concerns, while the Defense Secretary stated current operations are lawful.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

Congress launched bipartisan inquiries into a report alleging a second U.S. strike targeted survivors of a strike on an alleged drug boat.

Congress launched inquiries and lawmakers from both parties raised the possibility of war crimes after a report that the U.S. targeted survivors of a strike on an alleged drug boat.

The Republican-led armed-services committees in the House and Senate said this weekend they are opening bipartisan inquiries, after the Washington Post reported on a Sept. 2 attack on a boat in the Caribbean. In that attack, the Post said, a second strike was ordered to kill two survivors in the water.

The Wall Street Journal hasn’t independently confirmed the Washington Post report.

Several lawmakers on Sunday stressed that they didn’t know what happened, but said that the incident as described was concerning.

Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview on ABC that if the strike occurred as the article said, “that is a violation of the law of war. When people want to surrender, you don’t kill them, and they have to pose an imminent threat. It’s hard to believe that two people on a raft, trying to survive, would pose an imminent threat.”

Rep. Mike Turner (R., Ohio), a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also raised concerns. “Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that would be an illegal act,” he said Sunday on CBS.

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And Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.), who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the actions rise “to the level of a war crime if it’s true.”

The Pentagon declined to comment Sunday on the lawmakers’ concerns.

In a post on X Friday responding to the initial Washington Post report, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth didn’t directly address whether the incident in question occurred. “As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’ ” he wrote, adding: “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict.”

Mark Esper weighs in on the Trump Administration’s continued military strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers and says: “I’d want to unravel the network, not just get the traffickers.” Photo: Ivan Apfel for WSJ

President Trump said Sunday that his administration will look into the report. “I would not have wanted that, a second strike,” Trump added. “The first strike was very lethal, it was fine.” Trump said that Hegseth said that the second strike didn’t happen.

The leaders of the armed-services committees in Congress said they had requested additional information from the Pentagon about the matter.

“This committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean,” Reps. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) and Adam Smith (D., Wash.), the top Republican and Democrat on the House committee, said in a joint statement. “We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.), the committee’s top Democrat, said Friday that it had asked the Pentagon for more information. The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

Since September, the U.S. has carried out more than 20 strikes against boats that it says are carrying drugs, which have so far killed more than 80 people. Senators on both sides of the aisle in October pressed the Pentagon’s top lawyer in a closed-door meeting to provide a better legal explanation for striking alleged Latin American drug boats in the Caribbean, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Venezuela said Sunday it would create a committee to investigate the U.S. boat-strike deaths.

Write to Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 1, 2025, print edition as 'Congress Probes Targeting Of Boat Survivors'.

WSJ

7. Trump says Hegseth told him he didn’t order killing of boat crew

Summary:

POTUS voiced full confidence that SECDEF/SECWAR did not issue a spoken order to kill all crew members of a suspected drug-smuggling boat, while saying he will review the incident. A Washington Post investigation reported that a second strike, allegedly ordered to ensure no survivors, killed two men in the water. The operation and broader lethal campaign in the Caribbean have triggered bipartisan congressional investigations and demands for orders, recordings, and legal justifications. Law-of-war experts and a Former JAGs Working Group warn that targeting defenseless survivors violates international law and could constitute war crimes, despite a supportive Justice Department opinion.

Comment: I fear we can see where the blame is going with this.

Trump says Hegseth told him he didn’t order killing of boat crew

The president also said he would not have wanted a second strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs, which occurred after U.S. forces realized the initial attack left two survivors, as The Post reported.

November 30, 2025 at 8:33 p.m. ESTYesterday at 8:33 p.m. EST

Washington Post · Mariana Alfaro

By Mariana Alfaro, Alex Horton and Noah Robertson

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/30/trump-hegseth-caribbean-strikes-kill-order/

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has “great confidence” that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not give a spoken order to kill all crew members aboard a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea in September.

Trump said Hegseth told him “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100 percent.”

During an attack on a boat on Sept. 2 — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — a live drone feed showed two survivors from an original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat after an initial missile attack, The Washington Post reported Friday afternoon.

To comply with a spoken order from Hegseth to kill everyone, the Special Operations commander overseeing the mission ordered a second strike that killed the two survivors, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. Those people, along with five others in the original report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Trump said he would look into the issue. “I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal.

After the publication of The Post’s report, Hegseth wrote on X that “these highly effective strikes are designed to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’” adding: “Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.” He claimed that the military operations in the Caribbean are “lawful” and denounced “the fake news.”

On Sunday, the president also said he has “very little” concern over the way the United States is handling the boat strikes in the Caribbean. The U.S. military, he said, is doing an “amazing job.”

“Just look at the numbers. The amount of drugs coming into our country by sea is infinitesimal compared to what it was just a few months ago,” Trump said aboard Air Force One on his way back to Washington from Palm Beach, Florida, where he spent the long Thanksgiving weekend at his Mar-a-Lago Club.

Trump has sought to tie the strikes to the spread of fentanyl, but nearly all of the narcotics being targeted in the attacks have been cocaine, The Post has reported, much of it headed away from U.S. shores.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said in a classified memo that U.S. military personnel who are engaged in lethal action in Latin America would not be exposed to future prosecution.

The news report has spurred lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress to demand reviews of the September strikes.

Republican-led committees in the Senate and the House said they will amplify their scrutiny of the Pentagon. Bipartisan members of both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee say that they will gather a full accounting of the operation.

“And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” Kaine said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) told “Face the Nation”: “Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act.” Turner added that the White House has not provided Congress information supporting The Post’s report.

In October, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and top committee Democrat Jack Reed (Rhode Island) made public two letters they had previously sent to the Pentagon, requesting the orders, recordings and legal rationale related to the strikes.

In a rare warning, the senators wrote that the Defense Department had surpassed the time required by law to provide some of the materials, which would shed light on Hegseth’s initial order in September.

Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s campaign is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to prosecution because the alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not in an “armed conflict” with the U.S.

On Saturday, a group of former military lawyers and senior leaders known as the Former JAGs Working Group, which has scrutinized the Trump administration’s military activities in Latin America, said in a statement that the targeting of defenseless people is prohibited — regardless of whether the U.S. is in an armed conflict, conducting law enforcement or other military operations.

Under the circumstances cited by The Post, “not only does international law prohibit targeting these survivors, but it also requires the attacking force to protect, rescue, and, if applicable, treat them as prisoners of war,” the group said in a statement circulated to news media. “Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options.”

Ellen Nakashima, Aaron Schaffer and Victoria Bisset contributed to this report.

Washington Post · Mariana Alfaro

8. The Army’s latest PSYOP recruiting ad reminds you: ‘We are everywhere’

Comment: Video at the link.

The Army’s latest PSYOP recruiting ad reminds you: ‘We are everywhere’

taskandpurpose.com · Nicholas Slayton

“Words are weapons.”

Nicholas Slayton

Updated Nov 30, 2025 11:48 AM EST

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-new-psyop-recruiting-ad/

The Army’s favorite psychological operation soldiers want you. The Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne), the same group that put out the eerie recruitment video “Ghosts in the Machine” last year, released a new installment on social media this month. And it wants the viewer to know what psychological warfare is.

See for yourself:

View this post on Instagram

If it seems ominous, that’s the point. This is the unit’s idea of a recruitment video. The 4th Psychological Operations Group, based out of Fort Bragg, is focused on Military Information Support Operations (MISO), better known as psychological operations, or PSYOP.

The unit has been putting out striking, montage-filled recruiting ads in recent years. A Department of Defense’s Inspector General report last year found that the Army did not have enough PSYOP soldiers in its ranks to help fight an information war against peers such as Russia or China.

As with past recruitment videos, the new one touches on great counterintelligence ploys, Patton’s “Ghost Army” from World War II, with video showing the inflatable decoy tanks used for it. “There is another force applied in combat that we generally don’t think of as a weapon of war. That weapon is words. Words are weapons,” the voiceover intones.

4th Psychological Operations Group video screenshot.

Along with old films of subterfuge and surrendering enemy armies, there’s plenty of modern video, including drone footage of an eerie masked soldier waving. The unit once again brings in ghost imagery — drawing from Fleischer Studio’s iconic ghosts from their Koko the Clown cartoons — but also works in quite a bit of obviously computer-generated imagery that looks just slightly off. The effect is an unsettling montage of footage where there’s always something being toyed with. Maybe that’s intentional, given the unit’s entire mission and methodology.

In fact, the whole final sections of the ad before “Join PSYOP” is a barrage of subliminal images, with quick frames showing Koko the Clown, snarling ghosts dressed up like modern soldiers, Internet memes including Pepe the Frog and more. “Anything we touch is a weapon,” a subtitle says near the end.

Last year, after “Ghosts in the Machine” came out, a PSYOP reservist pointed out that the video is more a recruitment piece than an actual example of a psychological operation. This new one fits that same mold, although the imagery is rife with nods to subversion, subliminal messaging and other tools that are useful to psyops.

The Army has been putting additional resources and attention towards information warfare, including standing up new units meant to counter digital campaigns from adversaries and conduct wider public affairs battles against disinformation, but the 4th Psychological Operations Group, set up more than five decades ago, is a hardened veteran of the information war.

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Nicholas Slayton

Contributing Editor

Nicholas Slayton is a Contributing Editor for Task & Purpose. In addition to covering breaking news, he writes about history, shipwrecks, and the military’s hunt for unidentified anomalous phenomenon (formerly known as UFOs).

taskandpurpose.com · Nicholas Slayton

9. Suspect in National Guard Shooting ‘Radicalized’ After Entry to U.S., Noem Says

Summary:

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said alleged D.C. National Guard shooter Rahmanullah Lakanwal was likely radicalized after arriving from Afghanistan in 2021. The attack killed one Guard member and wounded another near the White House. In response, the administration froze Afghan immigration and asylum cases and pledged broad re-vetting and possible status revocations.

Comment: Likely, but how? If we determine how, will we expose the process?

Suspect in National Guard Shooting ‘Radicalized’ After Entry to U.S., Noem Says

WSJ

The alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, came to the U.S. from Afghanistan in 2021

By Mariah Timms

, Michelle Hackman

and Alyssa Lukpat

Nov. 30, 2025 12:17 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/suspect-in-national-guard-shooting-radicalized-after-entry-to-u-s-noem-says-0e97b192

A bullet hole near the site of Wednesday’s shooting in Washington, D.C. Annabelle Gordon/Reuters

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated the alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was likely radicalized after arriving in the U.S.
The Trump administration halted all immigration cases for Afghans and all pending asylum cases following the shooting incident.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national, was granted asylum in April after working with the U.S. government in Afghanistan.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated the alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was likely radicalized after arriving in the U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the man who allegedly opened fire on National Guard members in Washington, D.C., last week was likely drawn to more extreme political views after coming to the U.S.

“We believe he was radicalized since he’s been here in this country,” Noem said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” She added, “We do believe it was through connections in his home community and state, and we’re going to continue to talk to those who interacted with him.”

In the wake of Wednesday’s shooting, which killed one National Guard member and seriously wounded another, the Trump administration said it was halting all immigration cases for Afghans, as well as all pending asylum cases. The alleged shooter, 29-year-old Afghan Rahmanullah Lakanwal, came to the U.S. in September 2021 after the country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Trump administration has blamed the Biden administration for inadequately vetting the alleged shooter before allowing him to immigrate to the U.S., and officials have said they would reopen hundreds of thousands of cases decided under Biden to re-vet the immigrants in question—and possibly strip them of their legal status.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Friday that prosecutors plan to charge Lakanwal with first-degree murder over the death of National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom. He faces additional charges in the shooting of a second guard member, Andrew Wolfe, who remained hospitalized. Beckstrom, 20 years old, and Wolfe, 24, had been deployed from West Virginia. The shooting shocked Washington, D.C., where the National Guard has been patrolling for months after President Trump’s declaration of a “crime emergency.”

Lakanwal worked with the U.S. government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, during the war in Afghanistan, said John Ratcliffe, the agency’s director. He served in one of Afghanistan’s elite counterterrorism units operated by the CIA, according to AfghanEvac, a nonprofit organization that resettles Afghan nationals. He was granted asylum in April, according to U.S. officials.

About four years after Lakanwal settled in the U.S., authorities say he drove to the capital from his home in Washington state. He allegedly approached a group of National Guard members near the White House on Wednesday and opened fire with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. Other troops engaged the suspect after he fired several rounds. He was taken to an area hospital.

The Trump administration has intensified its push for “reverse migration” in the days since the shooting. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it would review every green card for residents from countries “of concern,” without specifying which nations. And late Friday, USCIS director Joe Edlow said the agency had halted all asylum decisions until every applicant was “vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a post on X Saturday that a different man who is also an Afghan national was arrested in Texas earlier in the week for allegedly threatening to blow up a building. Arrest records in Tarrant County, Texas, show a man was arrested Tuesday and is currently held at the county corrections center.

The cases aren’t known to be connected, according to AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver. “Nothing about this case indicates a broader trend, coordinated activity, or national-security element. The only difference now is that, after the D.C. shooting, this otherwise routine local matter is being pulled into a larger narrative by people looking to politicize it,” VanDiver said Saturday.

Write to Mariah Timms at mariah.timms@wsj.com, Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com and Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 1, 2025, print edition as 'Suspect Radicalized In U.S., Noem Says'.

WSJ

10. Top Gun Traders: Stock Bets and Crypto Culture Take Over the Military

Summary:

U.S. servicemembers are aggressively investing in tech stocks and cryptocurrencies, often treating bases as informal trading floors and social media platforms as financial classrooms. Young troops with steady pay, pensions, and combat or hardship bonuses are taking concentrated, short term risks, sometimes gaining six figure net worths, new cars, and luxury goods. Crypto and meme stock manias created a lasting culture of speculation, fueled by easy trading apps and peer “success stories.” Advisers and veterans warn that thin diversification, leverage, and overexposure to a few tech and crypto names leave many troops highly vulnerable if markets correct sharply.

Comment: I would not fit in in today's military. But perhaps it is a positive change from buying new cars at exorbitant interest rates with your bonus money. (though I am sure there are just as shady investment/crypto advisers, as well as social media "influencers" providing "peer" success stories as there are car salesmen outside of military installations).

Top Gun Traders: Stock Bets and Crypto Culture Take Over the Military

WSJ

Camaraderie, competition and a strong bull market help troops accrue new wealth; ‘I was trying to punch my ticket’

By Konrad Putzier

Nov. 30, 2025 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stock-trading-military-crypto-culture-75fb3c59?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Space Force Capt. Gordon McCulloh was sitting in a military propeller plane high in the calm, dark sky over New Mexico on a recent Wednesday night when his squadron’s group chat blew up.

The squadron members—some on the ground, some in the air—were collecting data for electromagnetic warfare, but they also had money on their minds. Google’s stock price had just shot up in after-hours trading.

Once McCulloh landed he saw the messages: One officer on the ground sent a screenshot of the news. “To the moon,” another texted back.

It was shaping up to be a profitable day for McCulloh and his buddies.

The U.S. military may just be the world’s most lethal investing club, and it’s killing it in this bull market.

Servicemembers are making fortunes in tech stocks and bitcoin. They’re trading tips on obscure cryptocurrencies from the decks of aircraft carriers. Base parking lots are peppered with new Porsches and Humvees as the market hits new highs. And social-media influencers in fatigues tell followers how they, too, can become rich.

McCulloh, who works as a flight-test engineer, is heavily invested in nuclear-energy related companies. He’s betting the AI data-center boom will create more demand for electricity. So far, things are going swimmingly. Some of his stocks have doubled or more since the spring, although the 27-year-old wonders how much longer the market rally can last.

“I’ll admit I don’t understand why it continues to go up unfettered,” he said.

The market has seen some turbulence lately, but overall stock prices have been on a tear since April, boosting troop net worths.

Luke Air Force Base in Phoenix had one of the highest share of tax returns reporting receiving or disposing of cryptocurrency in 2021. Olivier Touron/AFP/Getty Images

Servicemembers helped fuel a surge in crypto prices that started in the fall of 2020 and peaked in 2021. In 2020, eight of the top 25 U.S. zip codes with the highest share of tax returns reporting receiving or disposing of crypto were around military bases, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Internal Revenue Service data. The price of bitcoin roughly quadrupled that year. In 2021, the share rose to 11 out of 25.

Around Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, 16.3% of individual income tax returns in 2021 reported receiving, selling, exchanging or disposing of crypto, according to IRS data. The share was even higher around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona (19.4%) and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California (18.1%). Across the U.S., just 4.1% of returns ticked the same box.

Military bases lost their dominant position in 2022, the most recent year for which IRS data is available. Crypto prices fell precipitously that year and far fewer people on bases and elsewhere reported receiving or disposing of crypto on their tax returns.

But that one-year crypto surge—and the meme-stock mania that happened around the same time—got a generation of troops hooked on investing.

While many servicemembers are long-term investors heavy on index funds, some are making short-term bets or are heavily exposed to a small number of stocks or coins. They are often young, have known little aside from market growth and have few hedges.

If there’s a big correction, “they’re in for some hurt,” said Brian O’Neill, a financial adviser and Air Force veteran.

Some have already felt that, with sometimes significant losses on a bad bet. But servicemembers are more likely to talk about their wins than their losses. “There’s a culture of braggadocio,” O’Neill said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Third Class Bryson Saunders has ridden the roller coaster: He started buying dogecoin in 2021 because he kept hearing other recruits at his Tampa base bragging about how much money they had made with the cryptocurrency. Saunders also bought bitcoin, shares of pandemic-era memestock GameStop and “whatever else was going crazy.”

“I was trying to punch my ticket,” he said.

Saunders recently bought a Humvee thanks to his extra income, and to bolster his side hustle as a social-media influencer.

The coastguardsman offers tips on investing and finances from his home studio and other spots around St. Petersburg, Fla. Zack Wittman for WSJ

Saunders made a profit with Tesla shares, but said he lost more than $10,000 in a single day last winter trading a financial product that makes leveraged bets on the stock of MicroStrategy, a company that buys bitcoin and is now known as Strategy. He’s shifted to mostly stock-market index funds. He also earns five-figures monthly thanks to his side hustle as a TikTok and Instagram influencer.

His specialty: financial-advice videos for military servicemembers.

Zones of action

Bases are fertile ground for investing frenzies. They are full of young people—many already natural risk-takers—with time to kill, disposable income and few taboos when it comes to talking about personal finance, since military pay is public and based on rank. And while the armed forces provide guaranteed pensions after 20 years and unmatched job security, they don’t offer bulky salaries or six-figure year-end bonuses.

Members of the military have long been active investors. Some use zero-down-payment Veterans Affairs loans to buy rental properties. During the inflation years of the early 1980s, sailors locked away for months on nuclear-missile submarines killed time talking up gold bullion and raw diamonds. In the late 1990s, tech stocks were all the rage.

But two overlapping developments in the past two decades supercharged the get-rich culture: the rise of websites and later of apps like Robinhood that make it easier to trade, and the war on terror.

Starting in the early 2000s, hundreds of thousands of troops landed in remote bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. They got hazard pay, family-separation pay and were freed from federal income tax. Suddenly, they had thousands in extra income and were looking for places to put it.

F-16 fighter pilot Shawn Walsh opened his first brokerage account in 2008 while stationed in Iraq. His job was to bomb insurgents, but between sorties he spent hours sitting on call in a small shack a short sprint from his plane. There, kitted out in flight gear with nothing to do, he and his fellow pilots talked about investing strategies.

Walsh, then a recent college graduate, had real money in the bank for the first time. He started investing—first in mutual funds, later in index funds, individual stocks and rental properties. By the time he retired from the Air Force in 2024, he was a multimillionaire, he said.

Bases including Vandenberg Space Force Base, on California’s Central Coast, helped fuel the crypto-craze in 2020 and 2021. Tech. Sgt. Mary McKnight/U.S. Air National Guard

Spencer Reese shuttled soldiers between Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan in 2013 as an Air Force transport-plane pilot. “Every mission was a crash course in some other investing strategy,” he said.

One guy told him about his investments in gas stations and 7-Eleven convenience stores. Another recommended covered call options. A third liked bitcoin. On longer flights, Reese read investing books.

The military has basic training programs on how to save, budget and invest, but word-of-mouth is often a favored adviser. While troops are fiercely competitive, they also share a sense of camaraderie—even in investing. When people make money, they tell others because they want them to make money, too. Officers routinely pull out their phones to show others their investing account balances.

Cryptocurrencies spread through the military like wildfire in the early 2020s. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Zach Rodriguez dove in, putting more than $100,000—half his family savings—into coins like Chainlink, Polkadot and Quant. A buddy got him interested while they toured the Pacific on an aircraft carrier.

Lt. Cmdr. Zach Rodriguez next to a helicopter in 2020. A tour in the Pacific was the start of the Navy pilot’s crypto learning curve. Zach Rodriguez

He did well at first as values surged, before the coins crashed. He said he lost $250,000 worth of crypto to a scammer. Today the helicopter pilot is a “bitcoin and chill” guy: he invests in bitcoin and bitcoin-related companies, and said his holdings are up to around $1 million.

Meme-stock mania hit the military with similar force. Staff Sgt. Durelle Bailey, a health-services administrator in the Air Force, was sitting in a classroom at George Mason University in 2021 with two dozen military servicemembers studying for Master’s degrees when one of them mentioned an education-technology stock called Chegg. The price had fallen, which, according to the tipster, was a great chance to buy the dip.

“He was like, ‘Do it right now before it climbs back up,’” Bailey said. Immediately, eight or nine of them pulled out their phones and bought the stock.

Staff Sgt. Durelle Bailey, pictured in Arizona in 2019, went from having zero savings to a six-figure net worth in the past decade. Durelle Bailey

Bailey, who put in a few hundred dollars, lost money. Chegg, which briefly peaked at over $113 a share early in 2021, fell to a close below $25 late in the year. It most recently traded closer to $1.

Stocks and crypto were conversation topics wherever Bailey went. “We would talk about it in the barracks, we would talk about it in the gym, we would talk about it at the chow hall,” he said.

When he joined the Air Force in 2015, Bailey had no savings. Now, his and his wife’s net worth is in the solid six figures, thanks in large part to stock index funds. “We’re set for the future,” the 31-year-old said.

New wealth, and worries

Signs of rising wealth are hard to miss around military bases.

Army Warrant Officer Eric Rawlings, a helicopter pilot based in Colorado and currently deployed in the Middle East, said he recently bought a $10,000 Rolex to celebrate a milestone: For the first time, he made more money off his stock investments than his military pay.

He’s hardly alone. “There’s some dang nice cars driving around base,” the 29-year-old said.

Warrant Officer Eric Rawlings wears the Rolex he bought to celebrate his successful investments. Eric Rawlings

Some financial advisers and veterans worry the good times won’t last. Price-to-earning ratios are near record highs, and stock indexes are increasingly dominated by a small number of tech companies.

“I fear we could be in for a bubble burst,” said David Ashcraft, a retired Army officer.

During the tech boom of the late 1990s, Ashcraft, at the time a young lieutenant, bought shares in Cisco and Sun Microsystems. When the market crashed, the value of his IRA account fell from $10,000 to around $3,000. Since then, he has stuck to index funds.

“If someone tells me they’ve invested everything in crypto or a few stocks,” he said, “there’s always that worry.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What are the potential promises and pitfalls around the popularity of investing for U.S. servicemembers? Join the conversation below.

Bonds have largely fallen out of favor with servicemembers because they haven’t performed nearly as well as stocks in recent years. And few troops say they hold much cash.

Many servicemembers argue they can afford to take greater risks because they have job security and guaranteed pensions after 20 years of service. Even conservative investors are more exposed just by the nature of the market. McCulloh, the Space Force officer in New Mexico, said a handful of tech and energy-related stocks now account for the majority of his net worth simply because they’ve appreciated so much.

Risky bets can still flame out in a strong market. In 2023, Moises Gonzalez earned $38,000 as an Albany, Ga.-based truck driver in the Marine Corps—and lost $20,000 day-trading gold and stocks.

From his home setup on base, Moises Gonzalez learned the highs and lows of day-trading. Moises Gonzalez

“Some days I would just really be going through it because I’m just like losing and losing and losing and losing,” he said.

His biggest daily loss was $15,000, his biggest gain $6,000.

He set up three computer screens in his room on base—a scene that once caused a colonel to raise his eyebrows during a routine inspection—and took a laptop to the motor pool where he worked so he could trade during quiet periods in the morning.

Over time, Gonzalez got better. In 2024, he made $30,000 day-trading. A few months ago he left the Marines, moved to Hawaii and started trading full-time. The 25-year-old hopes to clear $10,000 a month in the market, but isn’t there yet.

“I make $7,000 in the course of three, four days,” he said, “and then I blow it all on the fifth day.”

Write to Konrad Putzier at konrad.putzier@wsj.com

11. America’s Tariffs Jolted the Global Economy. Its AI Spending Is Helping Save It.

Summary:

U.S. “Liberation Day” tariffs initially threatened global trade, but massive AI capital spending by U.S. tech firms, nearly $400 billion in 2025, is temporarily propping up growth. WTO and IMF have raised 2025 trade and GDP forecasts, yet gains are highly concentrated in AI supply chain hubs such as Taiwan, South Korea, and the Netherlands. Front-loading of imports has delayed, not removed, tariff pain, with the WTO now cutting its 2026 trade forecast sharply. Fiscal and monetary tailwinds in the U.S., Germany, and Japan may cushion the blow, but a slowdown looms if the AI boom falters.

Comment: Graphics at the link. Interesting assessment. We have been reading about how so much wealth is now concentrated in AI. What happens if the bubble bursts?

America’s Tariffs Jolted the Global Economy. Its AI Spending Is Helping Save It.

WSJ

Global trade and growth forecasts go up for now, but tariffs will bite soon

Stu Woo

Nov. 30, 2025 11:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/americas-tariffs-jolted-the-global-economy-its-ai-spending-is-helping-save-it-9be60ee0

President Trump unveiled the tariffs at the White House. Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Economists are revising global growth predictions upward, partly due to significant artificial-intelligence spending by U.S. tech companies.
The World Trade Organization increased its 2025 global merchandise trade volume growth forecast to 2.4% from 0.9%, but reduced its 2026 forecast to 0.5% from 1.8%.
AI investments disproportionately benefit a few regions within the specialized AI supply chain, such as Taiwan and South Korea.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

Economists are revising global growth predictions upward, partly due to significant artificial-intelligence spending by U.S. tech companies.

SINGAPORE—When President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April, economists predicted a global shock: The U.S. would buy less from the world, cutting exports and jobs.

Now some of those economists are revising their global growth predictions upward.

One big reason: What the U.S. government took away with its tariffs, the U.S. tech industry gave back with its artificial-intelligence spending spree.

In October, the World Trade Organization estimated that global merchandise trade volume would grow 2.4% this year, up from its August prediction of 0.9%. Also in October, the International Monetary Fund raised its 2025 world growth forecast to 3.2%, up from 2.8% after Trump’s tariff announcement.

The upward revisions, both groups said, were partly the result of the fortune that tech companies are investing in AI this year. Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft alone are putting nearly $400 billion this year into capital expenditures, largely for AI.

But these metrics don’t tell the whole story. While AI is propping up global trade and growth, it is doing so unevenly and the pain from tariffs is likely to grow.

AI helps a fortunate few

The U.S. represents a quarter of the global economy. AI investments—in equipment, data centers, and research and development, for example—accounted for as much as half of U.S. gross-domestic-product growth in the first half of 2025.

Beyond the major AI powers of the U.S. and China, the spending on tech infrastructure mainly benefits a few regions already inside the specialized AI supply chain.

Consider Taiwan, the global manufacturing hub for the most advanced AI chips. American hunger for these semiconductors prompted IMA Asia, which runs executive forums, to raise Taiwan’s GDP growth forecast to 7% this year, up from its 4.4% estimate a quarter earlier.

It is a unique case, the group said, as Taiwan’s capital expenditures on plants and equipment are expected to rise 30% this year, up from a 13% increase last year. But even as AI spending powers the island’s economic numbers, consumer demand remains low and other industries struggle.

The AI boom has also pulled up South Korea, which dominates the corner of the AI supply chain that makes memory chips, and the Netherlands, home of chip-making equipment leader ASML.

Asia accounted for nearly two-thirds of global AI-related trade growth in the first half of 2025, said Oriano Lizza, a trader at CMC Markets. “The benefits are overwhelmingly concentrated in advanced manufacturing economies,” he said.

Companies such as TSMC have made Taiwan a global center of chip manufacturing. ann wang/Reuters

The tariff cliff

Tariff pains haven’t been canceled. They have just been deferred.

Companies that paid attention to what Trump said on the campaign trail and early in his second term had ample warning before the April tariff proclamation. Importers and exporters front-ran tariffs, rushing to ship goods to the U.S. before a series of deadlines. That has boosted trade this year.

“It’s too early to say that the tariffs have had less impact than feared,” said Mansoor Mohi-uddin, chief economist at the Bank of Singapore. “What’s happening is that the impact has just been delayed.”

Now that the tariffs have kicked in and front-loaded inventory is dwindling, economists expect companies to pass on tariff costs to consumers and export less to the U.S.

The WTO’s outlook reflects this: At the same time it upgraded its 2025 forecast, it reduced its 2026 forecast for world merchandise trade volume growth to 0.5%, down from its August estimate of 1.8%.

A government backstop

The tariff cliff might not be a foregone conclusion. Policies from several of the world’s biggest governments are building a safety net.

Economists expect the Trump-championed One Big Beautiful Bill Act to boost the U.S. economy in the short run by extending tax cuts, while increasing the federal deficit. That could lift imports.

On top of that, Mohi-uddin said, Germany is making a historic shift away from frugality toward spending. And Japan approved $135 billion of stimulus to boost economic growth.

Such support, combined with a weak dollar and a potential Federal Reserve rate cut, means the global economy might stay on its feet in 2026, provided the AI boom doesn’t fizzle. “The environment for investors is actually still good,” Mohi-uddin said.

The construction site of a new Google data center in Germany. Florian Wiegand/Getty Images

Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 1, 2025, print edition as 'U.S.’s AI Spending Props Up Economy Jolted by Its Tariffs'.

WSJ

12. How Venezuelan Gangs and African Jihadists Are Flooding Europe With Cocaine

Summary:

Venezuela has become a primary launchpad for Colombian cocaine bound for Europe, exploiting weak security, corruption, and long coastlines. Shipments move by aircraft, boats, freighters, and semi-submersibles to West Africa, then north through jihadist-controlled Sahel routes into North Africa and across the Mediterranean. Al Qaeda–linked groups and corrupt officials tax and protect flows, funding terrorism and armed factions. Cocaine seizures in Europe now exceed those in North America, signaling a major shift in the market. The Trump administration cites Venezuela’s role to justify maritime strikes, while coups and instability in the Sahel are degrading already fragile interdiction and cooperation.

Comment: Is this new? I recall a briefing from C4ADS about a decade ago describing something along these lines.

How Venezuelan Gangs and African Jihadists Are Flooding Europe With Cocaine

WSJ

Surging trans-Atlantic drug flows mean that cocaine seizures in Europe now exceed those in North America

By Benoit Faucon

Nov. 30, 2025 10:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/how-venezuelan-gangs-and-african-jihadists-are-flooding-europe-with-cocaine-656f023f

The tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau has been a stopover for some cocaine shipments from Venezuela. Luc Gnago/Reuters

Venezuelan drug gangs are sending large volumes of cocaine to West Africa, where jihadists help traffic it to Europe.
Unprecedented cocaine production has overwhelmed traditional routes, making Venezuela a key transit point due to its location and weak security.
Cocaine seizures in Europe now exceed those in North America, with traffickers using various methods, including private jets and semi-submersibles.

An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

Venezuelan drug gangs are sending large volumes of cocaine to West Africa, where jihadists help traffic it to Europe.

Venezuela has become a major launchpad for huge volumes of cocaine shipped to West Africa, where jihadists are helping traffic it to Europe in record quantities.

Corrupt military officers and drug gangs smuggle shipments by light aircraft, fishing boats, semi-submersible vessels and freighters heading east, international law-enforcement officials have said publicly. The cocaine flows to West Africa, where an informal network of jihadist-linked smugglers and their allies then move the drug north to feed high and rising demand in Europe.

“Cocaine in the 1980s is not the same as the one we see today,” said Jesus Romero, a retired U.S. military intelligence officer. “There are direct linkages to terrorist organizations to support their cause.”

Unprecedented levels of cocaine production in Colombia in recent years have overwhelmed traditional smuggling routes, leading traffickers to exploit Venezuela’s strategic location, ineffectual security institutions and long coastline, the law-enforcement officials have said. That has led cocaine consumption to rise worldwide in regions that hadn’t been major consumers, from Australia to Eastern Europe, United Nations drug researchers say.

The confluence of drug smugglers, jihadists and corrupt officials is part of a growing global alignment among criminal gangs, militant groups and rogue governments that threatens democratic norms and social stability, with profound potential ramifications.

Now, the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro—who it asserts is heavily involved in drug smuggling—has brought global attention to the country’s role in the drug trade. Maduro has denied the allegation.

Trump has ordered strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs to the U.S. from Venezuela, but experts say the South American country sends far more narcotics for distribution to Europe, mostly through West Africa and islands near its coastline. The U.S. has also hit drug boats leaving Colombia, the world’s biggest producer of cocaine.

There in Africa, smugglers link up with al Qaeda-affiliated groups that escort the cargoes north and extort payments from the overland convoys, said current and former rebel leaders in northern Mali.

Surging trans-Atlantic drug flows mean that cocaine seizures in Europe now exceed those in North America, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

“The quantities have gone up so much, the problem that traffickers have now is moving them,” says Jeremy McDermott, co-director at InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in the Americas.

Bertrand Monnet, a professor of criminal risk at French business school Edhec, said Venezuela has become a top Latin American transit route to Europe, though cocaine is also shipped to Europe from Brazil, Guyana and other countries in large quantities.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited Venezuela’s role as a drugs transit hub as a justification for the U.S.’s strikes on alleged drug boats. He said that instead of Europeans criticizing the U.S. action, “maybe they should be thanking us.”

A screengrab from a video posted by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on his X account on Oct. 24 that he says shows U.S. military forces striking a vessel operated by drug traffickers. AFP/Getty Images

Antidrug officials say there are increasing signs of Venezuelan involvement in the European drug trade, with Spanish police in recent weeks detaining 13 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, a first in Europe.

Drug cargoes often pass through multiple hands en route to consumers, with numerous actors participating almost independently of each other. Almost no coca leaf, the plants used to make cocaine, is grown in Venezuela, and few labs there refine the final cocaine product. But Colombian traffickers typically bring cocaine overland into the country, before it is shipped to Africa.

In September last year, two cocaine-laden Gulfstream private jets took off from a makeshift airstrip in Apure, a Venezuelan state on the Colombian border. One of the aircraft was seized during a stop in the tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau with 2.6 tons of cocaine on board, according to Guinea-Bissau authorities, a record seizure for a country long known as a narcotics hub.

A town in the Venezuelan state of Apure, close to the border with Colombia. AFP/Getty ImageS

The second aircraft reached nearby Burkina Faso, another country ravaged by Islamist extremists, said Romero, the former intelligence officer, who was briefed on the flights.

Traffickers are flying at least one cargo a week from Venezuela to West Africa, say current and former Western officials. Smugglers turn off their planes’ transponders to hide their movements and bribe air-traffic controllers to switch off their tracking systems when drug planes pass overhead, according to InSight Crime.

Corruption at airports has also enabled organized criminals to ship large quantities of drugs through commercial airliners. In 2013, shortly after Maduro’s election, a British drug trafficker shipped almost 1.4 tons of cocaine hidden in suitcases on a flight from Caracas to Paris, where it was seized by French police.

In 2020, the U.S. accused Maduro and his ally Diosdado Cabello, now Venezuela’s interior minister, of involvement in the case, citing communications intercepts. Cabello has long denied drug allegations, saying they are being used to justify toppling the Maduro government.

The record seizure last year in Guinea-Bissau was intended for northern Mali, according to Guinea-Bissau judicial police, where the illegal trade is funding local al Qaeda groups, say the current and former Western officials.

After al Qaeda took control of the desert region in 2012, veteran Algerian jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar fought secular Malian Tuareg factions to gain control of cocaine smuggling routes, according to a public European investigation. Local drug traffickers also started working with the jihadist group to preserve their trade routes, say current and former European security officials.

From Mali, the drugs cross the Sahara and into Algeria, Morocco and Libya, say Western officials. A Russia-backed Libyan faction is collecting fees on cocaine transiting from Niger to Egypt, according to a 2024 U.N. report. From Northern Africa, the drugs are shipped across the Mediterranean Sea to Southern Europe.

Traffickers also often take advantage of corruption at ports and along Venezuela’s coastline to send vessels to Portugal or Spain, according to InSight Crime, as well as other European countries.

Detainees are transferred to police vans in A Coruña, Spain, after the seizure of a ship carrying 1.5 tons of cocaine. cabalar/epa/shutterstock

In one of the biggest seizures to date, Spanish authorities last December seized 3.3 tons of cocaine aboard a Spain-bound Venezuelan fishing vessel near the Canary Islands. Another ship, the MV Matthew, whose seizure in 2023 with 2.2 tons of cocaine was the biggest haul in Ireland ever, had loaded the drugs in waters near Venezuela, according to Irish police.

Colombian drug dealers also use semi-submersibles from Venezuela to move cocaine to Spain, according to InSight Crime. Portuguese police earlier this month detained such a vessel with 1.7 tons of cocaine, manned by a Venezuelan crew, as it sailed across the mid-Atlantic.

European law-enforcement authorities have boosted cooperation with African countries, but failed to keep pace with rising volumes. In the Sahel, the fight has suffered a setback from a breakdown in cooperation following military coups, said Aurélien Llorca, a fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute who investigated the illicit trade.

“Coups and instability are making things worse,” Llorca said.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

WSJ

13. Open Questions | Taiwan is a complicated issue, but the way out is simple: ex-PLA colonel Zhou Bo

Summary:

Retired PLA colonel Zhou Bo argues war over Taiwan can be avoided if Beijing believes peaceful unification remains possible and blames Taipei’s current leadership for provoking impatience in Beijing. He frames both Washington and Beijing as practicing “strategic ambiguity,” but says China’s ambiguity rests on rising strength while America’s masks decline. He rejects a G2 or “new Cold War” construct, insists the world is moving toward messy multipolarity, and says China seeks influence without spheres of influence or global “policeman” roles. The PLA’s missions, in his view, are national reunification, protection of overseas interests, and humanitarian operations abroad. He calls for a larger Chinese nuclear arsenal and strong space and AI capabilities to ensure deterrence, particularly over Taiwan, while portraying China as a restrained, non-hegemonic power that prefers incremental “small détente” cycles with the United States over open confrontation.

Comment: Shorter version - China good, US bad. Or is this from Shakespeare because he "doth protest too much." Of course if the PLA or SCMP read my assessment here they would say some retired American colonel says "China bad, US good."

My assessment is that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan).

What are the most significant challenges in the region? (e.g., PRC aggression, disinformation, disaster preparedness, civic resilience, regional tensions)
What emerging opportunities should we prioritize?

Some analysts assess: Chinese unification by force is untenable. Chinese peaceful unification is impossible. So the only option is unification by coercion.

What would a generational struggle look like? Monday morning stream of consciousness follows:

If this is the Chinese strategy: "China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions."

Perhaps these are some considerations for the generational struggle against China and the other members of the Dark Quad.

Strong deterrence - we want to prevent conflict and war BUT we cannot show fear of it and we cannot have a policy of "preventing escalation at all costs" as the previous US administration had in place. Fear of escalation is a demonstration of our strategic weakness. We have to understand that there are times to escalate to de-escalate. We have to have the strategic sense to know when.

Adopt JFK's dictum: "never fear to negotiate but never negotiate out of fear." Maintain global strategic strength to sustain a superior negotiating position.

Conduct proactive aggressive political warfare rather than "strategic competition" to protect, sustain, and advance US interests in conjunction with mutual defense and mutually supporting political warfare in conjunction with our friends, partners, and allies (some (e.g., UK or 5 Eyes) more than others ). This does mean protecting the rules-based international order (I cannot yet imagine something that could replace it that would be in our interest).

Regarding the Dark Quad (China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea or CRInK): recognize that we cannot impose external change on any of them. We have to sustain our strength and defense capabilities to deter them from engaging in direct conflict or war. We must deal with the reality of their malign activities and work to defeat the effects of those activities while conducting our own political warfare activities to continuously create conditions (dilemmas ) that will keep them off balance - we need to sustain the initiative and not cede it to them. We need to recognize that this will be the strategic order for the long term until there is internal change in these countries where they collapse or change due to their own internal contradictions. The bottom line is we have to both create the conditions where possible but also let the conditions develop naturally that will cause these countries to fail due to their own internal contradictions. We cannot "fix" everything ourselves. We cannot "try" too hard. But we can protect, sustain, and advance our interests. If we focus on that we can live with a certain level of the status quo while recognizing that eventually our enemies will change or collapse based on their own internal contradictions.

Open Questions | Taiwan is a complicated issue, but the way out is simple: ex-PLA colonel Zhou Bo

Commentator and former senior colonel on Beijing’s row with Japan, lessons from the Ukraine war and why playing global policeman is a trap

Shi Jiangtao

Published: 6:00am, 1 Dec 2025Updated: 3:57pm, 1 Dec 2025

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3334626/taiwan-complicated-issue-way-out-simple-ex-pla-colonel-zhou-bo?tpcc=GME-O-enlz-uv&utm

Shi Jiangtao

Published: 6:00am, 1 Dec 2025Updated: 3:57pm, 1 Dec 2025

Zhou Bo is a retired senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy. His military career included roles in the Ministry of National Defence’s Foreign Affairs Office and as a defence attaché. Zhou is the author of the recent book Should the World Fear China?

This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.

With the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party still in power in Taiwan and intensifying US arms purchases, how viable is peaceful reunification at this stage? What specific “red lines” or thresholds of “external interference”, in your view, would compel Beijing to consider non-peaceful means?

Now we’re talking about Taiwan, which is a billion-dollar issue. Of course, it looks very complicated. But for me, the way out is very simple: how to avoid a war in the Taiwan Strait?

The answer is to let Beijing believe peaceful reunification is still possible. If it believes peaceful reunification is possible, it will have confidence rather than impatience.

As China grows stronger, it could go in two different directions. One is that greater strength brings more confidence in eventual peaceful reunification because Taiwan will not move away, and time is on the side of mainland China. But it might also grow impatient and consider using force, especially if provoked. These are two very different directions.

So, which direction will China take? My argument, as I wrote in Time magazine recently, is that it depends on the Taiwanese authorities. Right now, Taiwan’s leader, William Lai Ching-te, is very provocative. Before his election, he described himself as a “practical worker” for Taiwan independence. Now he has called mainland China a hostile foreign force and said Taiwan must oppose China’s united front work. He has even outlined 17 strategies to intimidate people in Taiwan who support cross-strait exchanges.

All 24 opposition Kuomintang lawmakers in Taiwan survive mass recall campaign

The best way to understand the Taiwan issue is to put yourself in Beijing’s shoes. China today is strong and powerful. How could it allow part of its territory to remain separated forever? That wish for reunification is natural. The only question is whether it happens peacefully or through war.

Beijing has been patient. With Lai’s remarks about mainland China being a hostile foreign force, theoretically we could use force. In the proposed 15th five-year plan, “peace” is also mentioned. But compared with the last plan, the warning is louder. We hope for the best, but it is not entirely up to us.

Is there any specific red line for China to consider using non-peaceful means?

I believe both China and the United States have strategic ambiguities. It is not only the US that has ambiguity. China does too. China has not specified a deadline. But the difference lies in the nature of these ambiguities. American strategic ambiguity, in my opinion, is like a fig leaf covering America’s declining strength. In contrast, China’s ambiguity grows alongside its rising strength. That is the difference.

With Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s hawkish stance and closer ties to the US, do you see Japan as a rising strategic threat to China and regional stability, a “strategic pawn” of Washington, as you’ve previously suggested, or an opportunity to test Tokyo’s diplomatic flexibility?

Takaichi’s statement is politically motivated and aimed at a domestic audience. Although she mentioned that a “Taiwan contingency” involving Chinese warships and other armed actions “could constitute a survival-threatening situation” for Japan, she has actually walked back somewhat in changing her tone when facing domestic and overseas protests.

I think she should have learned a lesson even if she refuses to make an apology. Japanese leaders to come definitely will be more cautious. In fact, before Takaichi took office, both Japan and Australia refused to answer questions from US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth about whether they would fight alongside America. They avoid hypothetical questions, leaving the decision to governments at the time. And they have good reason: if America’s strategy is strategic ambiguity, why should its allies adopt a policy of clarity?

But there is a realistic problem of Japan joining the United States should there be a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Legally, Japan must provide logistical support to the US, such as allowing American forces to use Japanese bases. But whether Japan would actually fight shoulder to shoulder with the US is a big question.

The Rand Corporation has published a report concluding that nobody knows. It would only be decided at the last moment, based on circumstances and considerations. So far, neither Chinese nor Japanese warships have entered the 12 nautical miles (22km) around the Diaoyu Islands (which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands), although we did send in coastguard ships after Takaichi’s statement.

Does China see Japan as a rising strategic threat, as Japan sees China as a threat?

Japan sees China that way. Economically, Japan is not progressing very fast, but in terms of defence expenditure, it has drastically increased. I believe the prospect of direct conflict is low. The only real question is the Taiwan issue.

How would you advise Chinese policymakers to leverage the apparent US openness to G2-style strategic stability, and what risks do you see in embracing or rejecting such Washington-defined frameworks?

[The G2] was former US president [Barack] Obama’s idea, which was proposed to the Chinese side but politely declined. I think it is absolutely true that in the world today, China and the United States are certainly the dominant powers.

But we should not be too hooked on this concept because the world is moving towards multipolarisation, a conclusion actually drawn by the Munich Security Conference. Apparently, this goes beyond a bipolar structure. Even US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was talking about how it is not normal to have unipolarity.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump, in Washington on October 9. Photo: EPA

Are you suggesting China should not accept this G2 framework?

Of course we should not accept this. First of all, this is not a fact. Secondly, you alienate yourself from other countries or even from your friends.

Because then you become blind to the fact that the world is moving into multipolarisation, and you actually hold biased opinions about your own position in the world and the importance of other countries. Yes, China is a pole, but China only describes itself as a natural member of the Global South.

Is genuine bilateral detente possible? Or are cycles of confrontation and negotiation the new normal?

If you talk about detente, it certainly reminds people of those days between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first question is: has the tension between China and the United States reached a breaking point where they have to sit down and talk about the relationship, which was described as detente? During the Cold War, the US-Soviet relationship was balanced by terror that was reflected in almost equal numbers of nuclear warheads.

This background is certainly not found today, at least not in terms of nuclear parity. The United States has more than 5,000 warheads, while China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or the Pentagon, had about 600 by the end of last year.

But if you talk about relative peace or easing tensions, this could happen from time to time. The current relationship is very different from the Cold War, which was between two enemies with almost no economic interaction. Today, because we are so tightly bound together, we can definitely see a relaxation of tensions here and there, out of necessity.

And this presents another picture: from time to time, we will definitely see easing of tensions, just like what we have seen most recently, because the threats such as tariffs from the United States cannot materialise. Therefore, the United States has had to downplay its tone.

This kind of easing of tensions could itself be seen as a form of small detente. Maybe we will have this kind of small detente from time to time in spite of turbulence and competition.

‘We have a deal’: Trump claims breakthrough after ‘12 out of 10’ talks with Xi Jinping

You have rejected the idea that the current US–China rivalry is a “new Cold War” and emphasised China’s restraint. But with greater tech decoupling and the US expanding military cooperation in Asia, is there a risk that restraint could be misread as weakness?

I reject this idea of a new Cold War because we can only know whether we had a cold war when we look back. During the Cold War, people were actually preparing every day for a hot war. Only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union did people look back with relief and say, “OK, what we have experienced was the Cold War.”

But even a fortune-teller cannot tell the future. When we look into the future of China-US relations, we don’t even know if there will be a hot war. So how can you say that it is just a new cold war? Peace has to be earned.

What about China’s restraint?

China may seem not as restrained as before, but China won’t become unnecessarily provocative. Because even in describing this relationship, China went through a long period of time insisting on cooperation, while the US insisted it was one of competition. So, what is it? It is one of competition because a bilateral relationship is framed, shaped and determined by the stronger party. If the United States believes this is competition, it is useless to insist it must be cooperation. That is why China had to take a deep breath and said we have to dare to fight. That is just like dropping a glove on the ground and saying, “OK, if this is what you want, come on.”

This relationship is a mixture of both competition and cooperation. The only question is the ratio. For the United States, I definitely believe they think competition will prevail over cooperation. But for China, we hope there can be more cooperation.

Cooperation in the years to come may not prevail over competition, but it might increase. Even US President Donald Trump is asking China to help here and there – in Ukraine, in the Red Sea and on many other issues. During his first term, you could hardly hear of any areas of cooperation. The only area was probably climate change. This is obvious because if we do not cooperate, we shall all die. Now you can see how many areas the US has asked for cooperation.

In your recent book Should the World Fear China? you distinguish influence from a “sphere of influence”. How can China project global influence without formal alliances, especially as it positions itself as a “stabiliser” rather than a challenger in world affairs while the US renews traditional alliance structures?

Most people confuse these two terms, as if they are the same thing. They aren’t.

My basic argument is that even if China wanted to establish spheres of influence, it would be impossible.

Where would it be easiest to establish such a sphere? Of course, around your periphery. But look at northeast Asia: Japan certainly would not listen to China, nor would North Korea really listen to China, especially on denuclearisation. In Southeast Asia, often described as China’s backyard, quite a few countries are claimants in the South China Sea, and several are American allies. So how can you take it for granted that this is your backyard, your sphere of influence?

In South Asia, China’s relations with India are not smooth. Perhaps in Central Asia, China has the fewest problems, as these countries are increasingly dependent on China economically. But this is traditionally Russia’s sphere of influence. That is why China has been very cautious about doing anything militarily in that region. Issues like terrorism have been addressed through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. So, China doesn’t have any sphere of influence, even if it wanted to. That’s the first point.

The second point is that it is not necessary, precisely because China’s influence is already global. China doesn’t need to establish a sphere of influence if it doesn’t have the ambition to police the whole world. If you do have that ambition, then you need spheres of influence, which require alliances and allies. And allies are not necessarily easy to deal with. They are like cats, very difficult to herd.

I can give you an example. So far, the PLA’s operations overseas basically fall into three categories: counter-piracy, disaster relief and peacekeeping. Taken together, these are military operations other than war, humanitarian in nature. This is not accidental. It is a policy choice. We want to do humanitarian work to help other countries, to let them feel supported. These humanitarian operations are never controversial.

You go to help, like a Good Samaritan, as said in the Bible, and nobody disagrees. But if you send troops here and there, killing people under different pretexts, who remembers all those bloody excuses?

Sometimes I think about this: the United States probably has more clever people than any other country. But how could they make such terrible mistakes, one after another, from the Vietnam war to Iraq to Afghanistan? Even they themselves have criticised these wars.

Then how would China project its global influence?

There are many ways. One is that you don’t deliberately promote your influence. Projects themselves create influence. For example, the Belt and Road Initiative. China did not launch the [strategy] just to create influence. It was initially meant to be mutually beneficial, basically economic projects. However, even these economic projects can generate significant political influence.

Another way is through mediation in troubled regions. In the Middle East, China succeeded in bringing together, even for a short while, Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is how China’s influence can be welcomed. In Ukraine, China has tried with a 12-point peace plan and a joint initiative with Brazil. Although Russia welcomed these proposals, Ukraine was not interested. This is not surprising. In this war of attrition, which peace proposal has really worked so far? None of them.

But the other side of the coin is that no war will last forever. There might come a time when China could play a bigger role in a ceasefire or armistice, or in providing security guarantees with other powers or in taking the lead in sending peacekeepers if the warring parties agree.

Is China ready to lead reforms in global governance institutions like the UN Security Council?

That’s a very good question because I can almost see two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, China describes itself as a developing country, which is certainly true if wealth is divided by population.

Yet China is also regarded by many countries as a superpower or a leader of the Global South, though China itself only describes its role as a natural member of the Global South. Look at the four global initiatives China has put forward. Few other countries have proposed these global initiatives. They represent China’s world views. These initiatives are really big.

So, I think even if China would not call itself a leader, it is in fact taken by many countries as a leader. That is China’s position in the world.

UN Security Council members meet at the world body’s headquarters in New York on November 17. Photo: EPA

But China is preparing for that role, right?

If you mean China wants to become another world policeman, that is certainly not what China wants. Why should China do that?

What makes China different from the United States is that China is not a religious country, [not] missionary in nature. Chinese traditional culture starts with the individual: you educate yourself, then move into society, accomplish more and be good to others. That mentality is totally different.

But still, you see in the UN, China is paying more and more. The gap between Chinese and American contributions in the regular budget is not that great, just two per cent. Sometimes I even wonder if China’s GDP were to surpass that of the US, could there be a day when China says, “OK, we will make the largest financial contribution to the United Nations.”

Since the United States is not very interested in the UN, other countries may want a stronger China to take the lead. Could there be a time when all other countries welcome such a role for China? That is something I am thinking about.

Looking ahead, what would a truly multipolar world look like from China’s perspective and what role should the PLA play in securing that vision?

A multipolar world may not necessarily look very orderly because it also means more challenges in global management. If it is unipolar, that is the easiest. If it is bipolar, it is still easier than managing a multipolar world.

I have attended many conferences, and I know how difficult it is, for example, at the Asean Regional Forum, for 27 countries to agree on one thing. In a multipolar world, the only way out is, as the Chinese government has proposed, let’s discuss and work on these issues together. That is the only way forward.

For the PLA, I have already explained what it has been doing overseas – basically humanitarian missions – and this is still my hope for a stronger PLA. What makes the PLA’s role different is that while all militaries focus on sovereignty and territorial integrity, China is unique because, even as a major power, it is still a country divided. So, the PLA has a responsibility to help reunify the country. At the same time, China is also a major power, so it has international obligations overseas and must protect its ever-growing overseas interests.

For me, the PLA has three responsibilities: national reunification, safeguarding China’s overseas interests and shouldering China’s international responsibilities as a major power. Three in one.

But even in the future, I hope the PLA overseas will focus only on humanitarian operations, not missions where you have to kill people with a lot of excuses. This would make the PLA different.

Xi’s National Day speech warns against Taiwan independence

Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said at the UN General Assembly in 1974 that “if one day China should change her colour and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it”.

I think when Chinese leaders say China will not become a hegemon, even if it is developed, they are sincere. This comes from Chinese culture and from the fact that China’s rise in the last four decades has indeed been peaceful. Whether unprecedented or not, it is at least extremely rare in human history.

In the context of hybrid great-power competition, what responsibilities should China assume in shaping the rules of emerging domains such as AI governance and space security?

When people talked about strategic stability during the Cold War, it basically meant those two countries had equal numbers of nuclear warheads. But nowadays, between China and the United States, we don’t have equilibrium or parity in nuclear warheads. However, China and the United States are almost equally developed in AI. That is my argument: in the future, only China and the US could dominate battlefields because we are the two countries best at AI. We haven’t heard of serious AI developments in Japan or Europe.

That is why I wrote in my essay that in the future international arms market there will be just two countries that can sell advanced weapons: the United States, whose weapons are expensive but combat-tested, and allies must buy them for political correctness; and China, whose systems are equally good – as seen in air combat between India and Pakistan – but more affordable. In the future, you sell a system rather than just a few combat platforms.

I’m glad you mentioned space because we live on Earth and very few people look up at the sky daily. But in fact, space is becoming more contested, congested and lucrative. China is moving very fast in space exploration. Just imagine you are sitting here and can control a probe operating on the far side of the moon. That is what China has achieved, something no one else has done so far.

Outer space means many business opportunities, but it could also become a new area for an arms race. That is why I coined the term “mutually assured vulnerability in space”.

During the Cold War, we had mutually assured destruction. But in outer space, all countries are vulnerable because we share the same orbits. The US, China, Russia and India have all shown they are capable of destroying satellites. But attacks could generate thousands of pieces of debris, depending on the size of the satellite, and this debris could endanger all satellites in the same orbit. That is why I say mutually assured vulnerability. Everyone is vulnerable.

And of course, I don’t know whether one day we might face the terrible scenario of war in outer space. That is not an illusion. Otherwise, why would the United States try to build a Golden Dome [missile defence system]?

But if you build a Golden Dome, other countries will try to penetrate it. A war in space, in my conclusion, would be part of a nuclear war or the prelude to one.

Because if you decide to attack an enemy’s satellite, that means you have taken a deep breath. That doesn’t look like a small conflict. It’s an all-out war, a pre-emptive strike. I hope that never happens. That is why China and Russia proposed no placement of weapons in space.

Xi Jinping hails ‘lasting friendship’ in talks with Putin

As the Ukraine conflict drags on in its third year with Nato’s aid faltering, how should China position itself? China doesn’t want Russia to lose the war, right?

It’s not up to China to wish for which side wins or loses. Although we cannot yet see clearly how this war will end, I believe two outcomes are already on the horizon.

First, Nato’s expansion in Europe has basically reached its limit. It already has 32 members, and three countries are on the waiting list: Georgia, Ukraine and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first two are at war, or have been at war, precisely because they want to join Nato. Bosnia and Herzegovina wouldn’t add too much weight to Nato. I think Nato’s expansion in Europe has almost come to an end.

Second, no matter what happens, I think after this war Russia will consolidate a much reduced sphere of influence. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the West has ignored Russia’s interests, turning a deaf ear to its protests while continuing to move eastward. This time, the West has run into something solid. Of course, Russia, with huge sacrifices, could consolidate its own sphere of influence. But it has been weakened by the war, which is why I say it will be a much reduced sphere of influence.

What lessons does China draw from the Ukraine war in terms of military modernisation and strategic deterrence?

As I said, first of all, we need to increase our nuclear arsenal. The second lesson was already showcased in the latest Tiananmen military parade. You saw weapons such as anti-drone systems and laser weapons. This shows we are not only watching; we are also learning, researching and developing. Some of these systems are already deployed with our troops.

Looking at the protracted nature of the war in Ukraine, what lessons can China draw to avoid escalation into a protracted conflict in the Taiwan Strait?

We must increase the number of nuclear weapons. That is my conclusion. In a conventional war, we have all the advantages of fighting on our home turf. Precisely because of this, some voices in the US have raised the idea of using nuclear weapons in the Taiwan Strait, fearing defeat in a conventional war. America’s undersecretary of defence for policy, Elbridge Colby, for example, has spoken about this in the past. Why would Americans raise such ideas? Is it probably because China’s nuclear arsenal is not yet large enough?

Look at the war in Ukraine. Russia’s most obvious strength is its nuclear arsenal. Because its conventional forces have struggled, it has repeatedly hinted at the possible use of nuclear weapons. Last year, for example, Russia occupied only about 1 per cent of new territory. Why talk about nuclear weapons? Because they are uncertain of victory through conventional warfare, so they make thinly veiled threats.

A nuclear missile formation at the Victory Day military parade in Beijing on September 3. Photo: Xinhua

China has not made such threats. I don’t believe China would use nuclear weapons in the Taiwan Strait because Taiwanese people are our compatriots. How could we use such weapons against our own people, especially when we have pledged never to be the first to use nuclear weapons? That is impossible.

But we must be prepared in case the United States makes such an adventure. If we have enough nuclear warheads, then the US would never dare to consider such a scenario. The question, of course, is how many we need. I would say increase them to the point where the US would never, ever think of using nuclear weapons against China first.

Elsewhere, US-Philippines ties are deepening, and Vietnam is expanding its offshore oil deals. Is confrontation in the South China Sea inevitable or are there credible off-ramps?

If you are talking about the chances of conflict between China and other claimants, including the Philippines, I think the likelihood is not zero, but very low. We have pledged, along with the 10 Asean countries in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, not to resort to the use of force or the threat of force.

On tensions between China and the Philippines, I think precisely because China’s military is overwhelming, we can generally keep the situation under control. They may try to make trouble and sometimes succeed in creating incidents, but overall, our strength is sufficient to stabilise the situation. So, between China and any other Asean countries, I don’t believe conflict is highly likely.

The real danger is between China and the United States – the risk of a collision, whether between aircraft or ships, as occurred in 2001 [involving a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane near Hainan province]. That likelihood remains and is still very high. The Pentagon has reported that in the past two years Chinese forces carried out more than 180 intercepts of US aircraft. If those statistics are reliable, it would mean roughly one interception every four days. That is alarming.

Sometimes I think of another risk I had not considered before: a collision between Chinese and Australian aircraft. Australia has recently taken actions that China views as provocative, whether in the Taiwan Strait or over the Xisha, or Paracel, Islands. Australia accused Chinese pilots of releasing flares, which could be ingested by an aircraft’s engine and cause it to crash immediately. Such close encounters and dangerous near misses have already happened several times between the Chinese and Australian air forces.

Is Asean capable of mediating and managing South China Sea tensions effectively?

No, they can’t. Because quite a few of them are claimants themselves in the South China Sea with their own interests. They simply cannot speak with one voice. This is also reflected in the ongoing code of conduct negotiations. Why has it taken longer than expected? Because these countries cannot agree among themselves. So how can they mediate? They are part of the disputes.

Let’s turn now to the Korean peninsula. America’s approval of South Korea’s nuclear-powered submarines and North Korea’s accelerating nuclear programme have pushed northeast Asia towards a new nuclear arms race. How does China interpret and respond to South Korea’s internal push for nuclear armament and North Korea’s adventurism, especially given Beijing’s waning leverage over Pyongyang?

First of all, in South Korea, public polls suggest that about 70 per cent of the people would support developing nuclear weapons. But I think this also depends on how the questions are framed. If you ask, “If we have nuclear weapons, where would we conduct the first nuclear test?”, given South Korea’s population density, where could it be done? Then ask, “What if China strongly opposes this, perhaps with sanctions, how would we deal with that?” And finally, “What if the United States says, ‘Since you can protect yourself, I may withdraw my troops from South Korea’?” If all these questions were asked, I am very confident the approval rate would drop drastically.

I think if Trump really conducts a nuclear test, it would trigger chain reactions. First, Russia would do it. This is not speculation; both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin spokesmen have said so. If the US does it, Russia would follow. Then North Korea would likely do it. After that, Pakistan might do it, and if Pakistan does, India would too.

On China, the government would have to decide. Daryl Kimball, former executive director of the Arms Control Association, argued that if the US conducted a nuclear test, China would definitely follow because it would serve China’s interests. I am not so sure. His argument is based on nuclear missile technology. He claims US and Russian technologies are advanced enough, but China still needs more tests. He suggests China’s nuclear capabilities are not as good as those of the US or Russia. But how can you prove that? Last year China launched an ICBM into the southern Pacific Ocean, and it worked fine. Nothing went wrong.

How should China manage tensions on the Korean peninsula? What steps should China take to manage escalation and recalibrate its own nuclear posture to maintain deterrence superiority?

It is very difficult for us to manage the situation on the Korean peninsula. I think what North Korea wants is to become a “normal” nuclearised country. They want to be seen as normal, but with nuclear weapons. Yet with nuclear weapons, you are not a normal country. According to the UN and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, you are not a normal country. And the UN still maintains sanctions on North Korea. Sometimes I believe North Korea’s provocations are just meant to draw attention.

Trump was very busy talking to the North Koreans, but former US president Joe Biden seemed to have a new strategy. The Biden administration’s approach was, “OK, I don’t care what you’re doing.” So, to remind the US government that North Korea is still there, they fire missiles from time to time or even send soldiers to fight alongside Russians in Ukraine.

North Korea state media releases propaganda video showing soldiers fighting for Russia

Do you think North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship puts China in an unfavourable position considering Beijing’s dilemma over Pyongyang?

China certainly cannot be said to be happy with North Korea’s nuclear programme. Otherwise, why would China have joined other countries in the six-party talks? But it is impossible for China to put everything under control, especially when it is beyond our own borders.

Where do you see the biggest challenges for China’s interests outside its immediate neighbourhood?

It depends on what kind of interests you are talking about. Economically, China’s presence is already ubiquitous. Chinese products, investments and trade are found everywhere around the world.

But if we take the Belt and Road Initiative as an example, it raises important questions. How can we ensure the security of vital international sea lanes in the Indian Ocean? Consider the key straits: Bab al-Mandeb, Hormuz and Malacca. That is why our navy has been operating there since the end of 2008.

Another challenge is how to protect Chinese workers abroad who are found in many parts of the world, especially around the rimland of the Indian Ocean and across Africa. This is a huge task for the PLA.

That is why, in my understanding, China needs a large navy. Resolving the Taiwan issue is not only the navy’s job. Even with many ships, the Taiwan problem cannot be solved by naval power alone. The real explanation is that China has global interests and global obligations, which require a larger navy. That is why we must build one.

Will America’s accelerating retreat from global policing allow China to fill the vacuum in those regions?

No, that is wrong because I don’t believe there are vacuums. I think they are traps.

The first question is whether the Americans can really leave those regions. I have doubts. Could the United States truly leave the Middle East or Europe? Even if it wanted to, it could not. So, there are not many vacuums for China to fill.

And since China has no ambition to become a world policeman and its economic activity is already everywhere, why would China try to fill these so-called vacuums?

14. Fragmented frontiers: three approaches to understanding irregular warfare

Summary:

Western debates on irregular warfare and argues that thinking has fragmented into three competing models. It traces how US doctrine expanded irregular warfare from COIN, CT, and stabilization toward a broad tool for state competition, while British doctrine largely froze it inside a classic insurgency frame. This conceptual inflation blurs boundaries between irregular, hybrid, and grey zone activity, risks turning almost any coercive statecraft into “warfare,” and complicates doctrine, force design, and interagency coordination. Tripodi concludes that a “competition-disruption” approach, especially RAND’s notion of strategic disruption, offers the most coherent operational role for irregular warfare by treating it as a military contribution to great power competition rather than a grand theory. Yet he stresses that all three models contain serious gaps and that any unified theory of irregular warfare remains fragile, contested, and vulnerable to bureaucratic fashion and overreach.

Comment: A long read. Please go to the link to read this since it is not behind the paywall. Abstract and introduction provided below. It has an excellent citation and reference list.

The three approaches summarized:

Maximal model broad, near totalizing view that treats almost all non-conventional, often non-violent tools of influence and coercion as irregular warfare within grand strategy.
Traditional model conservative, COIN centric view that defines irregular warfare as violent contests between states and non-state actors in dysfunctional, mainly intra-state environments.
Competition-disruption model middle position framing irregular warfare as a military supporting effort in great power competition, focused on strategic disruption through small, expert forces that shape, enable partners, and generate cross-domain effects short of major war.

The 6 parts:

Part 1: blurred boundaries

Part 2: making sense of ‘reality’

Part 3: the emergence of the ‘maximal’ model

Part 4: persistence over time: the traditional model

Part 5: squaring the circle: the competition-disruption model

Part 6: hybrid, grey, and irregular: the dividing lines

Fragmented frontiers: three approaches to understanding irregular warfare

tandfonline.com · Christian Tripodi

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2025.2468941?scroll=top&needAccess=true#references-Section1

ABSTRACT

This article surveys current thinking, both academic and doctrinal, on the subject of irregular warfare. It argues that from a western perspective the debate has essentially resulted in three competing forms of understanding, what this paper terms the maximal, traditional, and competition-disruption models. Conceptually, all have certain strengths but also a number of highly significant weaknesses. It nevertheless proposes that the last of these, particularly when articulated as a form of ‘strategic disruption’, offers the most coherent vision of irregular warfare. Even then, significant gaps in reasoning still exist. Ultimately, the ability of western thinkers and doctrine writers to agree a common understanding of irregular warfare remains an inherently fragile endeavor.

Introduction

If you look at the current war, you might assume that the biggest failure on the Russian side is entirely (related to) conventional military … But here’s the interesting part to me. The real failure of this war is the failure in the irregular side of the campaign … a campaign … that failed spectacularly and colossally.

Michael Koffman’s observation, made in the early months of the Ukraine war, was important in two respects. Firstly, it provided much needed logic to what appeared otherwise to be an inexplicable series of decisions by Vladimir Putin and his senior civilian and military advisors where Russian military strategy was concerned. What Koffman was arguing was that the evident failings at that point in Russia’s conventional military capabilities were real but were never really meant to matter. This was because the employment of those conventional capabilities was always intended take place in the context of an adversary that had already been fatally paralysed by multiple forms of irregular ‘shaping’ actions – espionage, infiltration, cyber-attack, subversion, assassination – prior to the invasion. Russian conventional forces would thus mount their assault with the political and psychological disintegration of the enemy having been largely achieved before a shot had been fired.

Koffman’s observation mattered in another way, however. Namely that Russian methods not only exemplified the use of irregular warfare as a strategic enabler for the effective prosecution of interstate conflict, but simultaneously encompassed a wide range of non-military and indeed non-violent shaping actions, e.g. espionage, cyber-attacks, information operations and organised crime, carried out by non-military actors. Why is this important? Because at the time of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, let alone the fait accompli in Crimea 8 years previously, Western military doctrinal thinking on irregular warfare was notable for its entirely different approach to the subject. This was one in which the focus remained primarily upon counterinsurgency, stabilization and counterterrorism missions in which states and non-state actors (NSAs) violently contested one another in the context of intra-state dysfunction.

Fortunately a number of commentators, predominantly in the US, had already begun to articulate the need for a radically different conception of irregular warfare, one that acknowledged the requirement to broaden perspectives from one that was principally concerned with violent intra-state conflict to one that could accommodate more subversive, illicit and even non-violent forms of interstate competition. This was a way of thinking that would allow practitioners and policymakers to recognize the intent and match the actions of hostile state adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran. Thus began the process of formulating an understanding of irregular warfare that sought to move practitioners away from an outdated COIN, CT and stabilization ‘frame’ to better reflect the broader array of actors, actions and capabilities that might now be utilized as part of any ‘irregular’ strategy.

There stood an outlier to this, however, in the form of the British military. Specifically, the British Army , as of 2022, was (and still remains) the only one of the United Kingdom’s armed services to have produced its own irregular warfare doctrine. But the highly conservative nature of this manual, one that continues to retain a primary focus upon the challenge of wielding military power in the context of violent intra-state dysfunction, remains tightly related to the COIN doctrine that preceded it. Not only does it offer a differing understanding of irregular warfare to that held by other Western (and non-western) theorists but highlights more generally the sheer difficulty for doctrine writers in generating a coherent, actionable understanding of a concept beset at all turns by what Kilcullen describes as inherently ‘fuzzy edges’.

This paper serves to explore this problem by examining the recently evolving narratives around the subject of irregular warfare in Western military thinking. It addresses some of the semantic and terminological issues and contradictions relating to the concept in its most basic terms. It also serves to clarify the extent to which irregular warfare can be understood to comprise a meaningful concept of its own, distinct from the related terminology of hybrid warfare and sub-threshold/grey zone operations. It proposes that, in the West at least, our understanding of irregular warfare as a form of action appears essentially split along three lines: 1) those who believe the concept should embody a broad array of actions and activities including non-military, non-governmental, and non-violent, that might be utilised as part of a grand-strategic campaign of influence building; 2) those who adopt a far more conservative perspective which proposes that it still be understood primarily as a challenge posed by violent non-state actors in which the familiar missions of counterinsurgency, stabilisation and counterterrorism predominate; 3) and those that tread a middle ground, articulating a vision of irregular warfare as an aspect of great power competition but who emphasise a very specific role for military power within that dynamic. The are, respectively, what this article terms the maximal, traditional and competition-disruption models.

Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of these three approaches, this article proposes that the latter, whilst unable to resolve all the tensions apparent in the debate, goes some way to addressing the competing contradictions that emerge in the two preceding models. In particular it suggests that Eric Robinson et al.’s notion of strategic disruption comprises the most effective variant of the ‘competition’ model not only because it articulates to policymakers a useful vision of military power as an instrumental component of contemporary inter-state competition, but one that is underpinned by a genuine strategic theory of action (disruption) while privileging economy of effort and suitable expertise. The concept of strategic disruption not only helps elevate irregular warfare from the realm of tactical activity but also provides military practitioners with a much clearer understanding of how, in the context of interstate competition, their capabilities might profitably function as part of a truly multi-agency effort outside of the boundaries of ‘conventional war’.

What this article also reflects upon in broader terms, however, is the continuing tendency in some quarters to seek to draw disparate threats, actors and activities into the embrace of a single overarching theory. It is done so in order presumably to better make sense of those threats and to cohere an effective politico-military response, but that merely begs the question of the extent to which such aggregation benefits us. It may well do, but it also may not. What might be the conceptual advantage of automatically framing attempts at political subversion or economic warfare as part of a broader scheme of ‘irregular warfare’ (or indeed hybrid warfare) versus properly understanding such things on their own terms? Do inherent advantages accrue to policymakers conditioned to think instinctively of things not traditionally associated with warfare as precisely that? Are we tempted to see things that don’t exist and consequently bestow upon our adversaries a degree of power that they simply don’t possess? These are only some of the considerations that continue to bedevil the debate.

15. Running Estimate (Crawling When We Need to Run)

Summary:

Army staffs too often brief raw data instead of usable knowledge, leaving commanders unable to make sound decisions. The article argues that running estimates must shift from lists of facts, slants, and percentages to clear assessments, conclusions, recommendations, and associated risk tied to current and future operations. New formats should put conclusions first, link each warfighting function to phases and critical events, and continuously assess progress toward the desired end state. Data, assumptions, and detailed analysis still matter, but as “homework” that underpins recommendations. Properly focused, living running estimates enable commanders to exploit opportunities and adjust plans in large-scale combat.

Excerpt:

In summary, staff running estimates need to pivot their focus to conclusions/recommendations and associated risk as well as opportunities to exploit. They can do this if units re-prioritize what the focus of meetings and the associated products need to be. Staffs must brief commanders their conclusions and recommendations for each part of an upcoming operation while being prepared to go over the homework that drove those conclusions/recommendations, but they should not brief the homework by default. Ultimately, if staff running estimates provide the conclusions and recommendations a commander needs for decision making and assessing progress toward an end state, they achieve their purpose, regardless of the actual format.

Comment: A numebr of graphics atthe link. Probably of interest only to real planner geeks. (But this is important for all commanders and planners). I am reminded of something I heard at Georgetown from a speaker who worked on the national security staff in response to a question from a student who asked why do we have to write 10 or 20 or 30 page research papers in our security studies classes when the government runs on 1-2 page memos? Why don't we just focus on memos? His response was that, yes, the 1-2 page memo is a key communications tool for the principles. However, the principles expect that memo to be backed up with 10-20-30 pages of research by the action officer(s). I think the analogy applies to the authors' running estimate ideas.

Running Estimate (Crawling When We Need to Run)

by John R. Harrell, by James Villanueva, by Peter Farese, by Joe Hammond

12.01.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/01/running-estimate/

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the US Army’s Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL).

This article was published as CALL publication No. 24-894, Staff Processes in Large-Scale Combat Operations Part 2: Running Estimate (Crawling When We Need to Run).

This article is republished at Small Wars Journal with permission from CALL.

You can find this and all of CALL’s other publications on their website.

Introduction

In Army headquarters, commanders frequently leave a meeting without the knowledge they need to know to make decisions. This is mostly the result of insufficient or incomplete running estimates. Staffs often present raw, unrefined data without analysis and are unable to provide the knowledge commanders need to make decisions. Staffs across the Army need to better facilitate commanders’ decision-making during large-scale combat operations by focusing running estimates on assessments, conclusions, and recommendations along with associated risk and opportunities. Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 5-0 The Operations Process defines a running estimate as “the continuous assessment of the current situation used to determine if the current operation is proceeding according to the commander’s intent and if planned future operations are supportable.” Field Manual (FM) 6-0 Commander and Staff Organization and Operations warns, “Failure to maintain running estimates may lead to errors or omissions that result in flawed plans or bad decisions.” Doctrinal publications emphasize the fact that running estimates must be current and relevant, must include analyzed information that is of value to the commander, and must provide recommendations for future decision. Most important, by providing accurate, relevant, and timely running estimates, a staff can assist their commander in identifying opportunities for exploitation which will be crucial to success in large-scale combat.

Refocusing Running Estimates

Staffs frequently present raw data, such as a combat power percentage, vehicle slant, or quantities of a class of supply, and believe that they are providing the commander what is needed to make a decision. Such items are merely data points often detached from current or future operations.

Inadequate running estimates are likely the result of a variety of factors, such as:

Staff members (especially junior members) not knowing the context for an operation. This prevents full understanding of required information by the commander.
Commanders’ being unable or unwilling to articulate information they need for decisions.
A failure of commanders and staffs to understand what information is needed now and what will be needed in the future.
Running estimate formats which drive a focus on data when it should focus on the assessments, conclusions, and recommendations.

Observers during multiple warfighter exercises note that commanders often have little to no involvement in operations on the floor of their current operations integration cell (COIC). The running estimates presented in the COIC do not provide the commander enough information needed to understand and visualize the current and future fight to make decisions. While greater senior leader involvement in executing tactical operations will certainly facilitate better understanding and efficiency (similar to naval commanders who are never far away from their vessels’ helms) staffs can better support commander involvement in the COIC by providing and displaying relevant

running estimates.

The following list from FM 5-0 Planning and Orders Production is information/considerations typically derived from sub-steps of Mission Analysis that should be included in running estimates:

Facts
Assumptions
Friendly force status, including location, activity, and combat power of subordinate units from two echelons down
Enemy activities and capabilities
Civil considerations
Conclusions and recommendations with associated risk

The most important from above are the conclusions and recommendations provided in the context of current and future operations. These items drive a commander’s decisions. Much of the integrated, collaborative staff planning and synchronization must occur to conduct effective operations. Staff sections with clear recommendations created a situation where commanders and other staff can clearly see themselves and the enemy, draw appropriate conclusions to drive planning and execution, and continually assess progress towards the commander’s desired end state. While the other items listed above are certainly important for informing conclusions and recommendations, this information must always drive towards clear conclusions and recommendations. If they do not, then the staff is tracking a large amount of data and information which will serve little purpose in tracking progress to the commander’s desired end state.

Refocusing Staff Tools

One of the reasons that staffs and individual staff members do not focus on determining clear conclusions and recommendations is that current tools do not emphasize a focus on such items. Units commonly use a running estimate format which forms quad charts listing facts, assumptions, constraints, limitations, etc. Conclusions and recommendations (seen as the results of the listed facts, assumptions, etc.) are typically listed at the end of this running estimate.

Figure 1: Legacy Running Estimate Template

Figure 2 has another running estimate template that uses a format like that of an operations order. This format attempts to account for all the mission variables to drive the military decision-making process (MDMP) and allows a staff member to account for multiple factors and create an in-depth running estimate. While a very comprehensive tool in and of itself, this running estimate format is not easily digestible for a commander or other staff sections outside of the section that produced it. Similar to Figure 1, it also lists conclusions and recommendations at the end.

Figure 2: Running Estimate Template

Both templates list the most important part last. This means that the most important part of the running estimate is often relegated to being an afterthought. Instead, this article proposes the use of the tools below or similar tools to refocus the running estimate on conclusions and recommendations. Additionally, the running estimate should serve as a holistic assessment of operations by phase/critical event as opposed to a simple presentation of raw data and information.

Figure 3: Consolidated Staff Running Estimate Example

This template, which can be used for both the common operational picture (COP) and in staff meetings, helps solve several problems with current running estimate formats and briefing products. It presents assessments, conclusions, and recommendations that drive decisions first. It forces staff sections, to include subordinate unit liaison officer (LNOs), to look closely at specific requirements for critical events and phases and their inputs to the feasibility of actions during those phases/events. This helps focus the running estimate and prevents running estimates from becoming compilations of unrelated facts. It also forces staffs to anticipate future requirements and assess progress towards them as opposed to maintaining a myopic focus on current operations. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this running estimate tool ties the current state to the planned end state and assesses progress toward the end state.

Figure 4: Running Estimate as Assessments Towards a Desired End State

This updated product does not ignore the importance of facts, assumptions, constraints, etc., nor does it make current formats irrelevant, as those formats can still be used to create assessments, conclusions, and recommendations. It instead shifts the focus away from raw data and forces staffs to turn such data into information and knowledge. This data represents the homework necessary to provide the crux of the running estimate: conclusions/recommendations and associated risk. To use a mathematical equation as a metaphor, if 2+4+3= 9, with two, four, and three representing facts and nine representing a conclusion, the staff needs to focus on providing the commander the “answer,” nine, and not two, four, or three. However, when prompted, staff members need to be able to provide their data or show their work so their analysis and calculations can be verified. A focused, consolidated running estimate, like in Figure 5, can be used to begin any staff meeting or sync. This allows the staff and senior leaders to better understand the current situation and progress to the desired end state. A way to use this product during a COIC synchronization meeting, for example, would be displaying two screens in the COIC, one with the common operational picture (COP) on the left and the other with the running estimates on the right, and warfighting function representatives would cycle through to brief in turn. In the assessments working group, a unit could brief the synchronization matrix up front and then display this product to drive conversations on resources/conditions for current and upcoming operations and determine if the unit is on or off plan. This product can also drive any portion of the operations process to inform future plans at any point in the MDMP or any point in the course of an operation. Running estimates must always assess progress toward the designed end state and inform commander decisions in achieving that end state. Additionally, as discussed in ADP 5-0, they must be continuously updated to inform decisions at any time of day.

Figure 5: Completed Consolidated Staff Running Estimate Example

A focused running estimate also needs to account for current unit knowledge management processes. Regardless of where and how it is stored and accessed, the estimate must be updated constantly irrespective of the meeting schedule and must always be accessible to the commander and across the staff. If a unit keeps this product updated and accessible, it can be used in any meeting and drive planning regardless of the planning horizon. Accessibility challenges will manifest themselves for units which do not possess upper-tactical internet systems, or which do not possess such systems on the move, in which case units must be prepared to distribute these running estimates in an

analog manner. If it is accessible and updated, the running estimate can provide the information the commander needs at any time during the rhythm of the battle referenced in an earlier white paper. Refocusing unit running estimates in this manner will allow staff sections to update running estimates in the absence of a robust battle rhythm like that depicted below, a battle rhythm which never survives first contact during large-scale combat operations.

Figure 6: Robust Battle Rhythm Showing Information Flowing in Critical Paths Between Meetings

This structure is too inflexible for large-scale combat as running estimates are only updated once or twice daily in support of follow-on meetings. Continuously updated running estimates presenting clear conclusions and recommendations will allow commanders and staffs to identify opportunities to exploit around the clock.

Considerations for Running Estimates

Having provided an updated focus and conceptual framework for running estimates, the following list of considerations will provide more specific items which need to be in an individual staff section’s running estimate as they create their conclusions and recommendations. While not an exhaustive list, these items provide a starting point from which to build a running estimate and start the background analysis required to give cogent conclusions and recommendations to a commander and keep the entire staff informed.

The combat power, location, and status of a particular capability or function, often low-density, overseen by a given staff section. Examples include bridging assets; chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) decontamination equipment; or counterbattery radar. Staff sections serving as the subject matter experts (SME) on these items need to be prepared to provide clear recommendations on task organization and employment of these assets and availability of such assets in adjacent and higher headquarters units.
Commander’s critical information requirements (CCIR) or essential elements of friendly information (EEFI) for which a staff section provides subject matter expertise.
The process and planned time requirements for an asset or capability external to the unit in question.
Benefits or conflicts stemming from effects used by adjacent or higher echelons which a staff section provides subject matter expertise.
Actions or capabilities on the delegated authorities matrix which a staff section provides subject matter expertise.
Mandated sections of the unit common operational picture which a staff section provides subject matter expertise.
Relevant portions of the unit assessment and assessments working group which a staff section provides subject matter expertise.
Coordination for an item in the rules of engagement.
Latest subordinate, adjacent, and higher headquarters reports within a staff section’s area of
expertise.

All of these processes or key items of information, along with the processes for developing that information, must be codified in a unit/staff section standard operating procedure (SOP). As stated previously, not all of the items listed above need to be briefed to the commander or across the staff. However, these items are important pieces of data and information which should inform a staff section’s conclusions and recommendations briefed to a commander. Analysis of these items allows a staff section to conduct the homework which informs the commander and rest of the staff of important considerations as they monitor and plan operations.

Conclusion

In summary, staff running estimates need to pivot their focus to conclusions/recommendations and associated risk as well as opportunities to exploit. They can do this if units re-prioritize what the focus of meetings and the associated products need to be. Staffs must brief commanders their conclusions and recommendations for each part of an upcoming operation while being prepared to go over the homework that drove those conclusions/recommendations, but they should not brief the homework by default. Ultimately, if staff running estimates provide the conclusions and recommendations a commander needs for decision making and assessing progress toward an end state, they achieve their purpose, regardless of the actual format.

About The Authors

John R. Harrell
Major John Harrell is a U.S. Army infantry officer assigned as a division command and control observer-coach/trainer with the Mission Command Training Program. Previously, he served as a division FUOPS planner in the 10th Mountain Division and a battalion S3/XO in 2d Battalion, 22d Infantry Regiment. He has developed academic curriculum for over 13 academic and warfighter exercises and has published articles on various related topics.
View all posts
James Villanueva
Major James Villanueva is a U.S. Army infantry officer assigned as a division command and control observer-coach/trainer with the Mission Command Training Program. Prior to his current assignment, he served as the G-35 for the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). He holds a PhD in history from Ohio State. James was also an assistant professor in the U.S. Military Academy Department of History and is the author of Awaiting MacArthur’s Return: World War II Guerrilla Resistance against the Japanese in
the Philippines. He has an upcoming book assessing U.S. Army Regimental Combat Teams in the Pacific during World War II.
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Peter Farese
Major Peter Farese is a U.S. Army armor officer assigned as a division command and control observer-coach/trainer with the Mission Command Training Program. During his tenure he participated in, planned, or observed/controlled over 20 Warfighter Exercises supporting division and corps staffs around the globe. Prior to his current assignment, he served as the S3/XO of the reconnaissance squadron in the 3 d Cavalry Regiment and a planner for the III Armored Corps. He holds a masters of arts degree in military operations from the School of Advanced Military Studies.
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Joe Hammond
Joe Hammond is a Division Command and Control Analyst supporting Operations Group Bravo, Mission Command Training Program. He is former U.S. Army officer with three years of experience as an Observer-Coach/Trainer in MCTP and 4.5 years of time as a division staff officer with the 3rd Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions.
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16.

Summary:

III Armored Corps’ fires team contrasts two paths to large-scale combat readiness. For WFX 25-4, a year of deliberate “off-season” integration, rehearsals, and interoperability events produced a cohesive corps team that rapidly defeated a world-class OPFOR. For WFX 25-5, only seven weeks, heavy staff turnover, National Guard participation, missing LNOs, and limited digital rehearsals led to degraded shared understanding, COP fragmentation, and uneven system proficiency. The authors argue future crises will resemble 25-5, not 25-4, and call for a scalable rapid-integration approach built on humans, processes, and systems, anchored by a concise RIP-IT TACSOP supplement and routine Active–Guard training and LNO exchanges.

Excerpt:

The III Armored Corps’ experiences in Warfighter Exercises 25-4 and 25-5 demonstrate that while deliberate, long-term integration sets conditions for a favorable unfair fight purposely increasing interoperability and the overall probability of success. Yet, rapid integration with diverse units – including National Guard components – is the most challenging course of action we must deliberately prepare for now given the known risk to mission and risk to force. It is the most likely of two approaches we will experience in future conflict. Developing a scalable rapid integration approach mirroring the interoperability framework of human, process, and systems will account for preparation timelines that may demand immediate synchronization of corps maneuver and targeting operations across a breadth of unit experience and capacity.

Comment: Graphics at the link.

When There Is No Off-Season

by John ‘Jay’ Bradley

12.01.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/01/when-there-is-no-off-season/

Editor’s Note: this article is being republished with the permission of the Field Artillery Professional Bulletin. The original article will be published in the forthcoming issue of the Field Artillery Professional Bulletin.

Introduction

In our recent article, “Winning in the Off-Season,” the III Armored Corps (IIIAC) Fire Support Element (FSE) highlighted the critical importance of a deliberate process for building interoperability to effectively synchronize operations and fires as a Corps in large-scale combat operations (LSCO). This process proved essential to our success in overwhelming and defeating the exceptional World Class Opposition Forces in less than four days during Warfighter Exercise (WFX) 25-4. Our tailored approach customized an unfair fight but required a significant and sustained effort.

Following WFX 25-4, the IIIAC rapidly transitioned to assuming a Higher Control (HICON) role in WFX 25-5. This subsequent exercise presented a markedly different approach to building the team – we experienced a compressed timeline and limited pre-exercise integration opportunities due to the available training days, the participation of Component 2 (COMPO 2) National Guard (NG) units, and significant Corps Staff transitions. IIIAC rapidly integrated with two NG Divisions, an NG Fires Brigade, an NG Combat Aviation Brigade, and 451st and experimented with both our organic 75th Field Artillery Brigade as a multifunctional brigade strike (MFB-S) and a multifunctional brigade corps support (MFB-CS). This experience exemplified Donald Rumsfeld’s observation that “you go to war with the army you have.”

This article contrasts the deliberate, year-long integration process for WFX 25-4 with the rapid, near-immediate integration demanded by WFX 25-5. We will analyze the associated risks and identify the critical requirements for synchronizing operations and targeting in LSCO, particularly when time for preparation is severely limited. Ultimately, we aim to establish a scaled approach to integration based on the time available, recognizing that future crises may not allow for the extended preparation period experienced during WFX 25-4. (Image 1: WFX 25-4 take-aways from ALLF).

The Contrast

IIIAC Fires rapidly transitioned from the success of WFX 25-4, attempting to establish conditions with new units and personnel across Warfighting Functions (WfFs) within a compressed seven-week timeframe prior to WFX 25-5.

This challenge was significantly compounded by IIIAC Staff summer transitions and the difficulty synchronizing training and real-world mission requirements between Component 1 and Component 2 units.

To illustrate the complexity, integrating these disparate elements was akin to assembling an American football team comprised of an offensive line from the NFL, a defensive line from the CFL, and special teams from the XFL, then immediately competing against a Super Bowl championship team with no prior integrated practice.

A significant contrast existed between the process integration approaches for WFX 25-4 and WFX 25-5. During WFX 25-4, we conducted combined academics and symposiums with subordinate divisions, including detailed reviews of fighting products and comprehensive onboarding to IIIAC targeting, fires, and airspace clearance procedures. These preparatory events were largely absent prior to WFX 25-5 (Image 2: WFX 25-4 Overview ALLF).

Image 4: WFX 25-4 vs WFX 25-5 progression plan

This difference impacted the degradation of shared understanding of how IIIAC conducts operations, synchronizes targeting, and leverages the battlefield framework. Consequently, substantial effort was required to remotely align subordinate elements, navigating disparate Command and Control Information Systems (C2IS) and Mission Command Information Systems (MCIS) to establish a common operational picture and synchronize the fight.

Our team prioritized systems interoperability to improve data exchange between national MCIS and enable synchronized operations and targeting during WFX 25-4. Interoperability events, including three (3) Multilateral Interoperability Program (MIP) and Artillery Support Cooperation Agreements (ASCA) events, along with two (2) command post exercises, expanded our ability to share data and achieve shared understanding. However, in preparation for WFX 25-5, we lacked opportunities for pre-execution integration events to connect systems, share data, and build proficiency through data exchange events or command post exercises.

A key difference between the two exercises was an observed gap in proficiency and a shortage of experienced system integrators. While our Maven Smart System (MSS) successfully shared graphics with the National Guard’s Command Post Environment (CPCE) and other MCIS systems exchanged data, insufficient training prior to execution significantly hindered our ability to effectively manage the battlefield framework, develop targets, coordinate airspace, and leverage mission command systems. Essentially, we achieved an optimal performance in WFX 25-4 but experienced operational degradation in WFX 25-5 due to a lack of sustained integration and training before execution.

The absence of Liaison Officers (LNOs) during WFX 25-5 represented a significant shortfall and a degradation in capability compared to WFX 25-4, with the impact increasing in severity as operations progressed. LNOs proved invaluable during WFX 25-4, particularly in operations and targeting. Their ability to facilitate communication, bridge distinctions between units and partner WfFs, and concisely convey operational significance (“so what”) was critical. The lack of LNOs directly hindered effective integration of units for both operations and targeting.

The differing approaches to pre-exercise preparation – what we refer to as the ‘off-season’ – stemmed from factors beyond our ability to influence and synchronize. Personnel transitions, the availability of COMPO 2 training days, and the timing of WFX 25-4 execution were all considered and accepted as acknowledged risks. Looking ahead, the limited ‘off-season’ experienced prior to WFX 25-5 likely reflects a recurring challenge: the accelerating pace of competition, escalating from crises to large-scale combat operations (LSCO). Our Corps must be prepared to rapidly generate combat power during Reception, Staging, and Onward Movement (RSOI) while integrating a broad coalition of allies transitioning to LSCO.

Juxtapose Impact on Operations

Multi-national formations consisting of U.S. Army COMPO 1 and COMPO 2 forces with minimal notice integrating, establishing interoperability and synchronize the fight. That is a bleak and fair reality we must prepare for. The disparity in preparing for warfighting then holds three key takeaways that must inform our actions if a little to no-notice conflict emerges.

A shared understanding of the plan, visualized through the common operating picture and warfighting products, is critical for synchronizing units and resources. However, a lack of clear communication regarding our operational approach as the IIIAC, coupled with a compartmentalized Military Decision Making Process (MDMP), was exacerbated by independently developed layers across multiple map variations within two distinct common operating pictures (MSS and CPCE). From the start of execution, we observed significant differences in each unit’s visualization and understanding of the battlefield framework. This immediately hindered operations and slowed momentum, as the areas of engagement were not clearly defined, limiting the maneuver divisions’ ability to concentrate combat power in both the close and deep areas. We could not synchronize the fight by echelon.

Beyond visualization challenges within the common operating picture, variations in tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) between the corps and divisions contributed to operational delays and created inconsistencies in effects. Specifically, our approach to corps deep shaping operations – including the employment of fires and the Combat Aviation Brigade – was not fully understood as a practiced methodology. The intent behind our use of non-lethal effects, named events, and task organization designed to support those events was also not broadly disseminated. Furthermore, our automated counterfire and red track HeatMaps were not widely known or utilized by subordinate units. Consequently, the TTP of prioritizing Processing Exploitation and Dissemination (PED) to real-time indicators and developing dynamic targets was lost, due to a lack of practical experience gained from command post exercises and insufficient integration of these concepts into Division and Brigade staffs.

The most significant factor impacting operational success was the limited number of preparatory training repetitions. We conducted only one distributed digital rehearsal prior to WFX 25-5, which, while valuable, did not provide the same level of integration and synchronization achieved through command post exercises (CPXs) and experiential learning. As stated in ADP 5-0, The Operations Process, “Rehearsals are most effective when they focus on critical tasks and procedures, decision points, and transitions. Commanders use rehearsals to synchronize the actions of subordinate units and to identify and mitigate potential problems. Rehearsals build confidence in the plan and in each other.”

This significant gap in training repetitions resulted in a demonstrable difference in experiential knowledge between COMPO 1 and COMPO 2 units, based on available training days and requirements. Systems operators and WfF subject matter experts – regardless of age, rank, or experience – exhibited varying levels of proficiency in systems integration and the processes required to synchronize operations and engage the enemy as a corps. This disparity was not attributable to individual competency, but rather to a lack of collective training opportunities and mastery.

Recommendations: Scalable and Tailorable Approach

The current complex global competitive environment demands adaptability. We often face a choice between a deliberate, iterative approach – which can be time-consuming – or a rapid, ‘expedite’ response. Given our success with WFX 25-4 and challenges faced in WFX 25-5, we must now identify and tailor specific elements of our extended plan for implementation within a shortened, limited-notice timeframe. Failure to influence shared understanding will produce similar disconnects experienced throughout WFX 25-5. To ensure the corps and all subordinate formations can synchronize maneuver and targeting operations for decisive victory, we need to define our essential requirements.

Applying the Human, Process, and Systems framework – mirroring our approach to interoperability with partners for integration with any U.S. unit at no notice – we must develop a tactical standard operating procedure (TACSOP) supplement to standardize integration procedures. We must seek routine integration training exercises, and the consistent assignment of Liaison Officers (LNOs) are essential to enable synchronized operations following immediate, rapid integration.

The tailored package must be easily disseminated possessing the depth to increase understating and implementation, but not overwhelming to formations generating combat power, organizing for combat, and preparing to project to TAAs. These elements would be a short-term solution and must be directly drawn from existing products and standards. The following are the essential items to rapidly integrate for combat.

The current TACSOP, comprising two volumes exceeding 120 pages each, requires significant distillation to focus on essential requirements. It currently contains numerous charts, slides, and template examples, but lacks clear guidance on minimum standards of data required. To address this, the TACSOP should be supplemented with a Rapid Integration Pamphlet (RIP-IT). The following elements, drawn directly from the existing TACSOP would require minimal updates to convey the “how” and “why” while identifying the minimum data requirements to 60 pages only; 75% reduction from base TACSOP:

Battle Drills
Reports, including a newly developed CUA Update Report suitable for both digital and voice communication.
Enemy Event Template
Logistics Statistics Report, or LOGSTAT
Communications Statistics Report, or COMSTAT
7-Minute Drills, specifically: Aviation Go/NoGo, BUA, CUA, C2CD, COP Sync, OPSYNCH, Collection Management, Intel G2 Sync, TWG, TDB, AMD WG, Engineer WG, Protection WG, Sustainment Sync, and all Sustainment Working Groups.

Furthermore, the RIP-IT must include the Corps Fighting Product Standards as a quick reference guide. This should incorporate text boxes and embedded references/notes for the following products: Commander’s Visualization, OPSCHED, 24-hour OPSCHED, 120-hour SYNCMAT, and Tactical Assessment. This pamphlet, distributed digitally, stored in knowledge management systems, and printed on water-resistant paper, will serve as the foundation for establishing shared understanding of corps fighting methods and standards.

Targeting Network Systems – A network and systems integration chart think MCIS ECO-System serves as a guide to quickly establish and track system interoperability.

Knowledge Management and Data – producing a quick-reference guide, formatted as a two-sided aid. One side will detail a step-by-step process for accessing Knowledge Management resources—including the portal, Request for Information (RFI) submission process, OPORDs (daily and flash updates), and personnel directory. The reverse side will provide a “Bottom Line Up Front” (BLUF) guide to accessing, logging into, and navigating our key MCIS and applications: MSS GAIA Map, J-Chat, VJOC, and HeatMaps.

Protection– Phantom Protection operationalizes protection concepts to preserve combat power, deny enemy intent, and expand the Commander’s decision space. It frames protection elements as mechanisms—like defeat or stability mechanisms—and organizes them logically for the battle staff to protect fires, maneuver, command and control, and sustainment. It also leverages these same functions to enhance protection.

Friendly Forces Information Requirements (FFIR) – are a critical intelligence priority, enabling a common operational picture and reducing the risk of fratricide. These requirements including location, capabilities, and intent must be proactively developed, continuously refined, and widely disseminated. FFIR enhances shared understanding, influences mission success and mitigate risk while protecting friendly forces.

Battle Rhythm – Synchronizing the battle rhythm from corps to division’s involves aligning planning cycles and information flow to enhance situational awareness, optimize resource allocation, and improve decision-making at both echelons. Proactive coordination mitigates risks like misunderstandings and conflicting priorities; given operational conditions the BR must be purpose built for the specific operation given TASKORG variation. It must ultimately foster unity of effort and enable a faster, more effective operational tempo.

Human Commodities – The Commander’s concept of operations and scheme of maneuver are informed by accurate accountability, meticulous reinforcement, and informed projections of personnel combat power. The JPERSTAT and PRR inform the Human Commodity Working Group (HCWG), Casualty Estimation and Assessment Working group (CEAWG), daily battle updates, movement planning, and force flow sequencing IOT enhance operational endurance and facilitate Commander decision-making.

Surgeon Cell – Critical reporting requirements include the daily Army Health System Synchronization and Patient Evacuation Coordination Cell (PECC) procedures, accessible on MSS. Units can facilitate actions within the PECC through Liaison Officers (LNOs). The Medical Status Report, Purple 1, and Patient Movement Request from the TACSOP are best suited for the RIP-IT.

Effective training integration and interoperability are critical to future combat success. We must operationalize this by building capacity through progressive training – from Tabletop Exercises to Staff Integration Events – that specifically incorporates National Guard elements, such as Cyber Warfare Companies, Field Artillery Brigades, Combat Aviation Brigades and Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, to enhance joint operational capabilities. We must increase the number of and frequency of opportunities to integrate and train with our National Guard partners.

Effective communication and coordination require Liaison Officers (LNOs) to be embedded within higher echelons to foster shared understanding. Units should prioritize sending LNOs with expertise in critical Warfighting Functions, such as Fires and Airspace Management, to ensure unified effort and maximize combat readiness. A valuable LNO proactively advocates for their unit’s needs and facilitates action between echelons, providing a significant return on investment.

Conclusion

The III Armored Corps’ experiences in Warfighter Exercises 25-4 and 25-5 demonstrate that while deliberate, long-term integration sets conditions for a favorable unfair fight purposely increasing interoperability and the overall probability of success. Yet, rapid integration with diverse units – including National Guard components – is the most challenging course of action we must deliberately prepare for now given the known risk to mission and risk to force. It is the most likely of two approaches we will experience in future conflict. Developing a scalable rapid integration approach mirroring the interoperability framework of human, process, and systems will account for preparation timelines that may demand immediate synchronization of corps maneuver and targeting operations across a breadth of unit experience and capacity.

Tags: FCOE, field report, Fires Center of Excellence, III Corps, Republish, Staff Planning, Warfighter Exercise

About The Author

John ‘Jay’ Bradley
Colonel John ‘Jay’ Bradley is a field artillery officer currently serving as the III Armored Corps Fire Support Coordinator (FSCOORD). He has previously served in numerous field artillery tactical level leadership positions to include Commanding 3rd Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, 18th Field Artillery Brigade. He has served several tours in support of OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM and Spartan Shield and holds a Masters of International Relations from Websters University and a Masters of Strategic Leadership from the U.S. Army War College.

17. Taiwan’s plan to acquire drone ‘takeover’ technology sparks security debate

Summary:

Taiwan plans to buy Israeli counter-drone “takeover” systems to shield airports, power plants, and other critical sites, using jamming, spoofing, and hacking to seize and land intruding small drones. A requirement to decode DJI’s OcuSync links sparked criticism that specifications were brand-driven and perhaps unrealistic, prompting hints it may be dropped and stressing the civilian, not military, focus. Lawmakers warn takeover tools raise privacy, property, and legal concerns and must be clearly regulated. Experts note such tech works only against weaker protocols and cannot stop swarms or armed drones, so hard-kill options remain essential as Taiwan pursues a massive domestic drone build-up.

Taiwan’s plan to acquire drone ‘takeover’ technology sparks security debate

Network would protect key infrastructure from incursions by small commercial drones but there are concerns over use of takeover function

Lawrence Chungin Taipei

Published: 6:00am, 30 Nov 2025

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3334496/taiwans-plan-acquire-drone-takeover-technology-sparks-security-debate?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

Taiwan’s plan to acquire Israeli “takeover” technology as part of a counter-drone network has set off a debate over its use and the island’s security strategy as it tries to keep pace with rapidly evolving unmanned threats.

At a briefing for suppliers on the procurement requirements earlier this month, Taiwan’s homeland security office outlined specifications for a new system to protect the island’s airports, power plants and other critical infrastructure from incursions by small commercial drones.

The system – separate from the military’s programme – would require equipment capable of electromagnetic jamming and spoofing as well as a takeover function that could seize control of an intruding drone and land it using hacking techniques.

Slides presented by the government-controlled National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), Taiwan’s top weapons developer, at the November 14 briefing said equipment “must possess decoding functions” for OcuSync versions 2, 3, 4 and 4+ – the drone transmission system used by DJI.

Mainland Chinese company DJI accounts for an estimated 70 to 75 per cent of the global civilian drone market, including Taiwan.

At the briefing, slides said equipment “must possess decoding functions” for the drone transmission system used by DJI. Photo: AFP

The requirement prompted concern that the government was tailoring specifications around a single commercial brand, and questions over whether decoding DJI’s encrypted links was technologically feasible.

Local media later reported that the DJI-specific requirement could be removed from the tender documents, citing unnamed security officials.

The defence ministry also distanced itself from the requirement, stressing that the NCSIST’s briefing was for civilian critical infrastructure protection, not military procurement.

Taiwan’s military also plans to adopt drone takeover technology, alongside soft- and hard-kill functions.

In a separate government procurement notice on November 3, the defence ministry said it planned to buy 635 counter-drone systems worth NT$9.66 billion (US$307.2 million).

It said the systems would need a jamming range of at least 2km (1.24 miles) in all weather conditions, and that they would also need takeover and spoofing functions. They must also be mountable on light tactical vehicles or civilian platforms and be compatible with naval vessels.

Ma Wen-chun, a Kuomintang lawmaker who sits on the Foreign Affairs and National Defence Committee, said the use of drone takeover technology raised concerns over issues like privacy, property rights, freedom of communication, and the boundaries of criminal investigation.

She said if it was to be introduced for the island’s security then it would need to be clearly set out in legislation when the technology could be used.

“Civilian airspace and ordinary photography activities must not be arbitrarily taken over [by the counter-drone technology],” Ma said.

The KMT lawmaker also questioned the emphasis on OcuSync, saying security planning must be based on big-picture thinking, not brands.

“On the battlefield, Taiwan will face black- and grey-market DIY, modified, protocol-evading and non-DJI [first-person view] drones – not just the commercially available models shown in government slides,” she said.

Po Hung-hui, Taiwan’s defence vice-minister, responded that many drone-related issues still required cross-ministry coordination.

“Any use of takeover functions must be handled prudently,” he said, adding that legislation on drone incursions into protected facilities was being drafted.

In a statement on Monday, the NCSIST said the November 14 briefing was intended only to help critical-infrastructure operators understand requirements. It said the specifications would be submitted to cabinet for approval before they became common procurement standards and stressed that the briefing session was not related to military procurement.

William Wu, chairman of the Taiwan Drone Association, told reporters on Monday that the focus on DJI was understandable given its market dominance, though it was politically sensitive given the tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

He also noted that drone takeover technology would not always work.

“It only works if the target drone’s communications protocol is unencrypted or weak, and most drones have safety features that force them to hover, land or return home when the control link is jammed,” Wu said.

A participant uses an anti-drone weapon during a civilian evacuation drill held in Taipei in July. Photo: AFP

Su Tzu-yun, a senior analyst at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research in Taipei, said the requirement for OcuSync detection should be viewed as “inclusive but not exclusive”.

He said systems that could scan broader spectrums across multiple brands would be more valuable and performance indicators would “not be limited to DJI”.

The drone takeover technology was also the subject of a commentary in Taipei newspaper United Daily News that argued it was labour-intensive and required one operator per target, and manual retrieval after landing.

It said that in wartime, swarming attacks, low-altitude incursions or explosive-laden drones would still require hard-kill methods. It also warned that guiding a drone carrying explosives into a friendly facility using takeover technology would be tantamount to “leading the wolf into the house”.

The debate comes as Taiwan prepares for its largest-ever drone procurement. The defence ministry is set to buy 48,750 drones in the next two years as part of a broader effort to boost the island’s asymmetric capabilities.

The Armaments Bureau will brief suppliers on the tender on November 27. All of the drones must be produced or assembled in Taiwan, with no components from mainland China allowed, while companies with capital from mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau are prohibited from taking part.

Five types of drones are included in the plan: immersive first-person view drones, bomb-dropping multirotor drones, medium-range loitering munitions, small loitering munitions, and littoral reconnaissance drones.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China, to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including its main international partner the United States, do not recognise self-governed Taiwan as an independent state. However, Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the island by force and is legally bound to supply it with weapons to defend itself.

Lawrence Chung

Lawrence Chung covers major news in Taiwan, ranging from presidential and parliament elections to killer earthquakes and typhoons. Most of his reports focus on Taiwan’s relations with China, specifically on the impact and possible developments of cross-strait relations under

18. The Soldier in the Illiberal State is a Professional Dead End

Summary:

Debating how U.S. officers should serve in a “post-liberal” America masks a darker reality: such a regime would be authoritarian, not a neutral alternative order. The profession of arms draws legitimacy from a liberal, rights-based Constitution, so an illiberal state cannot sustain a true military profession. Officers would not wake up one day in a new system; they would help create it through their choices. Senior leaders must prepare for democratic backsliding now, clarifying ethical red lines, reassessing civil-military norms, and considering resignation or resistance when “lawful” orders erode the constitutional democracy their oath obliges them to defend.

Excerpts:

Yet the current moment involves far greater dilemmas than simple policy disagreements that would unnecessarily politicize the military. In a moment when Pentagon transparency is at an almost all-time low while the administration has clearly stated its lack of respect for the laws of armed conflict, public resignations may serve more as whistle-blowing activities than subversive actions. Resignations in protest over professional ethics may also send powerful positive signals to the rest of the force. By contrast, silence might otherwise indicate complicity or agreement, and in fact accelerate democratic norm erosion. Just as officers are now encouraged to risk being fired for giving honest military advice, when just a few years ago being fired was a source of great shame, public resignation in the service of professional ethics may be a norm worth similarly revising.

Yet how does one know when to break norms, when to stay silent, and when to disobey? The recommendation here is similar to what one would find in any preliminary ethics course: Identify in advance one’s ethical, moral, and legal red lines, discuss them with people who can hold you accountable, and visualize your actions in situations that could, in the moment, be extraordinarily complex. Without preparation, humans are subject to slippery slopes, ethical fading, and post hoc rationalization. By thinking about the scenarios that one may be placed in — whether it is using lethal force against protestors or migrants, interfering in elections, violating U.S. domestic law or court orders, or executing legally questionable strikes on vessels in the Caribbean — senior military leaders must be able and willing to make perhaps the hardest choice of their long and distinguished careers.

Kori Schake’s excellent new volume, The State and the Soldier, asks how an American public that began as skeptical of the standing army came to see it as a guardian of democracy. The answer, I would argue, is quite simple: By asking military officers to swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the form of government it enshrines, the American people made our military leaders responsible in part for its health and survival. Liberalism may indeed be failing — it is certainly under assault and we increasingly hear from those who would like to see it relegated to the dustbin of history. But we are not simple spectators in the process. Military leaders will not wake up suddenly one day to find themselves surrounded by and serving in a post-liberal political regime. The decisions that they make along the way will have an enduring impact on whether liberalism adapts to survive, and how effective the illiberal political project is in subverting American democracy.

Comment: A chilling view of a post-liberal America. I certainly hope this does not come to pass.

The Soldier in the Illiberal State is a Professional Dead End

warontherocks.com · December 1, 2025

Carrie Lee

December 1, 2025

https://warontherocks.com/2025/12/the-soldier-in-the-illiberal-state-is-a-professional-dead-end/

The American political system today is indeed in crisis. Government function is in doubt, the administration has politicized and weaponized a previously independent justice system, judicial rulings are regularly subverted or outright ignored, and political leaders are openly using their office to enrich themselves. Regular attacks — both rhetorical and legal — on the news media, education system, political opposition leaders, civil servants, and law firms have created a chilling effect across the country, compromising the quality of American democracy in ways not seen since at least the Nixon administration. As a result, public trust in institutions is at or near all-time lows, and some Americans are beginning to question whether democracy is in fact the right form of government for the future.

The military has not been immune from this crisis. Norms once thought essential to healthy civil-military relations in the United States are being shattered at record speeds: In just the last eight months we have witnessed open efforts to politicize the military, high-profile purges of the senior officer corps, proposals to use American cities as “training grounds” for the U.S. military, severe restrictions on transparency (including undermining Congress’s role as a legitimate oversight body), and attacks on judge advocates general, the rule of law, and the laws of armed conflict.

Peter Mitchell’s October 31 essay here in War on the Rocks is the latest example of profound civil-military norm-breaking that is a symptom of a larger political crisis — and one that holds potentially dangerous consequences for the American officer corps. In the piece, Mitchell engages in a sweeping critique of the military profession and asserts that this is the direct result of a failing rights-based liberal order as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. To that end, he performs a thought experiment: what would military officership look like if service members were to suddenly wake up in an illiberal America?

However, while Mitchell’s exercise may be an interesting thought experiment for West Point cadets, where he taught until recently, the reality is that military and political leaders in the United States will not simply wake up one day, a la Rip van Winkle, to find themselves in a world where there is suddenly a new political order. Rather, they will be active participants with choices to make about the degree to which they continue to serve civilians intent on undermining the liberal values enshrined in the Constitution. Rather than asking, “What does being a soldier look like in an illiberal state?” senior leaders should instead be asking, “To what degree does continuing to serve as an officer in the U.S. military do more harm than good to the democratic values I swore an oath to bear true faith and allegiance to?”

BECOME A MEMBER

A Post-Liberal America is an Authoritarian One

Mitchell argues that the time has come for American officers to consider what service to the United States may look in a “post-liberal” system. He first grounds the imperative in an indictment of the current military profession, which he argues has failed to achieve victory because of a “postmodern” ethos that has privileged bureaucracy, expertise, and cultural priorities, and de-emphasized the meaning of victory. To do so, he invokes and misinterprets swaths of the civil-military relations literature, most importantly the intent of Samuel Huntington in The Soldier and the State and Risa Brooks’ thoughtful critiques of how its influence on the senior officer corps has led to less, not more, liberalism.

What’s more, the problem that Mitchell identifies and lays at the feet of a “postmodern military” where “victory is a social construct” — otherwise known as the challenge of executing military strategy to achieve lasting political ends — is neither new nor unique to a liberal political system. Strategists from Jomini to Clausewitz to Mao have identified this central challenge of warfare, and did not need a rights-based order to grapple with the difficulty and complexity of matching political ends with military ways and means.

Mitchell’s hypothetical solutions stem from the proposals of a series of thinkers over the last decade who have openly challenged the current rights-based political order in the United States, and who currently have sway with many in power. The rise and influence of these thinkers, who largely identify with recent populist movements, has coincided with one of the most deliberate attempts to undermine pluralistic democracy in America since segregationists opposed the civil rights movement. The proposals of the post-liberal intellectual movement should therefore be understood as an active political project rather than a state of being that may suddenly appear in front of the modern officer.

Mitchell attempts to reassure his readers that post-liberal America “is not a synonym for authoritarianism or a politician in Budapest,” (a reference to Hungary’s illiberal leader Victor Orban). Yet these assurances stand in stark contrast with both the preferred outcomes of the thinkers Mitchell cites as well as his own typology. Indeed, the five outcomes he describes are not, in fact, compatible with anything we would recognize as democracy and thus by definition are authoritarian in nature. A patrimonial state cannot allow serious political competition. A mercenary one cannot be held accountable by citizens. Heinleian (aka praetorian) states are effectively oligarchies. Neo-Prussian models are personalist by design. Chivalric models are a synonym for theocracy where rulers lead by claiming divine right. As Mitchell’s own thought experiment shows, the options for a post-liberal order require that leaders operate free from meaningful constraint and outside of the bounds of public accountability. They are, in both theory and practice, authoritarian regimes.

Indeed, many if not most of the most currently influential thinkers he cites openly acknowledge as much: Adrian Vermeule fantasizes about an undemocratic takeover of the liberal state. Gladden Pappin accepts that the anti-liberal project requires wielding state power regardless of societal consent. John Gray himself critiques the post-liberal movement as being not just unworkable in its conception but undemocratic and unpopular. Historically speaking, what Mitchell casually ignores is that there are effectively no instances of societies coming together and agreeing to be ruled in authoritarian fashion when a rights-based system is an option. It is only when leaders subvert those popular rights-based institutions through deceit, patronage and elite bargains, or outright coercion that liberal democracy dies.

And so whether he intends it or not, Mitchell’s demand that officers consider service in a post-liberal regime is in fact a call to explore the nature of American officership under authoritarian rule. And to be sure, if U.S. military officers were indeed to suddenly awake from a deep sleep and find themselves subject to an authoritarian government, that would present a true puzzle. But modern democratic backsliding is rarely so simple and never so clean. Rather, in the American system, officers repeatedly swear to support and defend the very liberal principles in the Constitution that Mitchell argues they ought to contemplate abandoning. That makes them not innocent bystanders in the process, but rather active participants in the process of either defending democratic ideals or enabling their demise.

Yet Mitchell deals with this critical problem too flippantly, raising the dilemma but then essentially dismissing the prospect that officers may, in fact, have to make the unthinkably difficult decision to actually defend that oath (“The military will, and ought to, follow [a new system]”). While the essay may be interpreted by some as “just asking questions,” the argument advanced in fact effectively undermines the normative values of duty and fidelity to U.S. democracy that emerged after the Civil War — and were explicitly codified in the revised oath that was implemented in its wake. As a result, the essay becomes less of an idle thought experiment and instead enables the kind of anti-democratic norm erosion that the post-liberal political project requires to succeed.

The Post-Liberal Profession is a Myth

The stakes are high not just for American democracy but the profession of arms itself. It is tempting, as Mitchell does, to view the military profession as simply an organized group of armed people with “a code of conduct, discipline, and justice.” And indeed, this is as deep as many officers get in their treatment of the profession of arms — particularly at more junior levels — because that is what largely matters for operational and tactical effectiveness. Too often, the profession of arms is conflated (even by some senior leaders) with simply engaging in professional (read: appropriate and disciplined) behavior.

Yet the majority of senior leaders understand that true professions require much more than simple rule following. When we think about the classic professions — medicine, law, and clergy — we see that they occupy a privileged place in society. Each provides a critical service to the public that, if applied inappropriately, could have catastrophic consequences for a person’s freedom, health, or spiritual well-being. As a result, members of a profession ought to be vigilant about maintaining legitimacy with the public through continued study, rigorous certification processes, and self-policing according to a higher code of ethics. To achieve this end, they obligate their members to refuse to apply their expertise in a situation they know to be unethical, and professional organizations actively sanction those who behave in unethical ways even at the request of a client, patient, or congregant.

The profession of arms holds many of the same responsibilities as the classic professions. The military is responsible for the common defense through what Huntington calls the “management of violence,” yet that violence misapplied can cause catastrophic harm to the lives of citizens and residents. As a result, professional militaries must maintain legitimacy with the public to function appropriately. There is a reason why so many of the country’s most senior military leaders have spent so much time over the last decades emphasizing the importance of public trust. But as other senior military leaders have explored, the profession of arms is especially precarious, because subordination to civilian control requires that the military obey lawful orders regardless of whether they violate professional ethics (there is now some debate about this in legal circles, but it remains the dominant understanding within the profession itself). This means that the legitimacy of the profession of arms is tied much more closely than other professions to the legitimacy of the political regime.

It is therefore far from certain, and in fact unlikely, that there can be a legitimate profession of arms without a similarly legitimate form of civilian government. Mitchell is right in part that “the [American] military has always drawn its legitimacy from its regime,” but errs in assuming that it could maintain that legitimacy in the absence of a similarly legitimate government. Certainly, each of the five regime types that Mitchell explores lack legitimacy because they are not regularly responsive to changes in public preferences and therefore cannot reliably govern by popular consent. Mitchell’s thought experiment, therefore, deals not with the future of a recognizable military profession but rather the experience of leading troops under an illegitimate authoritarian regime. Those who are invested in maintaining a profession of arms, steeped in ethics, should be extraordinarily wary of serving at all under such conditions.

Indeed, those who value the profession of arms and serve democracy should and do have little interest in risking their lives and the lives of their subordinates to protect a political project lacking in such legitimacy. And so the question is not how American officers today, who have presumably taken and/or administered the oath to the Constitution dozens if not hundreds of times in their careers, adjust to serving in an illiberal world — but at what point do they decide that continuing in uniform is doing more harm than good to the form of self-determining government they chose to serve upon commissioning.

After all, it is worth remembering that military leaders’ obligation to respect civilian control of the military is derived from the Constitution, not the other way around. It is the Constitution — and specifically the democratic processes, checks, and balances that ensure the ultimate power lays with a country’s citizens — that gives certain political leaders the legitimate authority to make policy and exercise authority over the military.

Mitchell excuses officers from having to contemplate this legitimacy by claiming that it is too hard for the average servicemember to parse, arguing “if district judges cannot agree on the Constitution’s meaning, why pretend soldiers can?” Yet judges have disagreed with each other since the founding of the republic and the profession has nevertheless survived. The true challenge emerges if and when senior political leaders choose to undermine the legitimacy of the court system itself, and contemplate openly defying rulings they dislike. Yet this is again not unprecedented. Indeed, for 250 years, officers been able to understand and respect the sometimes messy and confusing democratic processes that divide and determine power in the United States. A lack of civics education is not an excuse to abandon the civic project entirely.

The Right Question

The central challenge therefore facing today’s senior military leaders is not how to serve in an illiberal America, but rather one that quite literally involves the fate of the republic and grapples with the descent into illiberalism itself: What does one do if and when the obligation to obey all lawful orders conflicts with the oath to support and defend the Constitution?

It is a novel question in the U.S. context, and one with few easy answers. Since ratification in 1789, all military officers have, upon commissioning, sworn an oath to bear true faith and allegiance to the United States. Since the Civil War, that oath has demanded fealty to the Constitution above all else. The idea that a military leader would be given orders at all that could undermine the very democracy they joined to protect is a deeply uncomfortable proposition, let alone the possibility that they may be ruled to be lawful. Yet it is this very phenomenon — the lawful dismantling of democracy from the inside out — that is the defining feature of democratic backsliding today around the world. Military leaders who have lived through the politicization and attempted weaponization of every other democratic and professional institution in the United States should be deeply concerned, but perhaps not surprised, that it has finally come home to the military profession.

Those who specialize in civil-military relations — in both theory and practice — have, for understandable reasons, placed a particular focus on the importance of civilian control of the military. The vast literature on the centrality of civilian control and what it looks like in practice — beginning with the Huntington–Janowitz military professionalism debate and most recently taken up by an exciting growing literature on civilians and civilian deference — focuses disproportionately on what Risa Brooks describes as “relations between political elites and the senior military leadership at the state’s apex,” with a particular emphasis on presidential-military relations in the American subfield. This has allowed many practitioners to assume (incorrectly, as senior practitioners would remind the force) that obeying the president’s orders is enough to satisfy their commitment to the oath. To the degree that discussions of civilian control are more nuanced, they highlight the importance of Congress as a civilian actor in the relationship; all but a scant few bother to mention the importance of the judiciary as the official arbiter of disputes. In sum, the focus on principles of civilian control has largely come at the expense of a deeper education about the Constitution, the form of government it represents, the liberal values embodied in the document, and their importance for the profession of arms.

That discrepancy is beginning to reverse, however. While the topic of military dissent, resistance, and resignation has been a regular and at times contentious point of debate in civil-military relations — and indeed, is taught in most war college leadership courses as an important topic at senior leader level — experts first really began wrestling with the problem of outright disobedience during the first Trump administration. That concern took on a new level of urgency during the lead-up to the 2020 election and 2021 inauguration as President Donald Trump looked increasingly less likely to peacefully relinquish power. Scholars and practitioners alike questioned the role that the military had to play in ensuring healthy democratic processes in cases where the president is untethered to democratic and civil-military norms: some adopted the extreme position that they should enforce domestic law and help remove the president from power, while others insisted they had no place in the dispute.

Subsequent work has dealt more directly with the issue of what it means to have a military steeped in modern liberal, democratic political values, asking questions like: under what conditions is it okay to disobey orders? What are the role of norms in upholding democratic civil-military relations? What role can, should, and does the military profession play in facilitating or preventing democratic backsliding? The answers are not simply academic. In a political moment where the president of the United States calls for the arrest of sitting members of Congress for reminding officers of their well-established obligation to disobey unlawful orders, military leaders across the profession will be forced to grapple with ethical challenges not seen in the modern era.

Liberal Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport

And so the central, critical question of the era remains. How should military officers respond when elected leaders issue apparently lawful orders that nevertheless undermine their oath by advancing an undemocratic (read: illiberal) political project? The options are not just a binary decision to comply or disobey. Indeed, outright disobedience is the most extreme and democracy-damaging form of resistance when other measures exist, and should be saved for the orders that are, in fact, outright unlawful.

Rather, senior leaders should be taking serious stock of the civil-military norms that have historically protected the military’s democratic ethos, its legitimacy, and the profession. They should be reevaluating and reassessing how those norms may or may not serve them in the current moment. They should remember that civil-military norms are not manna given from heaven. Rather, they are simply expectations of behavior developed over time by a community as a way to protect bigger principles like the democratic ethos. It is the norms that change with social and political winds, not the principles themselves. And so rather than wait for junior officers less steeped in the obligations and responsibilities of the profession of arms to engage in norm-breaking that threatens the very principles we care about, senior leaders should be actively assessing and articulating which norms need to be broken, which ones should be reinforced, and whether new ones should be established to survive the current moment.

Most critically and immediately, this may look like changes in the civil-military norms around resignation. Historically, we have seen public resignation and resignation in protest as threatening to civilian control because it inserts the military (which is itself not a democratically legitimate institution) into the political process as a powerful actor with policy preferences. Research further suggests that the impact of public resignations on public opinion writ large are minimal at best, making such a move both normatively undesirable and empirically ineffective — as Peter Feaver called it in 2015, “a cure worse than the disease.”

Yet the current moment involves far greater dilemmas than simple policy disagreements that would unnecessarily politicize the military. In a moment when Pentagon transparency is at an almost all-time low while the administration has clearly stated its lack of respect for the laws of armed conflict, public resignations may serve more as whistle-blowing activities than subversive actions. Resignations in protest over professional ethics may also send powerful positive signals to the rest of the force. By contrast, silence might otherwise indicate complicity or agreement, and in fact accelerate democratic norm erosion. Just as officers are now encouraged to risk being fired for giving honest military advice, when just a few years ago being fired was a source of great shame, public resignation in the service of professional ethics may be a norm worth similarly revising.

Yet how does one know when to break norms, when to stay silent, and when to disobey? The recommendation here is similar to what one would find in any preliminary ethics course: Identify in advance one’s ethical, moral, and legal red lines, discuss them with people who can hold you accountable, and visualize your actions in situations that could, in the moment, be extraordinarily complex. Without preparation, humans are subject to slippery slopes, ethical fading, and post hoc rationalization. By thinking about the scenarios that one may be placed in — whether it is using lethal force against protestors or migrants, interfering in elections, violating U.S. domestic law or court orders, or executing legally questionable strikes on vessels in the Caribbean — senior military leaders must be able and willing to make perhaps the hardest choice of their long and distinguished careers.

Kori Schake’s excellent new volume, The State and the Soldier, asks how an American public that began as skeptical of the standing army came to see it as a guardian of democracy. The answer, I would argue, is quite simple: By asking military officers to swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the form of government it enshrines, the American people made our military leaders responsible in part for its health and survival. Liberalism may indeed be failing — it is certainly under assault and we increasingly hear from those who would like to see it relegated to the dustbin of history. But we are not simple spectators in the process. Military leaders will not wake up suddenly one day to find themselves surrounded by and serving in a post-liberal political regime. The decisions that they make along the way will have an enduring impact on whether liberalism adapts to survive, and how effective the illiberal political project is in subverting American democracy.

BECOME A MEMBER

Carrie A. Lee is a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, where she leads the Democracy and Security Network. From 2021 to 2025, she served as the chair of the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College.

Image: Gemini

warontherocks.com · December 1, 2025

19. Could the PLA use long-range rockets against ships in an attack on Taiwan?

Summary:

Chinese state media says PLA PHL-03 long-range rocket launchers can now hit moving maritime targets over 100 kilometers away, not just land. In drills, truck mounted launchers fired 300mm rockets at 10 meter targets 150 kilometers offshore, simulating transport ships and uncrewed boats, with reported meter level accuracy. CCTV credits upgraded drones, satellites, and datalinks for real time targeting and trajectory correction at sea. Long range rockets are framed as a cheaper complement to missiles in any Taiwan Strait operation. The newer modular PHL-16 extends range to about 500 kilometers for precise “decapitation” and island assault strikes.

Could the PLA use long-range rockets against ships in an attack on Taiwan?

State TV footage shows PHL-03 launchers hitting moving maritime targets during drill

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3334607/could-pla-use-long-range-rockets-against-ships-attack-taiwan?utm

Liu Zhen

Published: 9:00pm, 29 Nov 2025

The People’s Liberation Army’s long-range rocket launchers can hit moving targets at sea during island seizure operations, according to mainland Chinese state media.

In a report on Thursday, state broadcaster CCTV gave the first official confirmation that the PLA’s PHL-03 land-based rocket launchers could be a threat to moving surface vessels more than 100km (62 miles) away, indicating potential use against ships.

Previously, the launchers were thought to only pose a threat to land targets.

“Striking maritime targets not only significantly expands the operational reach of long-range firepower but also establishes a new tactical deterrent ability,” the report said.

As a cost-effective and potent addition to missiles, the PLA’s long-range rockets are widely seen as a key firepower element in any potential military operation in the Taiwan Strait.

CCTV aired the report soon after Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te proposed a record defence budget for the island, including funds for the new “Taiwan Shield”, or “T-Dome”, air defence system.

The “T-Dome” would be a multilayered air and missile defence system and has been proposed as a way to prevent PLA aircraft, drones and missiles – as well as rockets – from striking the island.

The CCTV footage showed truck-mounted PHL-03 rocket launchers firing 300mm (3.9-inch) rockets from the coast and hitting floating targets at sea.

The targets were 10 metres (33 feet) in diameter and positioned 150km offshore, simulating moving enemy transport ships and uncrewed boats, the report said, indicating the rockets could also be used for anti-ship purposes.

“The accuracy in striking these floating targets is precise to within just a few metres,” it said.

The report said that to be able to locate and track maritime targets, the PLA had improved its real-time intelligence and data-link systems via surveillance platforms such as drones and satellites.

It had also improved communications to address potential environmental disruptions to rocket trajectories at sea such as crosswinds, high humidity and waves.

The confirmation also comes amid a diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s suggestion that her country could become involved militarily in a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Japan’s Ministry of Defence has also announced “steady progress” in its preparations to deploy medium-range, surface-to-air missiles on Yonaguni, Japan’s westernmost island only 110km away from Taiwan.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary and has warned that it would “resolutely strike back” if Japan used force to intervene.

Most countries, including Japan and the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-ruled island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.

Tensions across the strait have worsened in recent years since the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party came to power on the island. Beijing has labelled Lai as a “separatist” and ramped up military pressure against the island.

On Wednesday, Lai earmarked a historic US$40 billion (around NT$1.25 trillion) for a supplementary defence budget. Part of the funding would go to the development of the Taiwan Shield, although just how much is not known.

Lai proposed the system in October, inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome and the US’ proposed Golden Dome.

Trump’s Golden Dome shows US ‘obsessed with absolute security’, China says

The Taiwanese system will link disparate sensors and shooters into a network with high-level detection and effective interception of incoming aerial threats, supported by AI-enabled decision tools and reinforced command-and-control technology.

In addition to the moving targets, the CCTV report showed dozens of PHL-03 launchers, aiming at fixed targets at sea, simulating enemy headquarters, radar stations and communication nodes. The goal was to practise “paralysing the enemy’s nerve centre in a single strike”.

The PHL-03 has been in service since 2004 and is the workhorse of the PLA’s artillery forces, with hundreds of systems deployed.

The upgraded PHL-16, also known as the PCL-191, was introduced in 2019 and has a flexible modular design that enables it to use various types of ammunition, including tactical ballistic missiles and anti-ship missiles. This flexibility extends its range to up to 500km and makes it more precise.

The report also showed the PHL-16 in operation during the Strait Thunder 2025A exercise around Taiwan in April.

It said that in an island assault operation, the PHL-03 could wipe out beachhead defenders with blanketing fire or destroy the enemy’s attacking or landing forces from a stand-off distance. Meanwhile, the PHL-16 could carry out precise “decapitation strikes” against the enemy’s high-value assets, including the command-and-control networks.

Liu Zhen

Liu Zhen joined the Post in 2015 as a reporter on the China desk. She previously worked with Reuters in Beijing.

20. Are Palestinians Ready to Shed Hamas?

Summary:

Polls show Palestinian support for Hamas surged after October 7 as many saw the attacks as resistance, but has since declined amid massive casualties and destruction. Hamas still leads, yet many now favor negotiations, a two-state solution, and non-Hamas Palestinian-led governance in Gaza, especially Gazans suffering most. Support is more hardline in the West Bank. Public backing for a technocratic, Palestinian authority, potentially reformed PA or new body, rises if cease-fire delivers security, aid, and transparent reconstruction, possibly under limited international backing. If aid stalls or violence resumes, opinion will swing back to Hamas and armed struggle, undermining any transition.

Excerpt:

Over the course of the war in Gaza, the curve of Palestinian opinion is clear. Although Hamas won support initially, as the costs of conflict rose and the realities of what future governance would require grew clearer, that support diminished, and the public’s appetite for a negotiated settlement by a Palestinian-led, internationally backed administration grew. A cease-fire that delivers on its promises—together with an Israeli willingness to publicly accept the goal of the two-state solution and to curb settlement growth and settler violence—can push Palestinian public opinion further toward a moderate political center that supports negotiations and the two-state solution, especially in Gaza. A cease-fire that exists mostly on paper, however, would push opinion back the other way. Where popular attitudes go next depends on whether Palestinians are given a real chance to imagine a future that is not just war by other means.

Comment: I certainly hope so.

Are Palestinians Ready to Shed Hamas?

Foreign Affairs · More by Mohamed Elgohari · December 1, 2025

How Other Factions Might Gain Ground

Mohamed Elgohari

December 1, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/are-palestinians-ready-shed-hamas

Palestinians walking among piles of rubble in Gaza, November 2025 Mahmoud Issa / Reuters

MOHAMED ELGOHARI is an Affiliate Faculty Member at George Mason University. He previously led the Arabic Propaganda Analysis Team at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats.

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The fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has offered the first real opening to end the two-year war in Gaza. The outlines of a peace process have broad buy-in, with the UN Security Council approving U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed plan on November 17, but many political questions remain unresolved. And the thorniest among them—who will govern Gaza, whether and how Hamas will be disarmed and involved in politics thereafter, and what to do about Israel’s ongoing occupation—cannot be answered by international decree. In no small part, the outcome of any peace process will be shaped by what Palestinians themselves think.

Immediately after the October 7, 2023, attacks, Palestinians rallied behind Hamas and broadly supported its armed resistance as a means to end Israeli occupation. Since then, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and more than 90 percent of residential buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. Through the shock and attrition of Israel’s invasion, Palestinians’ opinions have shifted. Attitudes toward Hamas, and armed struggle in general, began to sour, although many Palestinians remained ambivalent about the alternatives. In the war’s later stages, however, the share of Palestinians who favored a negotiated settlement with Israel grew larger. Increasingly, Palestinians have seemed more open to governance by some sort of non-Hamas, Palestinian-led body to run Gaza after the war.

If these trends continue, the Palestinian public could get behind a new governing committee of Palestinian experts and specialists—independent of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority—backed by international partners. But this endorsement is far from guaranteed, and it is now incumbent on Israel, the United States, and Hamas to implement the cease-fire in a way that builds additional support for negotiations and for Palestinian political leadership. Over the past several weeks, UN-coordinated aid corridors have opened and closed, hostage exchanges have been intermittent, no international stabilization force has been established, and Israeli strikes have resumed, killing Palestinians. This will all need to change. Before the cease-fire, concerns about day-to-day governance helped turn many Palestinians away from Hamas. Maintaining that momentum depends on the effective delivery of security, aid, and reconstruction, showing Palestinians that a credible civilian authority, by and for Palestinians and backed by international partners, is worthy of their support.

HIGHS AND LOWS

The best gauge of Palestinian public opinion comes from surveys conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent polling organization established in 1991. Between March 2023 and October 2025, the center fielded nine waves of face-to-face surveys in Gaza and the West Bank that show the arc of Palestinian opinion before, during, and after the war in Gaza.

In one poll question, respondents were asked to choose the group “most deserving to represent and lead the Palestinian people”: Hamas, Fatah (the party that dominates West Bank politics), or neither. Before the October 7 attacks, Palestinians appeared to be at a stalemate: 27 percent of respondents favored Hamas, whereas Fatah’s support hovered at 24 percent. The most popular response by far was that neither group ought to lead. The war upended this equilibrium. In a December 2023 poll, the first conducted after October 7, more than half of Palestinians said Hamas was most deserving of leadership, and the number of respondents selecting Fatah or neither fell dramatically.

The boost Hamas enjoyed can be explained in a few ways. Many Palestinians saw the October 7 attacks as a valid response to occupation and repeated Israeli provocations, as well as a potential means to win the release of Palestinian prisoners. This interpretation conferred on Hamas a degree of moral and strategic legitimacy among Palestinians. Previously undecided respondents were attracted to a group that seemed to take initiative and act with authority—a classic rally effect.

The majority of Palestinians continued to rally around Hamas throughout the spring and summer of 2024. But as casualties, destruction, and displacement mounted—most intensely in Gaza—retrospective approval of Hamas’s attack on Israel declined, and the share who believed it was the “incorrect” decision grew. Consequently, the share of Palestinians who considered Hamas most deserving of leadership slid to 41 percent by the fall of 2025. Support for Hamas remained higher than it had been before the start of the war, but the grinding costs of conflict and the increasing recognition of the need for capable governance after the fighting ends kept the group from consolidating a stable majority.

A similar arc emerged when Palestinians were asked which party and presidential candidate they would choose in a hypothetical future election. Respondents’ support for Hamas candidates jumped after October 7, then began to fade. Hamas and its leaders retained the lead across most potential head-to-head matchups, but their advantage narrowed over time. Support for Fatah’s current leader, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, sank after the October 7 attacks and remained low. But races that substituted Abbas for a different PA standard-bearer were more competitive. Palestinian respondents favored Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Fatah leader currently imprisoned in Israel for his role in the second intifada, over any Hamas nominee by as many as 16 percentage points.

When asked about governance in the “day after” the war, Palestinians’ preferences again seem to have grown more flexible with time. In September 2024, 27 percent of Palestinians said they would support the return of an Abbas-led PA to govern Gaza, with 70 percent opposed. But by May 2025, 40 percent approved and 56 percent opposed prospective PA governance. In October 2025, when respondents were asked what they thought of the PA coordinating the work of a professional committee to administer Gaza, 54 percent of Gazans and 40 percent of West Bank residents supported such an arrangement. Similarly, in June 2024, 23 percent of Palestinians supported and 75 percent opposed an Arab or international security force alongside civilian rule; in May 2025, approval had risen to 31 percent and disapproval had dropped to 65 percent. By October 2025, approval rates were even higher: 53 percent of Palestinians in Gaza and 43 percent in the West Bank.

Palestinians are also becoming more open to negotiations with Israel. Since before the war began, a majority of Palestinians have judged the two-state solution to be infeasible. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that when Palestinians are questioned which option among armed struggle, nonviolent resistance, and negotiations would be the best means to end the Israeli occupation, the most popular response is armed struggle. But support for armed struggle has fallen since a post–October 7 peak of 63 percent; 40 percent of Palestinians in October 2025 identified it as the best course. This means a majority now favors a nonviolent solution. The percentage of those who think negotiations are the best way forward climbed from 20 percent before the war began to 36 percent in October, while 19 percent now opt for nonviolent resistance. Even the share of Palestinians who think a two-state solution is workable has increased from 33 percent in May to 41 percent in October. Thus, although many Palestinians may still doubt that the two-state framework can deliver, negotiations can retain legitimacy because a growing number of Palestinians see them as a practical option.

Notably, across the surveys, Palestinian attitudes in Gaza and the West Bank diverged. The post–October 7 rally behind Hamas was sharper in the West Bank, where encounters with the military and settler violence are routine, and preferences there hardened over the course of the war. Gaza moved on a different track: under the weight of human casualties, mass displacement, and physical destruction, Gazans shifted earlier and further in favor of negotiations and showed greater openness to hybrid or transitional governing arrangements that did not involve Hamas in the “day after” period. This is not to say Gazans turned against Hamas, but they did become more tolerant of alternatives that could bring relief and reconstruction: in October 2025, for example, 51 percent of Gazans, compared with 41 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank, supported the formation of a Palestinian authority not affiliated with the PA or Hamas to manage the Gaza Strip.

BIG CHOICES

Two years of polling tell a clear story. At first, facing heavy wartime pressure, a majority of Palestinians defaulted to seeing Hamas as the actor most capable of managing the crisis. But this boost did not translate into a postwar mandate. As the war lengthened and conversations about leadership and governance became less about symbolic resistance against Israeli occupation and more about the concrete administration of a Palestinian state, a wider array of preferences resurfaced—especially in Gaza, where humanitarian aid, security for civilians, and visible reconstruction are now what people most want to see. The Palestinian public seeks a credible administration that can deliver safety, services, and a path out of emergency. They want Palestinian leadership at the center, and many are willing to accept Arab and international support, too, as long as foreign forces are not explicitly tasked with disarmament and their role is limited in scope and duration.

Key lessons for policymakers emerge from the survey findings. First, making early, visible gains—calmer streets, predictable aid delivered by UN-coordinated convoys, the return of the remaining deceased Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and a detailed reconstruction plan, all of which require a halt to Israeli airstrikes and military operations—can reinforce current trends, encouraging favorable attitudes toward negotiations and an openness to political alternatives to Hamas. Fail to deliver such results, and support for armed resistance and violence will likely return. Next, transitional governance must be Palestinian-led to be legitimate. Hamas’s post–October 7 mandate has narrowed, and an Abbas-led Fatah cannot claim a mandate of its own. But there is evidence of growing support for a reformed Palestinian Authority or another Palestinian alternative, backed by a limited regional or international force. Finally, the West Bank and Gaza have different political climates. Measures that build legitimacy for a new governing authority in Gaza, including relief corridors, reconstruction, and civilian policing, will not automatically win the hearts of Palestinians in the West Bank who are more concerned about daily Israeli raids, settler violence (which in October reached levels not seen since 2006), and economic restrictions. A successful plan is one that meets both populations’ needs.

What happens during the cease-fire will determine whether Palestinian support consolidates behind a civilian government or reverts to more extreme alternatives. In the best-case scenario, the UN Security Council–backed cease-fire holds and enables a steady political transition. In the early stages, violence remains paused, aid is regular, reconstruction and compensation begin to happen, and the prisoner-hostage exchanges conclude. Then, ideally, comes a technocratic cabinet with a time-bound mandate, clear budgeting, and third-party monitoring of aid flows. Elections would follow after minimum conditions have been established, including freedom of movement, media access, and policing guarantees. As long as the steps of such a transition proceed, the data suggest, support for a negotiated end to the conflict would continue to climb.

If implementation of the transition plan is stalled in any way, however, support from the Palestinian population could be in jeopardy. This scenario looks most likely, given that Israel has resumed airstrikes, settler violence has escalated, aid delivery is inconsistent, and the mandate and makeup of a UN-endorsed stabilization force remain unresolved. Aid slowing to a trickle, minimal progress on reconstruction, continued raids in the West Bank, and a premature end to hostage-prisoner exchanges could all result in plateauing Palestinian backing of negotiations and increased preferences for armed struggle and Hamas leadership. These shifting attitudes would likely look different in Gaza, where people would grow more impatient for administrative competence, than they do in the West Bank, where opinion would harden against political solutions. In this unstable environment, transitional authorities are at odds with the people, and potential spoilers have an opportunity to gather public support.

Transitional governance must be Palestinian-led to be legitimate.

If the cease-fire breaks down completely or violence in the West Bank spikes dramatically, then the rallying effect that occurred in late 2023 would likely repeat itself. Hamas’s support would snap back, Fatah’s already limited recovery would collapse, and the share of Palestinians planning to withdraw from political participation would grow. These shifts in opinion would make it extremely unwise to try to stand up a new governing authority.

One possibility could transform the Palestinian opinion landscape: the emergence of Barghouti, or another Fatah figure with real reform commitments, as a credible leadership candidate. Such a candidacy would introduce a powerful rival to Hamas. Although many Palestinians may still favor Hamas—if legislative elections were held today, Hamas would win more than 40 percent of the vote—a real alternative could increase participation and decrease Hamas’s lead, making for a more competitive contest. A credible reformist ticket might even help shift public opinion away from armed conflict and toward negotiations.

There are some clear actions policymakers and mediators should take to keep Palestinians on board with the transition plan. The arrival of aid convoys should be publicized as much as a peace summit would be, in order to demonstrate competence and progress being made. Once a Palestinian governing entity is established, it should publish a reconstruction ledger, audited by international observers. This ledger could take the form of a searchable web portal, an interactive map, or a weekly bulletin, giving Palestinians the opportunity to see contractor awards, timelines, and site progress by neighborhood, as well as a means to file and resolve grievances. Making progress on reconstruction transparent and measurable can boost support for the broader peace plan.

When Arab and other international partners come in to help with policing, oversight, and dispute resolution, those roles must be clearly defined and time-bound to ensure that governance is anchored in Palestinian leadership. In the West Bank, measures that reduce Israeli raids, limit settler violence, and provide channels for Palestinians to submit complaints and see those complaints addressed will need to accompany any steps toward assembling new political leadership. Finally, any new administrative body should resist the impulse to rush into elections. The polls indicate that a large share of Palestinians will not participate until conditions improve on the ground, so a premature vote would likely skew the outcome toward extreme candidates, yield a winner without a real mandate, and deepen the West Bank–Gaza divide.

Over the course of the war in Gaza, the curve of Palestinian opinion is clear. Although Hamas won support initially, as the costs of conflict rose and the realities of what future governance would require grew clearer, that support diminished, and the public’s appetite for a negotiated settlement by a Palestinian-led, internationally backed administration grew. A cease-fire that delivers on its promises—together with an Israeli willingness to publicly accept the goal of the two-state solution and to curb settlement growth and settler violence—can push Palestinian public opinion further toward a moderate political center that supports negotiations and the two-state solution, especially in Gaza. A cease-fire that exists mostly on paper, however, would push opinion back the other way. Where popular attitudes go next depends on whether Palestinians are given a real chance to imagine a future that is not just war by other means.

Foreign Affairs · More by Mohamed Elgohari · December 1, 2025

21. The Best of Books 2025 – This Year’s Top Picks From Foreign Affairs’ Reviewers

Comment: Another excellent book list. All my Christmas/Holiday money will be spent on books.

The Best of Books 2025

Foreign Affairs · November 30, 2025

This Year’s Top Picks From Foreign Affairs’ Reviewers

November 30, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/lists/best-books-2025

Patrick Leger

The very best of the hundreds of books on international politics, economics, and history that were featured in the magazine this year, selected by Foreign Affairs’ editors and book reviewers.

Editors’ Picks

The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping

by Joseph Torigian

In this prodigiously researched epic, Torigian details the life of Xi Zhongxun—the father of China’s current leader, Xi Jinping—to explain the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Along the way, readers gain a sense of how the younger Xi became the man he is today.

Read the review

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America’s Great Power Prophet

by Edward Luce

Luce, a gifted storyteller, chronicles the personal life and intellectual journey of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who played a significant but underappreciated role in opening the United States to China, bringing the Cold War to an end, and shaping the world that came after. In writing this gem of a book, Luce has rendered a genuine service to history.

Read the review

Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation

by Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov

Soldatov and Borogon, two Russian journalists, tell the story of their one-time group of friends and colleagues—young Russians who, over the course of the Putin years, steadily drift toward nationalist and illiberal ideas and end up as supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

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Political and Legal

The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future

by Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein

Hanson and Kopstein persuasively argue that the global backlash against “unelected bureaucrats” will lead not to freer societies but to ones marked by corruption and authoritarianism. They warn of a return to a premodern form of political rule, whereby private interests overseen by a strongman leader appropriate state power for their own narrow ends.

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The West: The History of an Idea

by George Varouxakis

In this masterful study, Varouxakis tracks the meanings of “the West” from the late eighteenth century to the present—and argues that the modern notion of the term emerged in the 1830s as a way to distinguish western Europe from Russia. Today, for beleaguered countries such as Ukraine, “the West” is still a powerful idea.

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In the Long Run: The Future of a Political Idea

by Jonathan White

White offers a learned and thought-provoking reflection on the travails of modern democracy. He explores the many ways that ideas about the future have framed how people engage with one another across political divides—and worries that democratic societies increasingly fear that time is not on their side.

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Economic and Social and Environmental

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History, From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy

As Cassidy shows, criticisms of capitalism have remained strikingly consistent over the centuries, from attacks on the British East India Company to contemporary concerns about the environmental harms of growth. Surveying that broad history, he concludes that fixing the capitalist system requires not only political will but also the ability to act at the right time.

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Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places

by Paul Collier

Collier contemplates the fate of left-behind places, such as South Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, devastated by the loss of its steel industry. In this case and others, he blames centralized decision-making and blind faith in the market for failing to stem persistent decline. But he also highlights exceptions to the rule: left-behind places that rose from economic ruin.

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Richer and More Equal: A New History of Wealth in the West

by Daniel Waldenstrom

Waldenstrom dissents from conventional wisdom, arguing that the West’s past century has been marked by the democratization of wealth, not spiraling inequality. He posits that the property and pension wealth of the working class has grown faster over the last hundred years than the capital holdings of the elite.

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Military and Scientific and Technological

Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World

by Tim Bouverie

In this splendid history of the World War II alliance between the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union, Bouverie shows how isolated the British were in the early stages of the conflict and demonstrates the complexity of wartime diplomacy among the “Big Three.”

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Vatican Spies: From the Second World War to Pope Francis

Yvonnick Denoël

An extraordinary amount of detail is packed into this enthralling history of espionage and intrigue surrounding the papacy since the start of World War II. Because of the unique position of the pope, a cleric with his own tiny state and significant global influence, the book is also a chronicle of contemporary international affairs.

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Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II

by Elyse Graham

Graham shows that scholars of the humanities contributed to victory in World War II by transforming the practice of intelligence agencies. Descriptions of the training used to turn academics into spies provide fascinating detail on the crafts of information gathering and deception—as well as of sabotage and assassination.

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East Asia

Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World

by David Van Reybrouck

Van Reybrouck has produced a richly textured history of Indonesia’s struggle for independence and its emergence as a sovereign state. At one level, it is an extraordinary social history of the country’s formation. At another, the book places the country’s modern history within the broader sweep of centuries of intellectual, economic, and military change.

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China’s Church Divided: Bishop Louis Jin and the Post-Mao Catholic Revival

by Paul P. Mariani

Mariani offers an extraordinary account of how a small group of Catholic priests and other church leaders emerged from the devastation of Maoist China to lead the restoration of the Catholic Church in Shanghai in the 1980s. He describes in meticulous detail the battle that ensued within this elite group for the very soul of the church.

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Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company

by Patrick McGee

McGee lays out the fascinating history of how China and the technology giant Apple became indispensable partners. He argues that Apple’s choices have not only created risks for the company’s future growth but have also directly enabled the rise of China as the United States’ only peer technological competitor.

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South Asia

Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva

by Janaki Bakhle

Bakhle has produced a brilliant intellectual biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the early-twentieth-century architect of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism. This book is indispensable to understanding not just the thinking of Savarkar’s time but also the intellectual currents shaping modern India.

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Chequered Past, Uncertain Future: The History of Pakistan

by Tahir Kamran

This comprehensive history of Pakistan boldly subverts the standard view of Pakistani politics as a contest of dueling binaries, religious and secular, military and civilian. Kamran ably describes how the centralization of the Pakistani state in the service of the military sidelined democracy. The book stands as the best recent political history of the country.

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Marginlands: A Journey Into India’s Vanishing Landscapes

by Arati Kumar-Rao

Kumar-Rao compels readers to notice the beauty, complexity, and fragility of India’s ecosystems. She deftly weaves poetic descriptions, pithy scientific facts, historical background, and conversations with locals to bring these vanishing landscapes alive. India’s natural environment still has a fighting chance, she argues, if only more people pay attention to local knowledge.

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Middle East

Heat, a History: Lessons From the Middle East for a Warming Planet

by On Barak

In this provocative book, both witty and profoundly serious, Barak provides a human-scale history of the causes and consequences of rising temperatures in the Middle East. He brings the abstractions of carbon footprints and greenhouse gas emissions to vivid, tangible life.

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Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World

by Steve L. Monroe

Monroe draws on interviews with policymakers, archival work, and novel data to explain why the Arab world has resisted decades of international pressure for trade liberalization. He argues that domestic elites often acquiesce to the charade of reform, knowing that their connections with government authorities will exempt them from its implementation.

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Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine

by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley

In this elegiac and confessional work that reflects on their decades of trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Agha and Malley argue that the two-state solution was fatally flawed from the start. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians can be satisfied by the reduction of their historical and religious claims to technical quibbles over borders and diplomatic recognition.

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Africa

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence

by Zeinab Badawi

Badawi’s encyclopedic survey of African history brilliantly connects different parts of Africa into a common historical timeline, highlighting conflicts, trade, flows of ideas, and other interactions that knit the continent together.

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The Abiy Project: God, Power, and War in the New Ethiopia

by Tom Gardner

This account of the rise of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is essential reading for those interested in understanding how individual ambition and structural factors combine to mold a leader’s choices. Gardner places Abiy’s career in the context of political and economic development in Ethiopia since 1991 to show how his rise to the premiership was overdetermined by history.

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Soldier’s Paradise: Militarism in Africa After Empire

by Samuel Fury Childs Daly

In this provocative book, Daly argues that militarism in Africa has historically been about more than power grabs. He makes an important contribution, and in many ways a correction, to conventional understandings of what has motivated both civilian and military rulers.

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Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Republics

To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement

by Benjamin Nathans

Drawing on extensive new material, Nathans argues that the Soviet dissident movement arose during the monumental shift from Stalin’s murderous dictatorship to a softer regime that expected citizens to pay lip service to its proclaimed tenets and norms.

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Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals

by Maurice J. Casey

Casey follows the British suffragettes, Irish revolutionaries, and German communists who engaged in passionate political debates (and romances) at the Hotel Lux in 1920s Moscow—a “revolutionary sanctuary.” Through relentless research and serendipity, Casey was able to assemble an extraordinary collection of personal documents preserved by the descendants of his subjects.

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Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia

by Charles Hecker

Hecker traces the lives of dozens of Western business executives, bankers, and financiers who worked in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although some of the Westerners who engaged in lucrative business in Russia expressed concern over President Vladimir Putin’s unchallenged primacy, the squeamish were far outnumbered by the opportunistic.

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Western Europe

Warsaw Tales

by Helen Constantine and Antonia Lloyd-Jones

This is the latest volume in a series of captivating books, each of which contains essays and works of short fiction that capture the essence of a European city. Such a humanistic approach particularly befits Warsaw, a city whose physical and architectural history was all but destroyed by the Nazis in World War II.

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Seven Children: Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation

by Danny Dorling

Not since the Great Depression has inequality in the United Kingdom been as high as it is today. This disturbing book, inspired by the famous television series Seven Up!, follows seven British children born in 2018. Touching portraits of the children accompany shocking statistics on childhood poverty.

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Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece’s Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece

by James Romm

This book traces Plato’s little-known, and childishly naive, engagement in Syracusan politics. Whereas Plato’s Republic presumed that a philosophical education can combat tyranny, Romm suggests that applying ideal principles to real-world dictators can lead philosophers into tragic contradictions.

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Western Hemisphere

The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West

by Paul Andrew Hutton

Hutton’s sweeping epic narrative brings to life the violent conquest of the American West. In less than a century, waves of European immigrants cleared the forests, forcefully removed the natives, and defeated contending armies. Hutton blames callously materialistic white settlers for destroying both the environment and rival civilizations.

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The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe

by Marlene L. Daut

In this authoritative biography, Daut draws a complex portrait of the Haitian revolutionary Henry Christophe, also known as King Henry. Although Daut sympathizes with the Black liberators who heroically battled French imperialists to establish a postslavery order in Haiti, she does not hesitate to chronicle the conspiracies, betrayals, and insurrections that fueled the turmoil after the Haitian Revolution.

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Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, and Whore: The Story of a Woman Who Decided to Be a Puta

by Gabriela Leite

In her engaging, candid memoir, Leite recounts her experience working as a prostitute and her eventual transformation into a social activist—opening a window into the world of Brazilian brothels.

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The United States

Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

by Katherine Stewart

Among the dozens of books that have attempted to identify the forces that U.S. President Donald Trump rode to power, this is one of the most closely reported and cogent. A combination of economic pain and cultural grievance has given rise, in Stewart’s analysis, to a loosely organized but generously funded political movement that would propel Trump back to the White House in 2024.

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The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy From the Fringes

by Nick Troiano

Troiano compellingly argues, based in part on his personal experience running for Congress, that the single biggest problem afflicting the U.S. political system is partisan primaries—that is, primaries open only to voters registered with one of the two major parties.

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America’s Fatal Leap: 1991–2016

by Paul W. Schroeder

Schroeder, who died in 2020, was a celebrated historian of international politics and diplomacy. These essays on U.S. foreign policy were originally published in The American Conservative and are here published by the leftist Verso Press. Few works provide as perceptive a guide to the past 25 years or more powerful pointers toward a wiser future.

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Foreign Affairs · November 30, 2025

22. Politics and War. Reality vs Expectations (Ukraine and Russia)

Summary:

Valeriy Zaluzhny argues that war cannot be waged rationally without a clearly defined political goal. Drawing on Clausewitz and Svechin, he says politics must define what “victory” and “peace” mean, then align military, economic, and social efforts toward that end. Russia, he contends, entered the war with a clear political aim, the destruction of Ukraine’s sovereignty, and has shifted from a quick defeat strategy to a grinding war of attrition against Ukraine’s army, economy, and society. Ukraine, by contrast, fought heroically but without a unified political objective. For Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s core goal must be to strip Russia of any future capacity to attack.

Comment: Politics. This is why I ask what is the acceptable durable political and security arrangement that will be acceptable to Ukraine, Russia, NATO, and the US? And if there is one then one side (Russia) must be defeated and have our will imposed on it.

Politics and War. Reality vs Expectations

Why is it critically important to formulate a political goal in war? Explains Valeriy Zaluzhny, Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom, former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Valerii Zaluzhnyi

Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom, ex-Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

November 29, 21:00

https://www.liga.net/en/politics/opinion/politics-and-war-reality-vs-expectations

The thought of this article came to me more and more often at the end of 2023, when my team and I tried to sum up the stormy year of 2023, and most importantly, try to form our strategy for the upcoming year of 2024.

It was a tough year. We still didn't understand why it was getting harder and harder every day, despite being in a completely different position compared to 2022. Something was wrong. Something had to be seen and foreseen in the future. Something that could change everything, or at least somehow keep things in a situation where anything was still possible.

War in 2023 has changed dramatically. And while its physical nature was completely clear to us, which allowed us to even influence its further development, for example, with a comprehensive approach to UAVs and space reconnaissance, it did not yet seem possible to form a full-fledged strategy for our future behavior.

The dependence and use of economic opportunities and their increasing involvement in the war process as a whole became even more obvious.

Finally, we also realized that it is impossible to constantly be dependent on weapons supplies from Western partners. And not even because sooner or later they will run out of such weapons, but primarily because the weapons themselves will change over time and our partners will no longer have them. Something fundamental was missing in the approach to building a quality strategy.

Finally, after the consequences of the decisions made in the field of mobilization began to cause their disproportionate damage, everything fell into place.

Academic lessons immediately came to mind. Because according to Clausewitz, speaking of war as a continuation of politics by other means, it is implied that strategy cannot have a rational basis until the goals that need to be achieved are clearly defined.

Political goal of the war

The political goal of the war is what answers all questions. And if, according to the same Clausewitz, war is a "trinity": the population, the armed forces, and the state administration, then these aspects are three different codes of law, and among these parties, it is the population that is the most sensitive party in terms of supporting war.

Without public support, it is impossible to wage war successfully. Then perhaps the main form of such public support is society's attitude, first of all, to mobilization, which quickly began to fail.

Clausewitz also emphasized: in order to have the support of the population, it is important that the public is well informed, able to distinguish "right" from "wrong", "one's own" from "others". Naturally, the support of the population is strongest and most tangible for "their own" and "the right", that is, national – in practice, it becomes unconditional when they are directly exposed to danger. A danger can be any threat that is perceived as a direct threat to the independence of a state.

So, it is obvious that no matter how much the military command tries to form a military strategy for a certain period, all this will not bring any results without political will, which is precisely formed through a political goal.

Returning to Clausewitz, the basis of his theory is that wars are usually fought for political, not military, goals, and are driven not so much by physical, but primarily by ideological forces.

One evening, I gave the order to pull up all the directive documents that were coming to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in order to find out what the political goal of the war was. Or, perhaps, we missed something. Because only with the formation of a political goal all subjects of the state will try to reach the outlined line on the horizon. Which can then claim victory. Unfortunately, then we did not miss anything…

It is this term that ultimately makes it possible to see not only what the enemy is doing, but also how to move forward ourselves. It was then that I tried to formulate a political goal for our war, to outline the necessary strategy for achieving it.

Then I prepared a long article that remained on the top shelf of my desk. It was called "On the political purpose of the war for Ukraine at the end of 2023."

One of Carl von Clausewitz's most important postulates is true. It is that war is subject to change, and these changes occur in accordance with changes in politics. And indeed, it should be so. Because the changes that occur in the war also require changes on the political and economic fronts.

But the degree of political tension at that time did not allow my conscience to give this article a boost. The internal political situation was already too fragile. But some of its provisions nevertheless formed the basis for the plan of our actions for 2024. Which, unfortunately, remained on paper. Later, another team developed its idea and brought it to life.

Today, as of the end of 2025, the war in Ukraine has been going on for twelfth year. And with absolute certainty, we can say that it is increasingly bearing the hallmarks of a global war. Yes, in terms of the number of its victims, it has not yet reached the global scale, but in terms of the level of global impact and consequences, it is about ready to start its dangerous account.

Confirmation of this, for example, can be an episode from our history, when supposedly strong personalities of the modern world claimed about possible quick solutions and the long-awaited peace.

A peace that has not yet come.

Number one target for Russia

This confirms that Ukraine is in an extremely difficult situation, where a quick peace will definitely only lead to a devastating defeat and loss of independence. However, as time has shown, it was not possible to achieve it.

Now it is interesting isn't this a consequence of Russia's appetites, which may extend beyond Ukraine. Obviously, it is. All, again, due to a misunderstanding of Russia's political goal and the lack of its own political vision, which was presumably based on the possible political goals of global players. But even then, even if such an understanding comes, following the same theory of wars, any delay in war is to the detriment of the one who is attacking. The Russians cannot allow this – then the expected peace in Ukraine without building a new security architecture, at least in Eastern Europe, is simply impossible.

Here, for Europeans, I can’t resist quoting Benjamin Franklin: "Those who give up freedom for temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security." This is how the United States is shaping its policy in Europe today.

At a time when Western politicians were captive to their own illusions, drawing pink scenarios or playing along with each other, thinking about the reconstruction of Ukraine, and their experts, in unison with their Ukrainian colleagues, were drawing the future elections in Ukraine, the line of combat contact was confidently moving towards Dnipro, and today – towards Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv. Not many people pay attention to this anymore. Sometimes it seems that even at the front, like a hundred years ago, they are no longer waiting for victory, but for the long-awaited peace. However, the Russian classic of the theory of military art, Svechin, did not think so a hundred years ago. There is something more complicated behind this.

His own story is also interesting. As a tsarist general and hoping to be useful to the communist regime, in 1927 he published the book "Strategy", in which he outlined his view of the system of preparing for and waging war by the state. His story can be instructive in our difficult times. Alexander Svechin was arrested and shot in 1938 by the same communists he decided to serve. But now it's not about him, but about the strategy itself and its connection with politics, first of all.

So, trying to find a definition of the political goal of war, we find a rather interesting definition in the aforementioned author: "Any struggle for one's own interests can only be waged consciously and systematically if its goals are understood."

This is the first step towards understanding the essence of Russia's actions. The entire subsequent description of events, of course, confirms that, using, first of all, the weakness of the collective West and international institutions, the Russian leadership has formed a goal that is quite understandable not only for the military leadership, and does not concern the resolving of individual territorial claims or the protection of Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine. Russia is not interested in the Donetsk or Luhansk regions, except for their mobilization potential. Thousands of "svechinists" have already joined the ranks of fighters for "the Russian peace" and joined him.

Russia's number one target is Ukraine. It is Ukraine, with its subjectivity and independence and all its potential, that should become the gateway to Europe. Is that why it is so difficult today to find an understanding about stopping the war. Of course, following the same author's logic, such goals are not publicly announced, or are fundamentally distorted and announced publicly in order to attract as many supporters as possible.

Therefore, historians will be able to find out in what form the deprivation of Ukraine's sovereignty and the restoration of imperial ambitions were intended when it becomes possible. But the nature of events since the fall of 2021, throughout 2022 and to this day, especially the spread of distrust towards the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the revealed corruption ties of individual members of the National Security and Defense Council, as well as the rhetoric and behavior of the Russian leadership, leave no doubt about Russia's goal: Ukraine must cease to exist as an independent state.

This conclusion is something we, Ukrainians, must remember. Understanding of this conclusion should form the basis for building our own strategy for preserving the state. This strategy should be built on a political goal, which will be determined by the state's top military-political leadership.

A logical question arises: what exactly is a political goal. And why is a military strategy, which already affects the economy, not enough?

Everything, again, lies in the foundations of the science of war. And it says: "The task of the high military command is to destroy the enemy's fighting forces. The purpose of war is to win a peace that meets the conditions of the policy supported by the state."

So war is not a goal in itself, waged only by the military, but is waged in order to conclude peace under certain favorable conditions.

A politician, when determining the political goal of war, must take into account positions on the military, social, and economic fronts of the struggle, the capture of which will create favorable conditions for peace negotiations. So, obviously, not only defense on all these fronts is important, but targeted attacks on each such segment of the enemy must bring success, especially in a war of attrition. This needs to be remembered.

Thus, in determining the political goal of the war, it is actually necessary to define the tasks and unite the leadership on the fronts of political, economic, and armed struggle.

Preparations for the invasion

What was Russia doing?

Already having a clearly defined goal of the war, taking into account its own capabilities and the state of our country, under the slogans of ending the war that began in 2014, grossly violating international law, Russia, presumably from mid-2019, is beginning unprecedented preparations for an invasion in Ukraine, deploying troops along our borders and beginning their training.

Strategy is the art of combining preparation for war and conducting operations to achieve its goal. Strategy solves issues related to the use of both the armed forces and all the resources of the country to achieve the ultimate goal. This, by the way, is the first stone that Ukraine's defense is breaking. The strategy must use all the necessary resources. However, can it fully own them?

According to the same Svechin's logic, there are only two types of strategy to achieve this political goal: defeat and/or exhaustion. Humanity has not come up with anything else.

It would seem, why do we need to remember a Russian theorist who has long been forgotten in Ukraine? It is in the context of these two strategies that it is possible to consider the course of our war and, most importantly, to find the only correct strategy for our actions, built on a correctly defined political goal.

So the Russian leadership, which set a political goal for military action, was clearly aware of what was possible for the strategy with the available means and how their policy could influence the change of the situation for better or worse. Presumably, everything was foreseen.

In August 2021, when I became Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russia's war against Ukraine had been going on for seven years. Although the Armed Forces of Ukraine were undergoing transformation and gaining combat experience, they still had a large number of problems in various areas. The Russian army was rapidly increasing its forces and supplies. The analytical resource Global Firepower Index published a rating in the fall of 2021, according to which the Russian Armed Forces ranked second among the strongest armies in the world after the United States, while the Armed Forces of Ukraine ranked 25th.

Russia increased its military budget year after year, invested resources in the defense-industrial complex, and purchased more and more weapons and equipment. They significantly outnumbered us both in numbers and equipment. Starting in 2019 and for the next three years, Russia's military spending only increased. At the same time, in Ukraine, everything happened the other way around – in 2021, the army was allocated even less money than in the previous year. And although politicians loudly declared that more than 5% of GDP was allocated to the security and defense sector, this is not only about the Armed Forces, it is also about the National Police, the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Guard, and border guards.

Of the 260 billion hryvnias, less than half was for the Ministry of Defense. Funding for the development and procurement of weapons and equipment was not increased; the bulk of the money traditionally went to providing financial support for the military. Because of this, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were in a state of stagnation – there was a lack of finances for development and increasing combat readiness, there was a problem of personnel outflow and understaffing of military units.

The budget of 2022 was adopted by parliament in the conditions of an escalation of the situation and the build-up of Russian troops near the Ukrainian borders. As a result, it grew by only 10% and reached 133 billion hryvnias.

But this is nothing compared to the challenges that awaited Ukraine and the Armed Forces of Ukraine in connection with Russia's full-scale aggression. The future will show that the persistent underfunding of the army has led to the accumulation of a whole series of problems.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine met the full-scale Russian invasion with a huge shortage of everything from people to weapons.

As of the end of 2021, the Russian army was 5 times larger than the Ukrainian one, with 4 times more tanks and armored combat vehicles, 3.4 times more artillery, and 4.5 times more attack helicopters. The situation in the Ukrainian Navy was even sadder – we had no aircraft carriers, destroyers, corvettes, or submarines.

As of August 2021, the Armed Forces of Ukraine numbered 250,000 people, of which about 204,000 were military personnel. The size of the Russian army increased from year to year and by that time already amounted to over a million military personnel.

There were only 24 combat brigades in the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the time of my appointment. It's about combined-arms brigades of the Ground Forces, Air Assault Forces, and Marines, which are the basis of the groups for conducting ground operations. From their number, as of August 2021, 12 brigades were already performing combat missions in the East and South of Ukraine. So we had only 12 combat brigades left, which were at training grounds, at permanent deployment points, and which could be sent to fight the enemy during a full-scale aggression.

All this gave Russia every opportunity to use the strategy of defeat to achieve its established political goal. Therefore, in 2021, Russia began to significantly increase the number of troops along the border with Ukraine. And already by August, the configuration of possible invasion directions was emerging. According to intelligence estimates, the existing number of Russian troops near the Ukrainian borders allowed the enemy to create up to six operational groups of troops that could be involved in the invasion. In addition, troops were also accumulating in temporarily occupied Crimea for an offensive in the Tavria and Azov directions.

In general, before the invasion, the Russian offensive group was estimated to consist of at least 102 battalion tactical groups – up to 135 thousand servicemen, 48 operational-tactical missile systems, up to 2 thousand tanks, 5319 armored vehicles, 2 thousand artillery systems, and up to 700 units of MLRS.

Russia had an absolute advantage in the number of air attack and air defense weapons; before the war, it updated its aviation combat equipment and re-equipped it with more modern technology. Intelligence estimates suggest that the enemy could deploy up to 342 operational-tactical aircraft and 187 helicopters for the invasion. In addition, the Russians have created naval groups to conduct operations in the Black and Azov Seas.

This is what the situation looked like at the end of 2021. We were significantly inferior to the enemy in the number of weapons and military equipment, ammunition, and personnel. We, unlike the Russians, had very little modern weapons. At the beginning of 2022, the General Staff conducted calculations that showed that the total need for funds to repel aggression, including for the restoration and replenishment of missile and ammunition stocks, was estimated at hundreds of billions of hryvnias. Which the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not have. It is difficult to say what political goal this state of the most important institution in the country served.

Therefore, the Russian strategy of defeat envisaged clear and definitive military actions that had enough potential to achieve the political goal both by a quick strike on the capital and by strikes in other directions, but in a limited time. At the same time, such potential was only enough to carry out such actions if they were to be successful. A characteristic feature of such a strategy, in addition to the high, but limited allocated potential, is the enemy's lack of strategic reserves, which are not intended to be created and used in the strategy of defeat.

Operational reserves, typical for the military, are part of the groups and remain an allocated potential. Thus, the achievement of the political goal was carried out mainly by military methods, of course, in combination with classic informational and psychological campaigns and actions, and, presumably, special actions aimed at agents and the fifth column were carried out, which were supposed to precede military actions.

However, the situation turned out differently.

Changing the strategy of defeat to a strategy of attrition

Ukraine, which found itself under attack from an enemy that is several times larger in size, economy, population, military budget, and army size, has survived. First of all, thanks to the heroism of Ukrainians, innovations, and parity achieved with the help of allies.

Of course, such a reaction of ours should be part of a political goal. Because it was the unprecedented heroism of the citizens of Ukraine that became the key to victory and should be the result of a stable position on the political front.

Preventing an opponent from implementing their strategy to achieve a political goal is an absolute victory. A victory that, although costs Ukraine the lives of its best citizens and part of its territory, preserved the state and gave it, most importantly, a chance to fight and make peace on its own terms. A chance that we use to this day.

However, from that moment it is necessary to turn to military science. And it once again reminds us that to achieve the same political goal, when the calculation on the strategy of defeat does not come true, the strategy changes to attrition.

As will later become clear, this in no way refutes the determination of the ultimate goals. The whole world, not just us, has already been convinced of this today.

Since April 17, 2022, while the agents and the 5th column in Ukraine were preparing the ground for a new strategy, Russian troops focused their efforts on conducting military operations in the northeastern, eastern, and southern regions, where they were supposed to create conditions for preparing to carry out tasks within the framework of the attrition strategy.

From a military point of view, everything seemed clear. Russian troops, using the remnants of their saved potential, tried not to lose the initiative by delivering increasingly concentrated strikes, and in some areas, for example on the right bank of the Dnipro and in the South, went on the defensive, creating conditions for a protracted war. Wars of attrition. By the end of 2022, such actions continued almost along the entire front line, without significant operational successes, except for the liberation of the Kharkiv region and the right-bank Ukraine.

These actions were mainly the result of our use of the remaining operational stocks and stocks that were received dosed from partners, as well as Russia's partial use of its own limited strategic stocks. The result was our loss of most of the Luhansk region, and the left-bank part of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Objectively, the strategy of defeat has exhausted itself due to the lack of forces and means, as well as strategic reserves on both sides. This, by the way, is another reason for the emergence of positionality in the war. When there are insufficient material reserves and insufficient preparation on both sides, such a war is likely to become a positional one. However, later, under the force of other factors, this is what happened.

Presumably, examining these two theories, it is necessary to conclude that the strategy of attrition, according to military theory, can be used to create the conditions for defeat. Therefore, since the fall of 2022, Ukraine has been trying to create conditions for implementing the strategy of defeat in the following year, 2023.

However, due to the lack of a political goal, preparation continues only in the military direction and covers only strategic deployment and building capacity to solve tasks in 2023. Our reserves are limited by Western aid, the economy does not meet the needs of the front, society is focused on a quick victory in 2023 and is full of inflated expectations and hopes.

It doesn't seem surprising now that Russia's efforts in 2023 to focus on creating a powerful defense, which on the one hand was logical, supposedly serving to repel our probable offensive, and on the other hand, distracted our attention from the main thing, from forming the necessary material reserve for waging a war of attrition. While we were preparing for coffee in Crimea, the end of the war in 2023, and were watching the attempt to capture Bakhmut, Russia was putting the economy on military rails, launching propaganda and changing legislation, building strategic reserves, and dragging us into a war for which, just like in 2022, we were not ready. A war of attrition.

It was in September 2022, when the first drones flew into the territory of Ukraine, and Russian-influenced groups launched a discrediting campaign against the military leadership of Ukraine, that a new era of wars in the history of mankind began. Wars of attrition. By the end of 2023, this strategy was completely honed and perfected. The events of 2024, and especially 2025, despite minor achievements at the front, indicate the absolute effectiveness of such a strategy for Russia in its efforts to achieve its political goal.

What is this strategy of attrition? The definitions given by theorists of military art are very complex. And to understand it, historical analogies are needed. Because the tools and forms of implementation have changed, but the essence has not changed.

"A weak... enemy can be defeated by destroying its armed forces. But the line of least resistance to victory may pass through a certain prolongation of the war, which may lead to the political disintegration of the enemy. A strong and significant state can hardly be overthrown by methods of defeat without exhaustion," so say military classics.

They also add: "A war of attrition is waged mainly at the expense of reserves accumulated in peacetime; foreign orders for urgent replenishment before war can be extremely appropriate. A great power can organize a struggle for attrition solely on the labor of its industry during the war itself. The military industry can develop exclusively at the expense of military orders."

"Preparations for a war of attrition should focus primarily on the general, proportionate development and improvement of the state's economy, because a weak economy, of course, cannot withstand the severe tests of attrition."

It is almost impossible to understand these quotes, dated 1927, without drawing an analogy with these days. But it is absolutely true. The too expensive and devastating war must end quickly. This is the main postulate of NATO doctrine: there is no point in fighting a long war, because you have resources and opportunities to inflict more damage.

However, the history of our war confirms that the difficult path of the strategy of attrition, which leads to the expenditure of much greater resources than a short crushing blow, is usually chosen only when the war cannot be ended in one way.

The main thing to remember is that attrition strategy operations are not so much direct stages of achieving the ultimate military goal as stages of deploying material advantage, which will ultimately deprive the enemy of the prerequisites for successful resistance.

That's the answer to the question of how much it would cost to shoot down the 9000 air targets that Ukraine receives every month. This is precisely the implementation of the strategy of attrition.

However, a war of attrition is also being waged on the political front. Where, as I have already said, the main thing is the people of Ukraine and their ability to resist, through mobilization. And therefore, the path to political disintegration is becoming increasingly obvious.

The decisive blow that Russia may be preparing

As for military actions in a strategy of attrition. Military actions still play an important role in achieving political goals, but are not the main and final phase.

Presumably, the ultimate goals of military operations are not formed in advance, but are the result of situations created on the front, mainly through our actions. This means that with the achievement of, for example, the complete occupation of Donetsk or another region and the fulfillment of the task of some operation, the war will continue on both the political and economic fronts and, accordingly, will not achieve the political goal.

Or imagine the entry of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the borders in 1991. Will this mean the end of the war? It is certain that this will change the configuration of the front line, which will run along the state border. However, will this end the war when both the economy and the population of Russia are ready to continue it?

And vice versa – with a healthy economy and the right domestic and foreign policies, it is possible to change the configuration of the front, of course, affecting the economy and population of Russia. Therefore, the goal of military actions in the strategy of attrition is not to carry out balanced and coordinated operations aimed at achieving a final goal, but to create conditions under which it is possible to deliver a decisive blow aimed at the collapse of the country on the economic and political fronts simultaneously.

Simply put, the enemy is trying to create social tension, losses in manpower, and excessive expenditure of financial resources by conducting military operations today. Fighting for symbolic geographical and cultural objects, rather than for tracts of land, is most advantageous in such a case. Turning such objects into fortresses only confirms and supports the enemy's strategy.

Perhaps the last thing to add about the strategy of attrition. Indeed, within the framework of the strategy of attrition, all operations are characterized primarily by having a limited purpose. War is not a decisive blow, but a struggle for positions on the military, political, and economic fronts from which, ultimately, this blow could be delivered.

Yes, the strategy of attrition has its own decisive blow. And if the overall strategy of attrition for the enemy is to bring the country to disintegration through military action, political and economic situation, then what is a decisive blow in this situation? If we look back at history, the answer is obvious.

It is a civil war. Yes, this is exactly the decisive blow that Russia systematically achieves by implementing a strategy of attrition.

This war, by the way, in the absence of a unified vision of security at least on the European continent, is possible not only as a result of achieving the political goal, which is implemented by the strategy of attrition, but also, oddly enough, through a "just peace", which, without security guarantees and real financial programs, will certainly lead the war with Russia to the next stage – a civil war.

Therefore, it is precisely the future threats and risks that indicate that defining a clear political goal is not only a task for the activities of the armed forces, but also a directive for political preparation the war, which broadly covers issues of economics, domestic and foreign policy. The assessment of the prospects of war should form a single goal that will unite the military, political, and economic fronts.

For example, if we consider the main stages of the development of the military-political and military-strategic situation around Ukraine, we can consider the following options for the political goal:

1. The period from February 2015 to February 2022. The stage of avoiding and preventing war. The political goal of this period should be: avoiding war by preparing armed forces, population, and economy, and taking foreign policy measures to limit Russia's military capabilities.

Among the main practical measures would have been preparing the country for war in all areas. The final practical phase could have been the introduction of martial law and the early deployment of armed forces in threatening areas.

2. The period from February 24, 2022 to December 2023. The stage of using the destruction strategy. The political goal could be: ensuring sustainable peace and preventing the war from spreading to the rest of Ukraine. If that is not possible, prepare for a war of attrition.

3. The period from February 2024 to January 2025. Strategic defense and alliance formation for active action in a strategy of attrition to seek a just peace.

4. The period from January 2025 to August 2025. Strategic defense with the task of preventing Russia from using its military achievements in shaping peace negotiations.

5. From August 2025. Preservation of the state through the maintenance of military, political and economic fronts. Formation of alliances and coalitions around depriving Russia of war capabilities.

What could be the end of the war?

It is a very strange situation when the issue of the end of the war, under the pressure of the next informational pretext, becomes a topic for the another forecasters in Ukraine.

Informational reasons alone are clearly not enough to form an expiration date of the end of the war. The end or cessation of a war, especially a war of attrition, will depend on the totality of achievements or, conversely, losses on the military, economic, and political fronts. Of course, a collapse on one of them can only cause the emergence of prerequisites for its end. However, the stability of the entire structure is completely dependent on the stability and potential of others. For example, so fast predicted peace in Ukraine will raise quite tough questions in Russia about the number of human losses suffered – it will be as difficult to explain as it is to explain corruption in Ukraine today. And it is natural that the situation on the political front in Russia will not allow this without significant concessions or complete defeat on our part. Today it is difficult to say whether the mediators who are trying to draw up scenarios for Ukraine understand this. But the fact that conditions do not get better for Ukraine every time is obvious.

When forming the political goal of war, it is important to remember that war does not always end with the victory of one side and the defeat of the other. This was the case of World War II, but it is a rare exception, because it has almost never happened in human history. The vast majority of wars end with mutual defeat, or with everyone being sure that they have won, or other options.

So, when we talk about victory, we must honestly say this: victory is the collapse of the Russian Empire, and defeat is the complete occupation of Ukraine due to its collapse. Everything else is just a continuation of the war.

We, Ukrainians, of course, strive for a complete victory – the collapse of the Russian Empire. But we cannot reject the option of a long-term (for years) cessation of the war, because this is an all-too-common way of ending wars in history. At the same time, peace, even in expectation of the next war, provides a chance for political change, for deep reforms, for full recovery, economic growth, and the return of citizens.

It is even possible to speak about the beginning of the formation of a safe, maximally protected state through innovation and technology. Formation and strengthening of the foundations of a just state through the fight against corruption and the creation of a fair court. Formation of the outlines of future peace on the basis of international economic programs for the country's recovery.

About security guarantees

Another important aspect of shaping a political goal today is security guarantees.

The very concept of ending war is not only obvious today, but also demanded for a number of reasons. These reasons are both regional and global in nature. The very path of implementing efforts to achieve this today, unfortunately, is unlikely. First of all, there are no prerequisites for this. Perhaps the main one is the ongoing active high-intensity hostilities and attacks on the economy from both sides.

That is why shifting the emphasis from ceasefire negotiations to concluding a final peace agreement makes it impossible for them to even be accepted in Ukraine due to unacceptable conditions for us. Because we have already paid too high a price.

Secondly, in conditions where the concept of international law and especially the system to support this law no longer exists, concluding such agreements without creating guarantees of long-term security is absolutely impossible.

Such security guarantees could include: Ukraine's accession to NATO, the deployment of nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, or the deployment of a large military contingent capable of confronting Russia. However, there is no talk about this today. And taking into account the technological and doctrinal unpreparedness of any NATO member country, or any other country except Russia, Ukraine, and China, this issue cannot be considered in principle. And therefore, the war will probably continue. However, we should not forget that not only in the military, but also in the political and economic spheres.

Another aspect is the gradual reduction in the cost of war due to technological development, on the one hand, and the increase in total strike capabilities, on the other. This could lead to a situation where Russia will eventually need the same security guarantees. As strange as it may sound. Then, presumably, the basis of security guarantees should be capitals that can mutually guarantee their preservation. Which in turn will prevent collapse in the post-war years in both Ukraine and Russia. Because of course, such economic losses will also have political consequences. This was already at the beginning of the 20th century.

Therefore, formulating the political purpose of the war is the most difficult test for the thinking of a politician. Here the most erroneous ideas are possible. War is to a large extent a catalogue of blunders, said Winston Churchill.

However, perhaps the main political goal for Ukraine is to deprive Russia of the opportunity to carry out acts of aggression against Ukraine in the foreseeable future.

At the same time, it should be taken into account that Russia can implement such intentions by choosing one of two strategies. In any case, such an act of aggression will be carried out on both the military and political and economic fronts. The tools and forms of such aggression change, but they will all serve the same political goal.

If it is difficult to imagine the nature of the future war, it is clear exactly what the peace should be like, where our children should live. After all, as Olena Teliha said: "States do not stand on dynasties, but on the internal unity and strength of the people."

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

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