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– Arnold Toynbee

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– William Jennings Bryan

"We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns."

– Tom Waits

1. Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder

2. White House Defends Hegseth Over Strike on Alleged Drug Boat That Killed Survivors

3. Opinion | Shooting the Wounded on Drug Boats?

4. Trump’s Push to End the Ukraine War Is Sowing Fresh Fear About NATO’s Future

5. Exclusive | Chinese Rare-Earth Dealers Find Ways to Dodge Beijing’s Export Restrictions

6. Opinion | Can the U.S. Trust AI With National Security?

7. White House says admiral approved second deadly boat strike

8. Pete Hegseth is accused of throwing an 'American hero' under the bus as he shifts blame for drug boat strike

9. USAF Fighter Jets’ New Strategy on Isolated Island

10. Is China preparing for war in the Taiwan Strait?

11. Special Operations News – Dec 1, 2025

12. Outlets that reach millions denied access to rare Pentagon news briefings this week

13. New White House Website Criticizes Journalists and News Outlets

14. Ukraine’s “Hail Mary” Drone Attack Just Hit Moscow. Did It Matter?

15. The rot eating at China's war machine

16. China's military firms struggle as corruption purge bites, report says

17. Opinion | The Lesson of China’s Japan Bullying

18. From Paper to Permafrost: Applying Irregular Warfare Doctrine to Arctic Homeland Defense

19. American-Led Regime Change Is Usually Disastrous

20. Inside America’s next information war

21. Gray Zone Clarity: Building Irregular Maritime Intelligence through Civilian-Linked Networks

22. Mission Implausible: Revisiting the False Flag Narrative of Turkey’s July 15 Coup

23. Guerrillas and Governance: Lessons on Resistance Forces and The Local Populace from The American Civil War

24. The Ideological Security Dilemma in International Relations: The Case of US–China Ideological Competition

25. The West’s Last Chance: How to Build a New Global Order Before It’s Too Late

26. The Promise—and Limits—of a Free Press: Journalists Alone Cannot Stave Off Autocracy 

1. Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder

Summary:

Alleged verbal order by SecDef Pete Hegseth to "kill everyone" on a suspected drug boat, and Admiral Bradley's second strike on shipwrecked survivors, were clearly unlawful under U.S. law, international human rights law, and, if applicable, the law of armed conflict. U.S. personnel have an affirmative duty to refuse manifestly illegal orders, including attacks on shipwrecked or hors de combat persons. Superior orders provide no defense where unlawfulness is obvious; obedience can incur individual criminal liability. These killings likely constitute extrajudicial executions and potential federal murder. Commanders must ensure rules of engagement, legal advice, and reporting mechanisms prevent such unlawful directives.

Comment: A very thorough analysis of the 2 SEP incident at sea. This is well researched and written so that even us laymen can understand this. I will defer to the legal experts for definitive assessments. And for non-military personnel I hope you can get a sense of the complexity of military operations. This is potentially a significant inflection point for the US military 

Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder

justsecurity.org · Michael Schmitt

By Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman and Tess Bridgeman

Published on December 1, 2025

Editor’s Note

This is part of Just Security‘s Collection: U.S. Lethal Strikes on Suspected Drug Traffickers.

https://www.justsecurity.org/125948/illegal-orders-shipwrecked-boat-strike-survivors/

The question of when it is lawful for U.S. military personnel to refuse an unlawful order has become a point of discussion in the political arena. Those conversations took a turn with the Washington Post and CNN reporting over Thanksgiving weekend that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had issued a verbal order to “kill everyone” in the initial U.S. military strike on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, resulting in U.S. special forces’ allegedly killing two shipwrecked survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of their vessel on Sept. 2, 2025.

In this article, we do not engage with the political discussion, but rather examine the law that applies to the alleged facts of the operation and Hegseth’s reported order. And with respect to the legal assessment of that operation, we will not be dealing with the broader question of whether the attack on the boat was unlawful as such, which it was (see articles published at Just Security by Marty Lederman, Michael Schmitt, and a podcast discussion with Tess Bridgeman, Brian Finucane, and Rebecca Ingber). Instead, we focus on a narrower aspect of the strike, the purported order to kill all aboard the vessel and the resulting second strike on the boat that killed the survivors.

As a matter of law, there are two central issues to address. The first concerns the circumstances in which military personnel have a duty to refuse to obey an order and, relatedly, whether a superior order can relieve them of criminal responsibility. The second is whether the orders in this case triggered that duty or provided those involved a defense. As both issues are context-dependent, we begin with the facts.

The Reported Order(s) and Military Operation

Without rehashing the well-known and fairly straightforward reported chain of events on Sept. 2, it is essential to understand that there were apparently two different orders in the military chain of command.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s verbal order

The Washington Post reported:

“The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody,’ one of them said.”

Note that “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered the military prior to the operation to ensure the strike killed everyone on board, but it’s not clear if he knew there were survivors prior to the second strike, one of the sources said,” CNN reported.

Presumably, this order was issued to the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Commander, Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, raising the question of whether he had a duty to refuse it.

Adm. Bradley’s order to conduct the second strike

The Washington Post reported:

“Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack … ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.”

“Adm. Frank M. ‘Mitch’ Bradley, told people on the secure conference call that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo, according to two people. He ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.”

This order implicates the duty of subordinate commanders and those executing the strike to refuse to comply with unlawful orders.

Following the strike, Hegseth told reporters, “We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean, and when other people try to do that, they’re going to meet the same fate.” Note that according to an earlier report by the New York Times, the targeted boat had “altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started.”

The Duty to Refuse Unlawful Orders

From the perspective of those receiving them, unlawful orders raise two issues. The first is whether there is a duty to refuse them. The United States clearly imposes such a duty. In particular, the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual (2023) emphasizes the obligation, giving, as a paradigmatic example, an order to kill shipwrecked persons.

18.3.2.1 Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations. The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.

The Manual cautions, however, that “[s]ubordinates are not required to screen the orders of superiors for questionable points of legality, and may, absent specific knowledge to the contrary, presume that orders have been lawfully issued.” But in clear cases, the duty attaches. As the Manual for Courts-Martial explains, the general presumption that an order can be inferred to be lawful “does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.”

An even more granular explanation of the duty to refuse unlawful orders is provided in the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps/Coast Guard Commanders Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations (§ 6.1.3.2):

All naval personnel have a duty to comply with the law of armed conflict in good faith; prevent violations by others to the utmost of their ability; and refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of armed conflict. Naval personnel have an affirmative obligation to promptly report violations which they become aware. When appropriate, naval personnel should ask questions through appropriate channels and consult with the command legal advisor on issues relating to the law of armed conflict. Naval personnel should adhere to regulations, procedures, and training, as these policies and doctrinal materials have been reviewed for consistency with the law of armed conflict. Commands and orders should not be understood as implicitly authorizing violations of the law of armed conflict where other interpretations are reasonably available.

These U.S. duties track international law, for, as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has asserted, under the law of armed conflict (LOAC), “[e]very combatant has a duty to disobey a manifestly unlawful order” (ICRC, Customary IHL study, Rule 154).

And refusal to obey an unlawful order is not an offense in the U.S. armed forces. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, an offense occurs if the accused

(1) violates or fails to obey any lawful general order or regulation; (2) having knowledge of any other lawful order issued by any member of the armed forces, which it is his duty to obey, fails to obey the order; or (3) is derelict in the performance of his duties (art. 92).

It is also an offense if a member of the armed forces “willfully disobeys a lawful command of his superior commissioned officer” (art. 90). Thus, the fact that an order is unlawful precludes conviction for its violation. So, although orders may generally be presumed lawful, if they are clearly unlawful, U.S. military personnel have an affirmative duty to refuse them and may not be prosecuted for doing so.

No Defense of Superior Orders

The second issue raised by orders is whether they constitute a defense available to those acting unlawfully, but pursuant to them. It has long been the case under customary international law that “superior orders” is no defense for war crimes. The Charter of the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo excluded the defense (arts. 8 and 6, respectively), as did the 1950 Nuremberg Principles (prin. IV). The absence of a superior orders defense has also been confirmed in the statutes of modern war crimes tribunals, including those of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (arts. 33, 7, and 6, respectively). Indeed, the defense is unavailable to international law violations generally. For instance, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons prohibit superior orders as a defense in national legislation implementing their prohibitions (arts. 2 and VIII, respectively).

As with the affirmative duty to disobey an unlawful order, the ICRC has accurately stated that under customary international law, “[o]beying a superior order does not relieve a subordinate of criminal responsibility if the subordinate knew that the act ordered was unlawful or should have known because of the manifestly unlawful nature of the act ordered.” (ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law study, Rule 155).

U.S. military law likewise rejects the defense of superior order in the Manual for Courts-Martial. Rule 916(d) provides, “It is a defense to any offense that the accused was acting pursuant to orders unless the accused knew the orders to be unlawful or a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the orders to be unlawful.” The touchstone case reflecting the principle is U.S. v. Calley, which dealt with the murder of 22 children, women, and old men in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai. Lt. Calley claimed he was obeying an order because “he had been taught the doctrine of obedience throughout his military career” and that he “was acting in ignorance of the laws of war.” The U.S. Court of Military Appeals held that,

the obedience of a soldier is not the obedience of an automaton. A soldier is a reasoning agent, obliged to respond, not as a machine, but as a person. The law takes these factors into account in assessing criminal responsibility for acts done in compliance with illegal orders.

The acts of a subordinate done in compliance with an unlawful order given him by his superior are excused and impose no criminal liability upon him unless the superior’s order is one which a man of ordinary sense and understanding would, under the circumstances, know to be unlawful, or if the order in question is actually known to the accused to be unlawful.

Thus, it is unlawful to obey an unlawful order, and merely following clearly illegal orders provides no defense. This being so, the questions in the Sept. 2 strikes are whether Secretary Hegseth’s reported order to Adm. Bradley was clearly unlawful and whether Bradley’s apparent follow-on order to conduct the second strike was likewise manifestly unlawful.

What Law Applied to the Reported Orders?

Much attention has been focused on the laws of war as they may relate to the Hegseth order and resulting operation. In that regard, we must emphasize that LOAC did not apply to the Sept. 2 strikes, because, as has been explained in multiple Just Security articles referenced above, the United States is not in an armed conflict with any drug trafficking cartel or criminal gang anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. There is no international armed conflict because, inter alia, there are neither hostilities between States nor the requisite degree of State control over alleged drug cartels operating the boats. And there is no non-international armed conflict, both because the cartels concerned do not qualify as organized armed groups in the LOAC sense, and because there were no hostilities between the United States and the cartels on Sept. 2, let alone hostilities that would reach the requisite level of intensity to cross the armed conflict threshold. For the same reason, the individuals involved have not committed war crimes.

However, the duty to refuse clearly unlawful orders – such as an order to commit a crime – is not limited to armed conflict situations to which LOAC applies. Nor is rejection of a defense of superior orders restricted to war crimes. In fact, the more restrictive rules of international human rights law applied instead. As will be explained, the alleged Hegseth order and special forces’ lethal operation amounted to unlawful “extrajudicial killing” under human rights law (see also here). The federal murder statute would also apply, whether or not there is an armed conflict. (See, e.g., Marty Lederman’s analysis).

That said, the administration has reported to Congress, stated publicly, and recorded in legal and operational memoranda that it believes one or multiple “non-international armed conflicts” exist between the United States and 24 organizations in Latin America (whether it views the situation as one armed conflict, 24 separate ones, or some other combination is unclear). This being so, before turning to the law that was actually violated through the Sept. 2 and subsequent operations, allow us to counterfactually consider the law that would apply had the administration been correct in characterizing the operation as occurring during an armed conflict.

The Prohibition of Ordering Denial of Quarter or Denying Quarter

Assuming solely for the sake of discussion that there was a non-international armed conflict at the time of the Sept. 2 strikes, the most relevant LOAC rule applicable to the Hegseth and Bradley orders is the “denial of quarter,” i.e., an instruction not to allow any survivors (see, e.g., Working Group of Former Judge Advocates Generals’ statement on the Hegseth order).

The status of the prohibition on the denial of quarter (and on ordering or threatening its denial) was settled well over a century ago. It is applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts as a matter of customary international law (ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law study, Rule 46). This is so with respect to its status as a violation of LOAC entailing the responsibility of the State concerned and as a war crime by the individuals issuing orders to deny quarter or carrying them out. We need not repeat here the major international texts and tribunal decisions that support that conclusion. One of us (Schmitt) walked through all of the relevant texts, from the U.S. Civil War’s Lieber Code to the present, in a 2023 essay concerning a “kill everyone” order by the head of Russia’s Wagner Group (co-authored with LtCol John Tramazzo).

Here, suffice it to note that the DoD Law of War Manual is categorical: “It is … prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter. This rule is based on both humanitarian and military considerations.” The Manual further emphasizes that the rule “also applies during non-international armed conflict” (§ 5.4.7).

A closely related prohibition implicated in the Sept. 2 strikes, which also applies in both international and non-international armed conflict, is on attacking those who are hors de combat, a condition that includes those who are “defenseless” because they are shipwrecked (see ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law study, rule 47 and related practice). As the DoD Law of War Manual explains (§ 5.9.4),

Shipwrecked combatants include those who have been shipwrecked from any cause…. Persons who have been incapacitated by … shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack. In order to receive protection as hors de combat, the person must be wholly disabled from fighting.

The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations similarly provides, “Intentional attack on a combatant who is known to be hors de combat constitutes a grave breach of the law of armed conflict” (§ 8.2.3). Indeed, as noted in the Newport Manual on the Law of Naval Warfare published by the U.S. Naval War College’s Stockton Center, Geneva Convention II

sets forth a legal framework for the humane treatment and protection of victims of armed conflict at sea. The Convention requires parties to the conflict to, inter alia, respect and protect individuals falling within the scope of the Convention “who are at sea and who are wounded, sick or shipwrecked.” Parties to a conflict are thus required, after each engagement and without delay, to “take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick,” without discriminating between their own and enemy personnel.

To be clear, there is no exception to the prohibition on attacking those who are hors de combat due to being shipwrecked because they might escape or otherwise receive rescue assistance from their forces. The only basis for treating them as subject to continued attack is if they are, in fact, not hors de combat because they continue to fight.

Doctrine and Prosecutions on Denial of Quarter

This analysis of the LOAC rules merits being supplemented with three additional points. First, each U.S. servicemember has an obligation to report evidence that any U.S. operation potentially involved killing shipwrecked survivors or a denial of quarter. According to the Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations (§ 6.3; see also DoD Directive 2311.01):

All military and U.S. civilian employees, contractor personnel, and subcontractors assigned to or accompanying a DOD component must report through their chain of command all reportable incidents, including those involving allegations of non-DOD personnel having violated the law of war.

Examples of incidents that “must be reported” include: (1) “Offenses against the Wounded, the Sick, [and] Survivors of Sunken Ships,” such as “willfully killing”; (2) “Other Offenses against Survivors of Sunken Ships,” including, “when military interests permit, failure to search out, collect, make provision for the safety of, or to care for survivors;” and (3) “Denial of quarter, unless bad faith is reasonably suspected” (§ 6.3).

Second, a landmark 1921 case emerging out of World War I clearly set forth the rule that killing shipwrecked survivors of a boat strike is a war crime and that superior orders offer no defense to such conduct, because such orders must be disobeyed. In the Llandovery Castle case, the Imperial Court of Justice considered a June 1918 incident after a German U-boat sank the Llandovery Castle, a Canadian hospital ship. The U-boat Commander claimed he thought the ship was carrying American airmen. In convicting the defendants for firing on the survivors who were in lifeboats, the court noted that by that point, the international legal prohibition on killing survivors of a maritime attack was manifest.

The firing on the boats was an offence against the law of nations. In war on land the killing of unarmed enemies is not allowed (compare the Hague regulations as to war on land, para. 23(c)), similarly in war at sea, the killing of shipwrecked people, who have taken refuge in life-boats, is forbidden.

…

The fact that his deed is a violation of international law must be well-known to the doer, apart from acts of carelessness, in which careless ignorance is a sufficient excuse. In examining the question of the existence of this knowledge, the ambiguity of many of the rules of international law, as well as the actual circumstances of the case, must be borne in mind, because in war time decisions of great importance have frequently to be made on very insufficient material. This consideration, however, cannot be applied to the case at present before the court. The rule of international law, which is here involved, is simple and is universally known. No possible doubt can exist with regard to the question of its applicability. (emphasis added)

Accordingly, the court held that the German crew could not claim to be following orders as a defense because such an order would be clearly unlawful:

It is certainly to be urged in favor of the military subordinates, that they are under no obligation to question the order of their superior officer, and they can count upon its legality. But no such confidence can be held to exist, if such an order is universally known to everybody, including also the accused, to be without any doubt whatever against the law. This happens only in rare and exceptional cases. But this case was precisely one of them, for in the present instance, it was perfectly clear to the accused that killing defenceless people in the life-boats could be nothing else but a breach of the law. … They should, therefore, have refused to obey. As they did not do so, they must be punished.” (emphasis added)

The DoD Law of War Manual cites and quotes the Llandovery Castle case to illustrate the point that clearly illegal orders must be refused (see DoD Law of War Manual, § 18.3.2.1).

Notably, in its sentencing assessment, the court stated that “the principal guilt rests with” the U-boat Commander who issued the order, while his subordinates could obtain some mitigation of sentence given the pressure entailed in refusing a military order.

Third, a famous World War II case involved a similar set of facts. In the 1945 Peleus Trial, a British Military Court sitting in Hamburg considered a March 1944 incident in which a German submarine sank a Greek ship chartered by the British Ministry of War Transport. Upon the orders of the German commander Heinz Eck, the U-boat members fired a machine gun and threw grenades at Peleus’ crew members who had survived the first attack but were shipwrecked in the water. The Prosecutor and the Judge Advocate (who at that time served as the Court’s legal adviser) both relied on the Llandovery Castle case. In response to the defendants’ plea of superior orders, the Judge Advocate stated:

The duty to obey is limited to the observance of orders which are lawful. There can be no duty to obey that which is not a lawful order. …

It is quite obvious that no sailor and no soldier can carry with him a library of international law, or have immediate access to a professor in that subject who can tell him whether or not a particular command is a lawful one. If this were a case which involved the careful consideration of questions of international law as to whether or not the command to fire at helpless survivors struggling in the water was lawful, you might well think it would not be fair to hold any of the subordinate accused in this case responsible for what they are alleged to have done; but is it not fairly obvious to you that if in fact the carrying out of Eck’s command involved the killing of these helpless survivors, it was not a lawful command, and that it must have been obvious to the most rudimentary intelligence that it was not a lawful command, and that those who did that shooting are not to be excused for doing it upon the ground of superior orders? (emphasis added)

The court sentenced Eck and two other defendants to death, another to life imprisonment, and the fifth defendant to 15 years imprisonment.

Assuming the facts as reported about the Sept. 2 strike, and if LOAC and war crimes law had applied (they do not), Secretary Hegseth and Admiral Bradley’s orders were self-evidently unlawful because they ordered no quarter. Moreover, the second strike on the boat would qualify as an attack on those shipwrecked persons who are hors de combat. Whether Secretary Hegseth knew there were shipwrecked survivors is unclear, but Admiral Bradley reportedly did and ordered their attack anyway.

If those involved believed they were engaged in an armed conflict, we find it difficult to imagine they could not have known that the orders were unlawful. The more military training and experience they have, the more implausible such a claim is.

Applying International Human Rights Law to the Alleged Facts

The law of armed conflict is generally a more permissive legal regime for the use of military force than international human rights law (IHRL). In particular, the LOAC permits targeting members of the armed forces, including members of organized armed groups, based on their status, and others if and for such time as they “directly participate in hostilities,” which encompasses more than conducting attacks. By contrast, targeting based on status outside an armed conflict is prohibited. Acts opening the door to the use of force against an individual are generally limited to situations in which they pose an imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm. If the Hegseth and Bradley orders and the ensuing second strike had been violations of LOAC in a non-international armed conflict, they would, a fortiori, have violated human rights law as a matter of peacetime law enforcement.

With respect to the U.S. lethal strikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels at issue here, two of us (Schmitt and Goodman, along with co-author Marko Milanovic) have explained why “there is absolutely no question that the U.S. lethal strikes on the boats are a violation of international human rights law.” Without rehashing that analysis here, the bottom line is that the U.S. strikes on suspected drug traffickers at sea are clearly arbitrary deprivations of the right to life under IHRL, an obligation that the United States acknowledges applies extraterritorially. As they wrote:

The widely-accepted standard for arbitrariness prohibits the use of force likely to cause death or grievous bodily injury “except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury, to prevent the perpetration of a particularly serious crime involving grave threat to life, to arrest a person presenting such a danger and resisting their authority, or to prevent his or her escape, and only when less extreme means are insufficient to achieve these objectives” (Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials; see also U.N. Human Rights Committee, General Comment 36, para 12).

If the lack of an imminent threat of death or serious injury on the part of individuals suspected of trafficking drugs at sea (quite plausibly here, ferrying cocaine from Venezuela to a transhipment point for onward distribution in Europe) is obvious with respect to the campaign as a whole, it is doubly so with respect to a vessel that, as has been reported, had turned around prior to the U.S. strike. It is even more patently obvious that it is an arbitrary deprivation of the right to life – i.e., murder – to fire on the shipwrecked survivors of that strike, as has now been reported.

In sum, there is simply no plausible argument that the reported killing of two survivors clinging to the burning wreckage of their stricken vessel could be anything other than an extrajudicial killing. It is equally clear that, according to long-standing law (including prevailing U.S. legal interpretations), the reported Hegseth and Bradley orders to fire on them were manifestly unlawful, and that those carrying out that order cannot rely on a superior orders defense if prosecuted for those actions due to the egregious illegality of the order.

Concluding Thoughts

The Sept. 2 strikes on the purported drug boat neither violated the law of armed conflict nor amounted to war crimes, because they did not occur during an armed conflict. However, if the facts are as reported, there is little question that the order by Secretary Hegseth and the ensuing order by Admiral Bradley to conduct the second strike were unlawful, because the killing of the two survivors was a serious violation of international human rights law.

Moreover, both orders were clearly unlawful. Under well-established law, those who complied with the orders cannot escape individual criminal responsibility for the killing of the two survivors in the event they are brought to trial in a U.S. military court-martial, a federal trial, or a domestic criminal proceeding in another State that has jurisdiction, for instance, based on the nationality of the victims. If actually issued, these orders irresponsibly and unlawfully placed all those involved in the attack in serious legal jeopardy. If the reporting is accurate, those orders should, as a matter of law, have been refused.

Editor’s note: Readers may also be interested in Jeremy Chin, Margaret Lin and Aidan Arasasingham, Timeline of Vessel Strikes and Related Actions

FEATURED IMAGE: WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 09: U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump and Finland President Alexander Stubb meet in the Oval Office at the White House on October 09, 2025 in Washington, DC. Stubb and Trump met to discuss bilateral trade, defense policy and the war in Ukraine. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

justsecurity.org · Michael Schmitt

2. White House Defends Hegseth Over Strike on Alleged Drug Boat That Killed Survivors

Summary:

The White House defends SECDEF/SECWAR Pete Hegseth, asserting Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley lawfully directed two lethal strikes on a suspected drug boat under authority Hegseth granted, including a second strike that killed two survivors. POTUS publicly backs Hegseth’s denial that he ordered “kill them all,” yet Congress has launched bipartisan oversight into the orders, rules of engagement, and legality of the operation. Former and current lawmakers and legal experts question whether the strikes violate law of war principles and human rights norms. Hegseth’s rhetoric and removal of senior military lawyers heighten concern over politicized, permissive targeting.

Comment: The question is will the blame fall to ADM Bradley? I have not found any analysis that defends the alleged actions - most analyses start with the caveat "If the reporting is accurate then..." and they reach a conclusion that the alleged strikes killing survivors was not legal. If they are not war crimes because we have no declaration of war or an authorization for the use of military force, some analysis indicates that they are extrajudicial killings and thus illegal actions. Political/partisanship aside, I just do not find any credible analysis that is in line with the White House statements.

White House Defends Hegseth Over Strike on Alleged Drug Boat That Killed Survivors

WSJ

Press secretary says admiral who ordered second strike, which killed survivors of initial attack, was acting under Pentagon chief’s authority

By Michael R. Gordon

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Updated Dec. 1, 2025 8:58 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/white-house-says-second-strike-on-alleged-drug-boat-was-legal-951a19d6?mod=hp_lead_pos1

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

• The White House stated that the U.S. military conducted two strikes on an alleged drug boat in September, raising questions about an operation that included the killing of two survivors
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley to conduct the strikes, with Bradley directing the engagement, the White House said.
• Lawmakers from both parties expressed concern over the attack, with Congress probing the episode and questioning the legality of the strikes.

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.

• The White House stated that the U.S. military conducted two strikes on an alleged drug boat in September, raising questions about an operation that included the killing of two survivors

WASHINGTON—The White House said Monday that the U.S. military conducted two strikes on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September, deepening questions about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s role in an operation that led to the killing of two survivors.

Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command, was acting legally under authority to use lethal force granted by Hegseth in conducting the attacks on the boat, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

The White House defense of Hegseth followed a report Friday in the Washington Post that he gave a spoken order to “kill them all” aboard the vessel. The first strike killed all but two of the boat’s 11 occupants before Bradley ordered a second missile strike, which killed the men, according to the Post.

A Defense Department official on Monday provided a similar account to The Wall Street Journal and said Hegseth was the “target engagement authority,” the key figure who authorized the strike.

President Trump said Sunday that Hegseth told him that he didn’t issue an order to kill all the people on board.

“Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” Trump told reporters during a flight to Washington from Florida. “And I believe him.” But Trump later added “I wouldn’t have wanted that” in response to questions about whether he favored targeting survivors.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt jim lo scalzo/epa/shutterstock

On Monday evening, Hegseth wrote a social-media post that said that the Sept. 2 attacks were Bradley’s decisions.

“Let’s make one thing crystal clear: Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support,” Hegseth wrote. “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made—on the September 2 mission and all others since.”

Leavitt said in a statement read to reporters at the White House that Bradley had directed the attacks: “On Sept. 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” she said. “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed, and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”

Bradley didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A day after the strike, Hegseth said that he had monitored it as it occurred and expressed no misgivings on how it had been carried out.

“I watched the strike live,” he said in a Sept. 3 appearance on “Fox & Friends,” according to a transcript of the broadcast. “We knew exactly who it was, exactly what they were doing, exactly where they were going, what they were involved in.”

Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser to the State Department during the Obama administration and first Trump administration, said an order to give no quarter to the targets of an attack would violate Defense Department rules on use of force. The Pentagon’s law of war manual also bars attacks on shipwrecks where alleged combatants are unable to fight, Finucane said.

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Congress was probing the episode and Bradley was expected this week to brief the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House armed services committees in a classified session.

Admiral Frank M. Bradley Mariam Zuhaib/AP

“We want to know what happened, what are the orders, what are the rules of engagement, how does this fit with the legality, and we want to go up the chain of command,” Smith said. “Secretary Hegseth made a big point of saying he was running these operations, so ultimately he’s the one who ought to come in and explain it to us.”

Lawmakers from both parties expressed concern over the attack. “If there is a second strike and everything, that seems way over the edge to me,” said Sen. Jim Justice (R., W.Va.). “I don’t see how that is acceptable, to tell you the truth.”

Sen. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Armed Services Committee, said Monday night that he is planning “vigorous oversight” of those allegations.

“Secretary Hegseth loves to look tough,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said in a speech on the Senate floor Monday. “He loves to boast about the lethality of our forces. He wants to be taken seriously, but yesterday he posted a ridiculous tweet of a cartoon turtle firing on alleged drug traffickers—a sick parody of a well-known children’s book.”

Even before Hegseth’s role in the September attack became public, there was debate about the legality of the boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, which have killed more than 80 people.

Trinidad and Tobago’s government was quick to support the U.S. as President Trump increased pressure on Venezuela. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday reports on how this island nation came to play a significant role in the U.S.’s Caribbean campaign. Photo Illustration: Rachel Rogers

The White House has said that it is targeting “narco-terrorists” and that military force is lawful under Trump’s authority as commander in chief. Some lawmakers and former military legal officers say that the strikes are illegal because the targets are civilians who are smuggling drugs internationally for profit—not an enemy group seeking to attack the U.S.

Pentagon representatives didn’t respond Monday to requests for comment.

Hegseth responded Sunday to criticism of the strikes in a social-media message in which he showed the cartoon character Franklin the Turtle blasting boats operated by “Narco Terrorists.” The post was labeled “For your Christmas wish list…”

The debate over the strikes is the latest controversy to engulf Hegseth, who in February fired the top lawyers for the military services saying they were not “well suited” and could be potential “roadblocks” to orders “given by a commander in chief.” Critics said the action would remove lawyers experienced in applying the law of war whose role was to provide independent legal advice on the use of force on the battlefield.

Hegseth stirred more debate in September when he summoned top military commanders to a Marine base at Quantico, Va., for a speech in which he argued that the military should not be bound by “politically correct” rules of engagement.

“We’re training warriors, not defenders,” he said. “We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country.”

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com, Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com and Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 2, 2025, print edition as 'Second Strike on Boat Draws Deeper Scrutiny of Pentagon'.

WSJ

3. Opinion | Shooting the Wounded on Drug Boats?

Summary:

WSJ editorial board urges serious congressional inquiry into allegations that SECDEF/SECWAR Pete Hegseth ordered a no-survivors second strike on a Caribbean drug boat, stressing that killing defenseless shipwrecked survivors would violate U.S. and international law, erode public support for presidential war powers, and demands Hegseth testify under oath before Congress.

Comment: There is only one thing to do in this situation and that is to be transparent/

We also need to consider how our adversaries will exploit this.

Opinion | Shooting the Wounded on Drug Boats?

Congress is right to seek the truth about the alleged Hegseth missile order.

wsj.com

The Editorial Board

Updated Dec. 1, 2025 6:52 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/drug-boat-strike-pete-hegseth-pentagon-donald-trump-congress-9ef5426b

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth orlando barria/epa/Shutterstock

Congress is mostly a media circus these days, so credit the members who take their duties seriously. Lawmakers are doing a public service by trying to get to the truth on whether the Trump Administration killed defenseless survivors of a drug-boat strike.

The controversy involves a Washington Post report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered that no one survive a Sept. 2 missile strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. The story cites unidentified sources claiming that the U.S. military, on Mr. Hegseth’s orders, conducted a second strike to finish off survivors clinging to the destroyed boat.

Mr. Hegseth called the story “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” and said U.S. actions have been “in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”

President Trump added Sunday that the Secretary “said he did not say that, and I believe him, 100%.” Mr. Trump added that he’ll “look into it, but no, I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike.”

The Pentagon is certainly full of people who might leak a derogatory story because they’d like to see Mr. Hegseth fired. The U.S. campaign against drug boats has also riled civil libertarians and progressives who want to constrain the President’s ability to conduct military action.

But the charge of deliberately killing the defenseless is serious enough to warrant a close look from Congress. That includes Mr. Hegseth giving an account under oath. The Administration so far seems to think it can ride out the story with ritual denunciations of the media.

If Mr. Hegseth is right, then the factual record will support him. There are layers of bureaucracy between the Secretary of Defense and the business end of a missile. You can bet senior military officers bought insurance on their own careers by recording the advice they gave and the directions they received.

Our view is that the Commander in Chief deserves legal latitude as part of his constitutional war powers. But that doesn’t extend to shooting the wounded in violation of U.S. and international rules of war. The Pentagon’s own law of war manual prohibits “hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors.” Such excesses will also turn the public against allowing a President the power he may someday need to defend the country’s interests quickly.

The Hegseth story has additional currency because the Administration isn’t explaining its aims in the Caribbean with either voters or Congress. Sens. Roger Wicker and Jack Reed of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have been writing to the Pentagon asking for more details on the legal rationale for its drug-boat strikes. They seem to get mostly a stonewall.

That’s all the more reason for Congress to learn the truth about the Hegseth story, and some are ready to do so. Reps. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) and Adam Smith (D., Wash.), the top members on the House Armed Services Committee promised in a statement over the weekend “bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.” The Senate Armed Services Committee also promised an inquiry.

The drug-boat war is presenting questions of presidential power and America’s role in the world that will continue long after President Trump leaves Washington, and good for lawmakers who appreciate the stakes.

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Donald Trump ratchets up the pressure on Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to resign and effectively closes Venezuelan airspace. Plus, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denies giving an order to fire a second missile to kill survivors of an initial attack on a boat supposedly carrying drugs.

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Appeared in the December 2, 2025, print edition as 'Shooting the Wounded on Drug Boats?'.

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4. Trump’s Push to End the Ukraine War Is Sowing Fresh Fear About NATO’s Future

Summary:

POTUS’s Ukraine peace push is unsettling NATO by signaling Washington’s priority is ending the war quickly, not strengthening long-term deterrence. Envoy Steve Witkoff’s Moscow shuttle diplomacy and Secretary Rubio’s absence from the NATO ministerial deepen doubts about U.S. commitment. The leaked 28-point plan appears to reward Russian aggression, weaken Ukrainian sovereignty, and cast the United States as “mediator,” not core ally. European leaders fear NATO’s cohesion, credibility, and defense spending consensus will erode, creating openings for future Russian probes against the Baltics or Suwalki Gap. The core strategic question is whether U.S. security priorities still align with Europe’s survival.

Comment: Our "silk web" of alliances throughout Eurasia from NATO to our 5 treaty allies in the Asia-indo-Pacific (as well as other friends and partners) are critical to US national security, our ability to defend the homeland forward, and to project power to protect, sustain, and advance US national interests. We need to consider the second and third order effects on all our alliances if we make a decision that causes a weakening (or worse) of NATO. We have to ensure that short term gratification does not create long term consequences.

Trump’s Push to End the Ukraine War Is Sowing Fresh Fear About NATO’s Future

WSJ

Washington’s latest peace efforts have jolted the trans-Atlantic alliance

By Bertrand Benoit

Follow and David Luhnow

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Dec. 1, 2025 8:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/trump-russia-ukraine-nato-future-7fb3e220?mod=hp_lead_pos8

White House special envoy Steve Witkoff during a visit to the Kremlin in April. Kristina Kormilitsyna/Associated Press

• A U.S. envoy is in Moscow for peace talks on the Ukraine war, while the Secretary of State is skipping a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, raising European doubts about U.S. commitment to the alliance.
• A leaked U.S. peace plan for Ukraine suggests Russia as a clear winner, forcing Kyiv to cede land and weakening its protection guarantees, causing alarm in Europe.
• European leaders are concerned the U.S. plan could divide NATO by offering Russia amnesty for its invasion and reintegration into the global economy.

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.

• A U.S. envoy is in Moscow for peace talks on the Ukraine war, while the Secretary of State is skipping a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, raising European doubts about U.S. commitment to the alliance.

BERLIN—This week will bring a split screen that will reinforce growing doubts in Europe about the American commitment to the alliance that has served as the bedrock of Western unity since the end of World War II.

On one side, White House special envoy Steve Witkoff will be in Moscow for the latest round of peace talks with the Kremlin over the Ukraine war. Witkoff, who has yet to visit Ukraine, is making his sixth trip to Moscow this year.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be skipping a biannual gathering of NATO foreign ministers and sending a deputy in his place. The last time the U.S.’s. top diplomat didn’t show up at the event was 1999, when Washington’s focus was on Middle East peace, a former NATO spokeswoman said.

His absence will be felt acutely, coming as it does in the middle of peace talks over Ukraine that have prompted many European leaders to question whether Washington’s priorities are still aligned with those of Europe.

A leaked peace plan and transcripts of a call between Witkoff and a top Kremlin foreign-policy aide have left many with the impression that the Trump administration is more interested in improving ties and economic cooperation with Russia than defending the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Two aspects of the 28-point peace plan, in particular, landed like bombshells in Europe’s defense and foreign-policy establishment. First, the plan treated Russia as a clear winner and Ukraine as the loser, forcing Kyiv to give up strategic land it hasn’t yet lost, shrink its military and leave it without an ironclad guarantee of protection from either the U.S. or European allies should Russia rearm and come back for more.

Second, it described the U.S. as a mediator between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, suggesting America no longer saw itself as a member of the alliance it has long dominated and which has guaranteed much of Europe’s security since World War II.

“It is a Versailles treaty, except one that punishes the victim and rewards the aggressor,” said Carlo Masala, professor of international politics at the Bundeswehr University Munich, referring to the treaty that ended World War I. “And I think it reflects the positions of a certain faction in the U.S. government.”

Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner met with Ukrainian officials in Florida Sunday to discuss a peace plan. chandan khanna/AFP/Getty Images

The terms of a possible peace are still being hammered out, and the Europeans have had some success pushing back. Witkoff will be presenting amended terms of the peace plan to Russian President Vladimir Putin this week. Some European diplomats also recognize that the Trump administration’s biggest goal is simply to end the fighting.

But skepticism in Europe has deepened as more information has emerged about how the U.S. plan was drafted—including a leaked call in which Witkoff appeared to be coaching Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign-policy adviser, on what Putin should say to Trump, according to a transcript published by Bloomberg News.

“That’s the dream scenario for Russia. Since the Soviet Union, its goal has been to get a wedge between the U.S. and Europe,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges. “I think the reason Trump disregards Europe is because he sees Europe as being inconsequential.”

The White House hasn’t disputed the veracity of the report of the leaked call, and has defended Witkoff. Spokesperson Anna Kelly told the Journal last week that the Trump administration “has gathered input from both the Ukrainians and Russians to formulate a peace deal that can stop the killing and bring this war to a close.”

Polish Premier Donald Tusk called the draft peace plan “unacceptable.” Former Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said it was a pity that NATO partners needed to learn about details of peace plans involving Ukraine from media reports. “This shows that as a political entity NATO has not been working properly,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday and later spoke to President Trump, underscoring the importance of security guarantees for Ukraine, Macron’s office said.

If it weren’t for the Europeans, a French official said earlier in the day, Putin and Trump would have reached an agreement a long time ago. Europe, the official said, finds itself alone because the Americans are disengaging with the region, meaning it must rely more on itself.

The Americans and Europeans are coming at the peace process from two different angles, said Emily Ferris, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank specialized in defense and military affairs.

Ukrainian servicemen firing toward Russian troops near the front-line town of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine. Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters

“Europe sees Russia rearming and is worried about the next war,” she said. “The Americans are thinking much more short-term—let’s get this process over the line—cease-fire deal, get Ukraine back on its feet and cobble together some sort of cold peace for another year or two.”

The difference, she added, can be explained by Europeans’ proximity to the battlefield and the feeling they might be next, whereas the Americans are more worried about China as a long-term threat and Trump badly wants to conclude another peace deal. Europe is also being subjected to a campaign of hostile tactics from Russia, including cyberattacks, drone incursions and incidents involving the cutting of undersea internet cables.

Most European political and military leaders agree that Putin’s ambition is to rebuild Russia’s imperial reach, especially in Eastern Europe and Baltic states that used to form part of the Soviet Union. Standing in his way is NATO and its mutual defense clause, which states that an attack on one is an attack on all members, including a nuclear-armed U.S.

Putin knows he can’t defeat NATO in a head-on fight, especially given how badly the war in Ukraine has gone for Russian forces. His only hope is to defeat it politically by undermining its cohesiveness, which he tries to do all the time, said Ed Arnold, a former British army infantry officer who specializes in European security analysis for the RUSI think tank.

As Russian intrusions into allied airspace ramp up, NATO is being forced to confront its defense readiness. We analyze the bloc’s strategic options. Illustration: Ksenia Shaikhutdinova

The U.S.’s latest peace plan would go a long way toward dividing NATO, by proposing what would amount to an amnesty for Russia for the invasion, allowing it to re-enter the G-8 club of rich countries and pursue joint economic development plans with the U.S. in areas like the Arctic.

“That would create huge divisions within the trans-Atlantic partnership,” Arnold said. “Politically, Russia is on the cusp of winning.”

Masala, the German academic, said such moves to reintegrate Russia into the global economy would make it harder for European politicians to persuade voters to back higher defense spending.

Masala has gained recent notoriety for laying out how Russia might go about testing NATO to ultimately cause it to unravel. His booklet, “If Russia Wins,” has been making the rounds in European capitals and helps explain Europe’s anxiety about NATO and the U.S. administration.

The book describes a scenario in which Russia, having forced Ukraine’s capitulation, goes on to rearm and, in early 2028, sends in armed commandos to seize the town of Narva and the island of Hiiumaa in Estonia, arguing its majority Russian-speaking population needs protection.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gavriil grigorov/Press Pool/AFP/Getty Images

In the book, NATO allies don’t know how to act. Ultimately, the U.S. president decides he doesn’t want to risk a global war over a small town no one has heard of. His position is backed by a far-right government in France that has been elected by then, and Russia-friendly governments in Hungary and Slovakia.

In Masala’s scenario, NATO’s failure to act over such a small incursion has big consequences. NATO is built on decades of trust, so it would only take one time when it fails to act for everyone to question whether the alliance really works, and what it would take for the U.S., for instance, to rally to the side of a small Baltic country like Estonia.

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A fractured NATO would then give Russia the ability to try to retake the Baltics, which used to belong to the Soviet Union, with more manageable military risks. Would Poland or Germany, both of which lack nuclear weapons, stand in the way?

RUSI’s Arnold says the Masala scenario is plausible. Another possible move: Russian forces could try to narrow the so-called Suwalki Gap, a small stretch of land that links NATO members Lithuania and Poland that’s sandwiched between Russian and Belarusian territory.

“If Russian forces took a few kilometers of that land, would a president like Trump risk all-out war?” If he didn’t, said Arnold, the entire premise behind NATO would be at risk of collapse.

Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com and David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 2, 2025, print edition as 'Questions About NATO’s Future Roil Europe'.

WSJ

5. Exclusive | Chinese Rare-Earth Dealers Find Ways to Dodge Beijing’s Export Restrictions

Summary:

Chinese rare-earth magnet firms are legally circumventing Beijing’s new export controls by redesigning magnet chemistries to avoid restricted heavy rare earths and by embedding magnets in motors and other assemblies sold abroad. These workarounds keep supplies flowing to Western buyers, albeit with some performance tradeoffs and higher costs. Beijing is incrementally tightening controls, adding holmium to the restricted list while delaying full enforcement after a deal with Washington. The episode underscores China’s enduring chokehold on rare earths, the fragility of Western defense and industrial supply chains, and the urgency of accelerated diversification and onshoring to reduce strategic vulnerability.

Comment: How can we break China's enduring chokehold on rare earths?

Exclusive | Chinese Rare-Earth Dealers Find Ways to Dodge Beijing’s Export Restrictions

WSJ

Chinese companies are experimenting with workarounds aimed at keeping magnet sales to Western buyers humming

By Jon Emont

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Dec. 1, 2025 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinese-rare-earth-dealers-find-ways-to-dodge-beijings-export-restrictions-0a96002a

China set up a new export-licensing regime earlier this year, choking off the supply of rare earths. Tingshu Wang/Reuters

• Chinese rare-earth magnet companies are modifying magnet formulas and embedding magnets in motors to bypass export restrictions.
• Companies are developing magnets without restricted heavy rare-earth elements like dysprosium and terbium, which require export licenses.
• China added holmium to its list of restricted materials in October, but delayed enforcement for one year after a U.S. agreement.

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.

• Chinese rare-earth magnet companies are modifying magnet formulas and embedding magnets in motors to bypass export restrictions.

Chinese rare-earth magnet companies are finding workarounds to their government’s onerous export restrictions, as they seek to keep sales flowing to Western buyers without falling afoul of Chinese authorities.

The companies are tweaking magnet formulas to avoid using certain restricted rare-earth elements and devising other strategies to get powerful magnets out of the country, like embedding them in motors, according to employees of several large Chinese magnet companies and Western firms that buy from them.

The strategies—which are legal—don’t work perfectly and the new magnets sometimes behave differently than traditional ones. But Chinese companies have huge and growing magnet-making capacity, and say they are determined to find legal ways to maintain exports.

The drive is the latest twist in a long-running battle between China and the U.S. over rare earths. China dominates the global supply of rare earths and the magnets they are made of. They are crucial to making everything from cars to wind turbines and jet fighters.

Earlier this year, as Beijing traded blows with the Trump administration over U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, Chinese authorities set up a new export-licensing regime, choking off the supply of rare earths and inflicting pain on Western businesses. As part of an October deal with the U.S., China agreed to postpone certain impending restrictions, although Western businesses worry the supply will nonetheless be insufficient.

That has motivated Chinese rare-earth companies to find ways to ease the flow.

One approach has been to use technical innovations. Certain powerful types of rare-earth magnets—often used for car engines, robotics and industrial machinery—typically use small quantities of dysprosium and terbium, two “heavy” rare-earth elements, to allow magnets to function at high temperatures. Chinese rules introduced in April mean that magnets with even small amounts of these materials require export licenses. It often takes weeks or months to gain approval—if it comes at all, according to rare-earth companies and traders.

Rare earths are crucial in the manufacture of jet fighters. Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters

That has spurred a race by Chinese magnet companies to make better magnets without heavy rare earths. They are making such magnets more heat-resistant by, for instance, grinding the magnet material until it is extremely fine. That requires specialized machinery and adds significant costs. While the development of magnets that are free of heavy rare earths has gone on for years, the export restrictions have prompted a new push.

The resulting magnets are designed to operate at temperatures up to around 300 degrees Fahrenheit, sufficient for use in many types of home appliances. Carmakers, aircraft manufacturers and others will often require magnets with even greater heat tolerance.

Chinese companies marketing magnets free of the regulated heavy rare earths include Yonjumag, Anhui Hanhai New Material, Zhaobao Magnet and X-Mag. X-Mag has posted detailed charts showing its progress in developing new heat-resistant magnets that don’t require export licenses.

“As global supply chains for heavy rare earth elements tighten,” X-Mag said in a social-media post in October, developing magnet grades free of restricted heavy rare earths “has become increasingly critical.”

Zhaobao Magnet said on LinkedIn in October that, in response to export-control regulations, the company was “continuously developing new high-performance magnet series free of restricted elements.”

After China announced its initial export controls in April, Yonjumag published a brochure for foreign buyers listing “counter measures,” including selling magnets that are free of restricted heavy rare earths. It said it aims to develop even higher-grade magnets free of the restricted elements by the end of the year.

Many Western companies are buying such magnets, traders say, despite concerns that they might not always be as effective as their Chinese makers claim.

“Not being able to use [restricted heavy rare earths] does make the high-temperature performance slightly weaker, but for most customers, having a workable magnet is far better than having none,” Dylan Kui, a Chinese magnet company marketer, wrote on LinkedIn in October under a post detailing his company’s magnet performance at different temperatures.

In a sign of the political sensitivity surrounding rare earths, Bade Wu, whose LinkedIn profile lists him as general manager of a Chinese magnet manufacturer, commented under that post that Kui should be careful about providing such technical information, saying it could pose “regulatory risks.” Kui responded that he was sharing standard technical information, not revealing technological secrets.

Chinese companies are finding other workarounds. For instance, while the export of rare-earth magnets is restricted in China, the applications they are used in, such as motors, aren’t. So Chinese companies are now working with local parts manufacturers to deliver to Western clients motors and other parts that have magnets already embedded in them.

Given the political sensitivity surrounding rare earths, Chinese companies are careful to respect the law. In recent months, Beijing has announced crackdowns on smuggling of critical minerals like rare earths. Some Chinese magnet makers have appointed compliance officers to ensure their exports are hewing to the law.

Chinese regulators have already taken steps to close loopholes. After new rare-earth export controls were announced in April, some Chinese magnet makers began tinkering with using the rare-earth element holmium in their magnet formulas to increase heat resistance, replacing terbium and dysprosium, which were restricted under the new rules.

In October, China added holmium to the list of restricted materials, putting an end to the gambit. After an agreement that month between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to ease rare-earth exports, China delayed enforcement of holmium export controls by one year, potentially reviving the loophole for a time period.

While the workarounds offer potential short-term solutions, traders and rare-earth companies warn that Beijing could exploit China’s chokehold over rare earths again in the future for geopolitical gain. That could result in even tighter export controls and the closing of loopholes.

Chinese companies say foreign buyers are becoming frustrated and are developing alternative rare-earth sources outside of China.

“When those sources are mature and viable, we’re done with you,” a foreign buyer told an employee of one Chinese magnet company, according to that employee.

Write to Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

WSJ

6. Opinion | Can the U.S. Trust AI With National Security?

Summary:

The US is racing to deploy powerful AI in national security without matching investment in alignment, leaving systems vulnerable to adversarial manipulation, sleeper agents, and loss of control. China is funding “safe, reliable, controllable” AI at scale, treating alignment as a capability accelerator. They urge military-grade alignment as a core requirement in DoD AI contracts, major federal funding for neglected alignment research, and secure federal AI test zones. Strategic message: whoever solves alignment first will shape future military power; the window to build trustworthy AI before full autonomy and infrastructure integration is closing fast.

Comment: We have to get this right the first time and first and fast. 

Opinion | Can the U.S. Trust AI With National Security?

WSJ

Nowhere are the stakes higher for making sure the systems stay aligned with their creators’ purposes.

By Judd Rosenblatt and Cameron Berg

Dec. 1, 2025 4:31 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/can-the-u-s-trust-ai-with-national-security-b481ac43

Richard Mia

When nuclear strategist Herman Kahn published “Thinking About the Unthinkable” in 1962, it compelled Americans to confront the possibility of nuclear war and civilizational collapse. Military and political leaders initially dismissed his work as alarmist. But Kahn’s core insight was crucial and simple: Hoping that things won’t get completely out of control isn’t a plan.

We face a similar inflection point with artificial intelligence. We’re racing toward systems with capabilities that seemed like science fiction a year ago. The Pentagon is negotiating contracts with AI labs, each with ceilings up to $200 million, to integrate AI into national security. But we’re buying raw AI firepower without any comparable investment in making these systems steerable and secure.

Recent research has demonstrated that AI models can harbor sleeper agents that can be triggered under specific conditions without detection. The same adversaries that compromised U.S. telecommunications through Salt Typhoon and targeted critical infrastructure through Volt Typhoon can exploit vulnerabilities in military AI systems. We know that Chinese intelligence has penetrated frontier AI labs: In 2024, a former Google engineer was indicted on charges that he stole AI trade secrets while secretly working for Beijing. (He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is scheduled to begin next month.)

The way to address this is with AI alignment research—ensuring that systems’ objectives and reasoning stay stable, predictable and faithful to their intended mission across new situations, long time horizons and adversarial pressures. The administration’s newly announced Genesis Mission at the Department of Energy launches a coordinated national effort to accelerate AI-enabled scientific discovery. These are appropriate investments in cutting-edge capability, but a failure to invest comparably in alignment can allow adversaries to compromise American AI capabilities.

While American defense procurement treats alignment as an afterthought, China is moving systematically. In January, Beijing launched an $8.2 billion National AI Industry Investment Fund. Since the 2017 New Generation AI Development Plan, Chinese policy has emphasized building AI that is “safe, reliable and controllable.” Chinese military strategists stress the importance of systems that remain under operational command. Beijing grasps what many American policymakers miss: Alignment research accelerates AI capabilities. Whoever solves these technical problems builds more capable systems and wins the race.

Many AI policy discussions instinctively cast alignment as compliance overhead that slows development. But historically, such constraints have often unlocked capabilities. The F-16 became the most successful fighter in history not despite its strict design constraints, but because of them. The same principle applies to AI. Giving models structured frameworks for how they think produces dramatic capability improvements, and techniques designed to make AI more aligned have been adopted by most major labs.

Yet most promising alignment directions remain unexplored. The systems that defense planners need for extended autonomous operations require alignment properties we’ve barely begun to develop: stable long-term objectives, interpretable reasoning across complex decision chains, verified shutdown protocols that can’t be circumvented, and principled resistance to adversarial manipulation. Military-grade reliability demands military-grade commitment to alignment research.

Unlike cybersecurity, where we’re locked in a cycle of patching vulnerabilities after adversaries exploit them, AI alignment offers a chance to build security from the ground up. We can establish verified shutdown protocols, interpretable reasoning systems, and resistance to adversarial manipulation before these systems are deployed.

But this chance won’t last forever. Frontier lab leaders expect systems that can match human experts across all cognitive domains within 12 to 18 months. Once models can autonomously design successor models, and once powerful AI systems are embedded in critical infrastructure and military operations, we’ll face the same reactive posture that has plagued cybersecurity for decades.

Three steps would position America to win:

First, launch broad-scale programs that target neglected alignment research. Private labs optimize for commercial performance, which means critical security challenges go unsolved. These problems lack commercial importance, but they determine whether AI systems can be trusted with national-security operations. The government must fund this research directly, just as it has historically funded cryptography, semiconductor security and other dual-use technologies for which market incentives misalign with defense needs.

Second, require military-grade alignment research and development in major Defense Department AI contracts. The director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has already set a goal to achieve military-grade AI, and the Pentagon is already spending hundreds of millions on frontier capabilities. Those contracts should mandate that computing resources go toward interpretability, verified shutdown protocols, the elimination of sleeper agents and long-term objective stability. This approach would motivate private-sector research while ensuring that the systems we deploy meet defense-grade security standards.

Third, build special zones for AI research on federal land with alignment requirements built in from the start.

The Pentagon already demands the best equipment, training and strategic doctrine. It should demand the same from AI systems: reliably steerable toward American strategic objectives across time horizons that matter.

America built the atomic bomb when the physics seemed impossible. We reached the moon when the engineering seemed fantastical. We created the internet when networked computing seemed impractical.

Americans have always risen to civilizational challenges when we’ve seen them clearly and moved with conviction. The challenge now is to build AI systems we can trust with the future. That future is closer than most realize, and the window for shaping it is open. But it won’t stay open forever.

Mr. Rosenblatt is CEO and Mr. Berg a research director of AE Studio.

America is struggling to build ships, missiles and drones, even as war rages in eastern Europe and tensions rise in Asia. Kate Odell speaks with analyst Seth Jones about his new book “The American Edge,” and how the U.S. can still meet the world's threats.

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 2, 2025, print edition as 'Can the U.S. Trust AI With National Security?'.

WSJ

7. White House says admiral approved second deadly boat strike

Summary:

The White House confirmed a second September strike killed wounded survivors from an alleged drug boat, while shifting responsibility onto SOCOM Commander Adm. Frank Bradley, saying he acted “within his authority and the law.” Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt framed the operation as part of POTUS’s mandate to kill “narco-terrorists” heading toward the United States, implicitly insulating SECDEF/SECWAR Pete Hegseth from direct targeting decisions. Hegseth publicly backed Bradley’s “combat decisions.” POTUS signaled distance, saying he “wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike and believed Hegseth’s denial. Bipartisan lawmakers have pledged investigations, warning the incident and wider campaign could involve unlawful killings or war crimes.

Comment: Civilian control of the military. Just saying. Although it is saying the strike was legal, when that is no longer tenable as a defense will White House then say that Admiral Bradley went rogue? This could be a major inflection point for civil-military relations.

If I were aadvising the Dark Quad/CRInK I would recomend looking for wars to exploit what may become a major partisan/politcal distraction in the US. So we need to consider ways to preven them from doing so. Again, transparency is key to diffusing this.

White House says admiral approved second deadly boat strike

Karoline Leavitt defended the killings — and seemed to deflect any blame away from Pete Hegseth.

By Paul McLeary12/01/2025 04:06 PM ESTUpdated: 12/01/2025 07:57 PM EST

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/01/white-house-second-boat-strike-00671488

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks after a meeting with Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on Nov. 26. | Ricardo Hernadez/AP

The White House on Monday confirmed a second strike in September had killed wounded civilians after the first effort failed, and put responsibility largely on the naval commander leading the mission.

Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said U.S. Special Operations Command head Adm. Frank Bradley was “within his authority and the law” in conducting the second strike on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean, after the force of the first strike tossed them from the boat.

Her comments appeared to try and defend Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth, who came under fire over the weekend after The Washington Post reported that he authorized an elite military unit to kill everyone in the alleged drug boat. The case has heightened scrutiny from lawmakers and others on the deadly U.S. campaign to kill drug traffickers in the Caribbean.

The Post reported that Hegseth gave a verbal order to kill everyone after surveillance footage showed two men clinging to the wreckage. Bradley, as head of Special Operations Command, ordered the second strike.

But the White House distanced the Pentagon chief from the direct attacks. Hegseth “authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” Leavitt said. “The president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists again are trafficking illegal drugs towards the United States, he has the authority to kill them. That is what this administration is doing.”

The incident, which killed 11 people, was an early salvo in the Trump administration’s military action against what it has dubbed “narco-terrorists” who are smuggling drugs from Venezuela to the U.S. Dozens of unidentified people have been killed in the strikes at sea in what the Trump administration insists are legal attacks covered under international law.

Later on Monday, Hegseth said Bradley made the “combat decisions” during the lethal attacks.

“Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support,” Hegseth wrote on social media. “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.”

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have pledged to investigate the report, which some warn could amount to war crimes.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hegseth has given wide latitude to commanders in various hot spots to conduct strikes as they see fit. That authority has been used extensively in the Middle East against militant groups supported by Iran, and now apparently in the Caribbean. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the European Command head, has also used the authority to greenlight Ukrainian strikes on Russian forces that use sophisticated American weaponry.

President Donald Trump seemed initially unaware of the incident, and appeared to distance himself from it.

Asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One on Sunday if a second strike against survivors would be illegal, Trump said he didn’t know what happened. “I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike,” he said.

The initial strike on the boat “was fine,” he added, “and if there were two people around — but [Hegseth] said that didn’t happen. I have great confidence in him.”

Filed Under: 

• MilitaryCaribbeanPete Hegseth

8. Pete Hegseth is accused of throwing an 'American hero' under the bus as he shifts blame for drug boat strike

Summary:

Daily Mail reports growing anger in the Pentagon and Congress that the White House is shifting blame for the Sept. 2 Caribbean boat strike from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley. Officials say Bradley ordered the second missile strike on two wounded survivors while acting under Hegseth’s “kill everyone” guidance. Hegseth publicly praises Bradley as an “American hero” while effectively placing responsibility on him. Former JAGs call such an order “patently illegal” and stress a duty to disobey. Legal experts warn the killings likely fall outside armed conflict and could constitute murder or war crimes, driving bipartisan investigations.

Pete Hegseth is accused of throwing an 'American hero' under the bus as he shifts blame for drug boat strike

By BRITTANY CHAIN, US SENIOR REPORTER 

Published: 02:06 EST, 2 December 2025 | Updated: 03:07 EST, 2 December 2025

Daily Mail · BRITTANY CHAIN, US SENIOR REPORTER

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15343771/Pete-Hegseth-Mitch-Bradley-Venezuela-drug-boat-strike.html

Pete Hegseth has been accused of throwing an 'American hero' under the bus after the White House identified the military officer responsible for ordering the second strike on a Venezuelan drug boat.

The Secretary of Defense has faced furious backlash and accusations of committing war crimes over missile strikes which were carried out in the Caribbean on September 2.

The initial hit on the drug-smuggling vessel allegedly killed all but two members of the suspected cartel on board, but a second strike reportedly eliminated the duo as they clung to debris in the water.

The White House on Monday identified Admiral Frank Mitchell Bradley as the man who ordered the second strike, sparking fury within the Pentagon as insiders maintain he was acting on direct orders from above.

'This is ''protect Pete bulls**t'',' one military insider told The Washington Post.

Another accused the White House of 'throwing us, the service members, under the bus' with the carefully crafted statement naming Bradley.

The critic said it had 'left it up to interpretation' who was ultimately responsible for the strike in question, sparking a revolt within the Pentagon.

Hegseth mounted an extraordinary defense of Bradley, commander of the United States Special Operations Command, whilst simultaneously appearing to imply that the Naval officer was to blame.

The Secretary of Defense has faced furious backlash and accusations of committing war crimes over strikes which were carried out in the Caribbean on September 2

Hegseth allegedly ordered the second strike with a demand that everyone on board be killed, but he has now shifted responsibility to Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley (pictured) in an X post insisting the official has his '100 percent support'

'Let's make one thing crystal clear: Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support,' Hegseth wrote on X.

'I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.

'America is fortunate to have such men protecting us. When this @DeptOfWar says we have the back of our warriors — we mean it.'

Hegseth's comments led to further fears he was looking to shift responsibility to Bradley for the second strike, which has sparked concerns from lawmakers about whether it breached international law.

International humanitarian law prohibits attacks on incapacitated combatants.

The Defense Department's Law of War Manual states that shipwrecked persons cannot be knowingly attacked and must receive medical care unless they act with hostility or attempt escape.

At the time of the strikes, Bradley was head of Joint Special Operations Command, and now serves as commander of the United States Special Operations Command.

The initial missile strike hit the alleged drug smuggling boat and set it on fire. Commanders watched from a live drone feed as the boat went up in flames, but reportedly noticed two survivors clinging onto the debris in the water.

The initial strike on the drug-smuggling vessel allegedly killed all but two members of the suspected cartel on board, but a second strike reportedly eliminated the duo as they clung to debris in the water

Commanders watched from a live drone feed as the boat went up in flames, but reportedly noticed two survivors clinging onto the debris in the water

Bradley allegedly ordered the second strike in an effort to comply with Hegseth's verbal order to leave no survivors.

He allegedly saw the survivors as targets and was concerned about whether they could alert other traffickers to come and collect the cargo.

In all, 11 people were killed in the strike.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have pledged to look into the circumstances surrounding the strikes.

The waters were muddied further on Monday when White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Hegseth had authorized Bradley to conduct the strikes.

'Secretary Hegseth authorized Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,' she said.

'Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.'

Leavitt said the strike was conducted in 'self defense' to protect US interests, took place in international waters and was in line with the law of armed conflict.

Trump said that he would not have wanted a second strike on the boat and said Hegseth denied giving such an order

'This administration has designated these narco terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations.'

The military has carried out at least 19 strikes against suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coasts of Latin America, killing at least 76 people since September.

On Sunday, Trump backed Hegseth after lawmakers from both parties said they support congressional reviews of US military strikes against the alleged terrorists, citing a published report that Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a September 2 attack.

The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week's Washington Post report was true, and some Republicans were skeptical, but they said attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.

'The order was to kill everybody,' two people with direct knowledge of the operation told the paper.

Trump had Hegseth's back, saying: 'I don't know anything about it. He said he did not say that.'

When he repeated that Hegseth 'didn't do it,' he was then asked if he'd be okay with it if Hegseth had done it.

'He said he didn't do it, so I don't have to make that decision.'

However, Trump did also say the administration 'will look into' the matter and added, 'I wouldn't have wanted that - not a second strike.'

George Washington University law professor Laura Dickinson said most legal experts do not believe the boat strikes qualify as armed conflict, so lethal force would only be allowed as a last resort.

'It would be murder outside of armed conflict,' she said. Even in war, the killing of survivors 'would likely be a war crime.'

At the time of the strikes, Bradley was head of Joint Special Operations Command.

A group of former military lawyers, the JAGs Working Group, called the order 'patently illegal,' saying service members have a duty to disobey it and that anyone who complies should be prosecuted for war crimes.

Despite drawing bipartisan concern and criticism in Congress, the Pentagon has not presented evidence to support the claims that the boats were carrying drugs or were operated by terrorist groups.

If proven that Hegseth ordered the second strike, both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill had agreed Sunday that Hegseth was in deep trouble.

'This rises to the level of a war crime if it's true,' said Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia.

'Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act,' said Ohio Republican Mike Turner.

The latest twist in the saga comes after Trump warned Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to flee alongside his wife or face the consequences as the US loads up on warships and troops in the region.

The United States' presence in the region has only grown more menacing, with at least 11 warships and 15,000 troops deployed, including a unit capable of a land invasion to stop alleged 'narco-terrorists.'

The president even assured Maduro of safe passage for himself, his wife and son if he resigned immediately, The Miami Herald reported.

A source familiar with the call said that Maduro asked Trump for global amnesty, which the president rejected, before asking to keep his control of the Venezuelan armed forces in exchange for free elections.

Trump also said no to that idea before Maduro rejected the idea of resigning.

The president confirmed Sunday that the talks had occurred amid soaring tensions between the two countries.

'I wouldn't say it went well or badly. It was a phone call,' Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

He has flagged the possibility of US military intervention in Venezuela. On Saturday, he said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered 'closed in its entirety,' but gave no further details.

The Trump administration has been weighing options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro's role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. Maduro has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade.

According to Reuters, Trump is weighing whether to attempt to overthrow Maduro, and has authorized covert CIA operations in the country.

Daily Mail · BRITTANY CHAIN, US SENIOR REPORTER

9. USAF Fighter Jets’ New Strategy on Isolated Island

Summary:

The US Air Force is using Diego Garcia to showcase Agile Combat Employment, moving F-15E fighters from Kadena to a remote, survivable hub that can reach contested Western Pacific battle spaces with tanker support. The island’s heavy bomber and naval infrastructure underpins global strike options while signaling resilience to China. Politically, London’s stalled Chagos Islands Treaty would return sovereignty to Mauritius while locking in a costly 99-year UK-US lease, prompting backlash at home. Washington avoids the sovereignty fight, benefiting from low-cost access. Chagossian activists press for self-determination, creating friction that adversaries could exploit in a key Indian Ocean node.

Comment: One little island is of complex geostrategic importance. 

USAF Fighter Jets’ New Strategy on Isolated Island

asiasentinel.com · Dec 02, 2025

Signal to PLA

By: Andy Wong Ming Jun

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/usaf-fighter-jets-new-strategy-isolated-island?publication_id=23934&utm

For the first time, the US Air Force is deploying fighter jets to the secretive, remote island military base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, a powerful signal to China about the survivability of US combat airpower in the Asia-Pacific.

The deployment, announced on November 18, is part of the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) doctrine, a program that relies on dispersing aircraft to multiple, smaller locations instead of large, traditional bases to counter potential threats by aggressors seeking to deny strategic space to the US military.

The 7,000 km distance between Japan’s Kadena Air Base on Okinawa and Diego Garcia is significantly farther than those between American Pacific bases like Pearl Harbor or Guam, and with anticipated Chinese-contested battle spaces in the Western Pacific over Japan and the Taiwan Strait. The deployment on short notice, given the F-15E Strike Eagles’ maximum ferry range of about 4,450 km, is a demonstration of the ACE force’s agility, requiring midair refueling over the ocean in a complicated ballet involving tanker aircraft like the KC-135 Stratotanker or KC-46 Pegasus, allowing them to extend their range, transforming them from regional to global assets.

The 336th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, a detachment of six F-15s from Kadena, first flew to Diego Garcia for three months between May and July, coinciding with the island base featuring heavily in both actual combat operations as well as maskirovka tactics against Yemeni Houthis, who have bedeviled Red Sea shipping, and the joint Israeli-US action against Iran which destroyed Tehran’s nuclear capability.

The USAF has adopted ACE as its main operational doctrine for generating and sustaining survivable airpower since August 2022, marking a significant departure from previous thinking which had assumed de facto invulnerability of large, centralized air bases from which American combat airpower could be deployed and projected over vast battlespaces with little to no ground threat.

Diego Garcia, 1,600 km south of India and 3,330 km east of the African coast, is one of the most isolated places on earth. The UK grabbed the island from its then colony Mauritius in 1965, followed by a secret agreement with British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan to allow US use in exchange for selling their newest Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile system in lieu of the canceled Skybolt air-launched cruise missile for the UK’s nuclear deterrent capability at a discounted price.

Since the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, Diego Garca has bristled with parallel 3,700 meter runways, parking aprons for heavy bombers, anchorages for sea-going vessels, a deep-water pier, facilities for the US’s largest naval vessels, aircraft hangars, maintenance buildings and an air terminal, a 1.34 million bbl fuel storage area, and quarters for thousands of sailors and support personnel.

The UK was to hand the island back to Mauritius in return for the US joint-leasing it back from the Chagos islanders last year. But on November 4, the Labour government, led by Sir Keir Starmer, paused passage of the “Chagos Islands Treaty” through Parliament in the face of a fresh House of Lords amendment intended to bind the government into consulting before final ratification the original Chagossians displaced from the island territory.

As Asia Sentinel reported in October last year, the UK government had negotiated to not only hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory but also to pay Mauritius for the trouble. The negotiated lease sum for retaining UK-US joint usage of Diego Garcia, averaging out at £101 million annually for 99 years, triggered political fury within the UK, with the deal described as an “act of national self-harm” potentially playing to China’s advantage in a key geostrategic region.

The political fig leaf provided by the previous Biden administration in the US allegedly tying the Chagos Islands sovereignty dispute resolution to the maintenance of the decades-long UK-US “special relationship” was maintained by President Donald Trump after he regained the US presidency in January 2024. But even Trump must be impressed by the history of US military utilisation of Diego Garcia under circumstances which would not seem out of place in the art of a deal.

From the start, the US displayed an unwillingness to be dragged into any sovereignty dispute between the UK and Mauritius over the Chagos Islands, with the official stance that it was a “bilateral matter” for the UK and Mauritius to resolve themselves so long as US military access to Diego Garcia was unimpeded.

With the now-stalled Chagos Islands Treaty seeing the US continue to only cover operational costs at Diego Garcia for the “joint base” while the UK is to fork out hundreds of millions to Mauritius in leasing fees and further miscellaneous funds, President Trump no doubt feels that there is nothing to be gained from taking a personally punitive stance in reversing his predecessor Biden’s approval for a deal lopsided in American favour for relatively low cost.

Political lobbying on both sides of the Atlantic against the arrangement has been fierce, though much differing in justification. While in the US lobbying opposition against handing over the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia permanently to Mauritian sovereignty has been over concerns about future Chinese interlocution, in the UK it has largely been focused on defending the much-ignored rights and wishes of displaced Chagossians in the entire saga.

A unified force of journalists such as Tessa Clarke at The Chagos Files working alongside the Chagossian diaspora with Bernadette Dugasse have been consistently conducting lobbying and public awareness campaigns to fight for a seat at the negotiation table for what was their once-homeland sacrificed on the altar of great power horse-trading.

With the current Labour government seeing record unpopularity levels and criticisms of fiscal spendthrift particularly in its foreign aid budget, the currently-negotiated leasing fees for Diego Garcia may well prove to be an unaffordable expenditure of political and financial capital for London that can be seized on by opposition voices to undergird their idealism appeal for Chagossian self-determination.

asiasentinel.com · Dec 02, 2025

10. Is China preparing for war in the Taiwan Strait?

Summary: 

China’s leadership is tightening control over the PLA while rapidly expanding naval and missile capabilities, raising concern that Beijing is shaping a force able to move on Taiwan with little warning. Senior generals and admirals are being purged and replaced, possibly to ensure loyalty and warfighting competence. Massive shipbuilding and A2/AD investments could make US and allied intervention near Taiwan very costly, especially while Western munitions stocks are depleted by Ukraine and Middle East conflicts. Yet China remains economically tied to global trade and reliant on Russian support. War is not inevitable, but Xi is clearly buying options and surprise.

Excerpts:

While the official justifications generally involve corruption, the timing and breadth of the removals point to a broader political logic. It is harder to say which: Perhaps the leadership is seeking to consolidate loyalty, tighten command chains, and reduce institutional autonomy within the PLA; or instead it may be that the party leadership is withdrawing peacetime, armchair generals and replacing them with officers it finds more well suitable to fight an actual conflict. So which is it?

...

Meanwhile, another important consideration for Xi is the exhaustion of Western military stockpiles in the context of the conflicts it has engaged in in Ukraine and the Middle East. As Responsible Statecraft recently put it, the “US depleted its missiles in Ukraine, Israel. Now it wants more fast.” After years of large-scale wars and faced with a weakened industrial base, the West’s limited weapon reserves night be seen by China as opening a significant window of opportunity. Indeed, this has been an oft repeated concern by realist thinkers and leaders, chief among them the United States’ current Under Secretary of War for Policy. Elbridge Colby has repeatedly warned that reduced reserves of everything from shells to air defence and cruise missiles could limit Washington’s ability to fight a high-intensity war against an adversary as powerful as China. China likely agrees.

Despite this, there are many deterrents for China to consider. Today, a large-scale conflict in the Pacific would risk China’s economic model, which remains intertwined with global trade and foreign investment. The degree of Russian assistance, in the context of recovering relations with the US and healthy ties with India, remains an open question. Worse, a move against Taiwan would face an untested military with the most difficult type of operation modern warfare has to offer. And it would likely trigger long-term regional counterbalancing in ways Beijing would prefer to avoid for now, knowing that long-term dynamics and development patterns likely favour it over its adversaries. Indeed, by 2040, the difference in state capacity between China, Japan, and the US will likely be significantly larger than it is today.

The likeliest conclusion, then, advises neither alarmism nor complacency. What is clear is that Xi is making sure he holds the military, political, and narrative cards to act with little to no warning – and that, itself, is strategically decisive.

Comment: The Davidson window (2027) is almost upon us.

Is China preparing for war in the Taiwan Strait?

brusselssignal.eu · Rafael Pinto Borges

https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/12/is-china-preparing-for-war-in-the-taiwan-strait/

Something may be afoot in the Far East. As tensions rise in the Taiwan Strait and Beijing launches an unprecedented media campaign against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, of course the question is not whether China maintains an interest in achieving reunification with Formosa—this has been an explicit strategic aim of the People’s Republic since 1949, when, at the end of the country’s Civil War, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek withdrew what was left of his battered forces across the strait. Instead, what has long mattered is whether the political and military developments in Beijing are shifting the likelihood, timing, or shape of a possible conflict. The internal changes unfolding within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may offer in this regard important clues.

Over the past year, Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to have fired a large number of high-ranking generals and admirals, including figures responsible for the nation’s rocket forces, equipment procurement, and theatre-level operations. It is significant that these were not mid-tier officers; several sat at the uppermost levels of China’s military hierarchy. The current purge is exceptional in that it is targeting particularly big fish: He Weidong, China’s second-highest-ranking general was publicly expelled from the Communist Party; the same occurred to Admiral Miao Hua, until recently the People’s Liberation Army top political officer. His eviction marks the first time since the Cultural Revolution that a sitting commander of the Party’s Central Military Commission – China’s supreme military leadership organ – faces such opprobrium.

While the official justifications generally involve corruption, the timing and breadth of the removals point to a broader political logic. It is harder to say which: Perhaps the leadership is seeking to consolidate loyalty, tighten command chains, and reduce institutional autonomy within the PLA; or instead it may be that the party leadership is withdrawing peacetime, armchair generals and replacing them with officers it finds more well suitable to fight an actual conflict. So which is it?

China has spent two decades modernising its forces. Defence spending has risen at a steady annual rate, reaching roughly a quarter-trillion dollars by 2025 and making the People’s Republic the second largest global spender. By numbers alone, the PLA Navy is now the world’s largest, with expanding amphibious lift capacity and three operational aircraft carriers. The most modern of these, the Fujian, entered into service earlier this month, and is only marginally smaller than America’s Ford Class vessels. The country has also begun the construction of its next class of supercarriers, the nuclear-propelled vessels of the Type 004 Class. Everything put together, China commissions 20 to 25 times more military vessels per annum than Britain’s Royal Navy, or 10-15 as many major combatants. According to a declassified intelligence slide from America’s Office of Naval Intelligence from 2023, China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 – two hundred and thirty two – times bigger than that of the United States. The country’s naval expansion is the fastest the world has seen since Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz persuaded Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to build himself a fleet capable of surpassing London’s.

Of course, however, industrial capacity is not the same as military readiness or immediate intention. It is true that China has not fought a major conflict since 1979 in their brief war against Vietnam, leaving large parts of the PLA untested in conditions where improvisation and battlefield initiative matter as much as equipment. The very modernisation that has made the PLA more sophisticated has also made it more organisationally demanding: Joint operations require empowered commanders, agile decision loops, and resilience under stress. The ongoing purges may increase or decrease the fighting capability of the PLA – we’ll only really know if war comes.

China’s vast investments in anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) through powerful air defences and anti-ship assets would probably make it far too costly for the US and Allied navies to operate too close to Formosa, making a successful invasion probable. However, the danger Chinese strategists have to consider is that Taiwan turns out to be only the beginning of a Second Pacific War involving the United States and its powerful network of regional alliances and partnerships, including Japan, South Korea, Australia and even perhaps India and European NATO. For Chinese strategists, therefore, the main layer of complexity revolves around choosing the right moment to make a move. Beijing’s industrial superiority is currently overwhelming, but the country does not yet command a navy capable of seriously challenging the combined resources of the Western bloc in a fight for the Pacific and, therefore, for access to crucial trade lanes and the raw materials crucial to both war fighting and keeping the economy running at home.

For the Chinese, therefore, a crucial factor in taking the decision to go ahead with an invasion of Taiwan would be Russia’s stance. China’s northern neighbour is one of the world’s largest producers of raw materials and could largely supplant those imported by Beijing through sea routes. Without an assurance of Russian solidarity, it would be vastly more difficult – and, indeed, improbable – for the Chinese leadership to take the great risks of a Taiwan operation. The possibility of a Russo-American rapprochement, made greater by the ongoing Ukraine peace talks between Washington and Moscow, could therefore serve as an incentive for China to act before Moscow has the leeway to run a policy that is less reliant on the People’s Republic, and thus less favourable to it. The threat of a marked improvement in Russo-American relations could, thus, motivate an acceleration of China’s plans for Formosa.

Meanwhile, another important consideration for Xi is the exhaustion of Western military stockpiles in the context of the conflicts it has engaged in in Ukraine and the Middle East. As Responsible Statecraft recently put it, the “US depleted its missiles in Ukraine, Israel. Now it wants more fast.” After years of large-scale wars and faced with a weakened industrial base, the West’s limited weapon reserves night be seen by China as opening a significant window of opportunity. Indeed, this has been an oft repeated concern by realist thinkers and leaders, chief among them the United States’ current Under Secretary of War for Policy. Elbridge Colby has repeatedly warned that reduced reserves of everything from shells to air defence and cruise missiles could limit Washington’s ability to fight a high-intensity war against an adversary as powerful as China. China likely agrees.

Despite this, there are many deterrents for China to consider. Today, a large-scale conflict in the Pacific would risk China’s economic model, which remains intertwined with global trade and foreign investment. The degree of Russian assistance, in the context of recovering relations with the US and healthy ties with India, remains an open question. Worse, a move against Taiwan would face an untested military with the most difficult type of operation modern warfare has to offer. And it would likely trigger long-term regional counterbalancing in ways Beijing would prefer to avoid for now, knowing that long-term dynamics and development patterns likely favour it over its adversaries. Indeed, by 2040, the difference in state capacity between China, Japan, and the US will likely be significantly larger than it is today.

The likeliest conclusion, then, advises neither alarmism nor complacency. What is clear is that Xi is making sure he holds the military, political, and narrative cards to act with little to no warning – and that, itself, is strategically decisive.

brusselssignal.eu · Rafael Pinto Borges

11. Special Operations News – Dec 1, 2025

Special Operations News – Dec 1, 2025

December 1, 2025 SOF News Update 0

https://sof.news/update/20251201/

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

Photo / Image: U.S. Army Green Beret assigned to 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) calibrates a Kestrel Ballistics Weapons System Calculator during advance sniper skills training in Sanford, N.C., Oct. 6, 2025. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Edward Randolph)

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it 2 or 3 days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

More on the SF Identity Crisis. Mark Grdovic, a retired Special Forces officer, weighs in on the topic of the Special Forces identity crisis and reviews the many doctrinal publications that have been published by the Department of Defense about Special Forces, special operations, unconventional warfare, and other related topics over the past several decades. This is an interesting and thought provoking read. “Special Forces Identity Crisis; Deja vu all Over Again”, Small Wars Journal, November 24, 2025.

Ranger Course – 75 Years. The Ranger Course was established in 1950 during the Korean War. It coincided with the formation and training of 17 Airborne Ranger companies. Originally a 59-day program, it has changed based on the training needs of the Army throughout the past 3/4’s of a century. Read more in “Ranger Course marks 75 years of leadership development”, U.S. Army, December 1, 2025.

Cyber and SOF. Ben Soltisz examines the role that cyber operations will play in the future of special operations. As the Ukraine conflict has shown, cyber is an important emerging part of warfare. “Chance and Necessity: Evolving the Supporting Role of SOF to Cyber Operations”, Irregular Warfare Initiative, November 21, 2025.

SOF in LSCO. Two U.S. Army officers discuss how special operations forces (SOF) and conventional forces (CF) must work together to synchronize efforts during large-scale combat operations (LSCO). It is paramount that SOF and CF understand Army doctrine and each other’s capabilities and limitations. This is an interesting and educational article on how SOF can support the conventional force. “Special Operations Forces in Large-Scale Combat Operations”, Military Review, November 2025.

Help Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel with spine injuries receive the healthcare options, education, and care they need.

PSYOP Recruiting Ad. The 4th Psychological Operations Group based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has put out another recruiting video. “The Army’s latest PSYOP recruiting ad reminds you: ‘We Are Everywhere'”, by Nicholas Slayton, Task & Purpose, November 30, 2025.

SOCOM’s MK1 Combat Assault Rifle. A new carbine has the latest technology, designs, and materials will be delivered to selected SOCOM units in early 2026. “The new special operations rifle takes the classic M4 to the next level”, We Are the Mighty, November 28, 2025.

MACV-SOG in Vietnam. The Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was a joint special operations unit tasked and equipped to conduct covert cross-border operations in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and North Vietnam. “This elite US Special Operations Unit Required an Oath of Secrecy to Join”, by Stavros Atlamazoglou, Sandboxx, November 30, 2025.

U.S. SOF and the Finnish Utti Jaeger Regiment Train Together. Finnish Special Operations forces from the Utti Jaeger Regiment and U.S. SOF from the 352d Special Operations Wing and 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) participated in Exercise Florin Fossil, Sep. 21-26, 2025, at Utti Jaeger Regiment base, Finland. The exercise included airdrop operations for both personnel and equipment, utilizing the 352d SOW’s MC-130J Commando II. (DVIDS, 23 Sep 2025)

SOF History

On December 6, 1941, Camp X (STS 103) opened in Canada.

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

On December 5, 1944, the combined U.S.-Canadian First Special Service Force (FSSF) paraded one final time at their Villeneuve-Loubert camp, near the town of Menton, in southeastern France on December 5, 1944. The 1st Special Forces Regiment and all U.S. Army SF groups trace their “official” lineage to the FSSF. Commemoration of Menton Day is an occasion when U.S. SF honors its lineal connection to the FSSF.

On December 5, 1963, the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) was activated.

https://www.specialforceshistory.info/groups/3sfga.html

On December 1, 1989, the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) was activated as a major Army command.

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

National Security and Commentary

2nd SFAB Inactivated. The 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade was inactivated on Wednesday, November 26, 2025, at Fort Bragg, NC. The brigade was activated in 2018 to train, advise, and assist partner militaries worldwide. The 2nd SFAB’s first deployment was to Afghanistan in 2019. Its advisor teams were most recently serving under U.S. Africa Command and were deployed to 15 African nations. “2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade Inactivates at Fort Bragg”, DVIDS, November 26, 2025.

CJTF-OIR and Syrian MoI Destroy ISIS Sites. U.S. military personnel from Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolved (CJTF-OIR) worked with Syrian forces in identifying and eliminating ISIS weapons storage facilities across the Rif Damashq province during multiple airstrikes and ground detonations. The combined operation destroyed over 130 mortars and rockets, multiple assault rifles, machine guns, anti-tank mines, and materials for building improvised explosive devices. Forces also discovered and destroyed illicit drugs. (DVIDS, 30 Nov 2025)

Venezuela Military Buildup Continues. There are a wide variety of U.S. military aircraft and naval vessels in the Caribbean at the moment. View a chart of the many different types of aircraft currently deployed in the region. View a chart of the U.S. naval elements in the Caribbean. In addition there is a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU-SOC), special operations forces, and more. A national security team meeting took place on Monday with Venezuela on the agenda.

Killing Boat Survivors – is it Legal?. It would seem that the DoD is facing some blowback on one of its counter narcotics operations in the Caribbean conducted on September 2nd. Reports that military forces conducted a second attack on the two survivors of an attack on a vessel carrying drugs is raising concerns in Congress and elsewhere. The first strike killed nine of the eleven men on the Narco boat. A follow-on strike was conducted to kill two survivors of the first attack who were in the water clinging to the burning wreckage. A couple of legal experts look at the legal implications of the incident. “Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder”, Just Security, December 1, 2025.

Who Ordered 2nd Strike? There is a lot of speculation as to how the order for the second strike transpired. Initially some sources indicated that SecDef Hegseth ordered the second strike; but the narrative seems to be shifting. In the past day or so the White House has been mentioning (CNN) the USSOCOM commander, Admiral Frank Bradley, as responsible for ordering the second strike on the boat attack survivors. At the time, Bradley was the JSOC commander.

Here’s what SecDef Hegseth had to say on Twitter at 7:00 PM Monday, Dec 1, 2025.

“Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support. I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made – on the September 2 mission and all others since.”

Shooting of Two National Guardsmen in D.C.

Two NG Soldiers Shot in D.C.. On Wednesday, November 26, 2025, two West Virginia National Guardsmen on duty in Washington, D.C. were shot just blocks from the White House. Both suffered gunshot wounds fired from a pistol, one of the soldiers has since died. The shooter is in custody and has been hospitalized with injuries as well. Within hours SecDef Pete Hegseth ordered an additional (DoD) 500 National Guardsmen to perform duty in D.C. The West Virginia Joint Force Headquarters identified the two WV Guardsmen. (DVIDS, 27 Nov 2025). U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom died of wounds and U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe was severely wounded.

D.C. Shooter is an Afghan National. Early indications are that the attacker was an Afghan who entered the United States via Operation Allies Welcome after the chaotic period of August 2021 when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. The shooting suspect reportedly served with one of the CIA’s “Zero Units” – the Qandahar Strike Force or QSF “partner force”. The QSF was also known as NDS-3. During the last days of the U.S. presence the Kabul international airport was overwhelmed with Afghans attempting to board aircraft departing Afghanistan. This resulted in the evacuation of thousands of Afghans during the Kabul NEO. During the evacuation, the CIA’s NDS paramilitary forces helped secure the Kabul airport in return for a promise of evacuation to the U.S. The Afghan arrived in the U.S. in September 2021 as part of the u.s. evacuation effort with his wife and five children under humanitarian parole status.

He was granted asylum in April 2025. He had an active SIV application underway and had received Chief of Mission (COM) approval but had not yet been granted lawful permanent residence status. Both the COM application and his asylum application required review and vetting by the U.S. government, including the CIA. An Inspector General report by the FBI (PDF, 29 pages, June 2025) details the vetting process beginning in Afghanistan, at the “Lily Pads”, at Port of Entry, and finally at one of the stateside military bases prior to movement to a resettlement agency.

Asylum is a permanent status granted by the United States Citizenship and Immigrations Services (USCIS) after reviewing identity and background checks (DoD, DHS, FBI, and IC checks), biometric vetting (fingerprints, iris scans, and photos), in-person interviews, and an assessment of individualized risk and eligibility under U.S. law. Persons who receive asylum can apply for lawful permanent residence one year after being granted asylum.

IO, IW, Intel, and Cyber

The Harvard Spy. Richard Welch had an illustrious and clandestine career in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that spanned many years. He didn’t look like James Bond, more like a university professor with his partially bald head, glasses, and clipped mustache. He was assassinated by Marxists terrorists in Athens in 1975 where he was serving as chief of station. Read more about Welch in “The Life of a Harvard Spy”, Harvard Magazine, Nov – Dec 2025.

New Director of NCTC. In May President Donald Trump appointed Joe Kent, a former Green Beret, as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The center is responsible for identifying, understanding, and mitigating terrorist threats to the United States. This article details his training and assignments with the U.S. Army Special Forces as well as with the Central Intelligence Agency. “Joseph Kent: New US National Counterterrorism Czar”, Grey Dynamics, November 28, 2025. (Editor’s note: not a very favorable article on Joe Kent).

IW Club. Former Green Beret Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca writes about the small group of scholars and practitioners that form up an unofficial “Irregular Warfare Club”. This small informal group drives the discussion, research, and writing on Irregular Warfare (IW). Read more in “Irregular Warfare Club”, Small Wars Journal, November 28, 2025.

Strategic Competition

Putin’s Mercenaries. Mark Galeotti writes about the long history of the use of mercenaries by Russia starting from the eleventh- and twelfth-centuries to the modern era of Putin. He describes how and why the Wagner Group was formed and the use of other mercenary entities as well in Ukraine and in Africa. “Putin’s Outsourced Warfighting”, Osprey Publishing, November 23, 2025.

Age of the Mercenary. The advent of the Wagner Group, Africa Corps, and other private military companies (PMCs) is a sign of the future in the world of hybrid warfare. The presence of PMCs in Ukraine, the Sahel region of Africa, and other parts of the world is not an aberration but a new way of conflict in the ‘gray zone’. Read more by Amar Singh Bhandal in “The Age of the Mercenary Is Here to Stay”, The National Interest, November 27, 2025.

Confronting China. The DoD is several years into its pivot from the War on Terror to Great Power Competition. Unfortunately the focus appears to confronting China in the ‘next big war’. However, that is not the fight that China is fighting. With the redirection of scarce resources from special operations forces to conventional capabilities the US. is ignoring that the future conflicts will be fought in the gray zone. Read more in “Confronting China: America’s Conventional Approach Misses the Real Threat”, Special Operations Association of America, December 1, 2025.

Drone Warfare of the Future. A fiction piece envisions what a future war would look like in the Pacific given the place that drones have taken in land, air, and sea warfare. “Task Force Rust Bucket”, by Tyler Totten, CIMSEC, December 1, 2025.

Our Adversary’s Gray-Zone Ops. Our Great Power rivals (Russia, China, etc.) understand that in a conventional fight they would likely lose. That is one of the primary reasons they conduct hybrid warfare in the “gray zone”. They operate in the spectrum between war and peace and avoid a direct confrontation with the United States. “Why America Freezes: How Rivals Win Through Gray-Zone Warfare”, Special Operations Association of America (SOAA), November 18, 2025.

Ukraine Conflict

Witkoff the Negotiator? Steve Witkoff, real estate developer turned diplomatic envoy is taking a lot of heat for how he is negotiating with the Russians on their invasion and occupation of Ukraine. Some observers are accusing him of helping Putin and prolonging the war. “What is Steve Witkoff Trying to Do?”, by Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, November 26, 2025.

Two Russian Oil Tankers Attacked. Two oil tankers were attacked by Ukrainian Sea Baby naval drones in the past week. (Washington Examiner, 29 Nov 2025) One Russian oil tanker off the coast of Senegal has ‘experienced’ difficulties as well. The vessels are said to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” that evade sanctions.

Report: Ukrainian Sabotage Operations. A report has detailed the tactics and motivations for acts of sabotage carried out by the Ukrainians in both Russian-occupied Ukraine and in Russia. “Behind the lines: How Ukraine has outgunned Russia in sabotage”, ACLED, November 27, 2025.

• References:
• Interactive Map. Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine by the Institute for the Study of War and Critical Threats. On storymaps.arcgis.com See also https://www.national-security.info/ukraine/maps.html
• U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine, Congressional Research Service, CRSIF12040, periodically updated, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040
• Ukraine Conflict, National Security Info. https://www.national-security.info/ukraine-conflict.html

Africa

Coup in Guinea-Bissau? On this past Wednesday, November 26, 2025, soldiers took control of parts of the capital city of Bissau and detained President Umaro Sissococ Embalo. A contested presidential election was just held and the soldiers announced on state TV that they suspended the electoral process. Some senior army officers were taken into custody and checkpoints have been established around the city. Since independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has experienced considerable political and military upheaval. Guinea-Bissau’s history of political instability, a civil war, and several coups (the latest in 2012) have resulted in a fragile state with a weak economy, high unemployment, rampant corruption, and widespread poverty. View map of Guinea-Bissau (NSI). The West Africa’s regional bloc ECOWAS has suspended Guinea-Bissau’s membership (africanews.com) after an army general was sworn in (africanews.com) as the country’s president.

Map of Jihadist Groups in West Africa. This interactive map by Critical Threats covers the are where JNIM, IS Sahel Province, IS West Africa Province, and Boko Haram are conducting operations and have “zones of control”. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/05e4e0c6979a4f3a85170d43e6a5e703

SOCAFRICA’s Flintlock MPC. Special operations and law enforcement planners representing more than 20 allied and partner nations came together for Exercise Flintlock 2026’s mid-planning event, Nov. 22, 2025, held in Budapest, Hungary. The multinational gathering advanced operational planning for U.S. Africa Command’s premier special operations exercise, scheduled to commence in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya this April. Planners developed unified strategies and objectives for a realistic, cross-border scenario against increasingly sophisticated terrorist networks. Watch a two-minute long video of the proceedings. (DVIDS, 16 Nov 2025)

Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

Video – How a US Air Force Survival Expert Can Survive Anywhere on Earth, Business Insider, YouTube, November 28, 2025, 12 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPZebkT92Qk

Video – Finland’s Impact on NATO. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, against the backdrop of its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, changed the security landscape in Europe and acted as a catalyst for Finland’s accession to NATO. After 30 years of close partnership with NATO, Finland joined the Alliance as a new member in April 2023. NATO, YouTube, Oct 3, 2025, 9 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn7ojLa8WvE

Video – Prepping for a Russian Invasion on NATO’s Eastern Border, Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2025, YouTube, 12 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRciyEysilY

Sentinel. The December 2025 issue is now posted online. Topics include the SFACON and SOAR 2025 conventions in Las Vegas, a book review of I Walked With Heroes, profile of CSM George Vidrine, a history of MACV-SOG / CIA George Baccon, and some history of the 46th Special Forces Company.

https://www.specialforces78.com/chapter-78-newsletter-for-december-2025/

SOF News Book Shop

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SOF News provides news, analysis, commentary, and information about special operations forces (SOF) from around the world.

12. Outlets that reach millions denied access to rare Pentagon news briefings this week

Summary:

SECDEF/SECWAR Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is restricting rare press briefings to a newly credentialed, largely pro-Trump media pool, excluding AP, CNN, Reuters, the Washington Post and others. Mainstream outlets warn the new rules undermine transparency as Congress probes alleged Caribbean and Pacific drug-boat strikes and potential war crimes.

Comment: Transparency can only be provided through the Fourth Estate. Echo chambers do not provide transparency or support accountability.

Outlets that reach millions denied access to rare Pentagon news briefings this week

AP · December 1, 2025

By  DAVID BAUDER

Updated 10:21 PM EST, December 1, 2025

https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-press-corps-access-hegseth-defense-13d99be0dd906bcda714abffa3e020f8

Outlets that reach millions of news consumers are being denied access to rare briefings by Pentagon officials this week — sessions that are being held instead for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s hand-picked media organizations.

It’s not as if there’s little to talk about, with both the Senate and House Armed Services committees opening investigations into U.S. military strikes against alleged drug couriers in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Hegseth’s team says the briefings are part of special orientation events for a newly credentialed Pentagon press corps, consisting primarily of conservative outlets that agreed to his new rules for operation. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson is due to meet reporters Tuesday and Hegseth will do so Wednesday.

Most mainstream outlets exited the Pentagon this fall rather than agree to the new rules. The Defense Department says they are “common sense” regulations designed to prevent the spread of classified information. News outlets worried they would effectively be agreeing only to report news approved by Hegseth.

Departed journalists still working, just a bit farther away

The rules haven’t kept journalists from working, even without the physical access. The Washington Post reported Friday that Hegseth ordered a second strike in September on a boat with suspected drug smugglers after not everyone had been initially killed. President Donald Trump said Hegseth had denied he did this, which some critics have said was a potential war crime if true.

The Post, The Associated Press, CNN, Reuters and Newsmax were some of the outlets that said Monday they had requested special access to the Pentagon to cover question-and-answer sessions, but were denied.

“Denying access to briefings to credible and nonpartisan news media that routinely cover the Pentagon is not conducive to transparency for the American public, who fund the department’s budget to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars per year,” said Marc Lavine, North America regional director for Agence France-Presse, which also said its request was denied.

The department’s press office said Wilson’s briefing is part of a special orientation event “for credentialed press only.” It would not say whether future briefings would follow the same rules. Defense Department briefings used to be routine and regular; only a handful have been held since Trump began his second term.

It’s unclear whether any of the briefings will be seen outside the Pentagon. Lavine said AFP was told access to livestreams was not possible.

Newcomers take to social media

Some of the new Pentagon press corps posted pictures of themselves online Monday wearing their credentials.

They included influential Trump ally Laura Loomer, pictured sitting at an empty desk. “The Washington Post @washingtonpost and Dan Lamothe @DanLamothe used to occupy this desk inside the Pentagon Press room,” she wrote. “Now it’s mine!”

Replied Lamothe on X: “May it treat you well on your occasional trips to Washington, Laura. I assume it’ll sit empty much of the time, as it has for weeks now.”

Alexandra Ingersoll and former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz were recently credentialed at the Pentagon on behalf of One America News. Ingersoll is expected to report live this week from the Pentagon, said Charles Herring, OAN president. She conducted an interview with Hegseth that appeared on the network Nov. 20.

Rob Bluey, president and executive editor of The Daily Signal, said he expected to attend the briefings with reporter Bradley Devin, assuming some last-minute snags with their credentials are smoothed out.

Bluey, in an interview, said he understood the need for rules in issuing credentials, since his outlet was often denied access to places prior to the Trump administration.

“Generally,” he said, “I think that when government agencies err on the side of transparency it is to the benefit of the American people.”

___

David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

AP · December 1, 2025

13. New White House Website Criticizes Journalists and News Outlets

Summary:

The White House has launched an official “media offender” website that names outlets and individual reporters, branding coverage as “lies,” “malpractice” and “left-wing lunacy.” It follows new access limits for mainstream press and expanded promotion of pro-Trump content. Press-freedom advocates warn this government-run “Hall of Shame” risks chilling critical journalism and encouraging attacks on reporters.

Comment: I wonder if this will be challenged on 1st Amendment grounds? These are probably the second most important words in America after the greatest sentence ever written (per Walter Isaacson in the 2d paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." These are sacred words (or should be).

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

New White House Website Criticizes Journalists and News Outlets

WSJ

‘Hall of Shame’ identifies individual outlets and reporters for alleged bias and lies, in administration’s latest salvo against the press

By Alexandra Bruell

Follow

Dec. 1, 2025 7:36 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/new-white-house-website-takes-aim-at-journalists-and-news-outlets-1b97e59f

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a press briefing. Bonnie Cash/press Pool

• The White House launched a website detailing what it calls “false and misleading” media coverage.
• The site, which includes nearly two dozen publications and more than 50 individual reporters and TV personalities, labels articles with terms like “lie” and “malpractice.”
• Press rights advocates expressed concern that the administration’s approach could have a chilling effect on journalism.

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.

• The White House launched a website detailing what it calls “false and misleading” media coverage.

The White House published a website detailing what it calls “false and misleading” media coverage, the latest in a series of unorthodox steps by the Trump administration against media outlets.

The official government site, which went live late last week, identifies news outlets under the headers “Media Offender of the Week” and “Offender Hall of Shame.” It references stories on topics ranging from President Trump’s policy initiatives to immigration actions and tariffs and tags the articles with terms including “lie,” “left-wing lunacy,” “malpractice” and “omission of context.”

The site lists nearly two dozen publications, including The Wall Street Journal, as well as more than 50 individual reporters and TV personalities.

The site follows moves by administration officials to limit access for certain members of the press to parts of the Oval Office and Pentagon. Trump also has derided individual journalists’ personalities and looks.

In addition to the “media offender” website, the White House last month published a webpage chronicling what it describes as “lies, conspiracies, and outright opinion thinly veiled as fact” from ABC News. A representative from ABC declined to comment.

The White House earlier created a “wire” service linking to official videos and social-media accounts as well as favorable coverage of Trump’s presidency from largely conservative-leaning outlets.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in Monday’s press briefing that the new media bias site is a reaction to “fake news,” “inaccurate characterizations of meetings” and reporting based on anonymous sourcing. “It goes to our original promise on day one to hold the media accountable,” she said.

For years, Trump has used social media—particularly his platform, Truth Social—to reprimand the press for negative coverage. The new government site reflects a more coordinated, formalized approach to criticizing members of the press.

Press rights advocates have expressed concern that the administration’s approach could have a chilling effect on coverage and imperil journalists.

“The Trump administration’s landing page creates a dangerous permission structure for attacks on journalists and an attempt to undermine newsrooms across the country,” said Katherine Jacobsen, a program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The White House website criticizes editorial decisions made by major news outlets, including what they don’t cover or cite in their stories.

The page also highlights a Washington Post story about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to double immigrant detention space. The story, which describes an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law as an immigration expert, omitted the “left-wing” lawyer’s “history of bias,” according to the White House site.

“The Washington Post is proud of its accurate, rigorous journalism,” a spokeswoman for the paper said.

The White House site says a recent Journal story about Italian pasta potentially disappearing from American grocery shelves is “an exaggerated lie” and “an effort to fearmonger against President Trump’s successful tariff policies.”

“We stand by our journalists and the rigor of our reporting, which is fair and accurate,” said a Journal spokeswoman. “Our focus remains on maintaining our standards of quality and independent journalism upon which our readers rely.”

The Society of Professional Journalists on Monday asked the administration to remove the webpage and “lower the temperature in exchanges between administration officials and journalists.”

Trump has also pursued and threatened legal fights with news organizations.

ABC News last year agreed to contribute $15 million to Trump’s presidential foundation or museum and pay $1 million in legal fees to his lawyer to settle a defamation lawsuit he filed against the network and its star anchor George Stephanopoulos. Paramount Global earlier this year agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump this year accused the publisher of the Journal of defaming him in an article about a letter bearing his name that was included in a 50th birthday book for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. A Dow Jones spokeswoman has said the company has “full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting.”

Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

WSJ

14. Ukraine’s “Hail Mary” Drone Attack Just Hit Moscow. Did It Matter?

Summary:

Ukraine’s drone salvo toward Moscow, including a rare hit on the Shatura power station, showcases expanding long-range UAV reach but limited strategic impact. Russia’s air defenses intercepted most drones, prompting likely AD reinforcement and harsher counterstrikes. Weichert argues such raids are symbolic, reflecting Kyiv’s desperation and looming battlefield defeat.

Ukraine’s “Hail Mary” Drone Attack Just Hit Moscow. Did It Matter?

The National Interest · Brandon J. Weichert · December 1, 2025

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ukraines-hail-mary-drone-attack-just-hit-moscow-did-it-matter-bw-120125

Topic: Air Warfare

Blog Brand: The Buzz

Region: Europe

Tags: Air Defense, Drones, Moscow, Russia, Ukraine, and Ukraine War

December 1, 2025

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As Ukraine’s battlefield situation deteriorates, Kyiv has sought to intensify long-range strikes against targets inside Russia as a demonstration of resolve.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian air-defenses shot down 10 Ukrainian drones on Monday, November 24, as they were heading toward (or over) the Moscow region. Local officials in the Russian capital, including Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, said emergency services responded to crash sites where debris from the intercepted drones fell.

Some sources reported slightly different numbers: another account mentioned eight drones being shot down en route to Moscow.

The shootdown came just a day after a separate Ukrainian drone strike on the Shatura Power Station, located around 120 kilometers east of Moscow. That strike reportedly disrupted heating and power for thousands—a rare deep strike in Russia upon the country’s critical infrastructure. Therefore, it is likely that the strikes were part of a broader Ukrainian push to hit Russian energy and utility infrastructure to their breaking points. These were not random drone attacks. They were coordinated and part of larger events in the geopolitical realm.

Ukraine Is Working Around Russian Defenses

At the same time, the ability of Russian air defenses (AD) to intercept more than ten drones signals they remain at least somewhat effective now, even deep near the capital. But the fact that drones were launched from Ukraine to Moscow illustrates how long-range Ukrainian UAV capabilities are being successfully leveraged by Kyiv’s desperate military leaders.

Ukraine is in a strategic and tactical bind. The Americans are looking for the exits. The Europeans are mostly useless when it comes to defending Ukraine without American assistance. The Russians, meanwhile, are running roughshod over Ukrainian positions along the front in Ukraine.

Kyiv is desperate to make a show of how they can still fight as discussions mount that a ceasefire is at hand between the United States and Russia—one that will likely determine how much of Eastern Ukraine is handed to the Russians in exchange for peace. Plus, as the war stretches on, Moscow’s forces have started targeting energy infrastructure in Ukraine. Kyiv clearly wants to reciprocate, which they did in this attack.

For Russia, repeated intercepts will likely lead to further strengthening of their overall AD posture and possibly lead to more aggressive counterstrikes. At the same time, the need for emergency services in Moscow underscores that drone warfare is a persistent threat even far from the front.

As for the broader dynamics of the Ukraine War, these strikes (and subsequent interdictions) add layers to a war that is not just static frontlines—it’s also a war of attrition, deep strategic disruption, and massive psychological pressure across both sides.

The Drones Are a Distraction—and the End Is Still Near for Ukraine

With pressure on the Zelenskyy regime in Kyiv mounting, expect more drastic drone attacks conducted by Ukraine against targets deep within Russia. As the notorious Russian winter approaches, Ukrainian drones will continue targeting critical energy, logistical, and industrial targets deep within Russia in an attempt to signal to the world that the Ukrainians can still fight.

But they can’t. And eventually the Russians will overcome even this threat. So, anticipate a strengthening of Russian AD countermeasures, early-warning systems, and possibly increased domestic security and policing inside Russia.

The attempted Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy sources were not part of a war-winning strategy. They were another example of how close to defeat the Ukrainians are that they are desperately trying to hit Russian targets far from the front as a kind of revenge for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

But one can only pretend for so long. One way or the other, this war is coming to a close. And Ukraine isn’t going to win it, no matter how deep inside Russia their drones strike.

About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert

Brandon J. Weichert is a senior national security editor at The National Interest. Recently, Weichert became the host of The National Security Hour on America Outloud News and iHeartRadio, where he discusses national security policy every Wednesday at 8pm Eastern. Weichert hosts a companion book talk series on Rumble entitled “National Security Talk.” He is also a contributor at Popular Mechanics and has consulted regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including The Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, and the Asia Times. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Image: Shutterstock / Maria Taran.

The National Interest · Brandon J. Weichert · December 1, 2025

15. The rot eating at China's war machine

Summary:

SIPRI data and multiple studies show China’s defense industry and PLA modernization are being corroded from within by systemic corruption and Xi Jinping’s power consolidation. Major state arms firms have suffered sharp revenue drops after anti graft probes, disrupting missiles, satellites, and land systems. Purges in the Rocket Force and senior commands prioritize loyalty over competence, entrench bribery and fear based politics, and delay key Taiwan contingency capabilities. Analysts warn this mirrors Russia’s pre Ukraine “Potemkin” military, where falsified readiness masked deep rot. Centralized control also blocks true mission command, leaving the PLA potentially brittle in high intensity joint operations.

Excerpts:

 Wirth notes that while PLA doctrine urges lower-level commanders to act autonomously in “informationized” warfare, the PLA’s Leninist organizational culture, politicized promotion systems and enduring fear of political missteps impede decentralized decision-making. As a result, he says genuine mission command will not take root until a new generation of officers is trained and socialized under joint, technology-driven operational conditions.

Taken together, these trends indicate that China’s modernization drive is being undercut from within, as corruption and political control erode both the industrial base and the operational culture the PLA needs to fight a modern war.

Unless China confronts the systemic incentives that privilege political loyalty over competence, it risks replicating the very structural failings that crippled Russia’s military in Ukraine, with profound implications for any future high-intensity conflict, including a Taiwan contingency.

Comment: If this is an accurate assessment our question is: How can we exploit this? Is this useful for information and influence activities? Or should we heed Bonaparte:"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake?"

The rot eating at China's war machine - Asia Times

Corruption and purges dragging down China’s military modernization, raising doubts about PLA’s real fighting strength

by Gabriel Honrada

December 1, 2025

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada

https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/the-rot-eating-at-chinas-war-machine/

China’s drive to build a modern, high-tech military is increasingly undermined by a widening corruption crisis that is raising doubts about its true strength.

This month, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released a report mentioning that China’s major state-owned defense firms suffered the steepest downturn among the world’s top arms producers in 2024, as corruption scandals rippled through the sector and disrupted procurement.

According to the report, arms revenues of the eight Chinese companies on the list fell 10% to USD 88.3 billion, the sharpest decline of any country, dragging down overall regional performance. SIPRI researchers said six firms saw revenue losses after high-profile graft probes triggered postponements, cancellations and reviews of major military contracts.

Specifically, the report mentions that China North Industries Group Corporation Limited (NORINCO), China’s biggest land-systems maker, reported a 31% plunge in sales after the government removed its chairman and the head of its military division over corruption allegations, prompting delays to key projects.

Similarly, the report says that China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) recorded a 16% revenue drop as satellite and launch-vehicle programs were postponed following the corruption-linked dismissal of its president.

Furthermore, it states that the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), China’s largest defense producer, also saw revenues slip 1.3% amid slower aircraft deliveries.

SIPRI noted that while other Asian producers generally expanded, China’s decline stood out as systemic misconduct within procurement channels constrained output and undermined its efforts to modernize its forces at scale.

These industrial setbacks point to a deeper structural issue inside China’s military system—one increasingly shaped not just by procurement failures, but by the political logic of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s centralization of control.

As corruption increasingly disrupts China’s defense-industrial output, the problem may be rooted not only in procurement misconduct but also in Xi’s broader project of power consolidation, which is reshaping incentives inside the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and deepening the structural vulnerabilities undermining China’s military effectiveness.

An October 2025 Beyond the Horizon article mentions that Xi’s sweeping purge of nine senior PLA generals, including Central Military Commission (CMC) and PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) Commander Wang Houbin, was framed as an anti-corruption campaign but primarily served to consolidate his personal control over the military.

This tightening grip may be part of a broader political project. G Venkat Raman mentions in a May 2025 Observer Research Foundation (ORF) report that Xi’s accelerating consolidation of power stems from his drive to secure “regime security” and place “politics in command” at the center of all policymaking.

Raman notes that Xi views centralized authority as essential to realizing the “China Dream,” managing economic stagnation, and countering what China perceives as rising external threats.

He notes that Xi’s dominance enables long-term strategies to achieve technological self-reliance and accelerate military modernization — a core element of Xi’s ideological and strategic drive to strengthen regime security and position China for great-power competition.

Yet purging these networks did not remove the incentives that sustain corruption; the Beyond the Horizon article notes that by dismantling entrenched patronage networks accused of bribery and procurement scandals, Xi reinforced loyalty as the paramount criterion for advancement.

However, it points out that while centralization curbs rival factions, it paradoxically entrenches corruption, as officers rely on political alignment rather than merit to survive. It states that while Xi’s purges strengthen the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) dominance, they risk undermining transparency, morale, and competence, leaving the PLA disciplined by fear rather than institutional accountability.

Delving deeper into how corruption may be corroding China’s military capabilities, Xuan Dong mentions in a June 2025 report for the Institute for Security & Development Policy (ISDP) that corruption in China’s military is rooted in decades of commercialized military services and an expanded procurement system that enabled bribery, kickbacks and substandard equipment.

Dong points out that despite Xi’s decade-long anti-graft campaign, systemic abuses persist, including fraud in weapons development and bribery-for-promotions schemes. He adds that purges of top equipment officials have disrupted planning, while fear-based politics erode professionalism and cohesion. He adds that corruption is fundamentally degrading the PLA’s credibility, readiness, and long-term modernization.

If left unaddressed, such distortions risk producing the same hollowing effects observed in other authoritarian militaries.

One need only look at the early months of the Russia-Ukraine War to see the impacts of corruption on military capability. In a May 2022 article for the peer-reviewed Survival journal, Robert Dalsjo and other writers point out that systemic corruption hollowed out Russia’s military long before its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, creating inflated troop rosters, poor training, neglected equipment, and false readiness reports that collapsed under combat pressure.

Dalsjo and others say graft, embezzlement and falsified paperwork—from padded personnel numbers to maintenance shortfalls—produced a “Potemkin” image of modernized forces that senior commanders and the Russian leadership believed.

They state that the war exposed systemic rot – undermanned units, broken logistics, unusable kit, poor morale and incompetent coordination. They note that corruption-driven deception directly degraded Russia’s combat power and contributed to its early battlefield failures.

Given Russia’s precedent, China might find itself in a similar situation should it decide to use force to reunify Taiwan. The implications for China’s own strategic ambitions—especially Taiwan—are significant.

The US Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) 2024 China Military Power Report mentions that Xi’s sweeping purges have disrupted key modernization programs, including missile programs that the document identifies as central to China’s capability for a Taiwan contingency.

It notes that several ousted leaders oversaw ground-based nuclear and conventional missile projects, raising doubts about weapons reliability and readiness. It adds that such systemic corruption could slow or weaken China’s push to achieve the capabilities required for a high-intensity Taiwan contingency.

Yet the erosion of China’s warfighting capacity goes beyond disrupted weapons programs and extends into the PLA’s internal culture.

In a September 2025 report for Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Christian Wirth mentions that Xi’s concentration of authority creates a culture of upward delegation and risk aversion that runs counter to the mission command principles required for fast, multi-domain joint operations.

 Wirth notes that while PLA doctrine urges lower-level commanders to act autonomously in “informationized” warfare, the PLA’s Leninist organizational culture, politicized promotion systems and enduring fear of political missteps impede decentralized decision-making. As a result, he says genuine mission command will not take root until a new generation of officers is trained and socialized under joint, technology-driven operational conditions.

Taken together, these trends indicate that China’s modernization drive is being undercut from within, as corruption and political control erode both the industrial base and the operational culture the PLA needs to fight a modern war.

Unless China confronts the systemic incentives that privilege political loyalty over competence, it risks replicating the very structural failings that crippled Russia’s military in Ukraine, with profound implications for any future high-intensity conflict, including a Taiwan contingency.

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada

16. China's military firms struggle as corruption purge bites, report says

Summary:

China’s sweeping anti-corruption purge is now hitting its defense sector, with SIPRI reporting a 10% revenue drop for China’s top arms firms in 2024 even as global arms sales rose. Investigations into PLA procurement and expulsions of senior generals, including Rocket Force leaders and He Weidong, have delayed or cancelled major contracts at AVIC, NORINCO and CASC, disrupting missile, aerospace, and land-systems programs. Diplomats and analysts say the crackdown deepens uncertainty over the timing and reliability of new PLA capabilities, potentially slowing near-term modernization, though sustained budgets and political backing suggest longer-term investment and tighter, more centralized control will continue.

Comment: Graphics at the link.

China's military firms struggle as corruption purge bites, report says

Reuters

By Greg Torode

December 1, 20253:17 AM ESTUpdated December 1, 2025

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/chinas-military-firms-struggle-corruption-purge-bites-report-says-2025-11-30/

Item 1 of 4 A member of the People's Liberation Army stands as the strategic strike group displays YJ-21 missiles during a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, China, September 3, 2025. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang/File Photo

[1/4]A member of the People's Liberation Army stands as the strategic strike group displays YJ-21 missiles during a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, China, September 3, 2025. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

HONG KONG, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Revenues at China's giant military firms fell last year as corruption purges slowed arms contracts and procurement, according to a study released on Monday by a leading conflict think tank.

The Chinese declines contrast with strong revenue growth globally for big arms and military-services companies, fuelled by wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and global and regional tensions, the research by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found.

"A host of corruption allegations in Chinese arms procurement led to major arms contracts being postponed or cancelled in 2024," said Nan Tian, director of SIPRI's Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

"This deepens uncertainty around the status of China's military modernisation efforts and when new capabilities will materialise."

CHINA'S REVENUES DOWN 10%, JAPAN'S UP 40%

The People's Liberation Army was one of the main targets of a broader corruption crackdown ordered by President Xi Jinping in 2012, reaching the upper levels of the military in 2023 when its Rocket Force was targeted.

Eight top generals were expelled from the ruling Communist Party on graft charges in October, including the country's number two general, He Weidong. He had served under Xi on the Central Military Commission, China's supreme military command organisation.

Asian and Western diplomats say they are still trying to gauge the impact of the crackdown on China's ongoing military rise and how far down it reaches through the command chain.

Revenues of China's top military firms fell 10% last year, while those in Japan surged 40%, Germany 36% and U.S. revenues rose 3.8%, SIPRI data shows.

Bar chart showing percentage change in the arms revenues of companies in the SIPRI Top 100, by country 2023-24

Revenues of the world's 100 largest arms firms rose 5.9% to a record $679 billion, the report said, while China's fall was enough to make Asia-Oceania the only region to post a revenue decline among its top arms firms.

China's weapons revenue fell despite three decades of rising defence budgets in Beijing's growing strategic rivalry with the United States, Asia's traditional military power, and tensions over Taiwan and the hotly disputed South China Sea.

MID-, LONG-TERM INVESTMENT, MODERNISATION TO CONTINUE

The buildup is bearing fruit as China deploys the world's largest naval and coast guard fleets - including a potentially advanced new aircraft carrier - a host of new hypersonic missiles, nuclear weapons and air and sea drones.

Revenue fell at AVIC, China's largest arms maker, land-systems producer Norinco and aerospace and missile manufacturer CASC, all state-owned, according to the SIPRI research. Norinco experienced the steepest revenue decline, falling 31% to $14 billion.

Corruption-related personnel changes at the top of Norinco and CASC sparked government reviews and project delays, while deliveries of AVIC's military aircraft slowed, the research found.

China's defence ministry and the three companies did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment from Reuters.

The timeline of advanced systems for the People's Liberation Army's Rocket Force, which handles its growing arsenal of ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, could be exposed, along with aerospace and cyber programmes, said SIPRI researcher Xiao Liang.

This adds to uncertainties over the PLA's target of getting key capabilities and war-fighting readiness in place for its 100th anniversary, Liang said. The PLA's forerunner, Mao Zedong's Red Army, was founded in 1927.

"However, in the medium and longer term, sustained investment in defence budgets and political commitment behind modernisation will continue, albeit with some programme delays, higher costs and tighter control of procurement," Liang said.

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17. Opinion | The Lesson of China’s Japan Bullying

Summary:

China is punishing Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for stating that a PRC attack on Taiwan would be “survival-threatening” for Japan and could trigger a military response. Beijing has escalated with coercive diplomacy, gray-zone military pressure around disputed and undisputed islands, informal economic sanctions, a tourism squeeze, and renewed seafood bans. Xi reportedly pressed POTUS to rein in Tokyo, and POTUS urged Takaichi not to “provoke” China, reinforcing allies’ anxiety. The core lesson is that the real destabilizer is Beijing’s growing military and economic intimidation, and that Washington will need a resolute, closely aligned Japan to deter Chinese ambitions.

Comment: Economic warfare is a key component of unrestricted warfare. We have to be prepared to deal with this from China and support our allies. We must not be afraid to use the word warfare because it is warfare to our adversaries. Yes, war is politics by other means (Clausewitz). But to our adversaries politics is war by other means. And of course Mao said: "War is politics with bloodshed and politics is war without bloodshed." But it is all war to our adversaries. That does not mean the military should be in the lead. We need to lead with diplomacy and influence. It means we have to have a whole of government interagency approach to these strategic challenges and everyone has a role in warfare.

Opinion | The Lesson of China’s Japan Bullying

Beijing returns to economic coercion to silence Japan’s new Prime Minister.

wsj.com

The Editorial Board

Dec. 1, 2025 5:39 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/china-japan-taiwan-sanae-takaichi-xi-jinping-9d67303b

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi Eugene Hoshiko/Associated Press

The Chinese Communist Party is putting the squeeze on Japan to punish its new Prime Minister for telling the truth. Asked in Parliament on Nov. 7, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi explained that an attack by Beijing on Taiwan could be “survival-threatening” for Japan, potentially triggering a military response. Cue the weekslong campaign of outrage and coercion, as if it were Ms. Takaichi rather than China’s Xi Jinping who is threatening to blow up the status quo.

Beijing began its reply by firing up tensions around disputed and even undisputed islands, dispatching ships and drones. Chinese diplomats assailed Japan, with one threatening, “We have no choice but cut off that dirty neck that has been lunged at us.”

From so-called wolf-warrior diplomacy, Beijing escalated to economic sanctions. These have been kept informal, but that’s no consolation to the affected Japanese industries.

China told its citizens to avoid all travel to Japan, triggering a sharp and costly decline in tourism. By one estimate, 500,000 airline tickets from China to Japan were canceled in a few days. A ban on Japanese seafood imports also was suddenly reinstated, again on bogus concerns regarding nuclear contamination.

The Journal reports that China’s President Xi spent half of his hourlong phone call with President Trump last week reciting his grievances regarding Japan and Taiwan. More worrying, Mr. Trump reportedly responded by promptly calling Japan’s Ms. Takaichi and telling her not to provoke Beijing over Taiwan.

Nobody wants to provoke a confrontation over Taiwan. But who’s issuing the provocations—the leader explaining how she might respond to an invasion, or the one planning, building toward and threatening that invasion? The Japanese have no interest in a military clash with China, a nuclear-armed superpower. Tokyo might be pushed to that point only if Beijing’s aggression gives it no other choice.

Ms. Takaichi is right that an invasion of Taiwan by Beijing would seriously endanger Japan. The fall of Taiwan would break the first island chain that gives Japan its defensive depth. Should that bulwark become a Chinese bridgehead, critical Japanese shipping lanes would be vulnerable to disruption or blockade. Japan relies on those shipping lanes to import much of its food and energy. The U.S. strategy of open sea lanes and a network of alliances in the Pacific would fall apart.

China’s economic coercion today is an omen of what’s to come should it gain naval control of the region. As has been amply demonstrated against Japan, and Australia before it, the Chinese won’t hesitate to use their economic power to intimidate neighbors—and even nations farther afield. Lithuania learned that the hard way when Beijing effectively embargoed all goods to and from the country earlier this decade.

A diplomatic touch has always been necessary to avoid conflict over Taiwan, but the real danger here isn’t a Japanese statement of reality. It’s Beijing’s growing use of military and economic power to threaten Taiwanese democracy. Mr. Trump will need Japan’s help to ward off the worst of China’s ambitions.

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Appeared in the December 2, 2025, print edition as 'The Lesson of China’s Japan Bullying'.

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18. From Paper to Permafrost: Applying Irregular Warfare Doctrine to Arctic Homeland Defense

Summary:

The Arctic is now a primary avenue of approach to the US homeland, where Russian and Chinese gray-zone activities exploit US gaps in domain awareness, logistics, and persistent presence. Existing US posture is episodic and infrastructure-dependent, leaving “coverage without continuity.” Drawing on Cold War and Nordic examples, Gagnon urges applying irregular warfare concepts at home: permanent SOF teams in Alaska, a US “Arctic Rangers” force co-produced with Indigenous communities, and whole-of-society sustainment built around local industry and dual-use infrastructure. In the High North, logistics, legitimacy, and endurance, not firepower, will decide deterrence by denial.

Excerpts:

Irregular warfare is not confined to deserts, jungles, or failed states. It occurs wherever presence is contested and legitimacy matters—and in the Arctic, this contest is already underway. Russia and China are not experimenting at the margins; they are investing in endurance, building the infrastructure and logistics that allow them to persist where the United States can only rotate in. America is starting from behind in a race where endurance, not firepower, sets the pace.

To close the gap, US strategy must reverse its logic: start with the mission effects the Arctic demands—persistent domain awareness, credible deterrence by denial, and rapid response to crises—and then build the logistics and force structure that make those effects possible. Caches, co-produced sustainment with Indigenous partners, light but enduring platforms, and resilient dual-use infrastructure are not enablers on the margins; they are the campaign itself.

This requires institutional courage. The Department of Defense and its service branches must treat Arctic irregular warfare as a standing mission set, not an episodic exercise. That means resourcing permanent small units, embedding them in local networks, and measuring readiness by endurance and legitimacy rather than tonnage or sorties. It also means reframing homeland defense as a continuous competition for access and trust, where every partnership, radar site, and fuel cache extends sovereignty northward.

The Arctic is teaching a clear lesson: ambiguity, endurance, and adaptation decide outcomes. Adversaries have already adapted; they have normalized ambiguity and turned presence into pressure. The United States must now adapt faster—by linking doctrine to geography, investment to endurance, and legitimacy to deterrence. If America fails to translate strategy into persistent practice, it will cede its northern flank not through defeat in battle but through absence.

Doctrine written is knowledge; doctrine lived is power. To defend the homeland’s northern frontier, the United States must live its doctrine—embedding presence, partnerships, and persistence as the foundations of deterrence. Until Washington moves doctrine and investment from paper to permafrost, it will remain a visitor in its own Arctic backyard.

From Paper to Permafrost: Applying Irregular Warfare Doctrine to Arctic Homeland Defense

by Stephen Gagnon

|

12.02.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/02/from-paper-to-permafrost-applying-irregular-warfare-doctrine-to-arctic-homeland-defense/

Abstract

The American Arctic is the shortest avenue of approach to the homeland, where Russian and Chinese threats exploit geography and endurance at low cost. The stakes for the US include defending sovereign borders, ensuring freedom of navigation, securing resources, and sustaining credibility through partnerships with Indigenous communities and allies. Competing requires more than episodic presence; it demands enduring, co-produced domain awareness and resilient logistics that turn survival into strategic advantage.

Introduction

The United States cannot secure the Arctic without continuous domain awareness, and today it lacks it. The Arctic represents America’s northern flank of homeland defense, where Russian and Chinese forces can approach across the polar routes, and it is also the site of America’s critical missile defense complex and the chokepoint to new sea lanes and resource reserves (See Figure 1). As Arctic sea ice continues to retreat, maritime corridors like the Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage are opening to regular navigation. These routes cut Asia–Europe transit times by up to two weeks and expose vast untapped reserves (an estimated 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its natural gas). These changes amplify the region’s geostrategic value, heightening the risk of competition among major powers for access and control of Arctic territory, sea routes, and resources.

Figure 1: Arctic Territorial Claims, Source: International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Yet domain awareness in this environment is uniquely difficult to achieve. At high latitudes, surveillance thins, logistics strain, and the environment itself can disable equipment and personnel as effectively as an adversary. The result is degraded power projection, intermittent presence, and limited control over America’s northern approaches, conditions adversaries can exploit to test US sovereignty and response capacity. In irregular warfare, legitimacy is equally decisive: the ability of security forces to be accepted, trusted, and aligned with local communities. This is magnified in the Arctic, where Indigenous peoples bring different cultural perspectives, national identities, and interpretations of government power. The US security presence in the Arctic remains intermittent and reactive, signaling awareness but not control. Presence alone is insufficient; it must evolve into one that is persistent, legitimate, and co-produced with the people who already live in the region; anchoring American sovereignty and deterrence at the northern flank.

The limits of Arctic domain awareness became clear in early 2023, when a high-altitude balloon was detected drifting over Alaska. What began as an unremarkable radar contact evolved into an international incident revealing how ambiguity, endurance, and slow attribution can turn observation into opportunity.

The Balloon That Floated Over Alaska

In January 2023, US officials detected something out of place over the Aleutian Island chain: a high-altitude balloon drifting silently across the northern skies. By the time the object was shot down by a US Air Force F-22 off the Atlantic coast a week later, it had crossed much of the continental United States. For its journey across Alaska, the balloon passed largely unchallenged.

US officials later confirmed the device carried sophisticated surveillance equipment linked to the Chinese military. The ambiguity of the chosen platform was the point. It was not a missile or an aircraft; it was something stranger, lower-cost, and politically and militarily harder to classify. That ambiguity complicates immediate responses: militarily it invites caution—strike first to prevent intelligence gains over unpopulated areas and sort attribution later—while politically it demands clarity on ownership, intent, and the diplomatic fallout before escalation.

The episode did more than expose a single detection lapse; it revealed structural constraints unique to high latitudes. Persistent surveillance is harder to achieve in sparsely populated and geographically isolated regions. Satellite coverage in the Arctic is limited not by capability but by design—a deliberate allocation of finite ISR assets toward higher-priority threat areas (See Figure 2). When an area is not considered a strategic named area of interest, overlapping coverage is difficult to justify. Combined with sensor degradation in extreme cold and electromagnetic interference that complicates attribution, these factors create persistent blind spots across the northern approaches.

Figure 2: Satellite Coverage above the 66th Parallel, Source: https://www.starlinkmap.org/

In such conditions, hybrid and irregular threats—ranging from GPS jamming and spoofed signals to surveillance balloons or disinformation seeded through rural communication networks—are difficult to identify quickly, allowing adversaries time to exploit uncertainty. These actions can disrupt navigation, mask reconnaissance, and erode local trust in authorities before a clear response is possible. Had that balloon deployed sensors near Fort Greely’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) site, the installation responsible for detecting and intercepting intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threats to the US homeland, it could have gathered sensitive information on US early warning and missile defense capabilities. Alternatively, had it been used to seed disinformation across Alaska’s rural communication networks, it could have undermined public confidence in critical infrastructure and governance capabilities, while disrupted coordination with military and civil responders. Instead, it drifted on, leaving behind a warning: in the Arctic, irregular threats often look absurdly cheap, yet their effects can be strategically significant—exploiting operational vulnerabilities that make irregular warfare not a weapon of the weak, but the logic of the environment.

Lessons From the Cold

The Arctic has long been a stage for irregular threat ingenuity. In 1962, two US intelligence officers parachuted onto the abandoned Soviet drift station NP 8. The mission, known as Operation Coldfeet, sought to capture Soviet acoustic research equipment used for submarine detection. After three days on the ice, the men were extracted not by helicopter or ship, but by the experimental “Skyhook” system, a low-flying aircraft that snagged a tether attached to the team on the ice and reeled them aboard.

Operation Coldfeet highlighted more than daring tradecraft; it demonstrated that intelligence in the Arctic is not optional but essential to US security. The mission’s objective was not routine collection but the denial of a potential Soviet technological edge; an operational necessity directly tied to the balance of power at sea. It also underscored how the environment itself becomes an adversary. At extreme Arctic temperatures, often below -40°C and in some cases approaching -55°C with windchill, equipment fractures, fuel thickens, movement slows, and storms can reduce visibility to an arm’s length, halting resupply or evacuation. In such conditions, ISR is not a supporting function; it is the foundation for presence, detection, and survival. The lesson endures today: in a region where adversaries exploit ambiguity and distance, enduring Arctic ISR combined with resilient logistics is indispensable.

Operation Coldfeet was not an outlier. During World War II, the Alaska Territorial Guard, composed largely of Native Alaskans, patrolled thousands of miles of coastline and supported US forces during the Aleutian Islands campaign, when Japanese forces occupied Attu and Kiska from 1942 to 1943. The Guard’s operational value was derived from its perceived legitimacy among local inhabitants—communities saw the Guard as their own defense, not an outside imposition—and its environmental expertise rooted in intimate knowledge of regional geography, climate, and culture. This combination extended US sovereignty into remote villages, reassured Alaskans who feared further incursions, and denied Japanese forces the ability to move or resupply undetected. Operationally, legitimacy provided persistence, intelligence, and access: persistence because Guard members lived in the environment year-round, intelligence because they understood terrain and movement patterns better than conventional units, and access because their familiarity opened cooperation with communities that might otherwise have remained wary of federal authorities. In effect, the Territorial Guard created host-nation-style defense effects inside US territory, amplifying national combat power far beyond what their limited arms suggested.

Finland’s defense against invasion by the Soviet Red Army during the Winter War of 1939 offers a similar lesson: small, mobile ski units leveraged terrain and climate to slow and degrade a much larger mechanized force. Operating in subzero conditions that immobilized Soviet armor and vehicles, Finnish troops used ambushes, raids, and rapid withdrawal to isolate columns, sever supply lines, and destroy equipment. In less than four months, the Red Army suffered more than 120,000 casualties, lost hundreds of tanks and aircraft, and saw entire divisions rendered combat ineffective. Although the Soviet invasion ultimately succeeded, the larger operational lesson of Finland’s campaign was clear: terrain mastery and environmental expertise can offset conventional inferiority by imposing disproportionate costs on an unprepared adversary.

Greenland’s Sirius Patrol, founded in 1950, demonstrates the same principle in a different form. Composed of six two-man dog sled teams, the Patrol projects Danish sovereignty across vast stretches of uninhabited ice where no conventional garrison can survive year-round. Their endurance and resolve generate domain awareness, demonstrate government presence, and provide early warning at minimal cost. For modern Arctic defense, Sirius illustrates how lightly equipped forces with deep environmental expertise can achieve strategic effects that outstrip their size and resources.

The theme common to each example is clear: irregular methods thrive in the Arctic not because they are exotic, but because the environment punishes rigidity and rewards adaptation. Operation Coldfeet demonstrated two enduring requirements: continuous surveillance to detect enemy activity and persistent presence by specially trained, pre-positioned forces capable of exploiting fleeting opportunities. The Alaska Territorial Guard provided permanent surveillance and planning support to commanders, guided US forces into tactical positions, and reassured local populations. Finland’s ski troops delayed and degraded a numerically superior enemy for three months through raids, ambushes, and harassment, buying time for defensive preparations to be completed. Greenland’s Sirius Patrol shows that sovereignty can be projected year-round through endurance and domain awareness rather than massed firepower. Taken together, these cases reveal that in the Arctic, effectiveness belongs to those who can persist, sense, and exploit the environment itself—turning isolation, terrain, and climate into instruments of advantage where conventional forces, dependent on infrastructure and centralized firepower, often falter. In these conditions, small adaptive units empowered by local legitimacy and environmental awareness can source, coordinate, and control fires disproportionate to their size, acting as critical force multipliers in a complex battlespace.

The Contest Today

Although the Cold War ended, competition in the High North never ceased.

Today, Russia pours investment into the Northern Sea Route, building ports, airfields, and bases that blur the line between civilian and military use. Icebreakers, ostensibly for commerce, double as platforms for Arctic patrol. Scientific expeditions serve intelligence-gathering purposes. In 2019, Norwegian officials accused Russia of deliberate GPS jamming during NATO exercises in the High North, a classic gray zone tactic that disrupts without firing a shot.

China, though not an Arctic nation, insists it is a “near-Arctic state” and promotes a “Polar Silk Road.” Beijing advances access through research stations, infrastructure investments, and diplomatic engagement. Facilities such as the Yellow River Station in Svalbard support atmospheric research, but Western analysts note that the infrastructure is capable of supporting signals collection, space tracking, or other dual-use operations. Chinese overtures in Iceland, Greenland, and remote Russian ports seek commercial entry points that can translate into influence and overwatch.

The 2024 Department of Defense Arctic Strategy acknowledges US shortfalls: limited infrastructure, fragile logistics, and incomplete domain awareness. Yet these phrases deserve unpacking.

Infrastructure. Unlike Russia, the United States maintains very little Arctic military infrastructure. Alaska hosts critical sites—Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks, and the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense complex at Fort Greely—but north of Fairbanks, permanent facilities are scarce. There is no operational deep-draft port north of Dutch Harbor; Nome’s port expansion is underway but not yet delivering capacity. Runways capable of supporting sustained airlift are few and often seasonal, while radar and communications sites are relics of the Cold War, costly to maintain, and vulnerable to weather. Simply put, the US lacks the bases, ports, and airfields needed for persistent Arctic presence.

Logistics. Even if infrastructure existed, sustaining forces in the Arctic presents another barrier. The road and rail network ends at Fairbanks. Beyond that, most settlements are accessible only by air or sea, and often only during ice-free seasons. Fuel must be delivered in bulk during summer and stored for the year, while winter storms routinely ground aircraft and restrict maritime access. Temperatures immobilize vehicles, degrade batteries, and freeze hydraulics. Every resupply run requires deliberate planning, and small disruptions cascade quickly when the weather closes in. Logistics in the Arctic is not just costly; it is fragile.

Domain Awareness. Surveillance of the US Arctic is incomplete. Space Force and Air Force maintain long-range radar and missile-warning sites, but polar coverage remains patchy. Satellite orbits thin at high latitudes, and unmanned systems struggle with endurance in subzero cold. Electromagnetic interference complicates attribution, while maritime awareness is even weaker; commercial vessels, research ships, and foreign fishing fleets often move through US waters with limited monitoring. The United States has critical sensors, but they do not provide a continuous picture of activity across the Arctic air, sea, and land domains.

Operational Effect. Taken together, these shortfalls mean the United States can surge forces into Alaska, but it cannot easily sustain them north of the main road and rail network. Exercises prove capability but not continuity. Sensors detect some threats but leave blind spots. Bases exist but are too few and too far south to project into the Arctic Ocean. The result is the appearance of access without the reality of persistence.

What fills the gap today is a patchwork. Outside brief Army and Air Force exercise rotations, continuity rests with Coast Guard Arctic District cutters and stations; Space Force and Air Force radar and missile-warning sites; the Alaska National Guard in civil support and winter response roles; and a network of contractors and Alaska Native Corporations that sustain base operations, bulk fuel, remote camps, aviation support, and telecommunications. These actors keep access open, but they do not generate year-round military commitment that builds cold-weather mastery, local trust, or routine domain awareness. The effect is coverage without continuity.

The United States continues to rely on rotational forces for deterrence by presence, a model that struggles to deliver a credible response to adversary actions. Units deploy for exercises like Arctic Edge, then return home, leaving vast expanses of Alaska and the Arctic waters unattended. The 11th Airborne Division (Arctic) is based in Alaska, but its focus is largely Pacific-oriented. Its training posture remains rotational and exercise-based, rather than truly Arctic-defined. While its establishment signals overdue attention to Arctic defense, without enduring presence in the Arctic and adaptation to its conditions, the Division’s existence risks being more symbolic than transformative.

The result is an asymmetry tailored for irregular competition. Russia and China practice endurance, dual-use presence patrols, and ambiguity, while the United States shows up episodically. Yet the most overlooked advantage for America is not hardware or infrastructure; it is people. In the Arctic, Indigenous communities represent partners in domain awareness, a source of legitimacy, and the key to persistence in terrain that resists conventional control.

Arctic Partners in Domain Awareness

Irregular warfare is about people as much as terrain. In the Arctic, Indigenous communities are not simply observers but collaborators whose lived heritage can facilitate co-produced domain awareness. For millennia, communities across Alaska, Nunavut, and Sápmi have read ice floes, hunted in extreme cold, and moved through terrain where modern GPS struggles. This knowledge is not folklore; it is time-tested survival data. Their presence is not symbolic; it is an expression of sovereignty, stewardship, and resilience.

Canada understands this through the Canadian Rangers, part-time Indigenous patrol units under the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves. The Rangers extend domain awareness across thousands of miles and serve as critical partners for local and federal authorities. With little more than bolt-action rifles, snowmobiles, and generational expertise, they remain one of the most cost-effective irregular forces in the world.

Norway’s Home Guard, a civilian-based defense force, integrates local populations into national resilience. Organized into regional districts, it combines part-time soldiers with community networks to ensure rapid mobilization, local knowledge, and immediate support to national forces. This model allows Norway to maintain persistent presence across remote terrain without the cost of large permanent garrisons.

Denmark’s Sirius Patrol, with just 12 men on dog sleds, projects sovereignty and provides early warning across a landmass larger than many European countries. More than symbolic, the patrol demonstrates endurance and persistence: two-man teams endure months in isolation, conducting surveillance, reporting incursions, and deterring illegal activity through presence alone. Their ability to survive and operate where most forces cannot turn sovereignty from a legal claim into a lived reality.

Together, Canada’s Rangers, Norway’s Home Guard, and Denmark’s Sirius Patrol illustrate how small, locally rooted forces can generate disproportionate effects in extreme environments. By contrast, the United States has no comparable program, leaving vast stretches of the American Arctic without security presence or community-integrated defense. Alaska does maintain a State Defense Force, but it’s not equivalent. The ASDF exists under state law, and it’s limited under gubernatorial authority, lacking federal resourcing and authorities needed for Arctic defense. Indigenous consultations also exist, but they are episodic, underfunded, and rarely institutionalized. A US “Arctic Rangers” program, co-produced with Alaska Native communities, could change this. Such a force would be an enduring sensor, force multiplier in austere terrain, and provide initial response capacity—to locate, secure, and notify—until additional forces arrive. It could also co-manage multi-use logistics nodes, embed traditional knowledge into planning, and anchor legitimacy in places where Washington struggles to be present or trusted. The most enduring way to hold the Arctic is not with more hardware and technology, but by consulting and empowering the people who already live there as full partners in defense.

Logistics is the Campaign

In the Arctic, logistics isn’t just support, it is the campaign itself. Every frozen battery, gelled fuel line, or grounded aircraft proves that survival, not maneuver, decides outcomes.

Russia has acknowledged this reality by investing in hardened, dual-use bases, forward airfields, and the world’s largest icebreaker fleet. These platforms extend Moscow’s ability to sustain patrols and project sovereignty along the Northern Sea Route. China, for its part, is experimenting with drone batteries engineered to survive Arctic conditions, seeking cheap but enduring ISR where heavy platforms falter. The United States, by contrast, still depends on long-range airlift and seasonal sealift from the lower forty-eight, with limited depot capacity and shallow caches. The result is an asymmetry: America treats the Arctic as a destination, while Russia and China treat it as a domain.

This asymmetry matters because in the Arctic, effects follow logistics. In irregular warfare, sustainment often outweighs firepower. Insurgents in Afghanistan outlasted US patrols by relying on caches, smuggling networks, and pack animals. Guerrillas in Colombia used jungle terrain to offset superior technology, disappearing into the environment until they chose to reemerge. The same principle applies in the Arctic: the side that can stay fed, fueled, and connected will dominate.

US irregular warfare doctrine emphasizes adaptability, but Arctic training still assumes short deployments and robust supply lines. That assumption is misplaced. Forces here must be built for isolation, not rotation. To make logistics the campaign, several principles stand out:

• Plan from sustainment outward. Operations succeed or fail based on how long units can survive in isolation. Campaign design must begin with logistics, not maneuver.
• Preposition to extend reach. Distributed caches of fuel, food, and communications gear turn geographic distance into endurance and give options when main supply lines close.
• Partner for resilience. Indigenous communities can co-manage staging points and shared caches, blending traditional knowledge with modern supply chains. This reduces strain on long-haul logistics while anchoring legitimacy.
• Design for endurance. In the Arctic, reach depends on how long units can endure in isolation. Light platforms like snowmachines, sleds, drones, and dog teams outlast fuel-hungry convoys. Finland in 1939 and today’s Canadian Rangers show that endurance in sustainment makes persistence possible.
• Harden and repair. Every Arctic pier, airstrip, and fiber line is dual-use. Teams must be equipped and trained to conduct field-expedient repairs that keep operations alive.
• Institutionalize Arctic fieldcraft. Cold-weather sustainment skills—repairing equipment, building shelters, field hygiene, caring for casualties, surviving storms—must be formally taught and certified, not left to chance or short rotations.
• Effects follow logistics. Tactical concepts like domain awareness and precision strike are only possible if teams can remain on station. Sustainment is the prerequisite for every other effect.

The blunt truth is this: in the Arctic, logistics is the center of gravity. Those who can persist in place, adapt sustainment to the environment, and endure isolation will shape the contest. Those who cannot will remain visitors in a competition that is increasingly permanent.

Doctrine Meets the High North

The United States does not lack doctrine for irregular warfare. What it lacks is the willingness to apply it in the Arctic with the seriousness the region demands.

In February 2025, the Army published Army Techniques Publication 3-90.96: Arctic and Extreme Cold Weather Operations, the first service-level doctrine in years to focus on sustained cold-weather operations. It outlines fundamentals for maneuver, sustainment, and survival in extreme cold, from mobility on frozen terrain to medical risks in subzero climates. Yet while ATP 3-90.96 provides technical solutions, it does not grapple with the strategic contest already underway: one defined less by large maneuver forces and more by irregular competition for legitimacy, presence, and influence.

By contrast, Joint Publication 3-05 has long described irregular warfare as a “struggle among state and non-state actors to influence populations and affect legitimacy.” The Irregular Warfare Annex to the 2020 National Defense Strategy stressed that irregular competition is not the exception but the enduring condition of global rivalry. These insights are directly applicable to the Arctic, where influence is contested among states, local communities, and multinational institutions.

The gap is that Arctic planning still defaults to conventional assumptions: brigades flown in for seasonal exercises, infrastructure-dependent deployment, and episodic force projection. This conventional bias overlooks the reality that irregular competitors, Russia through dual-use “scientific” stations, China through polar diplomacy, already operate year-round in ambiguous ways that elude this intermittent form of deterrence.

The models and tools to respond exist. Section 1202’s logic of enabling unconventional partners has lessons for homeland defense; Civil Affairs units bridge military and local governance; small Army Special Forces detachments can endure where large formations cannot. What is missing is institutionalization: embedding these capabilities permanently in Alaska rather than temporary rotations.

History shows that doctrine adapts best when forced to confront stubborn environments. Counterinsurgency doctrine evolved in Iraq and Afghanistan because the costs of ignoring irregular dynamics became untenable. Stability operations doctrine matured in the Balkans only after years of grappling with fractured legitimacy. The Arctic now poses a similar test. Doctrine must move from the page to the ice.

For Special Operations in particular, this means embracing the High North as more than a training and exercise location. Permanent SOF presence in Alaska, working by, with, and through Indigenous communities, supporting early warning, and experimenting with distributed sustainment, would bring doctrine to life. Until then, Arctic irregular warfare remains something the United States can describe in publications but not yet practice at scale.

What Must Change

Four shifts are needed if the United States wants to keep pace in Arctic irregular warfare:

1. Permanent Teams in Alaska
2. Small, cold weather trained Special Forces and civil affairs detachments should not just pass through Alaska for episodic exercises and operations, they should live there. Rotational forces treat the Arctic like a proving ground; permanent teams treat it like home. Stationed year-round, these units would develop true Arctic expertise: how to move, sustain, and survive in subzero conditions without waiting for resupply from the lower forty-eight.

Their mission would extend beyond training. Permanent teams could partner with local communities, support civil authorities, and conduct domain awareness patrols in places where larger formations cannot linger. For irregular warfare, presence is power, and in the Arctic, presence must be constant.

1. A US Arctic Rangers Program
2. The United States needs a force that blends community legitimacy with national defense, modeled on Canada’s Ranger Patrol Groups. A US Arctic Rangers program, co-produced with Alaska Native communities, would give the nation enduring eyes and ears across remote terrain. Equipped lightly but empowered nationally, these Rangers would provide domain awareness, deterrence, and rapid response in environments that defy conventional control.

Such a force would require permanence, not ad hoc mobilization. The most viable legal pathway may be a blended construct: Title 14 authorities to anchor continuity and law enforcement legitimacy, Title 32 frameworks to enable state–federal mobilization, and selective Title 50 integration to fuse local reporting into the national intelligence architecture. Together, these authorities could institutionalize an Arctic Rangers program that is lawful, permanent, and co-produced with Indigenous communities, ensuring domain awareness and resilience where federal presence is otherwise episodic.

1. Co-Produced Strategy
2. Indigenous partnerships must move beyond symbolic consultation and become permanent fixtures of homeland defense in the Arctic. Co-production means embedding Alaska Native communities directly into planning cells, early warning networks, and infrastructure decisions.

Programs modeled on Canada’s Rangers and Norway’s Home Guard show how legitimacy, local knowledge, and persistence extend national reach where conventional forces cannot. For the United States, a co-produced strategy would anchor Arctic sovereignty in the very communities that live it daily; from coastal villages to sled patrols across the ice. For example, village-based observers linked into NORAD’s early warning system through dual-use platforms, similar to FEMA’s disaster reporting apps or neighborhood tip-line systems, could provide both situational awareness and legitimacy, closing gaps that satellites or radars alone cannot cover.

Such integration is not a gesture. It is irregular warfare applied at home: sovereignty exercised by those who endure the terrain, legitimacy built by those already trusted, and security extended through partnerships that cannot be replicated from Washington.

1. Whole of Society Sustainment

Leverage local industry and Alaska Native Corporations and their subsidiaries for persistent sustainment. Use multi-year contracts with Alaska Native Corporations and regional providers for caches, fuel staging, winterized sensors, and remote camps; set performance metrics for uptime and time to restore. Combine this with rapid-prototyping and experimentation authorities to cold weather resilient energy, batteries, small UAS, and mesh communications.

Whole of society sustainment also means integrating civilian infrastructure and services into defense resilience. Telecommunications providers, aviation firms, fisheries, and energy producers already operate year-round in austere conditions. Formal partnerships and incentives can align their existing capacity with defense requirements, ensuring that critical infrastructure serves both community needs and national security.

The goal is simple: presence that endures off the land and local supply chains. In the Arctic, sustainment is a collective effort where defense, industry, and Indigenous partners co-produce resilience.

Conclusion

Irregular warfare is not confined to deserts, jungles, or failed states. It occurs wherever presence is contested and legitimacy matters—and in the Arctic, this contest is already underway. Russia and China are not experimenting at the margins; they are investing in endurance, building the infrastructure and logistics that allow them to persist where the United States can only rotate in. America is starting from behind in a race where endurance, not firepower, sets the pace.

To close the gap, US strategy must reverse its logic: start with the mission effects the Arctic demands—persistent domain awareness, credible deterrence by denial, and rapid response to crises—and then build the logistics and force structure that make those effects possible. Caches, co-produced sustainment with Indigenous partners, light but enduring platforms, and resilient dual-use infrastructure are not enablers on the margins; they are the campaign itself.

This requires institutional courage. The Department of Defense and its service branches must treat Arctic irregular warfare as a standing mission set, not an episodic exercise. That means resourcing permanent small units, embedding them in local networks, and measuring readiness by endurance and legitimacy rather than tonnage or sorties. It also means reframing homeland defense as a continuous competition for access and trust, where every partnership, radar site, and fuel cache extends sovereignty northward.

The Arctic is teaching a clear lesson: ambiguity, endurance, and adaptation decide outcomes. Adversaries have already adapted; they have normalized ambiguity and turned presence into pressure. The United States must now adapt faster—by linking doctrine to geography, investment to endurance, and legitimacy to deterrence. If America fails to translate strategy into persistent practice, it will cede its northern flank not through defeat in battle but through absence.

Doctrine written is knowledge; doctrine lived is power. To defend the homeland’s northern frontier, the United States must live its doctrine—embedding presence, partnerships, and persistence as the foundations of deterrence. Until Washington moves doctrine and investment from paper to permafrost, it will remain a visitor in its own Arctic backyard.

Tags: Arctic Security, Arctic Sovereignty, Arctic Strategy; Domain Awareness, Cold-Weather Operations, Deterrence by Denial, Homeland Defense, Hybrid Threats, Indigenous Partnerships, irregular warfare, Logistics and Sustainment

About The Author

• 
  
• Stephen Gagnon
• Major Stephen Gagnon is a US Army Special Forces officer and Arctic security fellow at the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies in Anchorage, Alaska. He is pursuing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with research centered on irregular warfare, Arctic strategy, and Indigenous partnerships in defense. He has served with Special Forces units in Africa, Europe, and the Levant. The views expressed are his own.

19. American-Led Regime Change Is Usually Disastrous

Summary:

U.S.-led foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) has a long record of unintended catastrophe, with Iraq as Exhibit A and only rare successes like post-WWII Germany and Japan. Research shows roughly one-third of FIRCs slide into civil war. The article argues POTUS’s escalating military and covert pressure on Venezuela repeats classic pathologies: overconfidence, vague end states, and wishful thinking that a “better” government will naturally emerge. Structural risks include state collapse, factional violence, empowered extremists, and long-term U.S. entanglement. Strategic counsel: treat regime change as an absolute last resort, not a default tool of U.S. power with planning.

Comment: Sigh... the key words are "foreign imposed" (along with US-led). Two wonky points: The Special Forces motto is de oppresso leader - "to free the oppressed." But the correct interpretation is to help the people free themselves with the emphasis on the people freeing themselves. Second, the modern definition of unconventional warfare is activities to enable or support a resistance or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power..." The nuance is that Special Forces do not do the coercing, disrupting, or overthrowing. It is the people (through resistance or insurgency ) who do that. However, in American and US military culture we tend to want to play the dominant role and tell others how it should be done and then we end up trying to do it for them. For regime change to be successful it must be done by he people and not through US led foreign-imposed actions.

To get into it a little more deeper, no one should be proposing supporting a regime by a people unless there has been a thorough assessment.

 4. Assessment - must conduct continuous assessment to gain understanding - tactical, operational, and strategic.  Assessments are key to developing strategy and campaign plans and anticipating potential conflict. Assessments allow you to challenge assumptions and determine if a rebalance of ways and means with the acceptable, durable, political arrangement  is required. Understand the indigenous way of war and adapt to it.   Do not force the US way of war upon indigenous forces if it is counter to their history, customs, traditions, and abilities. 

5.  Ensure US and indigenous interests are sufficiently aligned.  If indigenous and US interests are not sufficiently aligned the mission will fail.  If the US has stronger interest than the indigenous force we can create an “assistance paradox” - if indigenous forces believe the US mission is "no fail” and the US forces will not allow them to fail and therefore they do not need to try too hard.  They may very well benefit from long term US aid and support which may be their objective for accepting support in the first place.

 6. Employ the right forces for the right mission. US SOF, conventional, civilian agency, indigenous forces.  Always based on assessment and thorough understanding of the problem and available resources and capabilities.  Cannot over rely on one force to do everything.  

7.  Learn how to operate without being in charge.  If we usurp the mission indigenous forces will never be successful on their own.  You cannot pay lip service to advising and assisting.  This is why operations in Colombia and the Philippines achieve some level of success.
 This is not “leading from behind.”  This is the appropriate understanding of the relationship between USSF/SOF and indigenous forces in a sovereign nation or indigenous forces seeking self-determination of government.

https://maxoki161.blogspot.com/2018/07/eight-points-of-special-warfare.html

American-Led Regime Change Is Usually Disastrous

Foreign Policy · Ellen Knickmeyer

The arrogance that led to Iraq now threatens catastrophe in Venezuela.

By Ellen Knickmeyer

December 1, 2025, 2:09 PM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/12/01/venezuela-iraq-regime-change-trump/

The United States is the world leader in regime change, toppling 35 foreign heads over the past 120 years, by one reckoning. It’s a record built on a dangerous combination of unparalleled military might, a large group of perceived enemies—and a sunny self-confidence that has repeatedly proven mistaken.

No one has shown himself more tempted by the power to unleash the world’s strongest army and economy to win arguments, take territory, smack down adversaries, and cow allies than President Donald Trump. Washington is leading a growing military and covert campaign targeting President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, after already striking Iran and Yemen and issuing other, vaguer threats against Nigeria, Mexico, Panama, and even Denmark and Canada.

Overthrowing another country’s leader is a routine enough tactic that it has its own acronym among academics: FIRC, or foreign-imposed regime change.

According to a tally by Alexander Downes, an associate professor and political scientist at George Washington University and the author of the book Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong, the United States carried out nearly a third of all of about 120 forced ousters of foreign leaders around the world between 1816 and 2011.

Regime change and other strong-arm interventions rarely go as planned, but some of those that Trump is threatening, such as going “guns-a-blazing” into Nigeria, with its armed extremists and ethnic and sectarian divides, seem like obvious disasters. But past failures should remind Americans of how catastrophic the consequences of hubris can be—both on an individual human scale and a national one.

Take U.S. Foreign Regime Change No. 34, Iraq, and the series of military patrols that I tagged along with as a reporter in Baghdad in May 2006.

Three years after the United States had forced out Saddam Hussein based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction, there was no sign of the wave of democratization that President George W. Bush’s team had promised would follow in the Middle East. Instead, the 10th Mountain Division patrols, when I accompanied them, had devolved into a de facto body-removal service. Nightly, they picked up and hauled away the corpses of Iraqis that other Iraqis were dumping on Baghdad’s streets and sidewalks.

The dead, mostly young men, some with hands clutching the air in shock or wired behind their back by their killers, were victims of a sectarian civil war that was unforeseen by the Bush administration. Toppling Saddam’s Sunni-based government and security forces proved easy for the U.S. military. Dealing with the ensuing power struggle between the vicious, Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias and Sunni insurgent groups that arose in the security vacuum that followed did not. The consequences would empower Iran, foster the Islamic State as a global threat, and stick U.S. troops in the region to this day.

Long after American forces chased out Saddam, the consequences were still cascading for ordinary Iraqis. Every day, they endured a gamut of abductions, torture and killing, car bombs and suicide bombs and other attacks.

On one of those nights in Baghdad, the Americans had already taken a hit from an improvised explosive device. The blast left some of the young soldiers limping or dazed. It flipped back the head of an Iraqi driver who had been nearby, killing him.

Will Shields, the 23-year-old second lieutenant leading the patrol, had gone that same night to a post of the Baghdad police, one of the Shiite-dominated security forces that the United States had created to bring order to Iraq. Alternately haranguing and bargaining, he prodded frightened Shiite police to step outside their offices, under American protection, long enough to help the U.S. patrol collect the night’s bodies.

“You do realize that this is your job?” the frustrated lieutenant, asked of the Iraqi police that night. “How do you expect Americans to do anything, when you won’t do anything?”

The scale of sectarian killings deprived the Iraqi dead of names and stories, reducing them to a succession of entrance and exit wounds, noted as soldiers swung the bodies into the back of vehicles.

Venezuela would be a return to a long U.S. tradition of regional interference. According to Downes’s research, about 20 of those 35 U.S.-backed regime changes were in Central and South America or the Caribbean.

In some of those countries, the United States removed and replaced leaders again and again, with the concentration of someone kicking a vending machine to get the right candy bar to drop. In 1954 alone, for example, Washington ousted three Guatemalan leaders in succession.

Globally, a third of all forced regime changes by all countries led to civil wars in the targeted nation within 10 years, Downes, the researcher, found.

One frequent path to disaster is when regimes collapse outright, leaving armed and disaffected security forces at loose ends. Another is when a foreign-installed new leader finds himself “pulled like Gumby,” Downes said, between the conflicting wants of his people and the foreign power that installed him.

“The whole problem with regime change is you tend not to think about what comes after. Like, ‘What’s the plan there?’” Downes told me.

“And it’s amazing just how prevalent that is,” he said. “Countries just keep doing it, and either they don’t think about what will happen next, or they think … that won’t happen to us.”

A few regime changes have led to much better things—most notably in Japan and Germany and other Western European countries at the close of World War II. Those, of course, were conflicts the United States was forced into rather than chose.

By the numbers, regime changes have the best odds of succeeding in installing a democracy when they happen in countries that already have experience of democracy, are well-off economically, and have a relatively homogeneous population, such as Japan or Germany immediately following World War II, Downes and fellow researchers found.

When those criteria don’t apply, you get situations such as the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan or the eventual rise of the Islamic Republic after the United States and United Kingdom aided the Shah of Iran by removing his political opponent. After two decades of killings and insurgencies, Iraq has reached a kind of stability, but a net effect has been to frighten other countries in the region away from democratic experiments. Experts see warning signs for any attempt at regime change in Venezuela, a petrostate where misgovernment by socialist autocrat Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez, coupled with international sanctions, have trashed the economy and created millions of refugees.

The Trump administration has accused Maduro of being in league with drug traffickers, although the United States overstates Venezuela’s role in drug smuggling into the United States. Washington has moved its largest aircraft carrier to the region as part of a military buildup. It has killed dozens of people in strikes on speedboats that the United States says, without evidence, are carrying drugs.

The Trump administration has been vague on its plans, including whether it was considering force to drive out Maduro, who has manipulated elections to stay in power, or whether U.S. actions such as airstrikes would be aimed at encouraging Venezuelans to do the job themselves.

A more peaceful U.S. approach in Trump’s first term—imposing financial sanctions to increase pressure on Maduro and proposing a power-sharing deal to ease him out of power—failed to empower Venezuela’s opposition as hoped. Trump is resorting to military and CIA deployment this time, either to scare Maduro into ceding power or to force him out directly.

“We have seen this movie before,” said Jacqueline Hazelton, a former instructor in the political effects of military power at the Naval War College and now the executive editor of the journal International Security, noting that the usual result was factional violence

Venezuela has a large and motivated democratic opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. But Maduro has had years to strengthen and diversify his hold on the country’s institutions. Machado lacks the ability to break that hold and repress challengers, Hazelton said.

Supporters of a U.S. intervention in Venezuela have cited No. 31 in the U.S.-led regime change list—in Panama in 1990, which replaced a military ruler with democratic government.

But Panama is a fraction of Venezuela’s size in territory and population, and it had a resident U.S. military force that Venezuela lacks, Downes noted.

Supporters of intervention in Venezuela are working to overcome any such U.S. doubts. A Venezuelan opposition writer and supporter of U.S. intervention rejected the very term “regime change” when it comes to his country.

Maduro sits at the top of a drug-trafficking criminal network, so there’s no sitting government to topple, Walter Molina, who fled Maduro’s Venezuela and lives now in Buenos Aires, told me. Molina and others have argued that Venezuela has an elected government, led by the opposition candidate who the United States and others say won 2024 presidential election that was overridden by Maduro, waiting to return.

Any U.S. intervention will be “about respecting the will of the Venezuelan people,” he said.

That may be, and the combination of resentment toward Maduro’s misrule from inside Venezuela and the overwhelming attack from outside might be enough to usher out an autocrat and usher in democracy. But that’s uncertain enough to warrant caution, and the world has heard this kind of urging before, such as when then-U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney declared that U.S. armed forces would be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq.

“The temptation is to just do it and say, ‘Well, what happens can’t be worse than what was before,’” Downes said of foreign regime change. “But that’s sometimes not true.”

Foreign Policy · Ellen Knickmeyer

20. Inside America’s next information war

Summary:

Private firms like Black Iceberg now run sophisticated influence operations, illustrated by using adult-content creators to expose North Korean soldiers in Russia to mundane images of normal life, subtly undermining DPRK narratives. At the same time, the US administration has scaled back U.S. government offices that monitored foreign disinformation, even as AI tools supercharge propaganda and impersonation at massive scale. Russia, China and Iran are already exploiting these capabilities. Experts argue that no single agency can cope; defending U.S. democracy now requires a whole-of-nation response that fuses government, industry, creatives and citizens to “tell the truth better than they lie.”

Comment: We have to be able to fight and win the information war. Are we ceding influence in the information and human domain?

I give great credit to Maggie Feldman-Pitch (a former Security Studies student at Georgetown) for taking the initiative and taking the lead in "leading with influence." She shows what can be done.

This is why we need to take aggressive action against north Korea and specifically the nKPA:

•      Information campaign – focus on the three target audiences: regime elite, 2d tier leadership, and the Korean people in the north.

o   The five principles of information: (1) massive quantities of information from news to entertainment; (2) practical information from market activity to organization for collective action; (3) facts and the truth about north Korea and the outside world; (4) understanding of the universal human rights for all people; (5) Voices from the north Korean diaspora to tell their stories of success

o   Major theme: Kim’s strategy has failed to achieve his objectives.

o   To counter nK propaganda we must recognize the Kim family regime’s strategy(s), understand the strategy(s), EXPOSE the strategy(s) to inoculate the Korean and American publics and the international community, and attack the strategy(s) with a superior form of political warfare (led by information).

A Psychological Operations Strategy for the Korean Peninsula from Lessons Learned in Ukraine

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/a-psychological-operations-strategy-for-the-korean-peninsula-from-lessons-learned-in-ukraine/

Developing an Irregular Warfare Campaign for North Korea

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/developing-an-irregular-warfare-campaign-for-north-korea/

Inside America’s next information war

nextgov.com · $(function() { GEMG.HoverGroup.init({}); });

By David DiMolfetta,

Cybersecurity Reporter, Nextgov/FCW

https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2025/10/inside-americas-next-information-war/408796/

Earlier this year, as North Korea began sending more soldiers to Russia to assist in its war against Ukraine, Maggie Feldman-Piltch turned to a group of adult content creators for their help.

The creators had noticed an uptick in subscribers from the DPRK who suddenly had access to a less restrictive internet environment than they were used to back home, including adult content recommended by their Russian counterparts.

Feldman-Piltch requested that the creators do things such as open a refrigerator on camera or casually mention needing to go to a doctor’s appointment while filming.

A short time later, a North Korean soldier was interviewed by Ukrainian media, where he talked about wanting to experience ordinary activities like going to a grocery store and pushing a shopping cart. Several of the creators recognized the soldier’s voice as one of their clients. It was mission success.

The DPRK is deemed one of the most restrictive and oppressive nations on the planet.

“This is a group of people who probably haven’t seen a full-size refrigerator, let alone one filled with food,” Feldman-Piltch said. Black Iceberg Holdings, her company that helped steer this narrative effort, has been operating in stealth for more than a year. Nextgov/FCW is the first to report its existence.

Such an effort is known as an influence operation — a coordinated attempt to sway public opinion and decision-making. It’s a tactic that has existed for quite a while.

During World War II, William Joyce, known widely as Lord Haw-Haw, was a Nazi propagandist, delivering English-language broadcasts to the United Kingdom and other allied nations to sow fear and dismay. In the United States, the Treasury Department’s Writers' War Board sought to counter those efforts with their own pro-American content.

Years later, consumer electronics and social media have made influence campaigns more covert and scalable. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia exploited those tools in an attempt to sway the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor. Trump and his allies have rejected that finding, branding it the “Russia hoax.” His administration, and now Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, have advanced the claim that spy agencies and law enforcement were weaponized against him to discredit his campaign and undermine his presidency.

Upon Trump’s return to the White House, the government has scaled back many of the nation’s offices used to track and counter influence operations targeting Americans at home, on grounds that they were ultimately used as political tools to censor Americans’ free speech.

Those offices include the Foreign Malign Influence Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force. They were built to identify and disrupt covert campaigns by foreign governments that spread disinformation, amplify divisions and undermine confidence in U.S. elections and institutions.

Scaling back those offices comes amid a time when advanced AI tools have fueled enormous capabilities to produce and disseminate content faster than ever before. Black Iceberg is just one part of a growing digital ecosystem of private-sector firms working to tip the balance of views about the United States and democracy around the world. But foreign adversaries are doing the same.

China, namely, has engaged at least one private company that uses advanced AI tools to carry out influence schemes, building data profiles on American lawmakers and other major figures, a recent Vanderbilt University analysis found. And a year ago, U.S. assessments concluded that Russia conducted sustained efforts with companies to launch disinformation campaigns leading up to the 2024 election.

Now, new opportunities are presenting themselves for foreign rivals: A slew of major gubernatorial elections is around the corner, midterm elections are set for next year and a presidential election is coming in 2028.

U.S. offices that keep their eyes on these matters have been reduced and restructured, and the age of advanced AI tools is just beginning.

The U.S. is not doomed, experts in cyber and influence campaigns said, but it will now take a whole-of-nation approach — government, cybersecurity companies, creators, artists, brand experts and more — to combat what they see as a major upgrade in information warfare capabilities in the years to come.

“It’s one of the biggest challenges we have in the world right now,” said Dave DeWalt, CEO of cybersecurity venture capital firm NightDragon, whose portfolio companies include firms that track influence efforts. “Where do I go for the truth? How do I figure out the truth? What is AI-generated? What’s real?”

Individual companies, big or small, will have to contend with these issues and tap into diverse streams of data from social media platforms and other online sources to keep pace with these threats, he said. Viral trends fueled by social media influencers and betting platforms could be hijacked to help covertly exacerbate claims that aren’t real.

“You can see one example after another where … you have this hyperlocal influencer that can get magnified in scale with bots and networks, and suddenly you have a risk to your brand and a risk to your value. And there is no hack, not at least a digital hack,” he said. “This is a brand breach problem, it’s coming to a theater near you in a big way, and we’re just seeing the beginning of this.”

AI tools have indeed drastically increased the scalability, reach and quality of influence operations targeting the United States and its allies, said Deric Palmer, the former assistant special agent in charge for the cyber field office of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division and now managing director of Asc3nd Tech’s open-source and human intelligence portfolio. While in service, Palmer developed the Digital Persona Protection Program that provides defense cyber measures to key personnel like the defense secretary and the Army’s chief of staff.

He often dealt with social media accounts that impersonate officials. Last year, his team identified and mitigated 242,000 of them. His shop was only a group of three people. Often, they would rely on private-sector contractors to automate the search and identification process of the sham accounts.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own,” he said. “So I don’t think just one government entity can do it.”

Social media platforms largely rely on users to report fake accounts, which also made the job challenging, he added. Agencies like the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had worked with social platforms to facilitate takedowns of content deemed false. Those agencies have largely pulled back from coordinating content takedowns since around mid-2023, in part under the pressure of conservative lawsuits alleging their communications with social platforms amounted to censorship of free speech.

Palmer estimates that hundreds of millions of impersonation accounts are present on social media sites right now. Some could theoretically be engineered to influence populations and large-scale decision-making, depending on who owns and controls them. They’re easy to stand up with generative AI tools, which can also be used to craft more realistic-sounding materials for social feeds.

“The first thing between the private sector and the public sector and what leaders need to do is admit that there’s an information operation problem,” he said.

Inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a recent overhaul has shifted the Foreign Malign Influence Center’s functions under the agency’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center and National Intelligence Council. An ODNI release argues that a previous version of FMIC was redundant and infringed on Americans’ constitutional rights when it coordinated with social media firms.

Not much else has been made public about the dissolving of the center, listed as part of a broader “ODNI 2.0” plan announced by Gabbard in August. It’s also not clear if ODNI has named an election threats executive responsible for leading the intelligence community on election security for major races like the 2026 midterms.

Asked about this, an ODNI official said in an email that, under the Biden administration, “the Election Threats Executive was replaced by the Foreign Malign Influence Center” and that “the function changed names from ETE to FMIC and then grew in size.”

ODNI opened the Foreign Malign Influence Center in 2022 and placed the election threats executive — created in 2019 under Trump’s first term — within that center. The executive is typically an individual assigned to coordinate spy agencies’ election threat responses and to oversee an experts group that analyzes intelligence on foreign interference efforts.

ODNI did not respond to a request for clarification on the status of the executive.

“Our country’s ability to counter foreign influence operations has never been stronger, and that is thanks to President Trump’s leadership and DNI Gabbard’s historic efforts to transform ODNI into the most actionable and efficient version,” ODNI Press Secretary Olivia Coleman said in a statement. “As we’ve said publicly on numerous occasions and as Congress has been told directly, core functions and expertise to ensure the safety, security and freedom of the American people have not been affected.”

Tracking information operations is a delicate balance, said one former U.S. official, who requested anonymity to speak freely. Intelligence analysts often struggle to balance weighing the potential harm of suspected propaganda against the principle that Americans should be free to see and judge information for themselves.

Reassessments of U.S. work on influence operations are normal and tend to swing back and forth in emphasis, the ex-official said. But regardless of those shifts, foreign adversaries will keep using information warfare as a daily tool — especially to create distrust at home — and those dynamics can’t be ignored.

It’s not just a U.S. problem, as cyber tools are borderless threats.

A blog post from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies warned that Russia, China and Iran have already exploited global protests, resource supply chains and U.S. elections through coordinated disinformation and hack-and-leak campaigns.

“America is letting its adversaries win the information war. The latest blow to U.S. efforts to fight this war came in August, when the U.S. intelligence community learned of the reduction in size and reorganization of the Foreign Malign Influence Center,” it says. “This ill-advised action comes on the heels of similar reductions within the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.”

Solving today’s information operations problem “requires a meaningful place for creatives, for musicians [and] for people outside of government,” Feldman-Piltch said. “It requires the citizenry to be engaged and supportive of their own nation. The best way to keep that from happening is to divide them and degrade them.”

“So you could have all the people and all the money in the world in government focused on this, and it wouldn’t be enough, because that’s not how this works,” she added. “We have to tell the truth better than they lie.”

nextgov.com · $(function() { GEMG.HoverGroup.init({}); });

21. Gray Zone Clarity: Building Irregular Maritime Intelligence through Civilian-Linked Networks

Summary:

Gray zone maritime coercion thrives on ambiguity and time gaps, and that Indo Pacific states can counter it by turning civilian maritime observers into a networked early warning and intelligence system linked to hubs like the Pacific Fusion Centre via existing infrastructure such as the Coral Sea Cable. Erika Lafrennie proposes phased creation of a Pacific Maritime Tactical Intelligence Cell that starts with trusted community alert channels, adds a tactical analysis layer to fuse local reports with ISR data, then expands through opt in partnerships. Faster, shared attribution would raise costs for Chinese coercion without militarizing coastal communities.

Excerpts:

Gray zone competition is often described as a contest without thresholds, but it is more accurately a contest over who controls the interpretation of events before thresholds are crossed. The actors who can surface intent earliest, and do so with shared credibility, gain leverage without escalation. In that environment, the most important asset is not the sophistication of one’s sensors, but the speed at which dispersed observations become validated, collective insight.

A civilian-linked reporting architecture does not replace traditional ISR, deterrence posture, or alliance commitments. It anchors them. It creates the connective tissue that turns warning into coordination, ambiguity into attribution, and isolated signals into strategic narrative advantage. When communities, analysts, and decision-makers can see the same behavior at nearly the same time, an adversary loses the temporal and informational margins they depend on to make coercion look like coincidence.

This approach centers on recognizing that awareness is distributed while clarity must be shared, making legitimacy, rather than infrastructure, the decisive terrain. In the gray zone, deterrence emerges from the certainty of revelation and the collective action that transparency enables.

Gray Zone Clarity: Building Irregular Maritime Intelligence through Civilian-Linked Networks

irregularwarfare.org · Erika Lafrennie · December 2, 2025

https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/gray-zone-clarity-building-irregular-maritime-intelligence-through-civilian-linked-networks/

Editor’s Note: This article was submitted as part of the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s 2025 Writing Contest, in which authors were invited to explore how the United States and its partners can use irregular warfare to strengthen security cooperation, build trust, and enhance resilience among Indo-Pacific nations. This article stood out for its innovative approach to integrating community-based observation with formal intelligence networks, demonstrating how a multilateral, distributed maritime awareness system could enhance situational understanding, accelerate partner response, and mitigate gray zone threats. By emphasizing practical, politically sustainable mechanisms for real-time intelligence sharing, the piece offers a concrete roadmap for combining irregular and conventional tools to improve regional security and resilience.

Gray zone coercion thrives where visibility is partial, attribution is uncertain, and response timelines are slow. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Indo-Pacific’s contested maritime spaces, where civilian mariners live inside the operating environment while national-level intelligence systems observe it episodically from above. When China intensified coercive pressure around Second Thomas Shoal in 2024, Indo-Pacific partners possessed frontline awareness but lacked the distributed channels to convert that awareness into shared, actionable clarity fast enough to shape escalation dynamics.

Traditional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) remains indispensable, but in the gray zone it is rarely sufficient. Competitive advantage no longer comes from collecting the most data, but from connecting the right observers early enough to shape decision cycles. The strategic opportunity lies in converting everyday maritime awareness into networked intelligence that denies adversaries the ambiguity gray zone operations depend on.

One solution lies in civilian-linked, socially legitimate reporting mechanisms that fuse local observation with existing analytic hubs, leveraging community insight rather than requiring new infrastructure or militarized presence. “Civilian-linked” refers to reporting systems that connect non-military maritime observers—fishermen, harbor masters, coastal enforcement—to formal intelligence networks without requiring them to become formal intelligence assets or compromise their local legitimacy. The goal is simple: turn community insight into regional deterrence by accelerating clarity faster than coercion can unfold.

A Proven Base, Expanded with Irregular Inputs

Benchmarks already exist for both the organizational capacity and technological connectivity required for enhanced maritime intelligence sharing. For instance, the Pacific Fusion Centre (PFC), a regional intelligence-sharing hub in Port Vila, Vanuatu, has trained thirty-five analysts from fourteen nations since 2018, producing strategic assessments on transnational crime and environmental threats. It delivers value by “provid[ing] regional leaders with information to support their responses to security challenges” without triggering political backlash or sovereignty concerns—the typical resistance to foreign intelligence presence or data collection on sovereign territory.

Similarly, Australia’s Coral Sea Cable—a A$200 million, 4,700-kilometer high-speed fiber link—has catalyzed regional connectivity that makes real-time maritime intelligence sharing technically feasible. The cable’s high-speed, low-latency infrastructure enables coastal communities to transmit observations instantly to regional analysis centers, transforming isolated coastal sensors into an integrated early-warning architecture.

These platforms provide a technical backbone and institutional precedent. However, what’s missing is both infrastructure and institutional legitimacy: a socially-accepted framework that connects civilian maritime observers to formal intelligence institutions like the PFC through platforms like the Coral Sea Cable. Doing so requires more than technical capability; it demands real-time alert systems from fishing communities, harbor masters, and coastal law enforcement—those closest to gray zone incursions but farther removed from formal reporting chains.

Strategic assessments offer context, but they rarely arrive fast enough to cue partner action during a live gray zone incident. Tactical coordination is the missing layer. Without a way to fuse real-time local inputs with ISR feeds and immediately share actionable insights across partners, detections stall. This gap is where a middle layer like the Pacific Maritime Tactical Intelligence Cell fits, helping accelerate analysis and response while aligning community awareness with regional readiness.

How Awareness Becomes Action

Clarity delivered at decision-relevant speed changes behavior in ways that awareness alone cannot. In gray zone competition, time—not firepower—is often the decisive commodity. Civilian-linked reporting networks matter not because they reveal more, but because they reveal earlier, enabling three critical shifts.

First, scattered observations become shared pattern recognition. When coastal communities report anomalies into a common channel, individual signals become collective evidence that weakens plausible deniability. Second, episodic reporting transforms into decision-relevant cueing. Community alerts can target formal ISR assets, directing scarce collection toward real indicators rather than broad speculation. Third, reactive crisis management shifts to anticipatory posture. Once regional actors can validate intent early, they can shape escalation pathways rather than merely respond to them.

In a domain where competitors depend on incremental pressure, the ability to collapse ambiguity faster than an adversary can escalate becomes a form of deterrence in itself.

This creates an asymmetric advantage. Gray zone actors depend on temporal gaps—the space between incident and attribution, between detection and response. Civilian-linked networks compress these gaps faster than adversaries can adapt their operational security, fundamentally altering the cost-benefit calculus of incremental coercion.

Implementing a Pacific Maritime Tactical Intelligence Cell

The following phased approach builds upon the Pacific Fusion Centre’s existing foundation and the Coral Sea Cable’s connectivity infrastructure to develop a Pacific Maritime Tactical Intelligence Cell. Each phase is distinct and sequential: early phases establish community trust and voluntary participation before introducing formal intelligence integration, building analytical capacity once community networks prove reliable, and adding technical systems only after partners demonstrate operational readiness. Later phases expand the network through multilateral partnerships once initial phases prove sustainable. This graduated, three-phase approach creates multiple exit points, allowing partners to participate at levels commensurate with risk tolerance while building comprehensive regional coverage.

Phase 1: Community-Linked Alert Channels

The foundation is not hardware but trust-based communication between frontline mariners and regional analytic centers. Low-bandwidth alert platforms—SMS, radio, or app-based—allow fishermen, harbor officials, and coastal enforcement to report anomalies without becoming extensions of state intelligence. This maintains local legitimacy, preserves sovereignty optics, and creates an always-on human sensor layer that formal ISR cannot replicate.

Phase 2: A Tactical Analysis Cell in Existing Fusion Hubs

Rather than creating new institutions, regional partners can strengthen existing analysis centers by adding a tactical layer capable of turning frontline observations into standardized, decision-relevant products. This cell blends commercial maritime data, open-source indicators, and civilian reports to identify, classify, and share anomalies using agreed attribution and data-protection norms.

Phase 3: Expansion Through Opt-In Partnerships

Once the approach demonstrates value locally, it can grow horizontally, not hierarchically. Partners with experience become mentors; participation levels remain voluntary and ownership remains local at every stage. This reduces single-point dependency, complicates adversary pressure, and creates a distributed deterrence posture that is difficult to target politically or economically.

Case Study: How Early Warning Changes Escalation

Dynamics

Had such a network existed during the 2024 Second Thomas Shoal escalation, the sequence of events might have unfolded differently. Community-linked alerts from surrounding coastal routes could have flagged unusual vessel movement patterns before the blockade materialized. These signals, rapidly fused by a tactical analysis cell, could have cued formal ISR assets to verify intent sooner, enabling Manila and its partners to issue coordinated diplomatic warnings before coercion crossed into physical obstruction. Visibility would not have prevented confrontation outright, but it could have forced earlier attribution, narrowed China’s narrative options, and raised the political cost of escalation. In the gray zone, that shift alone can change outcomes.

More importantly, documented attribution would have enabled coordinated partner responses such as joint coast guard transits, synchronized diplomatic protests, or shared intelligence products—the very outcomes China attempts to prevent by sustaining ambiguity and isolating partners.

Anticipated Challenges and Strategic Opportunities

Sensing that the Pacific Maritime Tactical Intelligence Cell outlined above threatens China’s narrative dominance, Beijing is likely to deploy familiar narratives, portraying such an initiative as “neo-colonial surveillance,” “militarized aid,” or “Western interference.” This tactic has proven effective before—during the 2021 Honiara riots, Chinese disinformation effectively reduced negative online sentiment toward China by 18 percent, shifting blame to foreign actors like the United States and Australia. Beijing might characterize even basic radar and communications equipment as “foreign surveillance systems,” creating political vulnerabilities for host governments. At the same time, China could respond with economic pressure campaigns, accelerating port construction and communications infrastructure to create alternative networks.

As such, any approach to narrative dominance in the region must embrace the unavoidable: that attempts to expose or counter China’s actions will be politicized. Transparency, modular opt-in, and local control can reduce potential vulnerabilities. Community alert channels are remarkably resilient. Framed as maritime safety tools, they are hard to discredit and nearly impossible to suppress because they provide immediate, tangible value to local communities while creating minimal dependency on foreign systems. The multilateral approach with allies and partners provides multiple cooperation options, reducing vulnerability to Chinese economic pressure on any single relationship while focusing on capabilities China cannot easily replicate: real-time tactical intelligence analysis and rapid crisis coordination.

Metrics and Sustainability

This network improves awareness and coordination but does not deliver hard deterrence. That must come through separate capacity-building efforts. Success for this initiative should be measured not only by participation, but by performance under pressure of the following capabilities:

• Alert-to-action cycle time reduction
• Partner financial ownership progression
• Network retention post-transition to local control

These metrics matter strategically because they measure resilience rather than dependency. Fast cycle times indicate the network can operate inside adversary decision loops. Financial ownership progression ensures political sustainability beyond donor timelines. Post-transition retention demonstrates that partners value the capability enough to sustain it independently, which is the ultimate test of whether civilian-linked intelligence creates a lasting deterrent effect rather than temporary foreign assistance.

Conclusion

Gray zone competition is often described as a contest without thresholds, but it is more accurately a contest over who controls the interpretation of events before thresholds are crossed. The actors who can surface intent earliest, and do so with shared credibility, gain leverage without escalation. In that environment, the most important asset is not the sophistication of one’s sensors, but the speed at which dispersed observations become validated, collective insight.

A civilian-linked reporting architecture does not replace traditional ISR, deterrence posture, or alliance commitments. It anchors them. It creates the connective tissue that turns warning into coordination, ambiguity into attribution, and isolated signals into strategic narrative advantage. When communities, analysts, and decision-makers can see the same behavior at nearly the same time, an adversary loses the temporal and informational margins they depend on to make coercion look like coincidence.

This approach centers on recognizing that awareness is distributed while clarity must be shared, making legitimacy, rather than infrastructure, the decisive terrain. In the gray zone, deterrence emerges from the certainty of revelation and the collective action that transparency enables.

Erika Lafrennie is the founder of Cypher Strategies and author of Xinanigans, a field-grade brief on China’s strategic behavior. She has experience as a U.S. intelligence analyst and irregular warfare practitioner, supporting special operations, shaping doctrine, and designing architectures for real-time, cross-border intelligence flow. Her work bridges psychological statecraft, irregular conflict, and systems-level foresight.

Main Image generated by ChatGPT (OpenAI), October 2025.

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

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irregularwarfare.org · Erika Lafrennie · December 2, 2025

22. Mission Implausible: Revisiting the False Flag Narrative of Turkey’s July 15 Coup

Summary:

Powell and Ben Hammou critique a revisionist claim that Turkey’s July 15, 2016 events were a false flag staged by Erdoğan. They argue Turkey’s pre-coup profile actually fit elevated coup risk and that failed coups are routinely exploited by leaders to consolidate power, so repression proves little. They reject “absence of evidence” arguments about missing written plans, noting conspirators avoid documentation and states can fabricate it. Historical coups are often confused and amateurish, so anomalies do not imply orchestration. A false flag would require an implausibly large, disciplined conspiracy. They offer a third view: a real coup, followed by opportunistic, abusive state narratives and purges.

Mission Implausible: Revisiting the False Flag Narrative of Turkey’s July 15 Coup

by Jonathan Powell, by Salah Ben Hammou

|

12.02.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/02/revisiting-the-false-flag/

Image credit: Mstyslav Chernov, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

A recent essay challenges the official interpretation of Turkey’s July 2016 coup attempt. The authors argue that the episode was not a genuine military uprising but was a false flag operation designed to consolidate President Erdoğan’s power. Their case is built on a range of purported irregularities in the coup—ranging from Turkey not fitting the normal pre-coup profile to the absence of a detailed operational plan, seemingly self-defeating behavior of participants, and the immediate launch of massive purges afterward. These anomalies are said to point not to incompetence or disorganization, but to deliberate orchestration by the state.

While this essay focuses on the interpretation of evidence rather than the full chronology of events, some brief context is in order. On July 15, 2016, factions within the Turkish military attempted to seize power, mobilizing tanks and troops in major cities like Istanbul and Ankara. The coup quickly faltered in the face of organized resistance by loyalist forces and widespread civilian opposition. Hundreds were killed or injured, thousands were detained, and in the aftermath, President Erdoğan oversaw a sweeping consolidation of power, including mass purges of military personnel, civil servants, and judges.

As scholars of military coups who have investigated over 500 coup events, we are very familiar with both the general tendencies of coups, the occasional oddity, and the frequent need to challenge official narratives. Though the revisionist perspective in “Rethinking the Narrative” invites valuable skepticism toward the official account, the argument relies on a variety of false assumptions about coups, omits key counterpoints, and requires a number of leaps in logic. As a result, the essay’s conclusions risks misrepresenting not only the nature of the July 15 events but also broader dynamics that are common in military coups.

The Pre-Coup Profile

The authors point to a number of ways in which Turkey did not align with the factors we would typically associate with a coup attempt. The authors cite Powell’s previous observation that the Turkish case was unusual when considering dynamics such as the size of the military and economy. To be clear, Powell nor his coauthor in that earlier work questioned whether this was a bona fide coup attempt.

The authors contend that “several facts contradict the traditional markers of an imminent coup,” pointing to the lack of “severe economic turmoil” or recent “civil-military crises.” Though this might be true, such dynamics are not necessary conditions for coups. In fact, the very research the authors invoke is generally probabilistic by design – these factors raise or lower coup risk; they do not dictate outcomes. More importantly, the picture does not look as puzzling when considering a broader range of coup determinants. For example, Andy Beger and Mike Ward’s coup forecasts had Turkey ranked as the 11th most likely country to experience a failed coup going into 2016. In other words, Turkey’s pre-coup profile looked far more like a coup candidate than “Rethinking the Narrative” acknowledges.

False Dichotomy

The authors effectively argue that the July 15 events were either a genuine coup or a pretext for Erdoğan to consolidate power. This framing overlooks a well-documented tendency for both to be true; that is, for leaders to exploit failed coups for political gain. In some cases, leaders may deliberately all a plot to move forward due to the benefits of catching conspirators in the act.

There are obviously cases in which failed coups are not followed by mass retaliation, such as the Spain and Venezuela cases used by the authors, but post-coup repression is very common. Writing in African Affairs, Powell and a few colleagues previously argued that already-autocratizing leaders will use failed coups to justify actions that further strengthens them. Indeed, they specifically reference Erdoğan’s acknowledgment that the coup could serve as a gift from God. Various studies have demonstrated this works through multiple pathways, including political purges, state-sanctioned violence, reduction in civil liberties, personalization of power, politicizing appointments, and other acts. Though larger in scale than other cases, one could argue that Turkey’s post-coup developments were precisely what would have been anticipated.

Absence of Evidence as Proof

The authors repeatedly use argument from silence logic in which an absence of evidence is actually presented as evidence. Perhaps most interesting is the interpretation of the lack of a written coup plan. Many – including us – would be unsurprised to learn that a criminal conspiracy was not carefully documented. To the authors, the lack of evidentiary documentation demonstrates that the event could not have been genuine, as if all coup conspiracies leave behind a written record of the plot.

There are, of course, numerous conspiracies in which plotters do not generate such documentation. Edward Luttwak’s classic book Coup d’etat: A Practical Handbook instructs conspirators in the maintenance of operation security. First in Luttwak’s guidance is that “no information [is] to be communicated except verbally.” While there are plenty of examples of written documentation and some written records might be unavailable, such as drafts of public announcements, it is obvious that such records will be avoided.

And if such documentation is so necessary for genuine coup plots, it is unclear why a government ostensibly willing to kill its citizens in a false flag operation would prove unwilling to fabricate such evidence. Indeed, Turkey itself might be no stranger to such fabrications.

Historical Analogues

The analysis engages in frustratingly selective use of case evidence. The authors highlight inconsistencies when compared to other cases—such as unusual troop behavior, forensic irregularities, and the timing of government responses. Overall, the coup “made no strategic sense” to the authors.

The authors effectively assume coups are both invariably well-planned and executed according to that plan. Yet many historical coups also featured tactical confusion and internal miscommunication. For instance, In Venezuela’s 2002 coup, conspirators somehow failed to disarm the National Guard after briefly toppling Hugo Chavez. In Libya in 1969, Muammar Gaddafi and his fellow conspirators became lost en route to seize power from King Idriss Snoussi. Kenya’s 1982 coup was notoriously labeled as “amateurish”, flopping due to a “comedy of errors.” Blunders are common in coup attempts, and have even been invoked to explain why some coups turn bloody.

In emphasizing only corroborating evidence, the authors fail to recognize that the cases they reference in support of their claims in one context, in fact, contradict those claims in others.. The 1992 attempt in Venezuela and 1981 attempt in Spain are used to illustrate a lack of a post-coup crackdown. But these cases also demonstrate the lack of coherent execution or tactical blunders the authors take to suggest a false flag in the Turkish case.

The historical false flag examples are also poor models for the Turkish case since a bombing and arson attack do not require large numbers of people to be caught in the act. A Turkish false flag does, and successfully executing such a conspiracy would have required the willing participation of scores of Turkish soldiers willing to face life imprisonment or being killed during the maneuver. The level of coordination such a deception would require renders the false flag thesis far less convincing than a far simpler explanation—that elements within the military attempted, and failed, to seize power.

A Third Option

The authors ultimately present the reader with two options: the “Turkish government’s narrative” and a false flag operation. A third option is agreeing with the claim that July 15, 2016 was indeed a coup attempt, but disagreeing with many of the government’s claims about the event. This includes the number of deaths, how those deaths occurred, the complicity of the many thousands arrested or purged, and the accusations against specific individuals such as Fethullah Gülen.

To the authors, a failed coup must meet an almost exhaustive list of conditions. It must be preceded by economic turmoil and civil-military friction, involve extensive collaboration among conspirators, and include a written operational plan. The plot must unfold according to that plan, feature willing and forthcoming witnesses, be accurately reported by the government, and be followed by restraint in the aftermath.

By such criteria, few coups in modern history would ever meet these standards. This underscores how the framework sets an unrealistically high bar and risks misrepresenting the realities of how coups actually unfold.

Tags: coup, coup attempt, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey

About The Authors

• 
  
• Jonathan Powell
• Jonathan Powell (Ph.D.) is a visiting professor in the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His previous research has focused on the causes and consequences of military coups, and he serves as the principal investigator of the Global Instances of Coups project.
• View all posts
• 
  
• Salah Ben Hammou
• Salah Ben Hammou (Ph.D.) is a postdoctoral research associate at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. His research focuses on military coups, authoritarian politics, and the dynamics of regime change. His scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Armed Forces & Society and International Studies Review, while his public-facing analysis has been featured in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Conversation, and other outlets.

23. Guerrillas and Governance: Lessons on Resistance Forces and The Local Populace from The American Civil War

Summary:

Irregular warfare in the American Civil War offers valuable lessons for modern SOF, especially on how guerrillas interact with and govern local populations. Mosby’s Rangers in northern Virginia used disciplined conduct, shadow governance, and economic engagement to sustain civilian support and intelligence, effectively extending Confederate authority behind Union lines. Newton Knight’s company in Mississippi arose from deep grievances against Confederate exploitation, showing how oppression and unmet basic needs fuel resistance and can evolve into postwar local governance. Together, the cases illustrate that legitimacy, civil-military relations, and governance are central to effective resistance and modern unconventional warfare.

Guerrillas and Governance: Lessons on Resistance Forces and The Local Populace from The American Civil War

by Alex Bogaski

|

12.02.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/02/american-civil-war-guerrilla-warfare/

Abstract

Guerrillas and other irregular forces in the American Civil War actively engaged with the civil populace on a day-to-day basis and often relied on it for their very survival. Modern Special Operations Forces (SOF) can learn a great deal about guerrilla units and how they leverage the civil domain by studying two famous units: “Mosby’s Rangers” and the “Knight Company.” More importantly, the modern practitioner may find their aperture widened by engaging with the history of the American Civil War “off the beaten path” of famous battles like Antietam and Gettysburg.

Why Study the Civil War?

The American Civil War provides a wealth of case studies useful to contemporary Special Operations Forces (SOF). There is perhaps no other topic in American history with more scholarship devoted to it; primary source documents are plentiful and in English, and battlefields and historic sites are easily accessible in the United States. Unfortunately, the Civil War is often ignored by SOF practitioners. Perhaps this is because most people still view the conflict as a largely conventional one, with uniformed armies facing off in large set-piece battles. While this was indeed the case in many theatres, and battles like Gettysburg and Shiloh were easier to understand and even romanticize after the war, Irregular Warfare was also pervasive throughout the American Civil War and merits study by modern professionals.

From more well-known cavalry raids, to sabotage operations, to savage wars of murder and retribution between Appalachian and Missouri families and neighbors, examples abound of actions of interest to modern Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations personnel, as well as other SOF practitioners. Confederate forces launched a commando raid into New England from Canada while Union amphibious elements waged a campaign of economic destruction on the rivers of the Deep South. Confederate propagandists attempted to sway the opinions of European powers and push the governments of Britain and France to intervene. Guerrillas raided, spies collected intelligence, and both sides vied for influence over the population. North and South both recognized early on the need to secure and gain the support of the civilian population in contested areas. President Lincoln advocated for operations into eastern Tennessee to support Unionist civilians there, and Confederate irregular forces attempted to stoke secessionism in Missouri and Maryland while isolating Unionist enclaves in West Virginia. Support for civilian populations was a key consideration in both large conventional campaigns and small irregular actions.

Modern SOF professionals may be called in the future to recruit and train resistance forces while conducting shadow governance against an occupier in Unconventional Warfare. Furthermore, modern SOF may be tasked with undertaking these actions in support of adjacent Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO), much as guerrilla forces did from 1861 to 1865.

Rather than attempt to distill four years of Irregular Warfare into a few pages, this article will briefly discuss two case studies that highlight aspects of Civil-Military Operations conducted by guerrilla forces during the war. Modern SOF professionals may be called in the future to recruit and train resistance forces while conducting shadow governance against an occupier in Unconventional Warfare. Furthermore, modern SOF may be tasked with undertaking these actions in support of adjacent Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO), much as guerrilla forces did from 1861 to 1865. These examples of historic operations will make the case that a renewed study of the American Civil War is highly beneficial for contemporary SOF.

This article will briefly explore Civil Military Operations and broader relations with civilian communities undertaken by two irregular forces: The 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion (known as Mosby’s Rangers), a uniformed Confederate partisan cavalry force in northern Virginia, and the Newton Knight Company, a loosely organized Unionist resistance in northern Mississippi. Mosby’s Rangers and Newton Knight’s Company didn’t simply conduct ambushes and sabotage. They were intrinsically linked with the local populace. Despite being different forces in extremely different places and circumstances, both guerrilla units relied on the local populace for intelligence, logistics, and communications. Moreover, their resistance forces were in fact a challenge to the occupying authority’s governance itself. Viewed through different lenses, both forces can be framed as resistance movements: Mosby’s Rangers as a resistance to Union occupation, and Knight’s Company as a resistance to an illegitimate Confederate authority and occupation. Both abound with lessons for the modern SOF professional.

“Mosby’s Confederacy”

“Resistance can consolidate gains in public support and initial governance capacity by utilizing Civil Affairs assessments, strengthening civil vulnerabilities, and cementing a bond with the greater population… Methods to realign the legitimacy of power should consider the timeliness required to restore essential services and strengthen the bonds between the population and the resistance movement…” – FM 3-57 Civil Affairs Operations

From the beginning, the 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion, which would come to be known as “Mosby’s Rangers,” had, in part, a population-centric mission. General Robert E. Lee’s vaunted cavalry commander, Lieutenant General “Jeb” Stuart, stated that his reason for sending Mosby and his men to the region was “to look after the loyal Confederate people.” Then-Captain John S. Mosby was a gifted amateur, a young lawyer before the war with no military experience. He carved out a piece of territory behind Union lines in the Fauquier and Loudon counties of Virginia that became known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.” Mosby and his men even managed to keep a good portion of this territory free of Union control until the end of the war.

Mosby didn’t merely raid Union outposts, railroads, and wagon trains; he attempted to extend Confederate government presence where it had been absent and kept the movement alive in a key middle-class community that had ardently supported Virginia’s secession, years after conventional Confederate forces had lost control of the northern reaches of Virginia. In the absence of a civilian Confederate government, the young lawyer-turned-cavalry officer became a quasi-official. He enforced draft laws and acted as a shadow judiciary on behalf of the Southern authorities. Mosby’s governance attempted to maintain law and order among local citizens, and by billeting his men in local homes and buying supplies from local merchants, he injected much-needed cash into the economy. The Rangers’ expulsion of Union cavalry from the area enabled a robust black market and smuggling network that took advantage of the porous border with Maryland and the Southern sympathizers there; Union-made goods and Union currency flowed freely into “Mosby’s Confederacy.” Thus, the young cavalry leader established a sense of legitimacy through both enforcement and economic opportunity.

Mosby’s Rangers (John Mosby, 2nd Row, Center)

Because Mosby and his Rangers relied on locals to house and feed them, they were known for maintaining good order and discipline when most other partisan bands were notorious for being little more than roving thieves who preyed on civilians indiscriminately. Mosby went further than other Confederate partisans and protected Unionist civilians in his area of operations as well. He maintained discipline and respect for civilian property in part because he refused to allow deserters from other Confederate units to join his ranks. Deserters were often drawn to the spoils that partisans were permitted to keep or sell, but Mosby was uncompromising in keeping them out of his Rangers. It should be noted that the 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion wreaked utter havoc on civilian infrastructure deemed (by them, at least) to be a part of the Union war effort, namely railroads, telegraph lines, and wagon trains. Nor was plundering completely off the table, as illustrated by the robbing of civilians during the “greenback raid.” Nevertheless, Mosby’s reputation, and thus the legitimacy of his actions, remained generally positive among local civilians.

Civilians in Mosby’s Confederacy provided a network of intelligence as well as an early-warning system in the event of Union cavalry raids. They also spread news of the Partisan Rangers’ exploits to bolster pro-Confederate feelings and disinformation to deceive Union troops. The civilian intelligence network aided Mosby in his reconnaissance (often undertaken personally before a raid) to find vulnerabilities in Union trains and blockhouses. Frustrated, Federal troops often responded by destroying civilian property in retaliation for the raids of the 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion, which only enhanced the narrative of Mosby’s representation of the only legitimate governing authority for the locals. Perhaps a key Measure of Effectiveness for Mosby’s methods is their emulation by his most successful adversary. Captain Richard Blazer’s Independent Scouts [Union] were lenient with local civilians and prisoners to build intelligence networks of their own and hound Mosby’s Rangers.

In his book The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861-1865, Robert R. Mackey makes the distinction that while Mosby was often called a guerrilla, he is more accurately described as a partisan and fits a specific mold of 19th century warfare. Because Mosby and his forces accorded themselves with this distinction, they were more palatable to their own government, their enemies, and indeed, the civil populace upon which they relied. The 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion and their gifted commander were uniformed partisans, not locally recruited resistors (at least, not initially). Nonetheless, they cultivated important relationships and provided governance and the rule of law in an occupied area. They enabled a wartime local economy to expand, and in return, they were provided with shelter, recruits, and intelligence.

While not exhaustive, nor necessarily universal laws by any means, the following lessons from Mosby’s Rangers should stand out to the modern SOF reader:

• The resistance need not be organic: A resistance force (or the nucleus of one) can be inserted behind enemy lines if a sympathetic civilian population and the right terrain both exist.
• Guerrillas can govern: Resistance fighters may be called to extend governance into a previously denied area.
• Hearts and minds are still important: Respect for property and the rule of law can maintain popular support and keep intelligence and logistics networks robust.
• Common cause isn’t enough: buying supplies locally and enabling smuggling networks or black markets may be necessary to keep up the support of local civilians.
• Think strategically: Mosby understood the context for guerrilla operations beyond a mere tactical action; he recognized that resistance forces could draw enemy strength away from the main, conventional battlefields, much as modern resistors could in LSCO.

“The Free State of Jones”

“Civil Affairs forces are typically sought for their unique capabilities with regards to identifying and mitigating the underlying causes of instability in order to create a stable environment. This same analysis, however, can be utilized by the resistance to identify and degrade those identified strengths and bonds of the existing regime into vulnerabilities, resulting in its continued delegitimization. This creates legitimacy opportunities for the movement.” – FM 3-57 Civil Affairs Operations

The yeoman farmers and cattle herders of Jones County, Mississippi, had little use for secession. The county was not a large slave-holding area, and the poor and middle-class people felt that the conflict was a “rich man’s war.” Newton Knight was one such yeoman farmer. He enlisted in the Confederate Army with friends and relatives to avoid being drafted but soon abandoned the war and returned to his home. Knight and other Confederate soldiers were often driven to leave their units in large part because of the plight of their families; their wives, children, and relatives were abused by oppressive Confederate tax collectors, who robbed them of the food, clothing, and other supplies that they needed to survive. After the Confederate defeat at Vicksburg, even more Jones County soldiers deserted and made their way home.

Newton Knight (1829-1922), an Anti-Confederate Guerrilla from Mississippi.

Knight organized these deserters from Jones County and surrounding areas into an ad hoc unit called the “Knight Company” to protect themselves and their families from Confederate taxation and draft enforcement. Knight’s unit also included escaped slaves. Members of the company utilized swamps and other restrictive terrain to conceal themselves, and relied on a network of sympathizers for provisions, intelligence, and communication (often using cattle horns to send signals). By spring of 1864, the Jones County rebels had effectively pushed out Confederate authority in the region, and news that the county had “seceded” from the Confederacy reached both Northern and Southern leaders. To meet this challenge, a substantial force of Confederate troops was sent in to restore control of the population centers, arrest or hang deserters, and drive Knight and his men back into the swamps. The outside forces that entered Jones County were quickly confronted with the reality that spurred the Knight Company to resist.

One Confederate officer who was a part of the force that reestablished control of Jones County wrote to the governor of Mississippi and provided a remarkably astute assessment of the civil vulnerabilities and grievances among the local populace that led to the all-out revolt of the Knight Company and the citizens of the area as a whole:

Provisions are now scarce particularly corn… If something could be done to ameliorate their condition by State authorities it would be productive of a much proved moral and political sentiment. It would [convince] them that we have a government, a fact which they are inclined to doubt.

Indeed, the impending starvation of their families was one of the factors that drove Knight and his neighbors to desert in the first place. This lack of essential human needs created a governance vacuum that Knight and his resistance fighters attempted to briefly fill in the “Free State of Jones.”

The same officer also identified that thieving and abusive behavior by Confederate tax collectors and draft enforcers had inflamed the situation and stoked the grass-roots resistance movement: “In several circumstances improper [shirking], robbing, stealing [which] the houses, cutting the cloth from looms, taking horses [etc.]. These acts have done more to demoralize Jones County than the whole Yankee army.” He also recognized that the Knight Company depended on a sympathetic local populace that was not only Unionist in their ideals, but also had tangible reasons to hide and support the resistance fighters:

…These men have often been misled by some old and influential citizens perhaps their fathers or relatives who have encouraged and harbored them… Among the women there is great reluctancy to give up their husbands and brothers and the reason alleged is the fear of starvation and disinclination to labor in the fields.

Knight’s home-grown resistance movement against Confederate authority was ultimately unable to attract support from the Union Army, but one could postulate that it could have posed a serious dilemma to the Confederacy in Mississippi if it had. Unlike Mosby’s command of uniformed and trained soldiers, the Newton Knight Company was a local uprising born of desperation and severe grievances with a government that they viewed as an illegitimate occupier.

“Today’s Resistors May Be Tomorrow’s Local Governance”

The issue of legitimacy became even more complex after the conflict ended. Newton Knight and his band became the nucleus of Reconstruction-era government and Republican politics in Jones County, and Knight even served as a commissioner on behalf of the Union Army to distribute food aid to the community at the end of the war. Altogether, Newton Knight’s actions provide several enduring lessons on Irregular Warfare that persist today:

• Grievances may open gaps: Oppression, lack of good governance, and lack of immediate needs like food, clothing, and shelter can inflame a local populace to resist or support a resistance.
• Keep priorities straight: Guerrillas may be motivated by the needs of their families first and ideology second.
• Think strategically: A grass-roots uprising may not appear where it would be most advantageous or needed; support must be allocated based on military necessity.
• Today’s resistors may be tomorrow’s local governance: “The resistance gains legitimacy through transitional governance via support to its alternate administration. This is accomplished by addressing grievances and providing essential services to create a civil strength or bond with the population. As the regime becomes severely degraded or collapses, CA will assist with addressing the remaining civil vulnerabilities to create stability for the emergent government, and inclusively, across the indigenous population.” FM 3-57 Civil Affairs Operations

Conclusion

If the modern state is defined by its monopoly on the use of force, then challenges to a state or occupier must also find legitimacy for their own use of force, and that legitimacy frequently comes from the local populace. Note that even the names of the geographic areas the two guerrilla forces controlled, “Mosby’s Confederacy” and “The Free State of Jones,” invoke notions of legitimacy. This is as true today as when the 43rd Virginia Cavalry and the Knight Company were operating, not just from foothills and swamps, but from small towns and hamlets.

The resistance forces of the American Civil War, and the communities they operated in, were nuanced and complex. Contemporary SOF professionals are likewise called to operate in nuanced and complex environments with equally interesting and intricate partner forces. By studying examples of Irregular Warfare in the American Civil War, one can develop an appreciation and sensitivity for these challenges in a more familiar context and language. By overlaying history with contemporary doctrine, modern SOF practitioners can prime the brain for similar phenomena when deployed abroad in Irregular Warfare campaigns of the future, be they in Great Power Competition or in support of LSCO.

Tags: American Civil War, Civil Affairs, Civil-Military Operations, counterinsurgency, Guerrilla Warfare, irregular warfare, Mosby's Rangers, Newton Knight, Special Operations Forces

About The Author

• 
  
• Alex Bogaski
• Major Alex Bogaski is a Civil Affairs SOF Governance Officer. He is currently assigned to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in Defense Analysis. Prior to being assessed and selected for Civil Affairs, he was commissioned as an Infantry officer. Major Bogaski has operational experience in the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent those of the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Army, or the Department of War.

24. The Ideological Security Dilemma in International Relations: The Case of US–China Ideological Competition

Summary:

Dr. Cho introduces the “ideological security dilemma,” where states try to defend the legitimacy of their own ideology but rivals read those defensive moves as offensive efforts to undermine their regime, triggering spirals of mistrust. Using US–China relations since 1991, Cho argues both sides mainly act defensively, while democracy promotion and the “China model” are aspirations, not concrete regime-change plans. Yet each side interprets the other’s rhetoric, alliances, and governance campaigns as ideological offense. The concept bridges realist and constructivist theories and suggests misperception, not inherent incompatibility, drives much US–China ideological escalation. Recognizing this could open space for calibrated de-escalation.The article introduces the “ideological security dilemma,” where states try to defend the legitimacy of their own ideology but rivals read those defensive moves as offensive efforts to undermine their regime, triggering spirals of mistrust. Using US–China relations since 1991, Cho argues both sides mainly act defensively, while democracy promotion and the “China model” are aspirations, not concrete regime-change plans. Yet each side interprets the other’s rhetoric, alliances, and governance campaigns as ideological offense. The concept bridges realist and constructivist theories and suggests misperception, not inherent incompatibility, drives much US–China ideological escalation. Recognizing this could open space for calibrated de-escalation.

Comment: From our good friend Dr. Sungmin Cho (former ROK Army, georgetown, APCSS in Hawaii). This is a long read so only the abstract is provided below. It is not behind the paywall so please ue the link to read the entire essay.

The Ideological Security Dilemma in International Relations: The Case of US–China Ideological Competition

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/ideological-security-dilemma-in-international-relations-the-case-of-uschina-ideological-competition/CF1155FDDD7BA29C67F13F5B094BE861

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2025

Sungmin Cho

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Abstract

Why does ideological competition between states intensify despite opportunities for coexistence? This article develops a theory of the ideological security dilemma to explain this puzzle. Like the military security dilemma, states may take defensive measures to safeguard the legitimacy of their own ideology, but these actions can be interpreted by others as ideological offensives aimed at weakening the legitimacy of rival ideologies. I test the theory through a process tracing of US–China ideological competition from 1991 to 2024. I find that although the United States initially hoped China would democratize voluntarily, democratizing China was not a central policy goal. Conversely, while China seeks global respect for its “China model,” actively exporting authoritarian ideology is not its goal either. Nevertheless, China perceives US efforts as aimed at regime change, prompting Beijing to promote the “China model” more assertively as a countermeasure to what it sees as a US ideological assault. This intensifies US fears of the global spread of authoritarianism and triggers further counteractions. This study integrates constructivist and realist approaches while drawing on insights from comparative politics on regime legitimacy and democratization.

25. The West’s Last Chance: How to Build a New Global Order Before It’s Too Late

Summary:

Alexander Stubb (President of Finland) argues that the liberal, rules-based order is dying and the world is sliding from multilateralism into a harsher multipolar competition among a global West, East, and South. The “triangle of power” will be decided by how the global South uses its leverage. He calls for “values-based realism” that holds to core principles like sovereignty, human rights, and rule of law while accepting cultural and political diversity and practicing pragmatic cooperation. Stubb urges deep reform of the UN, WTO, and financial institutions, warning that without shared rules and updated representation, the world risks chaos instead of a rebalanced order.

Conclusion:

Small states such as mine are not bystanders in the story. The new order will be determined by decisions taken by political leaders in both big and small states, whether democrats, autocrats, or something in between. And here a particular responsibility falls on the global West, as the architect of the passing order and still, economically and militarily, the most powerful global coalition. The way we carry that mantle matters. This is our last chance.

The West’s Last Chance

Foreign Affairs · More by Alexander Stubb · December 2, 2025

How to Build a New Global Order Before It’s Too Late

Alexander Stubb

December 2, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/wests-last-chance

Ed Johnson

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The world has changed more in the past four years than in the previous 30. Our news feeds brim with strife and tragedy. Russia bombards Ukraine, the Middle East seethes, and wars rage in Africa. As conflicts are on the rise, democracies, it seems, are in demise. The post–Cold War era is over. Despite the hopes that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the globe did not unite in embracing democracy and market capitalism. Indeed, the forces that were supposed to bring the world together—trade, energy, technology, and information—are now pulling it apart.

We live in a new world of disorder. The liberal, rules-based order that arose after the end of World War II is now dying. Multilateral cooperation is giving way to multipolar competition. Opportunistic transactions seem to matter more than defending international rules. Great-power competition is back, as the rivalry between China and the United States sets the frame of geopolitics. But it is not the only force shaping global order. Emerging middle powers, including Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey, have become game-changers. Together, they have the economic means and geopolitical heft to tilt the global order toward stability or greater turmoil. They also have a reason to demand change: the post–World War II multilateral system did not adapt to adequately reflect their position in the world and afford them the role that they deserve. A triangular contest among what I call the global West, the global East, and the global South is taking shape. In choosing either to strengthen the multilateral system or seek multipolarity, the global South will decide whether geopolitics in the next era leans toward cooperation, fragmentation, or domination.

The next five to ten years will likely determine the world order for decades to come. Once an order settles in, it tends to stick for a while. After World War I, a new order lasted two decades. The next order, after World War II, lasted for four decades. Now, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, something new is again emerging. This is the last chance for Western countries to convince the rest of the world that they are capable of dialogue rather than monologue, consistency rather than double standards, and cooperation rather than domination. If countries eschew cooperation for competition, a world of even greater conflict looms.

Every state has agency, even small ones such as mine, Finland. The key is to try to maximize influence and, with the tools available, push for solutions. For me, this means doing everything I can to preserve the liberal world order, even if that system is not in vogue right now. International institutions and norms provide the framework for global cooperation. They need to be updated and reformed to better reflect the growing economic and political power of the global South and the global East. Western leaders have long talked about the urgency of fixing multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. Now, we must get it done, starting with rebalancing the power within the UN and other international bodies such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Without such changes, the multilateral system as it exists will crumble. That system is not perfect; it has inherent flaws and can never exactly reflect the world around it. But the alternatives are much worse: spheres of influence, chaos, and disorder.

HISTORY DID NOT END

I started studying political science and international relations at Furman University in the United States in 1989. The Berlin Wall fell that autumn. Soon after, Germany reunified, central and eastern Europe escaped the shackles of communism, and what had been a bipolar world—pitting a communist and authoritarian Soviet Union against a capitalist and democratic United States—became a unipolar one. The United States was now the undisputed superpower. The liberal international order had won.

I was elated at the time. It seemed to me, and to so many others then, that we stood at the threshold of a brighter age. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama called that moment “the end of history,” and I wasn’t the only one to believe that the triumph of liberalism was certain. Most nation-states would invariably pivot toward democracy, market capitalism, and freedom. Globalization would lead to economic interdependence. Old divisions would melt, and the world would become one. Even at the end of the decade, as I finished my Ph.D. in European integration at the London School of Economics, this future still seemed imminent.

But that future never arrived. The unipolar moment proved short-lived. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the West turned its back on the basic values that it claimed to uphold. Its commitment to international law was questioned. U.S.-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq failed. The global financial crash of 2008 delivered a severe reputational blow to the West’s economic model, rooted in global markets. The United States no longer drove global politics alone. China emerged as a superpower through its skyrocketing manufacturing, exports, and economic growth, and its rivalry with the United States has since come to dominate geopolitics. The last decade has also seen the further erosion of multilateral institutions, growing suspicion and friction regarding free trade, and intensifying competition over technology.

Russia’s full-scale war of aggression in Ukraine in February 2022 dealt another body blow to the old order. It was one of the most blatant violations of the rules-based system since the end of World War II and certainly the worst Europe had seen. That the culprit was a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which was set up to preserve peace, was all the more damning. States that were supposed to uphold the system brought it crashing down.

MULTILATERALISM OR MULTIPOLARITY

The international order, however, has not disappeared. Amid the wreckage, it is shifting from multilateralism to multipolarity. Multilateralism is a system of global cooperation that rests on international institutions and common rules. Its key principles apply equally to all countries, irrespective of size. Multipolarity, by contrast, is an oligopoly of power. The structure of a multipolar world rests on several, often competing poles. Dealmaking and agreements among a limited number of players form the structure of such an order, invariably weakening common rules and institutions. Multipolarity can lead to ad hoc and opportunistic behavior and a fluid array of alliances based on states’ real-time self-interest. A multipolar world risks leaving small and medium-sized countries out—bigger powers make deals over their heads. Whereas multilateralism leads to order, multipolarity tends toward disorder and conflict.

There is a growing tension between those who promote multilateralism and an order based on the rule of law and those who speak the language of multipolarity and transactionalism. Small states and middle powers, as well as regional organizations such as the African Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the EU, and the South American bloc Mercosur, promote multilateralism. China, for its part, promotes multipolarity with shades of multilateralism; it ostensibly endorses multilateral groupings such as BRICS—the non-Western coalition whose original members were Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that actually want to give rise to a more multipolar order. The United States has shifted its emphasis from multilateralism toward transactionalism but still has commitments to regional institutions such as NATO. Many states, both big and small, are pursuing what can be described as a multivectoral foreign policy. In essence, their aim is to diversify their relations with multiple actors rather than aligning with any one bloc.

A transactional or multivectoral foreign policy is dominated by interests. Small states, for instance, often balance between great powers: they can align with China in some areas and side with the United States in others, all while trying to avoid being dominated by any one actor. Interests drive the practical choices of states, and this is entirely legitimate. But such an approach need not eschew values, which should underpin everything a state does. Even a transactional foreign policy should rest on a core of fundamental values. They include the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, the prohibition of the use of force, and the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Countries have, overwhelmingly, a clear interest in upholding these values and ensuring that violators face real consequences.

Many countries are rejecting multilateralism in favor of more ad hoc arrangements and deals. The United States, for instance, is focused on bilateral trade and business agreements. China uses the Belt and Road Initiative, its vast global infrastructure investment program, to facilitate both bilateral diplomacy and economic transactions. The EU is forging bilateral free trade agreements that risk falling short of World Trade Organization rules. This, paradoxically, is happening when the world needs multilateralism more than ever to solve common challenges, such as climate change, development shortfalls, and the regulation of advanced technologies. Without a strong multilateral system, all diplomacy becomes transactional. A multilateral world makes the common good a self-interest. A multipolar world runs simply on self-interest.

FINLAND’S “VALUES-BASED REALISM”

Foreign policy is often based on three pillars: values, interests, and power. These three elements are key when the balance and dynamics of world order are changing. I come from a relatively small country with a population of close to six million people. Although we have one of the largest defense forces in Europe, our diplomacy is premised on values and interests. Power, both the hard and the soft kind, is mostly a luxury of the bigger players. They can project military and economic power, forcing smaller players to align with their goals. But small countries can find power in cooperating with others. Alliances, groupings, and smart diplomacy are what give a smaller player influence well beyond the size of its military and economy. Often, those alliances are based on shared values, such as a commitment to human rights and the rule of law.

As a small country bordering an imperial power, Finland has learned that sometimes a state must set aside some values to protect others, or simply to survive. Statehood is based on the principles of independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. After World War II, Finland retained its independence, unlike our Baltic friends that were absorbed by the Soviet Union. But we lost ten percent of our territory to the Soviet Union, including the areas where my father and grandparents were born. And, crucially, we had to give up some sovereignty. Finland was unable to join international institutions we felt we naturally belonged to, notably the EU and NATO.

During the Cold War, Finnish foreign policy was defined by “pragmatic realism.” To keep the Soviet Union from attacking us again, as it had in 1939, we had to compromise our Western values. This era in Finnish history, which has lent the term “Finlandization” to international relations, is not one we can be particularly proud of, but we managed to keep our independence. That experience has made us wary of any possibility of its repetition. When some suggest that Finlandization might be a solution for ending the war in Ukraine, I vehemently disagree. Such a peace would come at too great a cost, what would effectively be the surrender of sovereignty and territory.

We live in a new world of disorder.

After the end of the Cold War, Finland, like so many other countries, embraced the idea that the values of the global West would become the norm—what I call “values-based idealism.” This allowed Finland to join the European Union in 1995. At the same time, Finland made a serious mistake: it decided, voluntarily, to stay out of NATO. (For the record, I have been an avid advocate of Finnish NATO membership for 30 years.) Some Finns harbored an idealistic belief that Russia would eventually become a liberal democracy, so joining NATO was unnecessary. Others feared that Russia would react badly to Finland joining the alliance. Yet others thought that Finland contributed to maintaining a balance—and therefore peace—in the Baltic Sea region by staying out of the alliance. All these reasons turned out to be wrong, and Finland has adjusted accordingly; it joined NATO after Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine.

That was a decision that followed from both Finland’s values and its interests. Finland has embraced what I have called “values-based realism”: committing to a set of universal values based on freedom, fundamental rights, and international rules while still respecting the realities of the world’s diversity of cultures and histories. The global West must stay true to its values but understand that the world’s problems will not be solved only through collaboration with like-minded countries.

Values-based realism might sound like a contradiction of terms, but it is not. Two influential theories of the post–Cold War era seemed to pit universal values against a more realist assessment of political fault lines. Fukuyama’s end of history thesis saw the triumph of capitalism over communism as heralding a world that would become ever more liberal and market-oriented. The political scientist Samuel Huntington’s vision of a “clash of civilizations” predicted that the fault lines of geopolitics would move from ideological differences to cultural ones. In truth, states can draw from both understandings in negotiating today’s shifting order. In crafting foreign policy, governments of the global West can maintain their faith in democracy and markets without insisting they are universally applicable; in other places, different models may prevail. And even within the global West, the pursuit of security and the defense of sovereignty will occasionally make it impossible to strictly adhere to liberal ideals.

Countries should strive for a cooperative world order of values-based realism, respecting both the rule of law and cultural and political differences. For Finland, that means reaching out to the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America to better understand their positions on Russia’s war in Ukraine and other ongoing conflicts. It also means holding pragmatic discussions on an equal footing on important global issues, such as those to do with technology sharing, raw materials, and climate change.

THE TRIANGLE OF POWER

Three broad regions now make up the global balance of power: the global West, the global East, and the global South. The global West comprises roughly 50 countries and has traditionally been led by the United States. Its members include primarily democratic, market-oriented states in Europe and North America and their far-flung allies Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. These countries have typically aimed to uphold a rules-based multilateral order, even if they disagree on how best to preserve, reform, or reinvent it.

The global East consists of roughly 25 states led by China. It includes a network of aligned states—notably Iran, North Korea, and Russia—that seek to revise or supplant the existing rules-based international order. These countries are bound by a common interest, namely, the desire to reduce the power of the global West.

The global South, comprising many of the world’s developing and middle-income states from Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia (and the majority of the world’s population) spans roughly 125 states. Many of them suffered under Western colonialism and then again as theaters for the proxy wars of the Cold War era. The global South includes many middle powers or “swing states,” notably Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Demographic trends, economic development, and the extraction and export of natural resources drive the ascendance of these states.

The global West and the global East are fighting for the hearts and minds of the global South. The reason is simple: they understand that the global South will decide the direction of the new world order. As the West and the East pull in different directions, the South has the swing vote.

The global West cannot simply attract the global South by extolling the virtues of freedom and democracy; it also needs to fund development projects, make investments in economic growth, and, most important, give the South a seat at the table and share power. The global East would be equally mistaken to think that its spending on big infrastructure projects and direct investment buys it full influence in the global South. Love cannot be easily bought. As Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has noted, India and other countries in the global South are not simply sitting on the fence but rather standing on their own ground.

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb in Washington, D.C., October 2025 Kent Nishimura / Reuters

In other words, what both Western and Eastern leaders will need is values-based realism. Foreign policy is never binary. A policymaker has to make daily choices that involve both values and interests. Will you buy weapons from a country that is violating international law? Will you fund a dictatorship that is fighting terrorism? Will you give aid to a country that considers homosexuality a crime? Do you trade with a country that allows the death penalty? Some values are nonnegotiable. These include upholding fundamental and human rights, protecting minorities, preserving democracy, and respecting the rule of law. These values anchor what the global West should stand for, especially in its appeals to the global South. At the same time, the global West has to understand that not everyone shares these values.

The aim of values-based realism is to find a balance between values and interests in a way that prioritizes principles but recognizes the limits of a state’s power when the interests of peace, stability, and security are at stake. A rules-based world order underpinned by a set of well-functioning international institutions that enshrine fundamental values remains the best way to prevent competition leading to collision. But as these institutions have lost their salience, countries must embrace a harder sense of realism. Leaders must acknowledge the differences among countries: the realities of geography, history, culture, religion, and different stages in economic development. If they want others to better address issues such as citizens’ rights, environmental practices, and good governance, they should lead by example and offer support—not lectures.

Values-based realism begins with dignified behavior, with respect for the views of others and an understanding of differences. It means collaboration based on partnerships of equals rather than some historical perception of what relations among the global West, East, and South should look like. The way for states to look forward rather than backward is to focus on important common projects such as infrastructure, trade, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Many obstacles lie before any attempt by the world’s three spheres to build a global order that at once respects differences and allows states to set their national interests in a broader framework of cooperative international relations. The costs of failure, however, are immense: the first half of the twentieth century was warning enough.

Uncertainty is a part of international relations, and never more so than during the transition of one era into another. The key is to understand why the change is happening and how to react to it. If the global West reverts to its old ways of direct or indirect dominance or outright arrogance, it will lose the battle. If it realizes that the global South will be a key part of the next world order, it just might be able to forge both values-based and interest-based partnerships that can tackle the main challenges of the globe. Values-based realism will give the West enough room to navigate this new age of international relations.

WORLDS TO COME

A set of postwar institutions helped steer the world through its most rapid era of development and sustained an extraordinary period of relative peace. Today, they are at risk of collapsing. But they must survive, because a world based on competition without cooperation will lead to conflict. To survive, however, they must change, because too many states lack agency in the existing system and, in the absence of change, will divest themselves from it. These states can’t be blamed for doing so; the new world order will not wait.

At least three scenarios could emerge in the decade ahead. In the first one, the current disorder would simply persist. There would still be elements of the old order left, but respect for international rules and institutions would be à la carte and mostly based on interests—not innate values. The capacity to solve major challenges would remain limited, but the world at least would not devolve into greater chaos. Ending conflicts, however, would become especially difficult because most peace deals would be transactional and lack the authority that comes with the imprimatur of the United Nations.

Things could be worse: in a second scenario, the foundations of the liberal international order—its rules and institutions—would continue to erode, and the existing order would collapse. The world would move closer to chaos without a clear nexus of power and with states unable to solve acute crises, such as famines, pandemics, or conflicts. Strongmen, warlords, and nonstate actors would fill power vacuums left behind by receding international organizations. Local conflicts would risk triggering wider wars. Stability and predictability would be the exception, not the norm, in a dog-eat-dog world. Peace mediation would be close to impossible.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In a third scenario, a new symmetry of power among the global West, East, and South would produce a rebalanced world order in which countries could deal with the most pressing global challenges through cooperation and dialogue among equals. That balance would contain competition and nudge the world toward greater cooperation on climate, security, and technology issues—critical challenges that no country can solve alone. In this scenario, the principles of the UN Charter would prevail, leading to just and lasting agreements. But for that to happen, international institutions must be reformed.

The unipolar moment proved short-lived.

Reform begins at the top, namely, in the United Nations. Reform is always a long and complicated process, but there are at least three possible changes that would automatically strengthen the UN and give agency to those states that feel that they don’t have enough power in New York, Geneva, Vienna, or Nairobi.

First, all major continents need to be represented in the UN Security Council, at all times. It is simply unacceptable that there is no permanent representation from Africa and Latin America in the Security Council and that China alone represents Asia. The number of permanent members should be increased by at least five: two from Africa, two from Asia, and one from Latin America.

Second, no single state should have veto power in the Security Council. The veto was necessary in the aftermath of World War II, but in today’s world it has incapacitated the Security Council. The UN agencies in Geneva work well precisely because no single member can prevent them from doing so.

Third, if a permanent or rotating member of the Security Council violates the UN Charter, its membership in the UN should be suspended. This would mean that the body would have suspended Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Such a suspension decision could be taken in the General Assembly. There should be no room for double standards in the United Nations.

The G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg, November 2025 Yves Herman / Reuters

Global trade and financial institutions also need to be updated. The World Trade Organization, which has been crippled for years by the paralysis of its dispute settlement mechanism, is still essential. Despite an increase in free trade agreements outside the WTO’s purview, over 70 percent of global trade is still conducted under the WTO’s “most favored nation” principle. The point of the multilateral trading system is to ensure the fair and equitable treatment of all its members. Tariffs and other infringements of WTO rules end up hurting everyone. The current reform process must lead to greater transparency, especially with respect to subsidies, and flexibility in the WTO decision-making processes. And these reforms must be enacted swiftly; the system will lose credibility if the WTO remains mired in its current impasse.

Reform is hard, and some of these proposals may sound unrealistic. But so did those made in San Francisco when the United Nations was founded over 80 years ago. Whether the 193 members of the United Nations embrace these changes will depend on whether they focus their foreign policy on values, interests, or power. Sharing power on the basis of values and interests was the foundation of the creation of the liberal world order after World War II. It is time to revise the system that has served us so well for almost a century.

The wildcard for the global West in all of this will be whether the United States wants to preserve the multilateral world order it has been so instrumental in building and from which it has benefited so greatly. That may not be an easy path, given Washington’s withdrawal from key institutions and agreements, such as the World Health Organization and the Paris climate agreement, and its newly mercantilist approach to cross-border trade. The UN system has helped preserve peace between the great powers, enabling the United States to emerge as the leading geopolitical power. In many UN institutions, it has taken the leading role and been able to drive its policy goals very effectively. Global free trade has helped the United States establish itself as the leading economic power in the world while also bringing low-cost products to American consumers. Alliances such as NATO have given the United States military and political advantages outside its own region. It remains the task of the rest of the West to convince the Trump administration of the value of both the postwar institutions and the United States’ active role in them.

The wildcard for the global East will be how China plays its hand on the world stage. It could take more steps to fill the power vacuums left by the United States in areas such as free trade, climate change cooperation, and development. It could try to shape the international institutions it now has a much stronger foothold in. It might seek to further project power in its own region. And it might abandon its long-held hide-your-strength and bide-your-time strategy and decide that the time has come for more aggressive actions in, for instance, the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

YALTA OR HELSINKI?

An international order, such as that forged by the Roman Empire, can sometimes survive for centuries. Most of the time, however, it lasts for just a few decades. Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine marks the beginning of yet another change in the world order. For young people today, it is their 1918, 1945, or 1989 moment. The world can take a wrong turn at these junctures, as happened after World War I, when the League of Nations was unable to contain great-power competition, resulting in another bloody world war.

Countries can also get it more or less right, as happened after World War II with the establishment of the United Nations. That postwar order did, after all, preserve peace between the two superpowers of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States. To be sure, that relative stability came at a high cost for those states that were forced into submission or suffered during proxy conflicts. And even as the end of World War II laid the groundwork for an order that survived for decades, it also planted the seeds of the current imbalance.

In 1945, the war’s winners met in Yalta, in Crimea. There, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin crafted a postwar order based on spheres of influence. The UN Security Council would emerge as the stage where the superpowers could address their differences, but it offered little space for others. At Yalta, the big states made a deal over the small ones. That historical wrong must now be made right.

Without a strong multilateral system, diplomacy becomes transactional.

The 1975 convening of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe offers a stark contrast to Yalta. Thirty-two European countries, plus Canada, the Soviet Union, and the United States, met in Helsinki to create a European security structure based on rules and norms applicable to all. They agreed to fundamental principles governing states’ behavior toward their citizens and one another. It was a remarkable feat of multilateralism at a time of major tensions, and it became instrumental in precipitating the end of the Cold War.

Yalta was multipolar in its outcomes, and Helsinki was multilateral. Now the world faces a choice, and I believe Helsinki offers the right way forward. The choices we all make in the next decade will define the world order for the twenty-first century.

Small states such as mine are not bystanders in the story. The new order will be determined by decisions taken by political leaders in both big and small states, whether democrats, autocrats, or something in between. And here a particular responsibility falls on the global West, as the architect of the passing order and still, economically and militarily, the most powerful global coalition. The way we carry that mantle matters. This is our last chance.

ALEXANDER STUBB is President of Finland and the author of the forthcoming book The Triangle of Power: Rebalancing the New World Order.

26. The Promise—and Limits—of a Free Press: Journalists Alone Cannot Stave Off Autocracy

​Summary:

A free press cannot by itself prevent autocracy; it only works when embedded in a strong institutional ecosystem. Using South Korea, Brazil, and El Salvador, she shows that investigative journalism can expose abuses and mobilize protests, but real accountability depends on independent courts, legislatures, prosecutors, civil servants, and courageous insiders who leak information. Where those institutions are captured, as under Bukele in El Salvador, even fearless outlets are surveilled, criminalized, and driven into exile. She warns that U.S. institutions that once converted reporting into accountability are eroding, and that defending democracy requires coordinated, collective resistance, not journalists alone.

​Conclusion:

One reason so many Brazilian and South Korean institutions and individuals stood up to democratic erosion was that they retained vivid memories of persecution under dictatorship. Americans have long considered themselves as apart from much of the world, secure in a long history of vibrant democracy and robust journalism. But other countries’ experiences suggest that complacency is a delusion.

​Comment: Journalists always need source of infomration.

An interesting comment about Korea. The majority of Koreans have no first hand memory of the Korean War and we often lament that. But fewer if any have any direct memory of the colonial period of Japanese occupation. Yet that still drives Korean emotions. It is true that many Koreans have direct memories of the 1960s and 1970s but I think surveys continue to show that there is increasing support for Park Chung Hee's rule which is responsible for the Miracle on the Han and today's prosperity in Korea. 

The Promise—and Limits—of a Free Press

Foreign Affairs · More by Susan Chira · December 2, 2025

Journalists Alone Cannot Stave Off Autocracy

Susan Chira

December 2, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/promise-and-limits-free-press

Reading a newspaper during a rally against martial law, Seoul, South Korea, December 2024 Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters

SUSAN CHIRA was Editor in Chief of the Marshall Project after being Deputy Executive Editor and Foreign Editor at The New York Times.

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With democracies under siege around the globe, it is tempting to see an independent press as freedom’s bulwark. In 2023, for instance, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called independent journalism “the foundation of democracy and justice” and “the very lifeblood of human rights.” But the sobering reality is that even the bravest, most determined journalists cannot shore up democracy without strong institutions. The media can expose abuses of power only if civil servants, government insiders, and other sources share sensitive information. And the press’s reporting, in turn, can constrain authoritarians’ power only if it spurs further action. Without prosecutors empowered to bring charges against wrongdoers, judges willing to strike down overreach, legislators daring enough to demand investigations and change laws, and citizens outraged enough to protest, any revelations by journalists will fall on stony ground.

As the assault on press freedom intensifies in the United States, it is instructive to examine the role that journalism has played in other countries facing democratic erosion. The cases of South Korea, Brazil, and El Salvador show the promise—and limits—of the media in bolstering democracy and curbing rising authoritarianism. In these countries, journalists have exposed corruption and mobilized citizens to protest leaders who were abusing their power. But only when other influential institutions and individuals such as courts, businesspeople, and whistleblowers helped check executive overreach did journalism effectively hold power to account. Members of the press in these countries have a warning: the U.S. institutions that support journalism and translate its work into real protections for the public are faltering. And if these institutions are not strengthened, no reporting—no matter how dogged—can arrest tyranny.

NEWS STORY

The collapse of communism in the late 1980s ushered in a captivating narrative about how authoritarianism can be vanquished. First, courageous journalists break a government stranglehold on information. Then, a disillusioned, outraged public takes to the streets calling for freedom. It was an alluring premise: if people are told the truth, dictators will fall.

But that was always an oversimplification that overstated journalism’s power. And in the intervening years, tectonic economic shifts have weakened journalism’s financial pillars. The rise of the Internet broke journalism’s economic model by driving down advertising revenues and widely circulating information the public once had to pay to receive. A 2025 report by the nongovernmental organization Reporters Without Borders noted that 34 countries are experiencing “mass closures” of news outlets, and in 160 out of 180 countries worldwide, media outlets struggle with financial stability.

And the delivery of news has fragmented. Silvio R. Waisbord, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, notes that 30 years ago, “the mainstream press had the attention of the elites and the public.” Now, “stories written from an accountability perspective are not reaching the people who should be exposed to the information.” The digital revolution has also given governments and political partisans more opportunities to manipulate the information citizens receive.

If institutions such as the judiciary are compromised, journalism cannot prompt change.

Waisbord grew up under the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 and went on to study democratic erosion in Latin America. Generally, he has found that the press is most effective as a tool to counter authoritarianism when it can exploit dissent among elites to extract information. For example, a sprawling 2014 corruption scandal that convicted business leaders and politicians in Brazil and other Latin American countries was sustained by press reports that relied on leaks about testimony and wiretaps from government insiders determined to focus public attention on wrongdoing. Such exposés can, in turn, stiffen the spines of institutions that check authoritarian power such as the legislature, the judiciary, and the military.

In the United States in the 1970s, journalists at The Washington Post relied on an FBI insider—the fabled Deep Throat, later revealed to be the agency’s third in command—to reveal a multitude of crimes by President Richard Nixon and his associates. The journalists used Deep Throat’s information to pry more revelations from Nixon aides troubled by their own complicity in abuses of power. And those revelations prompted action by the judiciary and Congress. The Supreme Court rejected Nixon’s claims of executive privilege and forced the release of the infamous Oval Office tapes. When the House Judiciary Committee subsequently pursued impeaching Nixon, Nixon’s own Republican Party members turned against him, warning him that they would vote to impeach, prompting Nixon to resign.

But if the institutions that can act to redress injustice are docile, captive, or compromised, little or nothing changes. And if people simply do not see what journalists publish in an increasingly siloed and isolated news landscape, they are unlikely to press for change, either.

DEFENDING THE DEFENDERS

South Korea, Brazil, and El Salvador all faced grave threats to democracy, and their different fates illustrate what kind of institutional ecosystem helps a valiant press defend freedom—and how even brave journalists can be muzzled. During South Korea’s nearly quarter century of authoritarian rule from the 1960s to 1980s, many news outlets were cowed into docility, dutifully echoing government propaganda. Even after massive protests by South Korean citizens forced the military dictator Chun Doo-hwan to step aside in 1988, the country’s young democracy struggled. Its repressive intelligence apparatus remained strong; legislators balked at the compromises necessary to pass laws and bridge old enmities, generating gridlock and intensifying partisanship.

When President Park Geun-hye took power in 2013, she adopted an authoritarian style that reminded many South Koreans of the 15 years of repression her father, Park Chung-hee, imposed after he seized power in a 1961 coup. She pressured the CEOs of public broadcasting companies to fire journalists, blacklisted thousands of artists from receiving government funding, and weaponized defamation laws to persecute reporters.

But the emergence of democracy in South Korea had also encouraged the creation of new press outlets committed to exposing abuse and corruption. Park Geun-hye was ultimately brought down by an improbable cooperation between Hankyoreh, a left-leaning daily newspaper established in 1988, and two more-conservative television stations. Soomin Seo, a former reporter and associate professor of journalism at Sogang University’s School of Communication, researched how the outlets uncovered payoffs to Choi Soon-sil, the president’s close adviser. Her analysis revealed that, frustrated by what they saw as political pressure on media leaders to halt coverage of the scandals, reporters from competing outlets shared sources—a remarkable departure from the norm. Although reporters did not disclose the identity of their sources, their scoops—one of which was prompted by the acquisition of a laptop showing that Choi had helped edit some of Park’s speeches—suggested that government insiders may well have assisted journalists.

Even brave journalists can be muzzled.

The revelation that Choi’s daughter was offered entrance to a top university despite mediocre grades stirred particular public outrage because ordinary Koreans cram for years for notoriously competitive entrance exams. That prompted nationwide rallies calling for Park’s resignation. Citizens formed human chains around the National Assembly to block armored vehicles, sewed and hung banners, provided food and drink, and otherwise sustained anticorruption demonstrations. Seo tells me that South Koreans’ fearlessness in protest was driven by their searing memories of dictatorship. “We were the first generation who could travel abroad freely, who grew up in a liberal postdictatorship generation,” she says. In the end, South Korea’s legislature voted to impeach Park. Public protests continued for months while the country’s constitutional court deliberated whether to uphold the impeachment; ultimately, the court unanimously voted to remove Park from office.

In late 2024, South Korea’s legislature again impeached a president—this time for unconstitutionally imposing martial law. Yoon Suk-yeol had already been criticized for presiding over extensive government raids of newsrooms and journalists’ homes on charges of spreading “fake news,” vetoing general labor protections, and whitewashing investigations of government failures. After Yoon imposed martial law, around-the-clock news coverage helped prompt South Koreans to take to the streets. Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, a legacy television and radio broadcaster, was particularly assertive, including on its wildly popular YouTube channel. According to a 2024 report by the Korea Press Foundation and the Reuters Institute, 51 percent of South Koreans get news from YouTube, the highest percentage among 47 countries that were surveyed.

South Korea’s legislature and judiciary again proved willing to buck presidential power. The constitutional court upheld Yoon’s impeachment unanimously, even though—as was the case in 2017, when Park was ousted—many of the justices had been appointed by the presidents they removed.

SOURCES OF STRENGTH

Brazil’s success in holding President Jair Bolsonaro accountable for plotting a coup after his election loss in 2022 also highlights how vital internal government dissent and an independent judiciary are to the press’s efforts to expose and curb autocracy. After Bolsonaro became president in 2019, he relentlessly attacked the press, mounted disinformation campaigns, and threatened the independence of Brazil’s elections. Brazil was ruled by a military junta from the 1960s to the 1980s, initially supported by a press that believed that temporary leadership by the military could restore stability and fend off communist threats. But Pedro Doria, a columnist for O Globo, the country’s leading daily newspaper, tells me that the resulting long, brutal junta made publishers ashamed of their early compliance and determined to be bolder when Bolsonaro threatened democratic norms. Journalists, businesspeople, and lawyers felt “really clear” that “we had to scream from the beginning,” Doria said. They felt they had to signal to Bolsonaro and any potential Bolsonaro supporters in the military that Brazil could not retreat to dictatorship.

A torrent of journalistic investigations into corruption and misgovernance followed. But the first step in revealing wrongdoing is to find government insiders willing to take risks to provide information—people with access to documents and decisions that show the inner workings of government. Patricia Campos Mello, whose investigations were a crucial spur to judicial action against Bolsonaro, recalls that her sources were determined not to see Brazil dragged back into dictatorship and felt that it was a matter of conscience to speak out. “There was so much internal dissent. It was a paradise of leaks,” she says. People “were brave enough to reach out to journalists.”

Her resulting articles for Folha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest and most influential newspapers, documented financial irregularities in Bolsonaro’s 2018 presidential campaign and his government’s subsequent use of social media to target opponents. Bolsonaro attacked Campos Mello on social media and in public statements, repeating a source’s false charges that she traded sex for leaks and triggering a flood of sexual-assault threats and online harassment against her. (A court eventually awarded Campos Mello compensation for “moral damages.”)

In the end, Campos Mello’s articles and the subsequent public outrage helped push the judiciary to prosecute Bolsonaro. Brazil’s independent judiciary proved vital in translating investigations into action. Federal and special election courts changed electoral rules to bolster elections’ fairness, restrained the use of social media in the country, and convicted Bolsonaro for plotting to stay in power after his 2022 election loss. Because enough opposition lawmakers remained in the legislature, Bolsonaro had neither the absolute sway nor the dealmaking ability to replace judges, Doria says. When journalists did their jobs, Campos Mello says, they “could trust the judiciary would do something.”

SOLITARY CONFINEMENTS

In El Salvador, by contrast, even an outspoken press has struggled to constrain authoritarian repression. In 1992, El Salvador became a democracy after a bloody 12-year civil war. Its constitution attempted to shield the army and the judiciary from politics. But these institutions remained vulnerable to political interference, and widespread poverty and social inequality continued to plague the country. Nayib Bukele was elected president in 2019 by Salvadorans terrorized by drug gangs and disgusted by a political establishment they saw as feckless and corrupt.

He soon gutted the country’s already fragile institutions and blocked avenues of resistance, moving quickly to neuter the legislature by sending members of the Salvadoran military into the parliament building in 2020 in an effort to coerce support for his power grab. Later, his party won a supermajority in the legislature. Those loyalist legislators then replaced many judges on El Salvador’s Supreme Court, which in turn reinterpreted the constitution’s limits on presidential tenure to allow Bukele to win reelection in 2024. Bukele has now decreed that he can stay in office indefinitely.

The Salvadoran digital outlet El Faro has a 15-year track record of fearless investigations, particularly its exposure of politicians’ ties to hated drug gangs. After Bukele took power, it continued to chronicle the erosion of democratic freedoms and government abuses of human rights, aided by alarmed inside sources. But El Faro came under relentless assault by the government—including surveillance, money-laundering charges, and smear campaigns by the very institutions that supported democracy in other countries: the judicial system, public prosecutors, and a legislature compliant with Bukele.

In 2022, the outlet discovered that at least 22 of its 30 journalists had been hacked by a state operator. El Faro published this information along with an editorial directed to its sources, advising them that they should assume that people in the government knew that they might be sources. Fears of government retribution then prompted a sourcing crisis, says El Faro’s director and co-founder, Carlos Dada. “All of our sources disappeared, and we needed to start again” to build “a system of protection for them.” El Faro kept reporting, publishing video interviews earlier this year with a prominent gang leader describing deals with Bukele. But threats of imminent arrest led most of the outlet’s journalists to flee the country, and it now operates in exile in Costa Rica. El Faro is not alone: the Salvadorian Press Association recently noted that over the past six months, at least 53 journalists have fled the country.

“Bukele controls all the institutions,” Dada laments. “Not only the legislature and the judiciary [but] also the attorney general’s office, the army, and the police.” That means “there is no protection [and] no counterbalance. We are defenseless except for our journalism.”

INDEPENDENCE NEEDS INTERDEPENDENCE

The effectiveness of the press depends on an interdependent ecosystem of institutions and democratic norms. These include a professionalized civil service and courageous government insiders, an independent legislature and judiciary, and citizens willing to risk protesting openly.

Even in South Korea and Brazil, journalists are feeling more pressure. Seo, the media professor, warned that South Koreans’ rising distrust of kiregi, or “trash journalists,” who have resorted to sensationalism, and a deluge of partisan commentators on social media could jeopardize trust in the press. Brazilian journalists, meanwhile, report censorship pressure from both the right and the left. As judges shut down some right-wing voices on social media, concerns are rising that the very judiciary that prosecuted Bolsonaro has become too powerful.

American journalists are covering the Trump administration with vigor, chronicling the human cost of the administration’s crackdown on immigration, investigating corruption and self-dealing, and detailing his conflicts of interest and the shattering of democratic norms. This coverage can resonate. Videos and articles with wrenching scenes of children torn from their parents during immigrant detentions appear to be one factor depressing Trump’s approval ratings. And a press report exposing a plan by the Pentagon to brief the businessman Elon Musk on U.S. policy toward China led the Pentagon to backtrack, potentially averting overt corruption.

But journalists in South Korea, Brazil, and El Salvador warn that the institutions that make journalism an effective safeguard for democracy are weakening in the United States. Civil servants have been fired en masse and replaced by loyalists, hampering journalists’ ability to obtain sensitive information. The Republican majority in Congress has not defended its constitutional power to make tariff policy and has enabled the Trump administration’s efforts to impound money appropriated by the legislature, undercutting the system of checks and balances. Many federal judges have ruled acts by the administration unlawful or unconstitutional. But unlike in Brazil or South Korea, the U.S. Supreme Court has embraced an expansive vision of executive power. It has ruled in Trump’s favor in multiple cases, including by allowing racial profiling in immigration arrests and the mass firing of civil servants.

Pushing back against abuses of power takes collective action.

And unlike in Brazil, many corporate media owners are fast succumbing to Trump’s pressure. CBS News agreed to pay $16 million and ABC News paid $15 million to settle lawsuits brought by Trump that many First Amendment lawyers believed had no chance to prevail in court. During Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, the publishers of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times blocked their editorial boards from endorsing his rival. Amazon—whose executive chairman, Jeff Bezos, is also The Washington Post’s publisher—donated large sums to Trump’s inauguration and his proposed new White House ballroom. Brendon Carr, the Federal Communication Commission’s chairman, has openly threatened news outlets. Trump continues to publicly insult journalists, recently telling a female reporter, “Quiet, piggy,” and dismissing the 2018 killing and dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S.-based Saudi journalist, with the phrase, “Things happen.”

To be sure, the United States is still far from El Salvador’s dystopia. Dada, the Salvadoran news outlet chief, notes the strengths the United States still possesses. “You still have an opposition; we don’t. You have a very healthy civil society”—including robust public protest and multiple nongovernmental organizations committed to protecting democracy. In El Salvador, unlike in the United States, the army is now loyal only to the president, although the Trump administration has now deployed the National Guard to several cities, purged many high-ranking military officers, and crossed former redlines by making overtly political speeches to generals.

Democracy scholars and press freedom advocates in the United States are clear on what Americans need to do to protect the rights they have long taken for granted. Pushing back against abuses of power takes collective action—as when all but a handful of news organizations refused to accept the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict reporting on military affairs and lost their Pentagon press passes. Standing up to pressure can dispel fear and embolden further pushback—as when congressional Republicans resisted intense lobbying by Trump and joined with Democrats to demand the release of the Epstein files. Fighting baseless lawsuits in the courts defends press freedom, while settling in advance undermines it.

One reason so many Brazilian and South Korean institutions and individuals stood up to democratic erosion was that they retained vivid memories of persecution under dictatorship. Americans have long considered themselves as apart from much of the world, secure in a long history of vibrant democracy and robust journalism. But other countries’ experiences suggest that complacency is a delusion.

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