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Quotes of the Day:
“Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless.”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
1. TikTok’s content on some political subjects aligns with the Chinese government, study says
2. With Western aid stalled, Ukrainian troops run low on artillery shells
3. Taiwan reports more Chinese military activity as election approaches
4. Misinformation is becoming more sophisticated in Taiwan
5. US Air Force to reclaim Pacific airfield that launched atomic bombings as it looks to counter China
6. The secret U.S. effort to track, hide and surveil the Chinese spy balloon
7. To shoot or not to shoot: Chinese-developed ‘golden veil’ could make deadly missiles look like passenger planes
8. USSOCOM hosts 1st SOF Truth conference focusing on force health
9. Iranian Spy Ship Helps Houthis Direct Attacks on Red Sea Vessels
10. Lessons unlearned: Drawing parallels between the Ukraine war and historical military campaigns
11. Trump hints at possible picks for Pentagon chief in a second term
12. Top US general speaks to Chinese counterpart, ending freeze on military talks
13. Overcoming A Clausewitz-Centric Mindset in Nontraditional Wars
14. After Tough Year, Military Recruiting Is Looking Up
15. Constructing a 'Theory of Sabotage'
16, US Bans Pentagon From Using Chinese Port Logistics Platform
17. The Pentagon Is Forging an Airborne Wireless Energy Grid
18. The US Wanted Out of the Middle East. The Middle East Had Other Ideas.
1. TikTok’s content on some political subjects aligns with the Chinese government, study says
They doth protest too much. Admt notherin, deny everything, make counter accusations (and attack the methodology).
There should be no surprise here. But can we get Tik Tok users to understand how they are being manipulated? Will banning TikTok solve this problem (I think not).
TikTok’s content on some political subjects aligns with the Chinese government, study says
In a statement to NBC News, TikTok said the institute behind the report used flawed methodology to reach a predetermined, false conclusion.
NBC News · by David Ingram
A new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute says that TikTok likely promotes and demotes certain topics based on the perceived preferences of the Chinese government.
The group, an independent research organization composed of psychologists, engineers and analysts at Rutgers University, analyzed the volume of posts with politically sensitive hashtags on TikTok versus on its rival Instagram.
The institute’s researchers, who are known for previously publishing an analysis showing a rise in insurrectionist hashtags leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said that they believe TikTok is likely manipulating public debate not only on China-specific topics, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, but also on strategically important topics with less direct ties to China, such as the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.
“We assess a strong possibility that content on TikTok is either amplified or suppressed based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese Government,” the report states.
The researchers compared hashtag performance to the average performance of pop culture hashtags, such as #TaylorSwift and #CristianoRonaldo. They found that there were 2.2 posts on Instagram with a top pop culture hashtag for every one such post on TikTok.
That baseline ratio of 2.2-to-1 made sense, they said, because Instagram has a bigger user base than TikTok.
Then, they ran a similar analysis for politically charged hashtags and said they found lopsided differences. For every one TikTok post with a hashtag supporting Ukraine, there were 8.5 such posts on Instagram — a significant discrepancy from the baseline ratio and one that dovetails with China’s support of Russia, the researchers said.
The difference was starker on other subjects, the researchers said. For the hashtag #HongKongProtests, there were 206 posts on Instagram for every one on TikTok, they said. The topic is especially sensitive to the Chinese government because it refers to that city’s pro-democracy demonstrations.
And the dynamic was reversed for some hashtags friendly to the Chinese government, researchers said. Posts tagged #StandWithKashmir are more numerous on TikTok than on Instagram by a ratio of 661-to-1, a dramatic overrepresentation, researchers said. That aligns with China’s strategic interest in the disputed Kashmir region that straddles India, Pakistan and China, the report said.
“It is challenging to imagine that activity of such magnitude could occur on a platform organically, and without the knowledge and consent of the platform itself,” the researchers wrote of the volume of Kashmir posts.
In a statement to NBC News, a spokesperson for TikTok, which looked at a copy of the institute's report before it was published, said the institute’s report used flawed methodology to reach a predetermined, false conclusion.
“It fails to take into account the basic fact that hashtags are created by users, not by TikTok,” the company said. “Most importantly, anyone familiar with how the platform works can see for themselves the content they refer to is widely available and claims of suppression are baseless.”
Before the report was published Thursday, the institute removed an example from the report of Covid-related hashtags. Those hashtags were relatively rare on TikTok versus on Instagram but that’s because TikTok banned them for causing anti-Asian violence.
Regarding the “China Virus” hashtag, a spokesperson for TikTok said that it "is blocked on TikTok because it was widely recognized as hate speech that was fueling violence."
"That this fact was ignored not only speaks to the shortcomings in this report, but is also deeply ironic coming from an organization purportedly dedicated to combatting hate speech online," the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, did not respond to a request for comment.
Hashtags are just one of many metrics on social media, and cultures on different platforms vary by the populations attracted to them, but the researchers from the Network Contagion Research Institute said the pattern of anomalies that they observed was too clear to ignore or to be easily explained by organic factors.
“Across topics directly sensitive to the Chinese Government, relevant hashtags are dramatically underrepresented on TikTok vs. Instagram,” they wrote.
They also said their methodology replicated methodology that TikTok itself used last month in addressing claims that its recommendation algorithm is biased in favor of Palestinians. Though the institute is headquartered at a university, its reports aren’t peer-reviewed like articles in an academic journal.
TikTok acknowledged that it also used hashtags in its Nov. 13 blog post to measure content on its platform versus Instagram.
But a spokesperson for TikTok said in a statement that "suggesting that this report employed TikTok's methodology is false, and we have repeatedly made clear that comparing hashtags is an inaccurate reflection of on-platform activity."
Hashtags about domestic U.S. politics generally did not show anomalies from the baseline, the researchers said. For every post on TikTok with the hashtag #Trump, there were 2.2 such posts on Instagram, and for the hashtag #BLM (Black Lives Matter), the ratio was similar at 1-to-1.9.
The analysis was published at a crucial time for TikTok, as politicians and technologists have ramped up their criticism of the popular video app. Its critics argue that a Chinese-owned social media platform is a privacy risk for Americans’ personal information and a potential source of foreign propaganda, possibly justifying a ban.
TikTok has pushed back on the criticism, saying that its recommendation algorithm doesn’t take sides on issues and that the company is willing to make accommodations for Americans’ privacy, such as by storing data in U.S.-based servers.
Last month, a federal judge blocked a Montana law banning TikTok from going into effect, ruling that the ban likely violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
NBC News · by David Ingram
2. With Western aid stalled, Ukrainian troops run low on artillery shells
With Western aid stalled, Ukrainian troops run low on artillery shells
By Siobhán O'Grady, David L. Stern and Kostiantyn Khudov
December 22, 2023 at 3:04 p.m. EST
The Washington Post · by Siobhán O'Grady · December 22, 2023
KYIV — Ukrainian forces are suffering from a shortage of artillery shells on the front line, prompting some units to cancel planned assaults, soldiers said this week, and stoking fears over how long Kyiv’s troops will be able to hold their ground against continuing Russian attacks.
The ammunition shortage is deepening the already palpable anxiety in the Ukrainian capital, as U.S. and European aid stalls and winter sets in.
“Our gunners are given a limit of shells for each target,” said a member of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, which is fighting in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.
“If the target there is smaller — for example, a mortar position — then they give five or seven shells in total,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
“The guys are tired — very tired,” he said. “They are still motivated — many people understand that they have no other choice.”
“But you can’t win a war only on motivation,” he continued. “You should have some kind of a numerical advantage, and with the weapons and weapons systems, it only gets worse and worse. How long can we last? It’s hard to say, but it can’t be long. Everyone understands this.”
Artem, 31, a gunner in the 148th Artillery Brigade who fires a 155mm howitzer, said his unit found a “dramatic” difference in stocks of shells after recently relocating from the southern front in Zaporizhzhia to positions in the east.
Artem said his unit was now firing just 10 to 20 shells per day at enemy targets, while previously it used an average of 50 shells, and sometimes up to 90. He spoke on the condition that he be identified only by first name in keeping with Ukrainian military rules.
“If the situation doesn’t change, or even worsens, we will not be able to suppress them and they will push us back,” Artem said. “What can you do with 10 shells per day? It is barely enough to respond to their advances — we are not even talking about attacking their positions.”
Insufficient supplies of shells have been a persistent problem for Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the current shortage during his year-end news conference this week, though he insisted that the military was holding strong.
Earlier this month, Zelensky visited Washington, where he pleaded for lawmakers to free up $60 billion in aid that President Biden has proposed for Ukraine. No deal came through, however, as Republicans tied the aid to controversial border security measures. Days later, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban blocked $55 billion in European Union assistance to Ukraine.
The delays, which come on the heels of Ukraine’s unsuccessful counteroffensive this summer and fall, have created more unwelcome hurdles ahead of the winter holidays.
Russia continues to try to push forward on the southern and eastern fronts, and also to hammer Ukrainian cities with drone and missile attacks — many of which have been thwarted by Ukraine’s improved air defense systems. But those systems, too, depend on continued foreign support.
Ukrainian soldiers stationed at the front said they have not detected any sign that Russia is facing a similar shortage of artillery shells.
Although Moscow was forced to considerably slow its ammunition production in the first few months after the invasion, it has since managed to subvert hard-hitting Western sanctions and export controls and has reenergized its military production.
It has done this, in part, by exploiting loopholes in supply chains, while illicit smuggling networks have brought in key weapon components, including from the United States, by rerouting them through countries such as Turkey and Armenia.
A deal cut between Moscow and Pyongyang in September also provided critical help, with North Korea agreeing to supply Russia with much-needed missiles and shells. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said this week that North Korea appeared recently to have delivered “1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions” to Russia for use in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky told Reuters that troops are facing ammunition shortages and that some plans have changed because of lack of supplies.
Lt. Gen. Ivan Havryliuk, one of Ukraine’s deputy defense ministers, declined to speak about the ammunition shortages, saying he did not have the authority to do so. A spokesman for the Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The United States is Ukraine’s most important ally and Zelensky told reporters this week that he is “sure the U.S.A. won’t betray us.”
But Biden’s failure to secure the urgently needed funding for Ukraine before the end of the year showed that the White House simply cannot ensure everlasting support.
Biden, who previously insisted the United States would stand by Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” instead said earlier this month that it will support Kyiv for “as long as we can.”
The Biden administration has warned that barring passage of a supplemental spending bill, there is only enough money left to replenish U.S. stocks and deliver one remaining aid package.
“Once these funds are obligated, the department will have exhausted the funding available to us for security assistance to Ukraine,” Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord said in a Dec. 15 letter to Congress.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has urged allies to work together to increase production for Ukraine.
Aware that it cannot rely forever on external aid, Ukraine is trying to ramp up its domestic weapons manufacturing. Its minister for strategic industries announced Wednesday that Ukraine plans to make 1 million first-person-view drones next year, along with thousands of other mid- and long-range weapons.
The explosive FPV drones have become key to Ukraine’s attack methods this year.
But in his own year-end news conference this month, Putin made clear that he is monitoring how Western aid for Ukraine has slowed.
“Today, Ukraine produces almost nothing,” he said. “Everything is brought in … for free. But the freebies may end at some point, and apparently it’s coming to an end little by little.
Some countries recently pledged tangible new military support for Ukraine.
On Friday, the Netherlands said it will transfer 18 F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, although a timeline for that delivery was not made public. Japan, meanwhile, agreed to send Patriot missiles to the United States, in a move that would probably allow Washington to send more of the weapons to Ukraine. Kyiv relies heavily on the U.S.-designed Patriot systems to protect critical infrastructure in major cities.
But Ukrainian troops here say they need more of everything, and fast.
“We lack everything,” said the member of 128th Mountain Assault Brigade.
Ivan Zadontsev, a press officer for the 24th Separate Assault Battalion, also known as Aidar, said it had reduced firing by about 90 percent compared with last summer. His battalion needs 122mm munitions for Soviet-era howitzers; Western partners have tried to procure the ammunition for Ukraine throughout the war.
Aidar’s tactics changed around mid-autumn as deliveries of munitions diminished. Although the battalion has faced artillery shell shortages in the past, there are concerns now that reserves will not be replenished.
Like the 148th Artillery Brigade, Aidar is trying to hold defensive lines in the east, near the town of Klishchiivka, which Ukrainian forces liberated from Russian occupation in September. But Zadontsev said that to plan any further assaults “would be stupid … while the Russian army has artillery superiority.”
He said the worries over U.S. border policy that are holding up U.S. aid for Ukraine pale in comparison with the life-or-death urgency Ukrainians feel on the front. It is hard for him to imagine, he said, that anyone abroad can “even understand the situation at all … and how it’s critical right now.”
“I hope the U.S. government understands,” he added, “that keeping Ukraine safe with ammunition is much cheaper than rearming Poland and the Baltic countries if Ukraine will fall.”
Francesca Ebel in London and Serhiy Morgunov in Kyiv contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by Siobhán O'Grady · December 22, 2023
3. Taiwan reports more Chinese military activity as election approaches
How will increased military activity by CHina influence the election in Taiwan?
Taiwan reports more Chinese military activity as election approaches
Reuters
December 23, 20232:32 AM ESTUpdated 6 hours ago
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-reports-more-chinese-military-activity-election-approaches-2023-12-23/
[1/2]Airplane is seen in front of Chinese and Taiwanese flags in this illustration, August 6, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
TAIPEI, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Taiwan reported Chinese warplanes and warships around the island on Saturday, including aircraft crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait, as Beijing continues military activities with three weeks to go before Taiwan votes.
Democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained for four years of regular Chinese military patrols and drills near the island.
Campaigning is under way for Taiwan's Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary polls. Relations with China are a major point of contention.
Taiwan's defence ministry said that since 1:30 p.m. (0530 GMT) on Saturday it had detected J-10, J-11 and J-16 fighters as well as early warning aircraft operating in the airspace to north, middle and southwest of Taiwan.
Ten aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait median line, or areas close by, working with Chinese warships to carry out "joint combat readiness patrols", the ministry said.
The median line once served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides, but Chinese planes now regularly fly over it.
Taiwan sent its own forces to monitor, the ministry said.
China has not commented on its recent spate of military activities near Taiwan. It has previously described them as being aimed at preventing "collusion" between Taiwan separatists and the United States, and protecting China's territorial integrity.
Taiwan's government, which has repeatedly offered talks with China, rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future.
The ruling Democratic Progressive Party's Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing has denounced as a separatist, is the frontrunner to be Taiwan's next president, according to opinion polls.
Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang, traditionally supports close ties with Beijing, and has pledged to reopen dialogue with China if it wins the election. But it too also says Taiwan's people are the only ones who can decide their future.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by William Mallard
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
4. Misinformation is becoming more sophisticated in Taiwan
The power of information.
Misinformation is becoming more sophisticated in Taiwan
NPR · by Emily Feng · December 22, 2023
Disinformation efforts are becoming more sophisticated in Taiwan, and often it's domestic platforms spreading false information.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
It is election season in Taiwan. And that also means, like here in the U.S., a rise in disinformation. Some of the propaganda and conspiracy theories can be directly tracked - traced back to China, which wants more control over Taiwan. And one of their favorite platforms is a Taiwanese online discussion forum called PTT. To figure out why, NPR's Emily Feng went to visit the tech guru who founded it.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: Like many things on the internet, Taiwan's PTT was born out of idealism.
ETHAN TU: We should have a system that embrace open source and embrace freedom of speech.
FENG: This is Ethan Tu, PTT's founder. He started the platform in 1995 as a college student, and to its 1.5 million registered users, he's often called PTT's creation god. And as such, he sets the rules for PTT, a forum where people can post news and comments in long discussion threads.
TU: For any individual, you are equal. You cannot buy ads to promote fundraising, and you cannot rerank your content.
FENG: Like many early adopters of the World Wide Web, he believes in radical free expression, creating a marketplace of ideas moderated only by the users themselves. This is, in part, what's made PTT a go-to site for journalists in Taiwan to get tips. It also makes it a great place to amplify false narratives, says Summer Chen, the editor of nonprofit Taiwan FactCheck Center.
SUMMER CHEN: (Through interpreter) Those aiming to spread disinformation want to attract journalists and help them disseminate the information further.
FENG: And since 2022, Chen says exploiting Taiwanese media to spread false information is on the rise. For example, this year a hacked PTT account posted faked documents showing Taiwan's vice president giving away millions of dollars in aid to Paraguay, false claims news websites picked up. Other dominant false narratives often play up food safety and vaccine concerns.
CHIHHAO YU: Another topic is definitely war, the possibility of a conflict in our region across the Taiwan Strait.
FENG: That's Chihhao Yu, co-director at the research group Taiwan Information Environment Research Center. He says it's becoming harder to pinpoint when Chinese state actors are planting disinformation because sometimes Taiwanese outlets are spreading the information on their own.
YU: And our data analysis shows that about half of these narratives are actually domestic, while the other half comes from the PRC.
FENG: The PRC as in China. The information is part of an effort to shape voter perceptions in Taiwan.
YU: So all these sort of narratives are amplifying chaos and amplifying fear, which is not very productive if you want a constructive public debate on policies, on national direction.
FENG: And this is the question at the heart of combating disinformation. Do you keep platforms completely open and let people decide for themselves what is true and worth reading, or do you increase moderation and ask for real-name registration? PTT's founder, Ethan Tu, is adamantly against this approach. He worries doing so gives individual platforms too much power over speech.
TU: Because the content moderation now will become too powerful, which means the system operator can control the opinion of the society. That should not be allowed at PTT.
FENG: He acknowledges disinformation is a growing problem and becoming more sophisticated. But Taiwan is a democracy, he says. The people should decide. Emily Feng, NPR News, Taipei, Taiwan.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NPR · by Emily Feng · December 22, 2023
5. US Air Force to reclaim Pacific airfield that launched atomic bombings as it looks to counter China
Excerpts:
“You create a targeting problem, and you may actually take some hits, but you still have preponderance of your forces still creating effect,” Wilsbach told Nikkei.
The Air Force has already been practicing the ACE concept on Tinian, including operating F-22 stealth fighters out of its international airport during exercise Agile Reaper in March.
The airport provided an environment where the US fighter jets could depend only on supplies they carried themselves or that could be flown in C-17 transports while showing they were “ready and capable of operating in a contested, degraded, and operationally limited environment,” an Air Force statement said.
The F-22s also operated from Guam, 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the south of Tinian, during Agile Reaper.
US Air Force to reclaim Pacific airfield that launched atomic bombings as it looks to counter China | CNN
CNN · by Brad Lendon · December 22, 2023
View of North Field, Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, March 31, 1945, when it was the busiest airport in the world.
PhotoQuest/Archive Photos/Getty Images
CNN —
The US Air Force plans to bring the Pacific island airfield that launched the atomic bombings of Japan back into commission as it tries to broaden its basing options in the event of any hostilities with China, the service’s top officer in the Pacific says.
Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces, told Nikkei Asia in an interview published this week that North Airfield on the island of Tinian will become an “extensive” facility once work has been completed to reclaim it from the jungle that has grown over the base since the last US Army Air Force units abandoned it in 1946.
“If you pay attention in the next few months, you will see significant progress, especially at Tinian North,” Wilsbach said. The Air Force is also adding facilities at Tinian International Airport in the center of the island.
Pacific Air Forces confirmed Wilsbach’s comments to CNN but said there was no official release on the subject.
Runways last used in World War II are still visible at North Field on Tinian island in January 2020.
Brad Lendon/CNN
Tinian is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific, some 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) west of Hawaii in the Pacific. Only about 3,000 people live on the 39-square-mile island.
Wilsbach did not give a timeline on when the airfield will be operational, according to the Nikkei report.
Pivotal in World War II
Tinian, along with the nearby islands of Saipan and Guam, has a rich history of US air operations.
During World War II, all three islands, after they were captured from Japanese occupiers, were home to fleets of B-29 Superfortress bombers which rained destruction on the Japanese homeland.
History’s deadliest bombing raid, the March 10, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo that killed as many as 100,000 people and injured a million, was carried out by B-29s launched from the three islands.
During the relentless bombing of Japan in 1945, North Field on Tinian, with its four 8,000-foot runways and 40,000 personnel, became the largest and busiest airport in the world.
The B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay as it moved over the bomb pit on the North Field of Tinian air base, North Marianas Islands, early August, 1945. The plane was loaded with an atomic bomb, codenamed Little Boy, which it then dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6.
PhotoQuest/Getty Images
North Field sealed its spot in history on August 6, 1945, when in the early morning darkness, the B-29 bomber named Enola Gay rolled down its Runway Able carrying the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima later that morning, killing 70,000 people with its initial blast and bringing the world into the nuclear age.
Three days later, another B-29, named Bockscar, would take off from Tinian to drop an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing 46,000 people with its initial blast.
An enclosure covers the pit at North Field, Tinian, from which an atomic bomb was loaded on a B-29 bomber for the bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945.
Brad Lendon/CNN
A storied past, contemporary uses
The Air Force’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget request shows $78 million has been sought for construction projects on Tinian island.
The reclamation project is part of the US military’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) strategy, which an Air Force doctrine document says “shifts operations from centralized physical infrastructures to a network of smaller, dispersed locations that can complicate adversary planning and provide more options for joint force commanders.”
Much of the US air power in the Pacific is concentrated on a few large air bases, like Andersen Air Force Base on Guam or Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
A strike on those bases could cripple the US military’s ability to hit back at an adversary if too much US air power were concentrated there.
And as China, the country the Pentagon identifies as its “pacing threat,” grows its missile forces, the Air Force is looking for places to disperse its fleet to make targeting it more difficult.
According to a 2022 paper from the Air Force’s Air University, “ACE helps mitigate (Chinese) threats by dispersing forces throughout the theater using hub-and-spoke basing configurations, offering the service unpredictability and requiring the People’s Liberation Army to expend more missiles to reduce US Air Force airpower effects.”
The ruins of World War II-era buildings at North Airfield, Tinian, are seen in January 2020.
Brad Lendon/CNN
“You create a targeting problem, and you may actually take some hits, but you still have preponderance of your forces still creating effect,” Wilsbach told Nikkei.
The Air Force has already been practicing the ACE concept on Tinian, including operating F-22 stealth fighters out of its international airport during exercise Agile Reaper in March.
The airport provided an environment where the US fighter jets could depend only on supplies they carried themselves or that could be flown in C-17 transports while showing they were “ready and capable of operating in a contested, degraded, and operationally limited environment,” an Air Force statement said.
The F-22s also operated from Guam, 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the south of Tinian, during Agile Reaper.
CNN · by Brad Lendon · December 22, 2023
6. The secret U.S. effort to track, hide and surveil the Chinese spy balloon
Excerpts:
“I look back and think that everything worked as it should,” he said. “While we can be critical of the decision of where and the timeline to shoot it down, I think in the end, the best decision and outcome happened.”
He added, “We kept the American and Canadian people safe.”
But VanHerck said that the U.S. still lacks the over-the-horizon radar capability it needs to spot such a balloon far sooner.
“I’m confident in our ability to see that over our homeland,” he said. “I would like to see it over the horizon before it approaches our homeland.”
While the U.S. is not aware of any other Chinese spy balloons that have flown over the country since last February, he said the Chinese stratospheric balloon program remains active. VanHerck believes it is primarily focused on the western Pacific to collect signals, video, and infrared and electro-optical intelligence for a potential crisis or conflict there.
“A cheap, satellite-like capability to fly in the stratosphere,” he said, “to give them what I would call a command and control, to share information, to collect.”
Biden and his national security aides, meanwhile, have tried to play down the China balloon incident. For much of 2023, they tried to put it behind them and get U.S. relations with China to a better place.
After months of efforts, the president’s team finally secured a meeting between Xi and Biden last month in San Francisco. During the summit, the balloon did not came up in the two leaders’ discussions. Officials said Biden never raised it.
The secret U.S. effort to track, hide and surveil the Chinese spy balloon
A year later, Biden administration officials say the threat was exaggerated, but U.S. military officials contend that too little has been done to spot spy balloons before they pose a threat.
Dec. 22, 2023, 9:18 PM EST
By Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/secret-us-effort-track-hide-surveil-chinese-spy-balloon-rcna130991
NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee
WASHINGTON — On a Friday evening last January, Gen. Glen VanHerck, the Air Force commander in charge of defending American airspace from intrusion, called President Joe Biden’s top military adviser, Gen. Mark Milley.
U.S. intelligence officials had just notified the general that for roughly 10 days they had been tracking a mysterious — and enormous — object flying over the Asia-Pacific, VanHerck told Milley. The object had crossed into U.S. airspace over Alaska and VanHerck said he planned to dispatch military jets to fly alongside it and attempt to assess what it was.
The previously unreported Jan. 27 phone call between Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and VanHerck, the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, set off an eight-day scramble inside the Biden administration to respond to a Chinese spy balloon the size of three school buses floating over the U.S.
The spy balloon exposed an increasingly brazen China’s competitive advances miles above the Earth and brought the most critical relationship in the world to one of its lowest points in recent history.
Nearly a year later, U.S. relations with China have not fully recovered and officials from the two nations have apparently not discussed it in detail. An American effort to create global norms in the largely unregulated spaces above the Earth has stalled. And VanHerck warns that the Chinese balloon program remains active and the U.S. has failed to develop the systems needed to detect spy balloons before they become a threat.
Privately, Biden administration officials complain that the political and public outcry over the balloon was wildly disproportionate to any threat it posed to U.S. national security. In their view, because China was so angered and humiliated, the damage done to the relationship between Washington and Beijing was a far graver threat to the U.S. than the balloon itself.
“It caused so many problems,” one senior administration official lamented.
Scrambling to respond
Administration officials at first hoped to conceal the balloon’s existence from the public, and from Congress, according to multiple former and current administration and congressional officials.
“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” said a former senior U.S. official briefed on the balloon incident.
A senior Biden administration denied that there was an effort to keep the balloon secret. “To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking them,” the official said, referring to intelligence gathering. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”
Soon after VanHerck’s phone call with Milley, U.S. military jets dispatched from Alaska used their targeting pods to determine what was on board the object. They confirmed that it was a Chinese spy balloon that was not carrying offensive weapons but was outfitted with a large payload of surveillance equipment.
VanHerck began sending emails every 12 hours to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Milley and other Pentagon leaders to update them on the balloon’s location, threat, projected flight path and likely intent.
In one email, VanHerck wrote that he determined the balloon was not an imminent threat and did not have hostile intent, so he did not have the authority to shoot it down. That order would have to come from the Pentagon and the White House.
Biden first learned of the balloon on Jan. 31, three days after VanHerck’s phone call to Milley. Top aides told him it appeared headed for the continental U.S., and Biden asked for options from the military for how to deal with it.
The balloon’s ability to fly and gather intelligence was mostly powered by 16 solar panels, and it was remotely steered for a time from inside of China, while also using the wind and the jet stream to push it across the U.S.
Early photos from the U.S. military of the balloon’s payload showed antennas that were likely used to listen to cellphones and other signals. The payload weighed about 2,000 pounds and was about 200 feet tall.
Biden’s military advisers warned him that it could not be safely shot down because of a massive potential debris field that would endanger people and structures below. NASA initially assessed that field to be 70 miles wide and 70 miles long, with thousands of pounds of debris falling 65,000 feet.
The president asked basic questions about the balloon and its capabilities. At times, he grew frustrated with how little U.S. intelligence officials knew about China’s balloon program.
President Joe Biden speaks on Feb. 16 about the U.S. response to the high-altitude Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the U.S. military.Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
American skies
When it crossed into Montana on Jan. 31, the Pentagon was tracking it with radar, F-22 jets and other aircraft. They watched the balloon closely and collected intelligence on its capabilities.
On Feb. 1, NBC News told White House officials that it was planning to report that a Chinese spy balloon was flying over the U.S. and asked for comment. With NBC preparing it report, and Biden’s decision not to shoot it down, officials hastily organized briefings for lawmakers and the media to try to get ahead of the story.
The U.S. also summoned Chinese diplomats for answers on the balloon. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then-Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman met with officials from the Chinese Embassy, but the Chinese diplomats denied the balloon even belonged to China. U.S. officials believe they genuinely did not know about it.
U.S. officials later assessed that Chinese President Xi Jinping knew about the balloon program but didn’t know about this specific one, including that it had crossed into U.S. airspace. American intelligence officials concluded that Xi was embarrassed by it. Some believe that’s at least partly what led to the ouster of China’s defense minister in October.
Feb. 1 also was the first time Austin, the defense secretary, spoke to VanHerck about the balloon. Austin took the phone call at 3 a.m., underscoring how urgent the issue had become. Until then, his top aide had received emails from VanHerck, as the secretary was traveling in Asia and focused on that trip.
“They weren’t paying attention,” a senior U.S. official later said.
VanHerck said he wasn’t asked to present options until Austin made the request on behalf of the president. After being briefed at the White House on ways to shoot down the balloon, Biden directed the military to do so as soon as safely possible.
But the enormous debris field remained a danger. The military, along with NASA, began to work on ways to decrease its size by using the weather, trajectory and size of the balloon, and its estimated payload.
As the balloon continued taking photos and attempting to gather sensory data to store on board for later, the U.S. gathered information on how it operated. VanHerck later told lawmakers that American intelligence officials had to get special authorization to collect intelligence on the balloon while it was over the U.S. and that they were granted that authority.
After NBC News broke the story on Feb. 2, officials also arranged to brief other media outlets later that evening. Once the balloon’s existence became public, U.S. officials said it stopped transmitting data. Officials also assessed that China’s plan was to self-destruct the balloon, not return it back home.
A firestorm in Washington
The balloon sparked a political frenzy in Washington. Several Republican lawmakers expressed anger that they were not briefed on the balloon earlier, before it was over Montana.
The partisan attacks played out as Blinken was preparing for a critical visit to Beijing. Blinken’s trip was a follow-on visit after Biden and Xi met in November in Bali to try to stop relations between their two countries from worsening.
On Feb. 3, China issued what for Beijing was an unusual public apology. “The airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure.”
In the U.S., China’s claim it was a weather balloon that veered off course was dismissed as insufficient and dishonest. That day, Blinken announced he was postponing his trip to China.
By then, U.S. military and NASA officials had developed a plan to minimize the debris field to a square area 6 nautical miles wide and long. Biden signed off on the military shooting down the balloon over U.S. territorial waters, with U.S. Navy assets nearby to collect the wreckage.
On Saturday, Feb. 4, a U.S. Air Force F-22 shot down the balloon exactly 6 miles off the coast of South Carolina.
China only learned the U.S. military downed the balloon after it was in pieces in the Atlantic Ocean. Chinese officials sent word that Xi was angry that the Biden administration didn’t give him a heads up, particularly in light of his government’s apology.
Nearly two weeks later, Biden delivered prepared remarks on the balloon. He announced four steps his administration would take to get a better handle on the issue of surveillance balloons going forward. One was for Blinken to work with U.S. allies to establish what Biden called “global norms in this largely unregulated space.”
Sailors prepare material recovered off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., after the shooting down of a Chinese high-altitude balloon for transport to the FBI.Ryan Seelbach / U.S. Navy via AP
Nearly one year later
As the one-year anniversary of the balloon entering U.S. airspace approaches, that effort remains unfinished.
On Dec. 18, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller issued a statement calling on the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization “to prioritize work on higher airspace operations, accelerate efforts to identify solutions for manned and unmanned aviation traffic in that airspace, and use the coming year to advance important technical work in this area.”
“This is just the beginning,” Miller promised.
VanHerck, the NORAD commander, said in an interview with NBC News this month that he learned lessons from the balloon incident, but he would not change how the U.S. responded.
“I look back and think that everything worked as it should,” he said. “While we can be critical of the decision of where and the timeline to shoot it down, I think in the end, the best decision and outcome happened.”
He added, “We kept the American and Canadian people safe.”
But VanHerck said that the U.S. still lacks the over-the-horizon radar capability it needs to spot such a balloon far sooner.
“I’m confident in our ability to see that over our homeland,” he said. “I would like to see it over the horizon before it approaches our homeland.”
While the U.S. is not aware of any other Chinese spy balloons that have flown over the country since last February, he said the Chinese stratospheric balloon program remains active. VanHerck believes it is primarily focused on the western Pacific to collect signals, video, and infrared and electro-optical intelligence for a potential crisis or conflict there.
“A cheap, satellite-like capability to fly in the stratosphere,” he said, “to give them what I would call a command and control, to share information, to collect.”
Biden and his national security aides, meanwhile, have tried to play down the China balloon incident. For much of 2023, they tried to put it behind them and get U.S. relations with China to a better place.
After months of efforts, the president’s team finally secured a meeting between Xi and Biden last month in San Francisco. During the summit, the balloon did not came up in the two leaders’ discussions. Officials said Biden never raised it.
NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee
7. To shoot or not to shoot: Chinese-developed ‘golden veil’ could make deadly missiles look like passenger planes
What a dilemma.
To shoot or not to shoot: Chinese-developed ‘golden veil’ could make deadly missiles look like passenger planes
- Military commanders could be put to the test as new gold-plated camouflage veil can make cruise missiles look like civilian planes
- The new low-cost, low-weight device could ‘change the face of war’ according to the team of scientists behind the design
Stephen Chen
in Beijing
+ FOLLOWPublished: 9:00am, 22 Dec, 2023
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3240861/shoot-or-not-shoot-chinese-developed-golden-veil-could-make-deadly-missiles-look-passenger-planes
A gold-plated camouflage veil that can make a cruise missile look like a passenger plane on a radar screen could “change the face of war”, according to the team of Chinese scientists behind the design.
The low-cost technology can confuse expensive air defence systems and significantly reduce the time available for military commanders to respond – if at all.
Developed by a research team in northwest China, the project is part of an ongoing effort by China to build up a wide range of ways it can penetrate air defence systems in the first island chain, Guam or even the US homeland.
While China’s overall military posture remains defensive, such abilities would serve as an effective deterrence against foreign intervention in regional affairs such as Taiwan or the South China Sea, according to some Chinese military experts.
The veil is made of fine metal threads which are gold-plated, according to Zong Yali and her colleagues in a paper published in the peer-reviewed Chinese Journal of Radio Science last month. The golden threads then form a web of complex geometry to reflect radar signals.
PLA will show ‘no mercy’ against Taiwan independence moves, top Chinese general says
Laboratory testing has suggested the device can boost the radar cross-section of a flying target from less than one to over 30 decibels per square metre, said Zong, who is an associate professor of radar science with the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian, Shaanxi province.
This is similar to the radar signature generated by a large aeroplane such as a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320 when being viewed from certain angles.
Radar reflectors are already being used by the US on some of its missiles, such as the ADM-160 MALD, to make them appear as aeroplanes on radar screens.
Stealth military aircraft, such as the F-22 fighter and B2 bomber, also carry removable reflectors known as Luneburg lenses most of the time so they can become visible to civilian air traffic control and hide their true radar signature.
“Electronic warfare has become more complex than ever. New electronic countermeasure equipment and tools are entering service at an unprecedented speed,” Zong said in the paper.
“They are changing the face of war,” she added.
But what makes the veil different from existing radar reflection technology is its flexibility, according to the team.
It can be deployed or folded repeatedly in a way that is similar to an umbrella, so the missile or aircraft can switch between visible and stealth modes at will throughout the flight.
The idea of tricking radar operators is not new. The US already use the ADM-160 MALD. Photo: Handout
The folding and supportive structure is made of carbon fibre materials and they can provide sufficient strength for military service, the researchers said.
The veil can also change its shape and size randomly, generating some strange patterns to confuse computer or radar operators.
Another key advantage of the veil is its relatively low cost and weight.
While there are smart, powerful transmitters that can also generate signals to confuse enemy radar, the technology is complex and the price for high-performance electronics is usually very high.
The veil is mostly made of low-cost materials that are widely available in China’s industrial production chain.
And the entire device weighs only about 1kg (2.3lb) – just a fraction of the weight of most reflectors currently in use or under development, according to the researchers.
This lower weight means the missile can fly a longer distance or carry a bigger warhead. The veil can also be mounted on warships or land vehicles.
The low cost, low weight and versatility of the device means that in the future, demand for it could be huge.
But Zong’s team said their next challenge is to bring the veil to mass production. Achieving uniform performance in a large number of products will be difficult, unless the manufacturing process can be done mostly by machines.
China’s state media released unusual footage last month that showed an autonomous factory for cruise missile production.
Cruise missiles are assembled manually due to their complexity, according to openly available information in the US and other countries. But in the Chinese plant, it seems most of the jobs have been replaced by machines.
The robotic missile plant can operate 24 hours a day and produce a large number of weapons at low cost and to high-quality standards, according to the report.
The Chinese government believes that a new arms race with hi-tech, low-cost weapons, including cruise missiles and drones, would not only boost the fighting power of the PLA, but could also drag opponents into bankruptcy.
CONVERSATIONS (41)
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Stephen Chen
Stephen Chen is the SCMP's science news editor. He investigates major research projects in China, a new power house of scientific and technological innovation, and their impact to humanity. Stephen has produced a large number of exclusive stories on China research, some highly controversial or shrouded in secrecy. He has been with the SCMP since 2006.
8. USSOCOM hosts 1st SOF Truth conference focusing on force health
Excellent initiative.
Excerpts:
To open the discussion, Fenton stressed the forum is for O6 and above command teams from across the entire SOF enterprise to attain the tools to take care of their teams at the lowest levels. Discussions centered around understanding brain health, being aware of physiological recovery programs available, and knowing how to access integrated care services. Fenton and Shorter emphasized the commitment to the health and wellness of the force.
“This is an opportunity for our formation to be introduced to all the organizations we have as resources to help servicemembers – our number one priority; our people,” Fenton said.
“The O6 commands are where the rubber meets the road,” said Shorter. “The O6 commanders deal directly with the individual person, they are there to take care of their people, we do not see that at the headquarters. This virtual conference is for you to help you with your people.”
USSOCOM hosts 1st SOF Truth conference focusing on force health
https://www.dvidshub.net/news/460564/ussocom-hosts-1st-sof-truth-conference-focusing-force-health
Photo By Michael Bottoms | U.S. Army Lt. Col. Glen Dowling and his wife Kelli give a testimonial on how the... read more
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, FL, UNITED STATES
12.21.2023
U.S. Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, commander, U.S. Special Operations Command and Command Sgt. Maj. Shane Shorter hosted the fourth of a series of virtual forums focused on people , at Joint Special Operations University, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, Dec. 14, 2023. This forum dealt with force health.
This quarter’s 1st SOF Truth Conference focused on force health with an emphasis on brain health and resiliency to empower leaders with access to the resources available for the command’s people .
The series of quarterly events are a component to the USSOCOM Preservation of the Force and Family’s Integrated Performance Campaign. The purpose of the events is to develop a mutual understanding across senior leadership and explore a variety of approaches to address the threat of self-harm to the people in the formation . And the intent is to generate follow on actions for the leaders to implement at the echelons below .
To open the discussion, Fenton stressed the forum is for O6 and above command teams from across the entire SOF enterprise to attain the tools to take care of their teams at the lowest levels. Discussions centered around understanding brain health, being aware of physiological recovery programs available, and knowing how to access integrated care services. Fenton and Shorter emphasized the commitment to the health and wellness of the force.
“This is an opportunity for our formation to be introduced to all the organizations we have as resources to help servicemembers – our number one priority; our people,” Fenton said.
“The O6 commands are where the rubber meets the road,” said Shorter. “The O6 commanders deal directly with the individual person, they are there to take care of their people, we do not see that at the headquarters. This virtual conference is for you to help you with your people.”
Guest speakers illuminated the data on performance and recovery programs aimed at special operations forces such as cognitive enhancement, resiliency, rehabilitation, and traumatic brain injury. As SOCOM is constantly looking to transform with emerging tech and scientific data, how doctors evaluate the performance and treat the recovery of our operators lends to our culture of continuous improvement.
Briefers from National Intrepid Center of Excellence, 7 East, Special Operator Performance and Recovery, Post-Deployment Rehabilitation Evaluation Program, Homebase, and a Lead Nurse Case Manager all explained their programs and how they help service members. The forum also hosted a panel discussion entitled Framing Warfighter Brain Health: what is it, effects, symptoms, types of conditions. Additionally, testimonials from four different people on how certain programs help them recover physically, mentally and spiritually.
Finally, Brian Johnson founder and CEO of Heroic Public Benefit Corporation gave a briefing on how his company Heroic uses ancient philosophers’ wisdom to empower and strengthen the modern mind.
“If people are more important than hardware, the ultimate war is internal, [the mind] not external, and we win that war by learning how to flourish by putting our virtues in action,” said Johnson. “Then we must train and measure that.”
Note: All the presentations given that day are available through USSOCOM’s CAC-enabled internal portal and available for individual or unit training purposes.
9. Iranian Spy Ship Helps Houthis Direct Attacks on Red Sea Vessels
Don't we have sufficient justification to destroy the Houthi capability in Yemen and in the Red Sea?
Iranian Spy Ship Helps Houthis Direct Attacks on Red Sea Vessels
Assistance raises pressure on Israel and the U.S. to take action against the Yemen-based rebels
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iranian-spy-ship-helps-houthis-direct-attacks-on-red-sea-vessels-d6f7fd40?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1
By Benoit Faucon
Follow, Dov Lieber
Follow and Gordon Lubold
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Updated Dec. 22, 2023 4:08 pm ET
Houthi fighters hold up weapons during a parade in San’a, Yemen, in support of the people of Gaza. PHOTO: OSAMAH YAHYA/ZUMA PRESS
Iran’s paramilitary forces are providing real-time intelligence and weaponry, including drones and missiles, to Yemen’s Houthis that the rebels are using to target ships passing through the Red Sea, Western and regional security officials said.
Tracking information gathered by a Red Sea surveillance vessel controlled by Iran’s paramilitary forces is given to the Houthis, who have used it to attack commercial vessels passing through the Bab el-Mandeb strait in recent days, according to the officials.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon unveiled plans for a multinational naval force to protect merchant vessels in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, many of the world’s biggest shipping lines, oil producers and other cargo owners have started diverting vessels from the region, prompting a rise in oil prices and insurance rates.
Many vessels sailing in the strait have been switching off their radios to avoid being tracked online, but an Iranian vessel stationed in the Red Sea is enabling the Houthi drones and missiles to accurately target the ships, the officials said.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for the Houthis said the group didn’t need to rely on Iran to help in its attacks. “It’s strange to attribute everything to Iran as if it were the world’s strongest power,” the spokesperson said. “We have intelligence facilities that have proven themselves over the years of aggression against us.”
The direct involvement by Iranian actors in the attacks raises the stakes for Israel and the U.S., which are eager to contain Tehran’s role in the region, and risks creating a new front in the conflict between Israel and its foes in the region, just as the U.S. is trying to stop it from escalating.
“The Houthis don’t have the radar technology to target the ships,” said a Western security official. “They need Iranian assistance. Without it, the missiles would just drop in the water.”
White House and Pentagon officials have demanded the Houthis cease attacks on commercial vessels and U.S. Navy ships. Meanwhile, U.S. officials have said privately they are looking at an offensive military response to the attacks.
Last week, the Houthis hit a Norwegian cargo vessel with an antiship cruise missile. The ship caught fire and was forced to sail to port after being damaged. None of the crew was injured.
On Friday, the White House declassified intelligence that it said showed the extent of the support Iran is providing to the Houthis for attacks in the Red Sea and on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. The intelligence release appeared to be an effort to lay the groundwork for potential military action against the Houthis.
The White House said the U.S. had found the Houthis rely on monitoring and tactical intelligence from the Iranians to target vessels, and had provided Iranian-designed drones and missiles the Houthis launched toward Israel and at least one vessel in the Red Sea.
“Iranian support to these Houthi operations remains critical,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council.
The U.S. has previously said Iran was enabling the Houthi attacks on ships but hadn’t said how until now. Iran for years has supplied weapons to the rebels in their battle against Saudi-backed foes in Yemen.
While the Houthis have said the attacks are in retaliation for Israel’s war in Gaza, the ships they have attacked have little or in some cases no links to Israel.
Washington has told Israel to let the U.S. military respond to the Houthis instead of taking action that could expand its conflict with Hamas and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia, U.S. and other government officials said.
U.S. officials have also said they wish to dissociate the attacks in the Red Sea from the conflict inside Gaza. Describing the Red Sea attacks as an international problem demanding a multilateral solution, the U.S. hopes to dissuade the Israelis from striking the Houthis and broadening their conflict with Hamas militants.
A senior Israeli official said the Iranian ship’s intelligence support for the Houthis shows that the West needs to pressure Tehran to halt its assistance, which is disrupting the global shipping trade. “Iran is giving them weapons, and Iran could stop it,” the Israeli official said. “We need to work to put pressure on Iran, so they will stop.”
In 2021, Israeli mines damaged an Iranian spy ship that had also been stationed in the Red Sea, and it was replaced by the vessel currently helping the Houthis, Western officials said.
Israel has also been angered by Houthi missile attacks targeting the southern port of Eilat, though they were intercepted by U.S. defenses.
U.S. officials say there is little indication that Iran is attempting to dissuade the Houthis from the attacks, though other officials acknowledge the group is a “wild card” and hard to control.
The intelligence the U.S. declassified and released on Friday purports to link Iran to the specific weaponry the Houthi militants used in recent attacks in the Red Sea and against Israel.
On Oct. 19, the Houthis launched from Yemen 29 KAS-04 OWAs drones from Yemen and at least three land-attack cruise missiles, the U.S. intelligence showed. Those weapons systems were designed by Iran, according to U.S. officials. Another Houthi attack against the commercial tanker M/V Central Park on Nov. 27 used the same kind of ballistic missiles Iran has supplied to the Houthis, U.S. officials said.
On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned his country could retaliate against the threats coming out of Yemen. “If they continue to provoke us, try to attack Eilat with missiles or by other means, we will know what to do,” he said, speaking onboard a warship sailing near the Israeli port. “We are preparing. The troops here are ready for any mission and any command.”
Western security officials have previously said Iranian assistance to the Houthis is overseen by the Quds Force, a branch of Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Republic Guard Corps that operates autonomously from the civilian cabinet in Tehran. The U.S. has placed a $15 million bounty on the Quds Force commander in Yemen, Abdolreza Shahlaei, for his role in supplying weapons and explosives to Iraqi Shia groups and planning a 2007 attack in Iraq that killed five American soldiers and wounded three others.
In messages passed to the U.S. through Switzerland and in public, Iran has said it had no control over the actions of the Houthi and other forces in the Middle East that have attacked U.S. and Israeli targets in response to the war in Gaza.
A spokesman for the Iran mission at the United Nations said last week that Iran opposed a U.N. Security Council resolution that imposes an arms embargo only on the Houthis. He said Tehran has abided by its implementation and that the Yemenis were capable of military self-reliance.
Saleh al-Batati contributed to this article.
Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com, Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and Gordon Lubold at gordon.lubold@wsj.com
Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the December 23, 2023, print edition as 'Iran Helps Houthis Take Aim At Red Sea Shipping'.
10. Lessons unlearned: Drawing parallels between the Ukraine war and historical military campaigns
Lessons unlearned: Drawing parallels between the Ukraine war and historical military campaigns
Sofia Presnyakova
22 December 2023
theins.press
CONTENT
- World War I: The war of attrition in 1914-1918
- The Winter War: The attack on Finland in 1939
- Operation Danube: The invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
- The Iran-Iraq War: A stalemate on the front lines and rocket attacks on cities in 1980-1988
- The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: Missile strikes and underestimating the enemy in 2003
World War I: The war of attrition in 1914-1918
The Russian-Ukrainian war is perhaps most often compared to World War I — this has become especially true in the last year, when the fighting became protracted. Photographs of the defense of Bakhmut are being compared to the Battle of the Somme and Russian pro-war activists are reprinting books detailing tactics that helped the German Army break through the Entente front in 1918. The Ukrainian army’s Commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, is also criticizing the West for the insufficient supply of shells compared to a century ago, describing a “positional stalemate” caused by new technologies — “just like in World War I.” The roles of WWI-era machine guns and artillery have evolved, however, and are now manifested in FPV drones and anti-tank systems.
Special military operation
“Special military operation” is a euphemism widely used by the Kremlin and Russian propaganda to refer to the invasion of Ukraine.
Shell craters on the outskirts of Bakhmut, January 7, 2023
Maxar Technologies
All the great powers that entered the First World War expected to end it in a matter of months. But plans for rapid combat failed to cope with new technologies — especially machine guns and long-range artillery. As a result, the war became a textbook example of a battle of attrition, with the front barely moving for years and heavy casualties on both sides.
Ammunition was in short supply for all sides throughout the war, and its consumption exceeded any forecasts made before it. Countries were forced to hastily rebuild their economies on a war footing, resulting in hardship and famine in the rear. The all-out (or “total”) nature of the fighting meant that multiple populations and armies effectively refused to continue the war. The outcome of WWI redrew the map of Europe and laid the foundations for the next global conflict.
Konstantin Pakhalyuk, Russian historian, expert on the First World War:
“Nobody thought that modern warfare could become positional. And to that extent they are similar. In a way, the current war is a war of attrition, just like the First World War. At least both sides think so. But there is a fundamental difference. The First World War was a war of massive, multimillion-dollar armies, a total war. The [Russian] slogan ‘Everything for the front, everything for victory’ [the slogan ‘Vse dlya fronta, vse dlya pobedy’ was used by Soviet propaganda during WWII and is well-known to this day — translator’s note] appeared during that time. After all, 600-700 thousand people from the Russian side were at the front - this is the scale of a relatively large operation by the standards of the First World War. The biggest battles of the First World War were fought with a million or 500-700 thousand men on each side. But these were separate battles, not involving all the mobilized troops.
If you can't break through the enemy's defenses all at once, you can do what the Germans did in 1916, for example: find a key point in the enemy's defenses that they’ll fight for without leaving. And then you dig in and start taking people out — both your own and those of the enemy. That is: the point is to kill more of their soldiers than your own. This is the tragedy of the Battle of Verdun.
The Russians repeated the same strategy at Bakhmut. Only the logic was slightly different: it had been defeated, it needed to gather its army, it needed Ukraine not to attack. So what you do [in that situation]? You hit Bakhmut, one of the most important points in the enemy's defenses, and just start to break through. You’ll suffer losses, of course, but the enemy will suffer even more [losses] (well, at least that’s what you’d want). Yevgeny Prigozhin explained all this quite clearly in May 2023.
Russia repeated the strategy of the Battle for Verdun in 1916 at Bakhmut in 2022
What brings these wars closer together? The moment of totality. A world war is not just a war with many participating countries. It's not just about mass mobilization. It's about the entire economy being converted to military needs. It erases the civil-military boundary. And although the current war is not a total war for Russia, radical supporters of the “final solution” to the “Ukrainian question” aren’t hiding that they want the whole society and economy to switch to military tracks.
Total war leads to a change in attitude towards the civilian population in the occupied territories. In the summer of 1914, Russian troops in East Prussia were still trying to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants — by fall, organized robberies began, based on the logic that “we have to undermine the enemy's economic potentia.” And in October 2022, when [General Sergei] Surovikin began destroying Ukraine's energy infrastructure, he was guided by the same logic of reducing production and creating a crisis for the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.
The First World War exacerbated the internal problems of the Russian Empire. It was a country with a great deal of economic growth (unlike Putin's Russia). And then Russia finds itself in a state of war. A massive army, a “people's war,” colossal battles — and failures — a positional front. And yes, many problems escalated both then and now.
On the eve of World War I, the Russian Empire, unlike Putin's Russia, was a country with a great deal of economic growth
In the First World War, artillery accounted for 60% of all casualties on both the Western and Russian fronts. Other weapons such as chemical weapons and tanks were used, but artillery was and is the key factor. For Ukraine today, the issue of artillery and shells is also key.
In World War I, it was the number of guns, shells and fire density that mattered, as well as range, which is important for defense. There was also the question of accuracy — that [depends on] the calculations, the skill of the artillerymen and the quality of aerial reconnaissance. Today, missiles and now drones have changed a lot. They can potentially deliver precision strikes with minimal damage to civilian infrastructure, but that’s in theory — practice has shown the opposite.
A lot of attention is now being paid to hitting civilian infrastructure, headquarters, rear areas, energy facilities. Much is said on morale and society, but the important thing is this: victory at the front is won with manpower (soldiers) and everything that goes with them. You can bombard Kiev, you can hit individual command centres, but victory in war is achieved through the destruction of the enemy's life force — [you] break through, detect and destroy. [You don’t] do targeted strikes and occupy territory. Ukraine's successes in August and October of last year were achieved precisely by destroying the enemy's living force.”
The Winter War: The attack on Finland in 1939
The current events in Ukraine, especially in the early stages, bear a strong resemblance to what happened between the USSR and Finland in 1939-1940. In an article for The Insider in April last year (available in Russian here), historian Boris Sokolov detailed how the invasion was conceived as a blitzkrieg, under the guise of self-defense, with the ultimate goal of installing a fully controlled puppet government — just like the attack on Ukraine in 2022.
A Russian BMP hit and abandoned near Sviatohirsk, November 21, 2023
Anatolii Stepanov / AFP
The Soviet attack on Finland began in November 1939 with a provocation — an allegedly organized Finnish shelling of Red Army soldiers in the village of Mainila — and was accompanied by a propaganda campaign about the massive support for the Soviet troops by the working people and peasants of Finland. The Soviet government did not officially recognize that it was at war and had no qualms about the barbaric bombing of cities and infrastructure. Just as the Kremlin does today.
Emil Kastehelmi, OSINT-analyst and military historian:
“These two wars are and are not comparable. In both cases, the aggressor is the eastern dictatorship, and the defender is a smaller democratic country. In both cases, the Western world sympathizes with the defender.
However, one of the many differences can be the Western actions. Finland did not receive large amounts of foreign help, except from Sweden. Finland would have needed more weapons and ammo, but it was not provided. Kind words don't help in destroying the enemy now or back in 1939. Gladly Ukraine has received more than just words. One feature of both wars was that they were rather extensively covered in the media. Public interest was high globally.
Kind words don't help in destroying the enemy now or back in 1939
The Red Army had suffered from Stalin's purges, which limited the number of experienced officers in the service. However, this solely does not explain the problems. Soviet intelligence did not create a proper picture of Finland or its capabilities for the military leadership, or the military leadership did not take the information into account sufficiently. The Soviet Union underestimated the Finnish political situation and their willingness to fight against the odds. In many places, the tactics of the Soviet Union were not suitable for the operating environment. Instead, the Finns were able to operate better even in difficult conditions, like in snowy forests in the wilderness. The Soviet Union's logistical capabilities and equipment were also often lacking. Also pure incompetence was a factor that also affected negatively on the soldiers abilities to succeed.
In both wars, the aggressor was ready to take heavy losses in order to achieve its goals. The war also began with fabricated and illegitimate claims. Both wars also inflicted heavy humanitarian problems — over 400 000 Finns had to relocate from their homes during the Winter war. It was over 10% of the whole population. Both wars are also existential battles, in which the whole future of a sovereign nation is threatened. Many countries viewed the Soviets very negatively after the attack, and the Soviet Union got kicked out of the League of Nations.”
In both wars, the aggressor was ready to take heavy losses in order to achieve its goals
Operation Danube: The invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
In 1968, the government in Czechoslovakia changed, and those in power wanted to democratize, establish equal relations with the USSR and build ties with the West. Although they did not give up on socialism, the Kremlin decided to use force to depose the new government and replace it with a more malleable one. Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces pulled up to Czechoslovakia's borders, comparable in size to the forces the Kremlin originally hoped to use to take Kyiv: 250,000 men, 2,000 tanks, and 800 aircraft. This was not much more than the Czechoslovak armed forces, as no one had expected organized resistance.
On August 20, 1968, Soviet paratroopers secretly landed at Prague airport, seized it and arranged for a mass transfer of troops, who began to occupy government buildings with the support of military and special services loyal to Moscow. This practically bloodless operation enabled them to establish full military control over the country within a few days, followed by a change of political leadership and a permanent military presence. In the most general terms, what happened then can be described as “the that could.”
A destroyed An-225 Mriya plane at Hostomel airport, April 3, 2022
Gleb Garanich / Reuters
As in the case of Operation Danube, Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with a roughly 1:1 ratio of forces, stressing the rapid capture of Hostomel airport by paratroopers. The paratroopers were to provide an air corridor for the landing of reinforcements and a rapid advance into the center of Kyiv before the main body of troops could arrive from Belarus. Without waiting for the main force to arrive, the paratroopers were to take control of Kyiv’s government buildings and arrest or force the Ukrainian political elite to flee the country.
Daniel Povolný, historian, author of 'Operation Danube. The bloody response of the Warsaw Pact to the Prague Spring of 1968':
“Is it possible to say that during Operation Danube the Warsaw Pact forces did not expect to encounter resistance? Certainly not. The soldiers were instructed that there were counter-revolutionaries in Czechoslovakia who would resist, sabotage and ambush them, so they should be careful. They also had instructions to occupy military garrisons of the Czechoslovak People's Army if our soldiers didn´t treat them in a friendly manner. In addition, they received false information that NATO armies were about to cross, or had already crossed, the Czechoslovak border.
On the other hand, however, they were surprised by the extent of the spontaneous resistance of the civilian population, as they believed that the majority of the public was on their side. From a military point of view Operation Danube can be considered a full-fledged military invasion. By 24 February 2022, it was also the largest military operation in Europe since the end of World War II.
Before February 24, 2022, Operation Danube was the largest military operation in Europe since the end of World War II
A certain similarity [between Operation Danube and the invasion of Ukraine] can be seen precisely in the preparation of the plan, which was developed in 1968 by the Soviet army and now by its successor, the Russian army. Both plans were based on overestimation of one's own forces, wrong assumptions about the adversary, and bad intelligence supplied by the secret services. In part, those informations ware incorrectly analyzed and evaluated, and in part, it was deliberately adjusted to match the superiors' views on the situation. In both August 1968 and February 2022, logistical security also failed to some extent. In 2022, however, it was a significantly bigger failure. Unlike in 1968, only one allied country provided its territory and logistical capabilities to the Russian army in 2022.
Russia's plan in 2022, like in 1968, was based on the overestimation of its own forces and wrong assumptions about the adversary
The main differences are, that in 1968 Czechoslovakia belonged to the Soviet bloc, the Soviet sphere of influence, so the Soviet army could use the military and civilian assets of its allies. Given this, no one from the West has given us any practical help. The Czechoslovak political and state leadership also decided not to «step over their shadow» and issue an order to defend the country. It only morally condemned the occupation as an act contrary to international law. This is also the fundamental difference between further developments in 1968 and 2022. Ukrainian political and state leaders decided to fight for the freedom of their homeland, and this is the main reason why the plan of the Russian army failed.”
The Iran-Iraq War: A stalemate on the front lines and rocket attacks on cities in 1980-1988
The conflict between Iran and Iraq is an example of how a war between evenly matched opponents can go on for years without any strategic purpose, simply because the opponents are not satisfied with the outcome. One of the bloodiest and fiercest wars of the second half of the 20th century ended in a “draw” — a UN-brokered ceasefire was declared and the parties did not achieve any territorial changes.
Both Iraq and Iran's plans were Napoleonic. Saddam Hussein, who started the war, decided to take advantage of his long-time regional adversary's weakness following the purges in the army after the recent Islamic revolution. He hoped, among other things, for an uprising of brotherly Arabs in the province of Khuzestan. But plans for a mechanized invasion failed, and instead of ending the war, the Iranian regime decided to export the Islamic Revolution to enemy territory.
Fighting near Mar'inka in the Donetsk Region, March 2023
The New York Times
This war was being compared to the First World War long before Russia invaded Ukraine. Most of the front line remained virtually unchanged, with both sides digging trenches and pulling barbed wire, Iraq using chemical weapons, and Iranian Islamist fanatics trying to pile corpses on the enemy's defenses: a tactic then called “human waves” and now called “meat storms” [мясные штурмы in Russian— translator’s note]. Both sides also sought to maximize the disruption of the enemy's hinterland and foreign trade.
Iran and Iraq exchanged rocket attacks on cities, and a real hunt for tankers began in the Persian Gulf. Despite his methods of warfare, Saddam Hussein received military equipment both from his long-time partner, the USSR, and from NATO bloc countries that feared Iranian hegemony in the Middle East. Iran, in turn, set up “parallel imports” wherever it could, including buying artillery shells from China that later ended up in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Ronan Mainprize, Guest Teacher at the London School of Economics' Department of International History, PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick:
“Both sides' goals changed throughout the course of the conflict depending on the strength of their positions. Iraq initially was the aggressor, with Iran only seeking to stop their invasion. Iraq launched their assault due to fears over the spread of Islamic revolutions that would threaten the Ba’ath regime and they also sought to annex the Arab-majority Khuzestan territory.
After this failed, Iraq attempted to fashion a peace deal, but Iran did not accept. Iran then went on the offensive themselves, pushing back Iraqi forces and reaching into their territory. They were attempting to overthrow the Ba’ath party and capture several Shiite holy sites, but again this failed. Both sides then launched various unsuccessful offensives over the next few years.
Both sides sought victory for such a long time because winning the war was perceived to be essential to their regimes’ existential security and their domestic legitimacy. Losing the war would possibly have meant their governments would have been forcibly overthrown – defeat was therefore inconceivable to both Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini. But there was also a longstanding, embittered dispute over various locations along the border that had been present since before the days of the First World War. Both sides coveted places that were seen as significant to their ideas of national identity, and the war thus took on an ethnic or religious character. This led both sides to continue fighting even when suing for peace would have been the more ‘rational’ option.
There was a lot of strategic incompetence on the part of Saddam, Khomeini, and the other political and military leaders. Neither side had a sound plan for how to achieve their objectives, believing emotional rhetoric and human wave attacks would suffice. The attritional nature of the conflict, defined by long trench lines and failed offensives, also required the potential victor to achieve a technological advantage to break the deadlock – this did not happen, and neither side was able to strike a decisive blow.
Neither side achieved technological advantage to break the deadlock and wasn't able to strike a decisive blow
Strikes against civilians, infrastructure, and trade routes were important aspects of the conflict. What became known as the ‘War of the Cities’ involved extensive strikes on numerous civilian locations and the use of chemical weapons by Iraq which led to the deaths of thousands of people.
Despite the widespread destruction of their infrastructure and the huge economic costs involved, attacks against cities weren’t particularly effective for degrading population morale until the final years of the war. The ‘Tanker War’ was arguably more important, as both sides sought to strangle the others’ oil exports that left through the Strait of Hormuz.
Comparisons between conflicts are never absolutely perfect, and analogising should be done with caution to avoid myopic thinking. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine does share notable characteristics with the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s on both tactical strategic levels. Firstly, both conflicts have been defined by numerous offensives and counteroffensives that have not been able to achieve decisive results, with the conflicts thereafter becoming attritional in character and including extensive trench networks and the heavy use of artillery. Both wars also have included extensive strikes against civilians and energy infrastructure, with Russia’s assault being reminiscent of the ‘War of the Cities’ and the ‘Tanker War.’”
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: Missile strikes and underestimating the enemy in 2003
The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq («Operation Iraqi Freedom»), which toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in a matter of weeks, has been hailed by outside observers as a model of lightning-fast mechanized operations. Air superiority and precision strikes against enemy military and infrastructure facilities played a crucial role in the U.S. and British forces’ success. It is reasonable to assume that at least some elements of this operation were emulated by the Russian command.
What was different was that Russia's targeting, coordination of air operations, and sometimes the accuracy of cruise and ballistic rockets, were severely compromised. Although Russian missile strikes caused serious damage to the Ukrainian air force and air defenses, they could not be completely neutralized. The Russian Air Force was eventually completely barred from entering Ukrainian airspace.
A destroyed Russian tank column in the Sumy region of Ukraine, March 7, 2022
Irina Rybakova / Reuters
Meanwhile, the U.S., relying on quick action, had not been prepared to counter Iraqi irregulars, the Fedayeen, who, despite their lack of heavy weapons, held major cities for long periods and attacked U.S. supply convoys on the road to Baghdad. Similarly, the Russian command did not take into account the factor of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, which played an important role in the defense of settlements in the Sumy, Chernihiv and Kyiv regions and attacked Russian logistics.
Despite all the setbacks (including a botched helicopter raid on Iraq's Medina Division), the Americans managed to achieve the campaign's objectives, thanks to their technological superiority and experience in both ground (Operation Desert Storm) and air (Operation Noble Anvil as part of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia). The Russian army has not had to plan and execute a campaign of similar scale in recent history, and that, together with the high morale of the Ukrainian forces (especially compared to Saddam's army), contributed to the failure of Russia’s attempted “blitzkrieg.”
Col. (Ret.) Frank Sobchak, PhD, Chair of Irregular Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute, U.S. Military Academy at West Point:
“It is unlikely that the initial success of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq influenced the Russian planning for a rapid invasion of Ukraine in 2022. After all, while the rapid invasion was successful in dismantling the regime of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. quickly became embroiled in fighting a determined insurgency, followed by attempting to stamp out a multi-side and brutal civil war. It is not something that other states would want to repeat, as by most assessments the U.S. invasion of Iraq ultimately only resulted in a victory for Iran.
In all likelihood, the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, in which Russia seized Crimea and much of the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, and the West’s limited response to that invasion and violation of international law and the 1994 Budapest Accords convinced Putin that he could get away with another invasion. In effect, the West’s response made him believe he could ‘take another bite at the apple’ and the West would again do little to nothing. It is traditional military tactics to try to seize a capital and the seat of government to create a fait accompli of regime change and force another nation to sue for peace or surrender, so targeting Kyiv is standard tactics.
The 2014 invasion of Ukraine and the West’s limited response convinced Putin that he could get away with another invasion
The U.S. only temporarily achieved its objectives [in Iraq]. While the regime of Saddam fell, the U.S. faced years of insurgency afterwards. That said. the government and conventional army in Iraq fell quickly, because the Iraqi conventional military had been devastated by the international coalition during the 1991 Gulf War, called Operation Desert Storm by the U.S. Nearly all of Iraq’s Air Force was destroyed as well as most of its tanks. As one American General said, 'Iraq went from the fourth-largest army in the world to the second-largest army in Iraq in 100 hours.'
In the years between that conflict and the 2003 Iraq War, Iraq was under international sanctions that prevented it from rearming. The paltry and ruined military that remained after the Gulf War was never allowed to rebuild. After the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine, most of the country was not occupied and there were no sanctions blocking the delivery of arms. While the West slowly rearmed and helped train the Ukrainian military, it was able to do so over nearly a decade, helping to create a more professional and capable force that the Russians faced when they attacked again in 2022. The Ukrainian military also gained considerable combat experience and knowledge of how to fight the Russians during the 2014-2022 period during both the 2014 invasion and the years before the 2022 invasion as the Donbas front saw sporadic but bitter fighting.
A number of allies, principally France and Germany, but also others, had urged the U.S. to not invade Iraq as it would set a new precedent in international relations about preventive wars. In addition, those and others preferred to have a U.N. Security Council resolution that clearly authorized the use of force, as had been in place for the 1991 Gulf War. Because the U.S. rebuffed all those requests, it damaged its relations and international position with allies and rivals. The eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, coupled with increased Iranian influence and then the eventual collapse of Iraqi forces fighting the Islamic State (ISIS/Da’ish) in 2014 created an accurate perception that the U.S. had lost the war, further damaging the U.S. standing in the world. That sense, that the U.S. had been weakened, likely helped embolden Putin and other rival states to be more aggressive.”
11. Trump hints at possible picks for Pentagon chief in a second term
Trump hints at possible picks for Pentagon chief in a second term
By LARA SELIGMAN
12/22/2023 02:10 PM EST
Politico
The GOP frontrunner brought up Christopher Miller, who once said he couldn’t wait to leave DOD.
Former President Donald Trump tapped Christopher Miller to be his acting defense secretary on Nov. 9, 2020. | Scott Olson/Getty Images; Pool photo by Joshua Roberts
12/22/2023 02:10 PM EST
Former President Donald Trump on Friday dropped hints about who he would pick to lead the Pentagon if he wins a second term. And the names are familiar ones.
Speaking with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday, Trump singled out Christopher Miller, the former Green Beret who served as acting defense secretary for the last two months of Trump’s first term, when asked who he would pick.
“We had Miller at the end who did a very good job,” Trump told Hewitt, host of the nationally syndicated “Hugh Hewitt Show” and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. “I thought he was really good. I thought he was very good.”
Hewitt mentioned five other names who could serve as Trump’s defense secretary: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Reps. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) and Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.).
“That’s a good list to start off with,” Trump said, before bringing up Miller.
Trump tapped Miller to be his acting defense secretary on Nov. 9, 2020, after firing former Pentagon chief Mark Esper and a spate of other top Defense Department officials in the days after the presidential election. Miller, who was previously Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, served at the top of the Pentagon until Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021.
Miller’s tenure was short but eventful. Shortly after stepping into the job, he announced Trump’s ordered drawdown from Afghanistan and Iraq to just a few thousand troops in both countries, a move Esper had resisted. His chief of staff as acting defense secretary was Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes who played a key role as a Hill staffer in helping Republicans discredit the Russia probe.
Miller came under fire for his response to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. He approved the deployment of the National Guard to help the Capitol Police, but critics say the troops arrived hours too late. Miller defended his actions before Congress, saying that he was concerned that sending troops to the Capitol would fuel fears of a military coup.
He also said Trump played a role in the insurrection. “Would anybody have marched on the Capitol, and overrun the Capitol, without the president’s speech? I think it’s pretty much definitive that wouldn’t have happened,” Miller said in an interview with VICE on Showtime.
Miller’s team was also accused of blocking the Biden transition team from meeting with key DOD officials, but the Pentagon denied those allegations.
“I’m humbled by President Trump’s comments — he was remarkably effective at protecting Americans and advancing our Nation’s interests around the world. I was honored to play a small part,” Miller said Friday when asked for comment. “I come from a family of public servants — when asked to serve, we answer the call.”
He was less than enthusiastic about the job in the waning days of the Trump administration. During an extraordinary meeting with reporters while flying back to Washington on Jan. 14, 2021, was asked about problematic weapons programs at the Pentagon, including the tri-service F-35 fighter jet and the Navy’s littoral combat ships.
“I so … I mean, I cannot wait to leave this job, believe me,” he said, according to an official DOD transcript. “But part of me is like, I would have loved to have gotten involved in the acquisition process and try … and you know, talk about [a] wicked problem.”
POLITICO
Politico
12. Top US general speaks to Chinese counterpart, ending freeze on military talks
Accomplishments? Effects achieved? Will they answer the phone in a crisis?
Top US general speaks to Chinese counterpart, ending freeze on military talks
By LARA SELIGMAN
12/21/2023 08:28 AM EST
Politico
Gen. C.Q. Brown is the first senior U.S. military official to speak with his Chinese counterpart since the two countries agreed to resume military communications.
Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, participates in a virtual Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) meeting, on Nov. 22, 2023, at the Pentagon in Washington. | Cliff Owen/AP
12/21/2023 08:28 AM EST
Gen. C.Q. Brown, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to his Chinese counterpart Gen. Liu Zhenli on Thursday morning, ending a nearly year-and-a-half impasse between the two militaries, the Pentagon announced.
Brown is the first senior U.S. military official to speak with his Chinese counterpart since the two countries’ leaders agreed in November to resume military communications after China froze all talks in retaliation for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. The two spoke during a video teleconference on Thursday morning, according to the Pentagon.
Brown and Liu, China’s chief of the Joint Staff, discussed “the importance of working together to responsibly manage competition, avoid miscalculations, and maintain open and direct lines of communication,” according to a readout provided by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Brown “reiterated the importance of the People’s Liberation Army engaging in substantive dialogue to reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings.”
The Biden administration sees the conversation as a step in the right direction for U.S.-Chinese relations, which have frayed significantly in the last two years. The two countries have traded harsh rhetoric over the Pelosi visit, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, Chinese intercepts of Western aircraft in the South China Sea and the U.S. shooting down a Chinese spy balloon off the East Coast in February.
President Joe Biden and Chinese Leader Xi Jinping appeared to make a breakthrough during a tightly-scripted meeting on the sidelines of a summit in California in November, indicating they both wanted to see those relations thaw. While Biden used the moment to reiterate his view that Xi is a “dictator,” the two sides still announced the plans to resume military dialogue and cooperate on other issues such as stopping the fentanyl crisis.
Now it looks like those plans have finally come to fruition. The Pentagon is also planning to resume lower-level group engagements in “the short term,” specifically the annual Defense Policy Coordination talks that China canceled after Pelosi’s visit, a senior DOD official told reporters Wednesday. Officials are also planning to hold a round of the safety-focused Military Maritime Consultative Agreement dialogue in the spring, said the official who, like others interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to speak ahead of an official announcement.
High-level military communication between the two countries is seen as an essential tool for deconfliction in the Pacific, and the lack of talks has added a dangerous new element to a spike in intercepts between Chinese and U.S. ships and aircraft there. Pentagon officials have slammed China for what they describe as harassing behavior, citing nearly 200 incidents involving U.S. aircraft in the past two years.
The Defense Department in October released video footage of some of the intercepts, including a Chinese military jet crossing in front of an American aircraft at just 100 yards. China has also ramped up its harassment of Philippine vessels in the South China Sea in recent weeks, prompting a spat between the two nations.
While the Thursday conversation is an “important” step, it is “just one step,” the senior DOD official said, noting that the two sides are working on the logistics of scheduling additional one-on-one calls between theater commanders and policy officials. Adm. John Aquilino, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, for example, has asked to speak with his Chinese counterparts multiple times in the last more than two years, but has yet to have one of those requests accepted, he told reporters in October.
DOD officials previously told POLITICO that lower-level talks could not occur until Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks with his own Chinese counterpart — but that role is currently empty. Xi has yet to appoint a new minister of defense since he fired Gen. Li Shangfu in October. Even before his ousting, Chinese officials had refused to offer Li to meet with Austin because the ex-defense minister was at the time under U.S. sanctions.
DOD expects China will name a new defense minister in March when the National People’s Congress meets, the senior DOD official said Wednesday.
POLITICO
Politico
13. Overcoming A Clausewitz-Centric Mindset in Nontraditional Wars
Excerpts:
In the twenty-first century, military theorists rarely mention Dien Bien Phu, and the Battle of Baylen is completely ignored. And yet, in their way, these two battles are as important to understanding nontraditional warfare as are Waterloo or Gettysburg to understanding the conventional model. As noted in the foregoing thesis, what makes nontraditional conflicts distinctive from conventional wars is not only the means used in each struggle but their root causes and political consequences.
As we’ve seen, insurgencies are fought by part of the people against an established regime considered illegitimate by many, such as King Joseph in Spain, or a French governor general in Indochina. The political goal of the “guerrillas” during the Peninsular War and that of the Vietminh in French Indochina was the same: overthrow of the existing regime and establishment (or re-establishment) of a government of the rebels’ own choosing.
Clausewitz’s recognition of the centrality of politics to warfare is universal. But in revolutionary warfare, as opposed to conflict between nation states, heavy weaponry, conventional infantry units, swift flanking maneuvers or even command of the air and sea count for little. Since the heart of any insurgency is its political basis, the chief weapons are political and psychological influence operations, propaganda, political mobilization of the people, strikes and boycotts, sabotage, assassination, and even terror, supported only when necessary by armed elements. Insurgency is “armed politics.”
To close, it is possible that in the future US policymakers and senior military officers might confront nontraditional challenges, especially in the Global South. If the United States becomes involved, it is to be hoped that it has learned from past mistakes, chosen the correct model of warfare, and applied methods appropriate for the task.
Overcoming A Clausewitz-Centric Mindset in Nontraditional Wars - Foreign Policy Research Institute
fpri.org · by G.L. Lamborn
Bottom Line
- In contrast to Carl von Clausewitz’s state-vs-state model, insurgencies are fought by part of the people against an established government considered illegitimate. The political goal is the overthrow of the existing regime and establishment of a government of the rebels’ own choosing.
- Because the heart of any insurgency is its political basis, the chief weapons are political and psychological influence operations, propaganda, political mobilization, strikes and boycotts, sabotage, assassination, and even terror—supported only when needed by armed elements. Heavy weaponry and large conventional infantry units contribute little and may, in fact, be counterproductive.
- In conventional wars between regular forces, civilians are considered noncombatants irrelevant to the struggle and watch as hapless bystanders awaiting the outcome. No attempt is made to proselytize, organize, or mobilize the people. But in insurgencies, the people are the political object of the war and are involved in every military or political activity—hence Mao’s term “people’s war.”
- Insurgency stands Clausewitz on his head in that its centerpiece is the mobilization of the nation’s civilians politically and psychologically and the undermining of the nation’s government. Insurgents aim at gaining control of the countryside and its people. Destruction of the regime’s armed forces is achieved through the disintegration of an unpopular government rather than by the army’s defeat in battle. Bernard Fall observed that insurgents do not necessarily outfight a government; they out-administer it.
- Until near the end of a protracted war, insurgent forces prefer to avoid combat unless conditions are overwhelmingly favorable. Mao makes clear that guerrilla units are dispersed to mobilize the people politically and brought together only to exploit an opportunity. Guerrillas are creatures of offense and must never attempt to fight defensive battles from fixed positions as noted by Clausewitz.
Standing in the heat at Gia Lam airfield in Spring 1975, respected author and military theorist Colonel Harry Summers was puzzled. Despite ten years of US support, the deployment of nearly 500,000 US soldiers and Marines, the provision of heavy weaponry and helicopters, and the expenditure of an estimated one trillion dollars, the Saigon government had collapsed in defeat. Summers turned to his North Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Tu, and stated “You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield.” Colonel Tu thought about that for a minute, then replied: “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.”
Colonel Summers might have phrased his bewilderment in this way: “How is it that you won the war when we consistently defeated you on the battlefield?” The thoughtful Colonel Tu probably would have replied: “You fought only the enemy you could see, but not the enemy that you could not see. You fought the wrong war.”
Lessons Not Learned
Following Prussia’s crushing defeat at Jena-Auerstedt in October 1806, Carl von Clausewitz became a prisoner of the French at the Chateau de Coppet. There he had ample time to reflect on Napoleon’s political and military victories. Clausewitz studied the factors contributing to Napoleon’s triumphs, such as strategic surprise, rapid forward movement, flanking of enemy forces, and speed of concentration. He also noted the connection between battle and political results, perhaps his most profound observation.
Upon his release from captivity after the Peace of Tilsit, Clausewitz returned to Prussia and worked with King Friedrich Wilhelm and others to reform the Prussian army and state.
Months later in July 1808 at Baylen, Spanish insurgents, including thousands of angry civilians, wiped out a French regular force of 20,000 under General Pierre Dupont. France’s invasion of Spain unleashed powerful political forces—early signs of nationalism and ethno-centrism, which were to flower later in the nineteenth century and shape a new form of war, popular insurgency—the “war of the people.”
Clausewitz served both the Russian Czar and King of Prussia in the War of Liberation, which drove Napoleon out of Germany (and ultimately out of France). After Clausewitz’s death, his observations on the Napoleonic campaigns were canonized as Vom Kriege by his widow, Countess von Brühl, and serve to this day as guidance for regular forces.
The lesson of Baylen took much longer to digest. No one at the time bothered to analyze, much less canonize, the forces at work in popular insurgency. Joachim Murat, overall French commander in Spain, thought Baylen to be little more than a riot. He completely missed the significance of the Spanish popular uprising: both its immediate consequences and certainly its historical implications. Perhaps it may be said that the French grasped the watershed lesson of Baylen only 150 years later at Dien Bien Phu.
The Clausewitzian Paradigm
Many US military professionals think of war, as did Clausewitz, as a clash of regular military forces between nation-states, with the winner dictating terms of peace. Indeed, Clausewitz’s paradigm held true in the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and both World Wars. His volume, On War, is sacrosanct in Western military academies and war colleges.
Yet the defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan caused military theorists to raise questions about “what went wrong” in each situation. How could overwhelming firepower, numerical strength, financial power, and advanced technology fail to defeat enemies lacking airpower, heavy artillery, armor, superior logistics, and technology?
As in previous wars, in both Vietnam and Afghanistan the US military faithfully applied Clausewitzian theory. The full weight of US firepower—from the air as well as the ground—was brought to bear. Yet, after years of attempting to apply firepower and high technology to these insurgencies, the end result was defeat despite trillions of dollars spent, thousands of lives lost, and the resulting overthrow of the regimes in Saigon and Kabul the United States tried to protect. Clausewitz had somehow failed us.
Perhaps the failure was in America’s fundamental misunderstanding that “nontraditional wars” do not lend themselves to Clausewitzian solutions. The insurgencies in Vietnam and Afghanistan posed very different problems requiring approaches that Clausewitz had never considered. Clausewitz knew only of the Spanish resistance to Napoleon in its “guerra de guerrillas” to which he devotes one chapter of On War. (Clausewitz viewed the Spanish insurgency against Napoleon’s brother King Joseph as useful only if guided by regular forces—essentially an adjunct of conventional operations.) Clausewitz could not foresee the late-nineteenth century rise of ideology, nationalism, and social revolution—the modern forces that shape insurgent warfare.
Insurgency—revolutionary warfare—is separate from Clausewitz’s conception of war. A Prussian officer, Clausewitz’s views were formed during his struggle against Napoleon’s infantry and cavalry. Perhaps America’s triumph in World War II fighting a conventional war against enemies from advanced industrialized countries blinded it to nontraditional warfare against opponents of vastly different cultures and political beliefs. With the exception of the first Gulf War and defeat of Ba’athist Iraq, America’s wars since the Korean armistice of 1953 have pitted us against nontraditional opponents.
Insurgencies—which the United States attempted to counter at great cost in Vietnam and Afghanistan—do not lend themselves to Clausewitzian analysis. I make the following point in Arms of Little Value: “If we are to conduct effective counterinsurgency we must first understand insurgency. The US people apparently do not. This is especially ironic as the United States of America won its independence from Great Britain by means of a ten-year-long insurgency aided and abetted by outsiders.” (Clausewitz viewed the Spanish insurgency against Napoleon’s brother King Joseph as useful only if guided by regular forces—essentially an adjunct of conventional operations.)
Clausewitz makes clear that war is an extension of policy and not a thing apart from policy. Noting that war is an instrument of policy, Clausewitz stated: “It is, of course, well known that the only source of war is politics.”
Clausewitz, however, was speaking only of international politics—the clash of interests, values, and political-economic forces between rival states that induce those countries to come to blows. His views are drawn from the extension of French power throughout much of Europe during Napoleon’s time. Napoleon’s policy was to expand France’s direct rule as an empire, and spread the ideals of the French Revolution throughout Europe. Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and other states, motivated by their own state interests, attempted to carry out policies sharply conflicting with those of Napoleonic France. The means chosen by both sides to resolve the clash of interests (policy) was war by means of regular armies using the conventional weapons of the era.
By contrast, insurgency aims at the steady erosion from within a vulnerable government by its own disaffected population. Hence, the only Clausewitzian concept that applies to nontraditional conflict is the truth that war results from politics and is an extension of politics “with additional means.” The existing (threatened) regime certainly wishes to preserve itself. And those citizens having a stake in the existing regime naturally have an interest in retaining their property, social position, and political power.
The insurgents’ policy is to overthrow the existing regime and replace it with a government of their own choosing, perhaps also deposing (or even eliminating) the current ruling class. In most cases, victorious insurgents become leaders of the new government.
Thus, war certainly results from the clash of interests—in other words, politics. But the internal war that follows from conflicting policies is very different from that which characterizes state-on-state war. It is a war primarily of political and psychological influence, often using nontraditional means such as strikes, boycotts, sabotage, assassination, political mobilization, and even terror—supported when needed by armed elements.
Anatomy of Modern Insurgencies
Modern insurgencies differ from Clausewitz’s concept of war in at least three major ways. First, insurgency is an internal war. It is not fought between nations, the way Clausewitz and most other Western conventional thinkers conceive of war. Rather, it is fought by a part of the people against the established regime in their own country—one that many perceive as illegitimate and perhaps corrupt and repressive. Insurgencies can only take place under certain dysfunctional political-social conditions and can only be understood in terms of the insurgents’ Cause and the people who support that Cause.
In Vietnam, the insurgents’ goals were reunification (motivated by nationalism) and the expulsion of intruding foreigners—in many ways, a continuation of the French Indochina War. In Afghanistan, a reactionary version of Islam coupled with the majority Pashtun population’s ingrained anti-foreign views fueled the Taliban’s ultimate victory.
Second, because certain dysfunctional conditions exist causing widespread disaffection, insurgents offer policies aimed at rectifying the “contradictions” which gave rise to the disaffection. This defines the political goals of conflict—the cause—and leads to popular insurrection. While it is quite true that some insurgent movements use regular, uniformed elements alongside peasant guerrillas in civilian clothes, what sets insurgencies apart from conventional wars is constant proselytizing, recruiting, organizing, and mobilizing.
Third, an insurgency is armed politics—political warfare. Indeed, this is its key element. Because the heart of any insurgency is its political basis, the chief weapons are political mobilization, propaganda, subversion, intelligence and counterintelligence, passive resistance, sabotage, and time. Heavy weaponry and large conventional infantry units contribute very little and may, in fact, be counterproductive.
In conventional wars, civilians are considered noncombatants and generally are irrelevant to the struggle between regular forces. Noncombatants may complicate operations, but the people basically sit and watch as bystanders and await the outcome. No attempt is made to proselytize, organize, or mobilize the people.
But in insurgencies, the people are the political object of the war and are involved in every military or political activity—hence, Mao Zedong’s term “people’s war.”
“People’s war,” however, is much more than “guerrilla warfare.” Many military professionals often equate the two. Indeed, guerrilla units are organized from a “base of popular support.” Members of this “mass base” might be farmers, tradesmen, teachers, laborers, and artisans—all enlisted in support of a cause. Although guerrilla warfare can play an important role in the process of insurgency, it is merely one tool of many in the insurgents’ toolbox. The historical record makes clear that in revolutionary warfare insurgent groups may employ acts of terrorism, sabotage, subversion, economic warfare, and even infiltration of the regime.
In all cases, however, insurgent movements use sophisticated propaganda and political warfare aimed at building popular support for their movement while undercutting support for the despised regime. Given a politically vulnerable regime, this almost invisible activity is the true centerpiece of insurgency.
Insurgency stands Clausewitz on his head in that its centerpiece is the political and psychological mobilization of the nation’s civilians and the undermining of the nation’s government. Insurgents aim at gaining control of the countryside and its people. The destruction of the country’s armed forces is achieved through the disintegration of an unpopular government rather than by the army’s defeat in battle. Bernard Fall observed that insurgents do not necessarily outfight a government—they out-administer it.
Indeed, until near the end of a protracted war, the insurgent force prefers to avoid combat unless conditions are overwhelmingly favorable. The master of insurgent warfare, Mao, made clear that guerrilla units are dispersed to mobilize the people politically and brought together only to exploit an opportunity. Guerrillas are creatures of offense and must never attempt to fight defensive battles from fixed positions.
The political, economic, and perhaps spiritual exhaustion of the existing regime merely paves the way for the dramatic photo-op of tanks crashing through presidential gates as in Saigon, or the mob scene at the Kabul airport in August 2021. The war was already over long before this dramatic end. The governments had ceased to govern.
If insurgency is “non-Clausewitzian” warfare, it must be fought using nontraditional means by both sides. On War must be set reverently on the bookshelf and guidance sought elsewhere. The chief weapons in this nontraditional form of conflict are political mobilization and intelligence operations rather than employment of armor, artillery, and air power. Central to political mobilization is persuasive propaganda and psychological warfare—vital military skills that even now the Pentagon is deemphasizing.
It is striking to think that in Vietnam and again in Afghanistan two totally different “wars” were being fought simultaneously by the opposing forces. The United States tried to fight Clausewitzian wars with only a thin veneer of propaganda (grudgingly) painted on—and virtually no political warfare worthy of the name. Meanwhile, the insurgents used a diametrically opposite approach: they were heavy on Viet Cong political indoctrination in Vietnam and religious zeal in the case of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Each nontraditional opponent propounded its cause to the people and succeeded in recruiting a mass base.
British General Sir Frank Kitson made the following observation based on his service in Kenya, Malaya, and Northern Ireland: “Insurgents start with nothing but a cause and grow to strength while the counter-insurgents start with everything but a cause and gradually decline in strength to the point of weakness.”
In the 1980s there was much talk at the Pentagon about “Information Warfare” or, for those of a dovish persuasion, “Information Operations.” Unfortunately, as is often the case with definitions, the term “Information Operations”—though appearing in numerous reports and PowerPoint briefings—meant different things to different people. Since the term could not be precisely defined it could not be clearly understood. And if “IO” could not be understood, then it could not be put into effective practice in the field. It is arguable that the Defense Department never took “IO” seriously and that its lukewarm support contributed to its lack of effectiveness.
Perhaps the term “psychological operations” is now considered archaic; it appears to have fallen into disuse. Also, the concept of “political warfare,” to say nothing of the word “propaganda,” felt unworthy of a “chivalrous” US military force. Attempts to work around distasteful terms resulted in: public information, public relations, public affairs, “effects,” advertising, political action, media relations, and so on. Some definitions overlap; some activities are better defined than others. Most terms are useful only in PowerPoint briefings.
It’s All About Politics
Let’s leave the semantic battle aside. Even if we were to arrive at some conclusion, all we would have achieved is to create yet another “definition.” Rather, we should ask ourselves what it is that we hope to achieve through our deeds and spoken and written words, and how we intend to get to our goal from where we are now.
The key to nontraditional warfare lies in organizing and mobilizing the civilian populace. This is how Zedong phrased his approach in May 1938:
What does political mobilization mean? First, it means telling the army and the people about the political aim of the war. It is necessary for every soldier and civilian to see why the war must be fought and how it concerns him … Secondly, it is not enough merely to explain the aim to them; the steps and policies for its attainment must also be given, that is, there must be a political programme … Without a clear-cut, concrete political programme it is impossible to mobilize all the armed forces and the whole people to carry the war against Japan through to the end. Thirdly, how should we mobilize them? By word of mouth, by leaflets and bulletins, by newspapers, books and pamphlets, through plays and films, through schools, through the mass organizations, and through our cadres … Fourthly, to mobilize once is not enough; political mobilization for the War of Resistance must be continuous. Our job is not to recite our political programme to the people, for nobody will listen to such recitations; we must link the political mobilization for the war with developments in the war and with the life of the soldiers and the people, and make it a continuous movement. This is a matter of immense importance on which our victory in the war primarily depends.
Here, then, is the core of nontraditional warfare, the element that turns Clausewitz upside down. It is political mobilization—the organization of the entire populace toward specific political objectives.
What matters in politics, commercial activities, and nontraditional warfare, is to influence groups and individuals in ways that lead to a specified, desired result—the goal. Put more directly, we want someone to do something that meaningfully aids our cause, or conversely, to cease doing things hindering our cause. In an election, we work to influence voters to vote for our candidate. In commerce, we want consumers to buy our product. In war, we want “our side” to defeat its enemies. But note that in all cases, we want someone to do something. Not merely to know something.
“Influence” is one of those relatively rare words that is both a noun and an active verb. Influence can describe a state of affairs, such as “China’s influence over North Korea.” But of greater interest to us as practitioners is its use as an active verb. We say, “we must influence the people to act.” It is here that “influence” acquires its motive power. We want something to happen, something to take place. And we have the means to achieve that end.
By contrast, “information” is a noun only. You cannot say, “we must information them to act.” Information exists, yes. But information is passive. By itself, information has no power. Rather, information is like a large reservoir from which electric power can be produced only if that water can be made to run through a turbine. Unless information can be made to do something, operationally it is useless.
Let us therefore talk of “influence” for the remainder of this paper. Simply put, our goal is to motivate someone to do something (or, conversely, cause them to cease doing something we consider harmful). We gain little by merely informing a person of something.
Dictionary definitions of influence give us a glimpse into what “influence” is all about:
- A power affecting a person, thing, or course of events, especially without direct or apparent effort;
- Power to sway or affect based on prestige, wealth, ability, or position.
Here we see the potential for motivating someone to actually do something. The central element is not merely the passive provision of “information.” Instead, it is the ability to induce, persuade, compel, provoke, bring about, cause, or even cajole a specific action. The “results” we seek by motivating others always should have an active verb such as: create, produce, act, decide, buy, vote, attack, defend, participate, build, and so on.
We are ultimately seeking active participants, not passive spectators. Political warfare seeks action. Action is muscle power applied to achieve some purpose.
The outcome of an insurgency is decided by whichever side—the regime or the insurgent movement—the people ultimately choose to support. If that is so, it then follows that it is vital for each side not merely to inform people of things, but to recruit the people as their active supporters and motivate them to achieve a stated purpose. The provision of information, therefore, is merely a contributory part of the process. It is by no means the whole process. Insurgent groups rarely lose sight of the need to recruit supporters while cutting away loyalty to the target regime. This absolute need, however, appears to be a blind spot for vulnerable regimes and for their US backers.
Consider a political campaign: An insurgency is not far removed from such. What matters most in a political campaign is the strategy followed and the effectiveness of the candidate’s organization. Yes, issues matter. Indeed, the campaign staff constantly touts the great cause toward which the people will be mobilized. And the cause needs to be clear, popular, and compelling. But that by itself is not enough.
Ultimately what will carry the day will be the effectiveness of the county and precinct organization. This is especially true if the contest is between two equally attractive candidates with similar platforms. As Mao states, mobilization is achieved through tireless efforts by cadres conducting seminars, distributing literature, giving plays and concerts, and in a dozen other ways. Nowhere does Mao mention aerial bombardment or the use of armor and artillery.
Effective local work by volunteers knocking on doors, handing out leaflets, making phone calls, and arranging a candidate’s personal visits and appearances at public rallies, will spell the margin between victory for one side and defeat for the other. The Platform (ie. the information) has its place. For insurgents, it is the Cause. But it is the organization and a viable strategy that turns a passive reservoir of voters into electric power at the polls.
So now, we return to the subject of “what is influence?” At the end of the day, “influence” may be thought of as the ability to mobilize people and, once mobilized, regularly motivate them to take specified actions. It is the ability to induce broad masses of people to rally behind an idea or a leader and convince each and every person that he or she is personally responsible for the outcome—victory or defeat hinges on the combined effort of every member of the group. This is the “mass base” noted earlier.
The task of political leadership is therefore to inspire others with great hope or a grand vision and then carry the people forward to victory despite a sea of troubles. Everyone must be involved. Everyone has a stake in the outcome. “If the people are for you, you cannot lose. If the people are against you, you cannot win.”
A cause or vision—the clear goal toward which all the people are striving—is a political purpose, something worth fighting for. In the late 1940s, when Soviet Communism threatened Western Europe, Jean Monnet, the father of modern Europe, noted: “People will only fight for what is inside them and what they believe, and we must give them something to believe.” Before the people of any country can be mobilized, they must first be given some idea so important to believe that they are willing if necessary to give their lives for its realization. That is the core of political warfare—the means of influence.
Two recent examples of successful counterinsurgencies that made good use of political mobilization using appropriate slogans coupled with genuine political reforms are the Omani defeat of Communist-backed Dhofari rebels and the British-Malay defeat of the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA). In the case of Oman, a new sultan took the throne in 1970 and immediately instituted reforms that increased the popularity of the Sultanate while taking away much of the rebels’ appeal. The slogan formulated by the British and Omanis was “Islam is our way, Freedom is our aim.”
In the case of Malaya, from 1953 the British had been preparing the colony for eventual independence under a responsible Malay government. There the slogan was “Merdeka” (Freedom) and it was given credence by the widely publicized steps toward independence which was granted in 1957. The MRLA had no credible program or goal to offer.
In both cases, it is important to understand that the slogans used were not empty phrases, but shorthand for real, attainable political reforms that the people knew were underway and which they supported. In each struggle, the people were involved directly and ultimately they chose to support the government.
Slogans are often iconic phrases used as the shorthand for propaganda campaigns. Slogans such as “Remember the Alamo” and “Land, Peace, Bread” were used to mobilize support for revolutionary political movements. In the first example, the slogan mobilized Texas settlers to fight Santa Anna’s Mexican army in an insurgency to win freedom from Mexican rule. In the latter case, the Bolsheviks used their slogan to attract support from landless peasants, war-weary Russians, and masses of hungry people.
The point remains that a slogan is merely hot air unless it relates directly and obviously to political goals familiar to the people affected. An empty slogan is hypocrisy on parade.
It is important to always remember that influence is an active verb, and its goal must always be action.
To close our examination of conventional versus nontraditional warfare, we would do well to consider the comparative “footprints” of conventional versus nontraditional wars. In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the United States deployed tens of thousands of US servicemembers in combat and logistical units. This factor had a major impact on local political, economic, and social conditions in both countries. Clausewitzian theory suggested that powerful forces should prove decisive in each war. Yet the warping of local conditions actually created a backlash socially and politically with the effect of aiding the insurgents.
By comparison, the US advisory effort in El Salvador—with just fifty-five advisors—had almost no economic or social impact. However, by teaching, training, and working collegially to assist the Salvadorans in achieving necessary reforms, US involvement was effective in blunting the FMLN insurgency. The Salvadorans themselves carried the burden.
Likewise, the advisors who assisted the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in 2001 left a very small footprint on Afghan society. The advisors provided intelligence, air cover, and some supplies to the Northern Alliance, but otherwise left Afghan forces free to deal with the Taliban in their own way. As is well known, the Taliban regime quickly collapsed—overthrown with popular support—and offered to capitulate. Only when this political road that might have ended the war was closed, and masses of US regular troops were brought in, did the nature of the Afghan war fundamentally change. The introduction of 130,000 foreign troops unintentionally aided the Taliban in its bid to regain power in Afghanistan.
The last word belongs to Clausewitz. In Book I, chapter one, Clausewitz states:
The first, the supreme, the most far reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that means (i.e., the political aim) the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.
Conventional forces operating under Clausewitzian principles are certainly appropriate in conflicts such as the Russo-Ukrainian War or against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Republican Guard. But Carl himself would agree that his theory applies only with caveats when the issue is a “war of national liberation”—an insurgency.
The problem, therefore, is using the appropriate set of theoretical tools for a particular job. Clausewitz’s advice is appropriate where it applies, but policymakers and military officers should not mistake one form of war for another or attempt to turn a nontraditional war into “something that is alien to its nature.” We are best advised to apply the right theoretical tools in the right way to the right task at hand.
Last Reflections on Dien Bien Phu
In the twenty-first century, military theorists rarely mention Dien Bien Phu, and the Battle of Baylen is completely ignored. And yet, in their way, these two battles are as important to understanding nontraditional warfare as are Waterloo or Gettysburg to understanding the conventional model. As noted in the foregoing thesis, what makes nontraditional conflicts distinctive from conventional wars is not only the means used in each struggle but their root causes and political consequences.
As we’ve seen, insurgencies are fought by part of the people against an established regime considered illegitimate by many, such as King Joseph in Spain, or a French governor general in Indochina. The political goal of the “guerrillas” during the Peninsular War and that of the Vietminh in French Indochina was the same: overthrow of the existing regime and establishment (or re-establishment) of a government of the rebels’ own choosing.
Clausewitz’s recognition of the centrality of politics to warfare is universal. But in revolutionary warfare, as opposed to conflict between nation states, heavy weaponry, conventional infantry units, swift flanking maneuvers or even command of the air and sea count for little. Since the heart of any insurgency is its political basis, the chief weapons are political and psychological influence operations, propaganda, political mobilization of the people, strikes and boycotts, sabotage, assassination, and even terror, supported only when necessary by armed elements. Insurgency is “armed politics.”
To close, it is possible that in the future US policymakers and senior military officers might confront nontraditional challenges, especially in the Global South. If the United States becomes involved, it is to be hoped that it has learned from past mistakes, chosen the correct model of warfare, and applied methods appropriate for the task.
Clausewitz would expect nothing less.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.
G.L. Lamborn
G.L. Lamborn, a retired Central Intelligence Agency and Army Reserve officer, took part in nontraditional wars in Asia, Africa, and Latin America from 1967 to 2013. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Chinese studies from the University of Washington.
fpri.org · by G.L. Lamborn
14. After Tough Year, Military Recruiting Is Looking Up
After Tough Year, Military Recruiting Is Looking Up
defense.gov · by Jim Garamone
It's no secret that 2023 was a tough year for military recruiting, but that situation is looking up, said Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder during a news conference yesterday.
Ryder Briefing
Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder conducts a briefing at the Pentagon, Dec. 21, 2023.
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Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said recruiting will remain challenging, but the services are adapting to the challenging environment and there's reason to be optimistic.
Last fiscal year, only the Marine Corps and the Space Force made their recruiting goals.
Still, there are concerns. Only 23 percent of young people between 17 and 24 even qualify to join the military. Even fewer have expressed the "propensity" to enlist, officials said.
Also working against the recruiting environment is the fact that the military is smaller and in fewer places. Many young people do not know anyone who has enlisted and they do not see service members in their communities or even on a regular basis.
The services are responsible for staffing the force, and they have tried new ways and methods to attract recruits. The COVID-19 pandemic handcuffed military recruiters who were not able to have "the face-to-face kind of communication that is absolutely essential to recruiting efforts," Ryder said.
Taking the Oath
Pennsylvania National Guardsmen take the oath of enlistment before the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Circuit Finals Rodeo in Harrisburg, Pa., Jan. 13, 2023.
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That is changing, and military recruiters are making the contacts needed to enlist personnel. "You're seeing the services look at many different types of ways to get out and engage with today's youth, as far as highlighting the opportunities that military service and the benefits that it can provide," Ryder said.
The Army has a program to help recruits qualify for enlistment, and the service works with potential enlistees to meet the enlistment standards. Army officials said 95 percent of those in the program have successfully completed it.
Spotlight: Value of Service
The Air Force has aviation camps where young people get to experience life in the service and the various aviation jobs available to them, Ryder said.
"So, the services continue to be very active and creative in looking at how we can communicate with the public that we serve," the general said.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has said that the services didn't get into this recruiting situation overnight, and it will take time to correct. "But we are confident that we will continue to see those numbers increase, and it's something that we'll, obviously, continue to work very hard at," Ryder said.
New Recruits
A “night of arrivals” staff member motivates new recruits as they line up at the in-processing center at Great Lakes, Ill., April 20, 2023.
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DOD and the services are also working to educate the public about the military. This can be done at airshows, parades, sporting events, base tours and more, Ryder said.
"There are many different ways for people to learn about the military," he said. "But the analysis has shown that at, the end of the day, it's a conversation with someone. Billboards and advertisements are important, but at the end of the day it's the conversation about, tell me more about it. What does this mean? What does this look like?"
These conversations with someone who has personal experience with the military are important, Ryder said. It helps in "breaking down some of the stereotypes in terms of what military life actually is versus what the perception is based on—popular programming or TV."
Ryder said potential recruits need to understand that one of the strengths of the U.S. military is the fact that [it] is an all-volunteer force. "Each of us takes … the oath to protect and defend the Constitution by choice," he said. "No one's making us do this, and it makes us more resilient. It makes us a more powerful military because we are defending the people from which we come.
"I would tell any prospective recruit the United States military provides an opportunity unlike any you will ever get to experience," he continued. "It's an amazing place to develop and … be a part of something bigger than yourself."
defense.gov · by Jim Garamone
15. Constructing a 'Theory of Sabotage'
We need to give serious thought to subversion and sabotage conducted by our adversaries as well as by us (or our proxies).
Constructing a 'Theory of Sabotage'
By Madison Minges | December 20, 2023
american.edu · by Madison Minges
When you think about the word “sabotage,” what comes to mind? Do examples in history, like the attempt by the German government to sabotage American defense equipment production in World War II, occur to you? Do you think about cyber espionage or hackers tapping into sensitive databases?
In a new article published in the French journal Études Françaises De Renseignement et de Cyber [Journal of French Intelligence and Cyber Studies], SIS professor Joshua Rovner lays out a theory of sabotage, explains why sabotage is appealing to militaries and governments, and discusses cyberspace sabotage. We asked Rovner to answer a few questions about his new article, “Theory of Sabotage.”
Your article seeks to articulate what a theory of sabotage could entail. You write, “To my knowledge, no one has written a theory of sabotage,” despite recent interest from scholars in covert actions and international relations theory. What were some key considerations you made when articulating a theory of sabotage?
I started with three questions: Who are the saboteurs? Who are their targets? And what is the point? The last question was most important. We have a lot of theories about the logic of military force, economic sanctions, and so on, but not about this peculiar tool of statecraft. This is surprising, given how much the fear of sabotage has been in the news. Just think of the warnings we hear about cyber threats to public utilities and voting machines. A lot of smart analysts have explored the technical aspects of these operations, real and hypothetical. I thought it was time we looked harder at the underlying logic.
You’ve written that the “goal of sabotage is to make [friction] intolerable.” You define friction as the “routine hiccups that affect any organization’s performance,” and explain that sabotage has different effects in peacetime and war. Are there specific examples in history that informed your view of sabotage in peacetime and war?
During World War II the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, wrote a fascinating little guide for saboteurs operating behind enemy lines. I've assigned it for years in my classes on intelligence, and I returned to it when I started sketching the outlines for a theory. The manual is striking because it talks about the ways that quiet saboteurs can weaponize ordinary bureaucratic friction. Sabotage is less about spectacular violence and more about the cumulative effect of on-the-job frustration. Saboteurs usually succeed not by blowing things up but by eroding organizational efficiency and morale, forcing rival policymakers and bureaucrats to divert their time and resources to unseen threats. And by working carefully and quietly, they can go about sabotage without being captured.
But this case also says something about the limits of sabotage. There is a trade-off between secrecy and effects: the larger the effects of any given operation, the more likely it will be discovered. For this reason, sabotage may be most effective as a small-scale enabler for larger policy instruments. Sabotage didn't defeat the Nazis, but it probably diverted their attention in advance of military force. I suspect the same is true today, despite the very different technologies involved.
You dedicated a section of the article to discussing “Sabotage in Cyberspace.” You wrote, “Although the goals and methods of each case [of offensive cyberspace operations] are unique, the logic is the same: they weaponize friction, reduce efficiency, and cause frustration to accumulate.” You also discuss three examples of cyberspace sabotage: the Stuxnet campaign, Russia’s information campaign in the 2016 election, and the 2021 ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline. Briefly, in your view, what do the outcomes of each of these operations tell us about the future of cyberspace sabotage?
Cyberspace sabotage will continue to appeal to policymakers. The domain itself seems tailor-made for such operations: if you want to increase friction in someone else's bureaucracy, you need to attack the information and communications systems on which it depends. Moreover, the growing connections between the cyber and physical worlds hint at a future in which cyberspace operations can have big physical consequences. And even if they don't, it’s a low-risk proposition, because it's a lot safer to deploy malware than human agents.
That said, recent experience suggests that even sophisticated operations may not have lasting effects. Iran actually increased the amount of uranium it enriched during the Stuxnet campaign. Russia was not able to affect the actual vote count in 2016. And while the Colonial Pipeline operation caused some panic among gas buyers, it was short-lived and no harm was done to the energy infrastructure. That said, cyberspace sabotage is clearly an unsettling experience for the targets. The interesting question is how the lingering memory affects their organizational and strategic choices in the aftermath.
The article ends with three propositions surrounding the effects of sabotage: “the effects of sabotage depend on the bureaucratic characteristics of the target”; “the practice and psychological effects of sabotage depend on bureaucratic culture”; and “the broader political consequences of sabotage depend on preexisting political circumstances.” In addition to these three propositions, you recognize in the article that “there are almost certainly other ways in which states and non-state actors may seek to undermine their rivals.” What did you consider when determining these three propositions?
I want to know what kind of evidence will prove me wrong. That means thinking up the kind of theoretical propositions that we can convert into testable claims. I think these ones fit the bill.
I also want to encourage a conversation among scholars with different interests (cybersecurity, intelligence, strategy, etc.) and from different disciplinary backgrounds (political science, history, economics, psychology, organization theory, etc.). The article draws on a pretty eclectic mix of scholarship. This was probably inevitable, given that sabotage implicates so many different fields. I've learned a lot from scholars who approach the problem from different directions. Synthesizing their views helped me generate some ideas about how sabotage works. I hope more attention to this question will help put those ideas to the test.
Finally, the propositions are relevant to ongoing policy interest in "resiliency." The issue is how the United States bounces back from various kinds of attacks, presuming it can't stop all of them. By thinking about sabotage as a bureaucratic issue as much as a technical threat, officials may be able to implement modest but useful bureaucratic processes that limit the damage and help avoid an overreaction.
american.edu · by Madison Minges
16. US Bans Pentagon From Using Chinese Port Logistics Platform
But I would bet every host nation logistics contractor is a target for penetration by the CHinese.
US Bans Pentagon From Using Chinese Port Logistics Platform
https://www.voanews.com/amp/us-bans-port-logistics-platform-china-offers-free-worldwide-/7408269.html?utm_source=pocket_saves
December 22, 2023 0:41 AM
A general view of the Port of Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 23, 2017. The port is one of several in Europe that use the Chinese state-owned digital logistics platform LOGINK.
WASHINGTON —
The U.S. Congress has passed legislation that would ban the Pentagon from using any seaport in the world that relies on a Chinese logistics platform known as LOGINK.
LOGINK, by tracking cargo and ship movements, lets Beijing monitor America's military supply chain, which relies on commercial ports, according to sponsors Senator Tom Cotton and Representative Michelle Steel.
Their amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2024 also bans federal funding of any port that uses LOGINK. The spending bill passed December 14 and the LOGINK ban goes into effect six months after the bill is signed. President Joe Biden has not yet signed the NDAA.
Steel, in an email interview with VOA, called LOGINK's threat "very serious" because it operates under the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing already has investments in about 100 ports in more than 60 nations.
SEE ALSO: China's Global Network of Shipping Ports Reveal Beijing’s Strategy
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), which monitors the national security implications of U.S.-China trade, said in a September 2022 report, "LOGINK's visibility into global shipping and supply chains could also enable the Chinese government to identify U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities and to track shipments of U.S. military cargo on commercial freight."
A spokesperson for the Pentagon's U.S. Transportation Command told VOA via email on Tuesday, "USTRANSCOM understands the visibility into global logistics China has through their Belt and Road Initiative and related public-private arrangements."
LOGINK partners with more than 20 ports worldwide, including six in Japan, five in South Korea and one in Malaysia. There are also at least nine across Europe and three in the Middle East. There are no LOGINK port contracts in the U.S., according to the commission's report, which says Beijing subsidizes the free platform.
Under the NDAA, Congress must commission a study of how foreign influence at the 15 largest American container ports "could affect" U.S. national and economic security.
"Chinese companies are operating ports in the United States, which poses a national security risk to our critical infrastructure. This report will spur policy to counter that risk," said Ivan Kanapathy, who served on former President Donald Trump's National Security Council as director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia. He is now a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington referred VOA to China's General Administration of Customs for comment, but an email inquiry received no reply.
'Major step' by Congress
Michael Wessel, an original member of the USCC who helped write the report, now heads a consulting firm, the Wessel Group. He told VOA the legislation is "a major step taken by Congress to begin to address the challenge of the threat posed by LOGINK."
Wessel and others say an alternative to LOGINK needs to be developed.
Gabe Collins, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and a former Department of Defense China analyst, told VOA he's not seen an alternative to LOGLINK "that can operate at that scale."
Collins estimates that LOGINK collects data on as much as half of all global shipping capacity — through contracts with ports and data sharing agreements with existing logistics networks.
He said the U.S. ban sends a "demand signal" telling the marketplace it must invent an alternative to LOGINK, though he said it could take as long as five years to develop one.
Washington's new ban also requires the secretary of state to begin negotiations with allies and partners to remove LOGINK from their ports. Compliance must begin in six months.
It is unclear how the amendment will affect ports worldwide used by the U.S. military. The International Association of Ports and Harbors told VOA it would need more time to survey its members on how they might respond to the new legislation.
Randall Schriver, former assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said that while working with the USCC in April, he discovered some European leaders were in the dark about LOGINK and its monitoring capacity.
"These were administrative matters handled at a lower level, and they were going with a cheap but good product without thinking through all of the possible implications," he said.
17. The Pentagon Is Forging an Airborne Wireless Energy Grid
A fascinating concept that I would think would be a game changer.
The Pentagon Is Forging an Airborne Wireless Energy Grid
Popular Mechanics · December 19, 2023
- The U.S. military has officially hired Raytheon to create a wireless airborne relay system.
- The system aims to build “webs” that are capable of transmitting energy from ground sources for use in long-range operations.
- If the system can also harvest energy, it could reduce the military’s dependence on fuel, as well as assist with energy storage.
The U.S. military wants to rethink energy.
The government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants a wireless airborne relay system to “deliver energy into contested environments.” And DARPA is moving toward that goal by awarding a $10 million contract to Virginia-based company Raytheon.
DARPA also wouldn’t mind if that system could harvest energy. If an energy supply could help reduce the military’s dependence on fuel while also shaving down delivery and storage hurdles, that would be great.
“Energy is essential in the modern battlespace, and it is critical to achieving military objectives,” Colin Whelan, president of Advanced Technology at Raytheon, said in a statement. “When operating in contested environments, energy may not always be available or abundant, making the need to generate, store, and redistribute it vital.”
Related Story
The company’s Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) program is intended to help with DARPA’s Energy Web Dominance portfolio mission—to establish an energy transport across air space, maritime, land, and undersea domains.
Last year, Col. Paul Calhoun—POWER program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office—said in a statement that this concept is the internet for energy. It is intended to harness energy flow from abundant sources and transport it to energy-starved locations. “The military faces particularly acute energy challenges,” he said, “which are driving this innovation. We often must operate far from established energy infrastructure and rely on liquid fuels that require precarious supply lines.”
Beaming power uses the same physics as wireless communication. “You need a power source,” Calhoun explained, “you convert that power to a propagating wave, typically electromagnetic, send it through free space, collect it in through an aperture, and then convert it back to electricity.”
That’s wireless energy transfer.
The Raytheon plan centers on unmanned aircraft at high altitudes capable of serving as relay vessels, intended to receive and transmit beamed energy. Power would be beamed to the aircraft from the ground, allowing the webbed system of planes to then relay the energy over long distances. That energy could then theoretically be used for recharging airborne planes, powering ships in the sea, or fulfilling additional energy needs on the ground.
“This technology seeks to enable our military to generate power where it is safe and efficient to do so and easily distribute it to other platforms,” Whelan said.
Related Story
The government is looking to eventually be able to reroute energy in seconds or minutes, allowing a near-instantaneous pivot of strategies without requiring cumbersome changes to supply lines. In essence, they want ‘energy web dominance.’
Raytheon, which will work on the two-year contract in El Segundo, California, has long been a partner with the military. They’ve worked on air and missile defense, smart weapons, radars, cybersecurity, and space-based systems. But now, they’re entering a relatively new frontier. Creating a military-level wireless energy web system would push forward the emerging world of wireless energy.
The POWER program aims to make the power beaming relays efficient, maximizing beam quality and harvesting energy along the way. “It is a three-phase development effort,” Calhoun said, “culminating in a compelling energy relay flight demonstration.”
Tim Newcomb
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.
Popular Mechanics · December 19, 2023
18. The US Wanted Out of the Middle East. The Middle East Had Other Ideas.
180 degree Pivot to Asia or a 360 degree pirouette to the Middle East?
The US Wanted Out of the Middle East. The Middle East Had Other Ideas. | Military.com
military.com · by Rebecca Kheel
Facing a growing list of attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles "C.Q." Brown was pressed at a recent conference on why the American military wasn't responding more aggressively.
Two decades of war in the region, a war that much of the American public is eager to move on from, have made military leaders cautious when talking about battlefields that have claimed thousands of service members' lives.
"We're being very thoughtful about the approach we take, and I do that when I provide my advice on how best to respond but also not to broaden the conflict," Brown said on stage at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the beginning of the month.
A day later, the list grew, with Iran-backed Houthi rebels launching one of their biggest drone attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, prompting the destroyer USS Carney to shoot down multiple drones.
That same day, U.S. forces in Iraq killed five Iran-linked militants in a drone strike intended to prevent an imminent attack on American troops.
Since then, U.S. forces have faced dozens more attacks in Iraq and Syria, with the total topping 100 and at least 66 American troops suffering injuries. U.S. warships have also been called upon several more times to respond to continued Houthi attacks on commercial ships, and American military involvement in protecting commercial shipping is poised to grow with the announcement of a new multinational task force to patrol the Red Sea, an escalation as the year draws to a close.
Despite efforts to avoid a larger war and as the U.S. watches close ally Israel's ground campaign in Gaza continue, the American military by all appearances is, yet again, getting pulled deeper and deeper into the Middle East.
Taken as a whole, events since October demonstrate that, as much as the country has sought to extract itself from the Middle East in recent years, the region is not done with the United States, and 2024 is likely to see U.S. forces still confronting threats and facing the risk of casualties.
"The fact that there are several frozen conflicts in the region that have been unresolved, neither militarily nor politically, certainly creates an enabling environment for various cycles of violence to keep repeating themselves," said Merissa Khurma, director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center. "Everyone looks to the West for leadership in resolving these conflicts because that responsibility comes with the power the United States yields, both politically and militarily."
Further, the danger of a broader, conventional Middle East war still looms.
"It's sheer good luck that we have not lost any Americans in this growing number of attacks," said Mona Yacoubian, vice president of the Middle East and North Africa Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "This is far from over, and I think, unfortunately, we have not yet seen what the full scope of escalation looks like."
The start of the Biden administration saw a concerted effort to turn the page on America's so-called endless wars in the Middle East and South Asia, and in turn focus more on the Indo-Pacific region and America's strategic adversary of China.
Last year, a new National Defense Strategy named China as the United States' top "pacing challenge" while placing the threats that had consumed U.S. attention in the beginning of the 21st century, including terrorism and the Middle East, on a lower tier.
President Joe Biden withdrew the last remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan, despite warnings that came to fruition that doing so would lead to the Afghan government's collapse.
And while the administration left untouched about 2,500 troops in Iraq and about 900 troops in Syria to keep any remnants of the ISIS terrorist group at bay, Biden made a high-profile announcement in 2021 that the combat mission in Iraq was over, and officials rarely drew attention to U.S. military activities in Iraq and Syria.
Then Oct. 7 happened.
Hamas terrorists snuck across the border from the Gaza Strip to Israel, slaughtering about 1,200 people and abducting about 250 others in the bloodiest day in Israel's history. Americans were among both the dead and the hostages. The Israeli government responded by launching a war on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip that has included a blistering airstrike campaign and ground invasion.
Iranian proxy forces in the region have taken advantage of the chaos by launching a flurry of attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Israel and Hezbollah have also regularly been trading fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since Oct. 7.
The United States responded by rushing forces into the region in what officials described as an effort to deter a wider Middle East war. Two aircraft carriers and their associated strike groups steamed into the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and air defenses were bolstered throughout the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, among other elements of the buildup.
Defense officials have stressed that no assets are being taken from the Indo-Pacific region to help the buildup in the Middle East. They also argue that they remain focused on China despite Gaza, as well as the war in Ukraine before that, consuming the most immediate attention.
"We've not lost any readiness," Gen. Charles Flynn, commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific, said at the Reagan forum when asked how competing priorities for weapons, particularly for the war in Ukraine, could affect his forces. "There's a lot of ways to weight your effort, and it's not just steel coming off of a production line."
Still, public attention has undeniably shifted recently, as has many U.S. leaders' rhetoric.
The Reagan National Defense Survey, released annually ahead of the conference, found the Middle East jumped as a priority for Americans in the last year. While 11% of respondents said in 2022 that the U.S. military should focus its forces in the Middle East, 31% said so this year. This year's iteration of the poll was taken weeks after the Hamas attack.
By comparison, 25% of respondents this year said the U.S. military should focus on East Asia, including China, compared to 31% last year.
When given free range to decide how to allocate U.S. military resources, poll respondents split forces fairly evenly between the Middle East and Asia. On average, respondents said about 19% of U.S. military resources should be focused on the Middle East and about 18% should be focused on East Asia.
Still, 51% said they believe China is the greatest threat to the United States, with the country retaining its perch atop the list from last year.
"It depends on what the leaders are talking about, that's what Americans are going to focus on," Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said on a panel at the Reagan forum about the poll results.
While the annual confab of military officials, lawmakers and defense contractors did not officially include any panels on the Middle East or the war in Israel, talk about the conflict permeated discussions at the Reagan Library.
During his speech at the conference, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke almost twice as long about Israel and the Middle East as he did about America's supposed priority theater of the Indo-Pacific.
"As we are working to stabilize the region, Iran is raising tensions," Austin said in his speech. "After attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria, our forces repeatedly struck facilities in Iraq and eastern Syria used by Iran's IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and by militias affiliated with Iran. We will not tolerate attacks on American personnel. These attacks must stop. And until they do, we will do what we need to do to protect our troops -- and to impose costs on those who attack them."
Even with the tit-for-tat between U.S. forces and Iran-backed militias in the region, warnings at the beginning of the war in Israel that it could escalate into an all-out war in the Middle East haven't borne out. But regional experts say the skirmishes in Iraq and Syria, the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and the violence on the Israel-Lebanon border all still risk spiraling into a more conventional war that would further entangle the United States.
"Nobody wants this to escalate further because they understand how high the risks are for contagion," said the Wilson Center's Khurma, who said she's spoken to regional diplomats who have open channels of communication with Iran. "It is very delicate. The risks remain high."
military.com · by Rebecca Kheel
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
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