Quote of the Day:

"Inflict the least possible permanent injury, for the enemy of to0day is the customer of the morrow and the ally of the future. "

- Sir Basil H. Liddell-Hart

"To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing; to contemplate the beautiful thing, that is enough for one man's life."

-T.S. ELiot

"You need power, only when you want to do something harmful, others, love is all you need to get everything done."

- Charlie Chaplin

1. American Spies Confront a New, Formidable China

2. Iran warns Israel will pay after top IRGC commander killed in Syria

3. U.S. Strikes Iran-Backed Groups in Iraq in Round of Retaliation

4. ‘Glory to the Heroes’ documents the resilience of those on Ukraine’s front lines

5. Network of current, former intel officials boosts leftist agendas, says ex-CIA agent

6. Somalia says U.S. drone strike killed mastermind of attack on Americans

7. Biden orders strike on Iranian-aligned group after 3 US troops injured in drone attack in Iraq

8. USS Laboon shoots down four drones in Red Sea

9. Junior enlisted pay to be key congressional focus in 2024

10. Taiwan not seeing signs of large-scale Chinese military activity pre-election

11. Opinion - There Is Finally Hope of Ousting Myanmar’s Military Junta

12. What War Games Really Reveal

13. France completes military withdrawal from Niger, leaving a gap in the terror fight in the Sahel

14. Escaping Xi’s China by paddleboard: ‘I rushed into the water and thought if they catch me, they catch me’

15. How We Deterred Iran in the Gulf Last Time

16. Taiwan ranked 14th-richest country

17. Taiwan holds first live-fire training of rifles and handguns at bathing beach

18. Five Ukrainian Spectacular Long-Range, Special Ops Strikes Carried Out in 2023

19. Understanding Ukraine: 12 Books in English

1. American Spies Confront a New, Formidable China

Depressing.

American Spies Confront a New, Formidable China

CIA lost network of agents a decade ago and has struggled to rebuild in the surveillance state America calls its top security priority; ‘no real insight into leadership plans’

By Warren P. StrobelFollow

Updated Dec. 26, 2023 12:04 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/american-spies-confront-a-new-formidable-china-5c384370?mod=hp_lead_pos7

WASHINGTON—Beijing’s spycatchers all but blinded the U.S. in China a decade ago when they systematically rounded up a network of Chinese agents working for the CIA. As many as two dozen assets providing information to the U.S. were executed or imprisoned, among them high-ranking Chinese officials.

The CIA is still struggling to rebuild its human espionage capabilities in China, the agency’s top intelligence target, according to interviews with current and former U.S. officials. The gaps leave the U.S. with limited understanding of secret deliberations among Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his inner circle on key security issues such as Taiwan and other topics, the officials said.

“We have no real insight into leadership plans and intentions in China at all,” said a former senior intelligence official who until recently read classified reporting.

Strengthening the human spy network targeted on China is one goal of a titanic, but mostly secret, shift at the CIA and its sister U.S. spy agencies. It comes amid a larger transformation in U.S. security policy away from fighting insurgencies around the world and toward preparing for a possible “great power” conflict with China and Russia. 

After two decades of hunting terrorists, the $100 billion-a-year U.S. intelligence community is retraining personnel, redirecting billions in budgets and retooling expensive spy machinery to focus on those potential adversaries.  

The pivot hasn’t been simple. Hamas’s surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have demanded White House attention and intelligence resources, complicating CIA Director William Burns’s drive to ensure China is the top long-term priority. One agency veteran said that handling the two crises, while keeping a sustained focus on Beijing, will test the agency’s agility.

CIA Director William Burns, center, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, left, and FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in Congress in March. PHOTO: SHAWN THEW/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

The U.S., which ceded responsibility for monitoring Palestinian militants to Israel in the years following the September 2001 terrorist attacks and like Israel was blindsided by the Hamas assault, has redirected some intelligence resources to the Israel-Palestinian conflict in recent weeks, officials said. It isn’t publicly known how substantial they are. 

The unexpected clash shows how difficult it can be, with finite spying resources, to get the balance right. “The reality is that you don’t have collection resources that you can exploit all over the world,” a former counterterrorism official said. 

China, which the Biden administration named as the greatest danger to American security, remains at the top of the CIA’s to-do list, Burns told The Wall Street Journal.

“We are approaching the PRC as a global priority, more than doubling the budget resources devoted to the China mission over the past three years, and establishing the China Mission Center as CIA’s only single country mission center to coordinate the full agency’s efforts on this issue,” he said. “Even as we are balancing multiple priorities including ongoing conflicts, we remain intensely engaged on the strategic long-term challenge posed by the PRC.”

In a previously undisclosed mission, Burns traveled to Japan and South Korea since the Hamas attack, a CIA official said, following a publicly reported trip to Beijing in May.

Even as the Middle East and Afghanistan dominated resources and attention in the years after 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies never stopped targeting China aggressively, according to former officials directly involved in those efforts. This intelligence focus intensified in the mid-2000s, they said, but the entire U.S. government didn’t make China a priority for at least another decade.

Orwellian surveillance

The U.S. government has never publicly acknowledged the loss of its Chinese agents between 2010 and 2012. 

Today, U.S. spy satellites closely monitor China’s military deployments and modernization plans, while cyber and eavesdropping tools scoop up vast swaths of Chinese communications. Beyond that, U.S. knowledge of Xi’s plans comes mostly from inference and from parsing his frequent public statements, officials said.

Cameras at the entrance of a subway station in Shanghai in October. PHOTO: CFOTO/ZUMA PRESS

China is a much tougher intelligence target than it was a decade ago, when the agents were lost. Xi’s security-first state employs Orwellian surveillance systems that vastly complicate spy operations inside the country. And U.S. intelligence must track China’s progress in fields as disparate as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. 

The two countries have clashed over American technology restrictions, military maneuvers at sea and in the skies, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China’s weaknesses, notably slowing economic growth and a shrinking population, are another wild card in assessing its future course.

“Unfortunately, China’s goals and objectives are so vast that it really is very difficult to say that we’re doing a great job,” House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Mike Turner said in an interview.  

In the early 2000s, CIA analysts began warning frequently about China’s economic growth and military ambitions, former U.S. officials said. Collectively, this stream of classified intelligence reports became known among government insiders as the “Scary China Brief.”

A Chinese jet that came near a U.S. B-52 aircraft over the South China Sea in October, in an image provided by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. PHOTO: U.S. INDO-PACIFIC COMMAND/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Secret reports sent to the White House, State Department and other agencies charted the planned modernization of the People’s Liberation Army, China’s coming naval expansion and Beijing’s goals for overseas bases.

The CIA leveraged endemic corruption in the upper reaches of the Communist Party and government ministries to recruit dozens of officials as paid agents, former officials familiar with the events said. But in a catastrophic setback, this network was obliterated as China caught the traitors in its midst one by one.

A flaw in the CIA’s covert communications with its agents, exploited by Beijing, is the suspected cause of the compromise, former officials said. The details of what went wrong aren’t publicly known, and it is unclear if anyone at the agency was held accountable.

“Horrendous. Horrendous. Horrendous,” a former senior U.S. official said of the losses in China. “And I have doubts about whether there’s been much of a recovery since then.”

Pedestrians outside a mall in Hong Kong pass a monitor showing a news broadcast of Xi Jinping early in his leadership in 2012. PHOTO: LAM YIK FEI/BLOOMBERG NEWS

The agent roll-up had profound effects. It occurred just as Xi was being groomed for power. Shock at the depth of the CIA penetration helped shape the Chinese leader’s overarching emphasis on security and loyalty, said another former U.S. intelligence official. It also, at least for a time, chilled the agency’s efforts to recruit foreigners worldwide. The feeling was, “‘Why would I take a call from a U.S. person, I know that Chinese people got bullets in the back of their head,’” the former officer said.

The U.S. lost its human network in China just as Xi became Communist Party leader, in late 2012, and then president a few months later. Multiple, sometimes daily, CIA reports predicted he would be a different kind of Chinese leader, more forceful, nationalistic and security-focused, current and former intelligence officials said.

Several officials said the analysis was largely ignored by President Barack Obama’s White House, which hoped that as China grew economically, it would liberalize and join the U.S.-led international world order. That policy had been followed by Democratic and Republican administrations for two decades. “There was a lot of desperation to believe that,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA East Asia analyst​.

Danny Russel, a former top Obama aide on Asia, said the intelligence was factored into policy discussions and, while valuable, it didn’t predict “that Xi would become the kind of security-obsessed autocrat that he has shown himself to be.”

Kevin Patrick Mallory, shown in 2019, a former CIA officer who was convicted of selling secrets to China. PHOTO: ALEXANDRIA SHERIFF’S OFFICE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Xi’s China has aggressively pursued maritime claims in the South China Sea, increasingly harassed Taiwan with military drills and orchestrated repeated cyber hacks to steal secrets and personal data from the U.S. government, healthcare providers, tech giants, defense contractors and others.

China also ramped up its own human espionage, often using social media sites such as LinkedIn to contact and recruit former U.S. intelligence officials. Its successes included Kevin Patrick Mallory, a former CIA officer who had become deeply in debt and sold secrets for cash, including the identities of U.S. intelligence officers due to travel to China. Mallory was convicted in 2018. 

In August, the Justice Department revealed the arrest of two U.S. Navy sailors charged with providing military information to China. Both were U.S. naturalized citizens born in China. Wenheng “Thomas” Zhao pleaded guilty to two counts in October. Jinchao “Patrick” Wei pleaded not guilty. 

Recruitment Drive

In a pivot that accelerated after 2020, the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and other U.S. spy agencies cut spending on counterterrorism and other targets, including in the Middle East, to fund expanded programs to penetrate China’s government, the current and former officials said. The numbers are classified, but officials describe the budget shifts as significant. Burns merged a CIA Iran Mission Center established by a predecessor back into a larger unit focused on the Middle East, a move that officials said didn’t reflect a diminished focus on Tehran.  

Burns now holds a weekly meeting devoted to China, gathering top lieutenants in his 7th-floor office at the CIA’s Langley, Va., headquarters. Soon after becoming director in 2021, he established a mission center for China. Such units bring CIA operators, intelligence analysts, technology experts and other specialists together to work on a single target. 

One U.S. intelligence official described the China center as having “a quarterback role,” setting intelligence priorities on China across the agency, and working to support offices at headquarters and CIA stations globally.   

The agency is also recruiting from outside and within its workforce. “CIA is leaning hard on people to learn Mandarin who already work here,” a second U.S. intelligence official said. Burns has said the agency needs additional Mandarin speakers, but also more officers steeped in technology, the fulcrum of U.S.-China competition.

“The numbers have gotten, I would say, significantly better in terms of personnel, spend [and] focus on China,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. PHOTO: KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS

But Warner and others say the CIA still needs to make a profound cultural shift, moving beyond its traditional focus on foreign leaders, militaries and economies. The U.S.-China rivalry plays out in fields such as quantum computing, nuclear fusion and rare earth minerals. 

Burns in 2021 created another new unit whose mandate includes new and emerging technologies, and outreach to the U.S. private sector. 

And much of what U.S. spy agencies need to know is hidden in plain sight, if it can be found in an ever-proliferating cache of open-source intelligence that also poses new challenges for U.S. intelligence. Open-source data include billions of social media postings, huge commercially available databases and academic papers. Several spy agencies have created or expanded open-source intelligence units, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines created a small group of officials to oversee the efforts.

The vast majority of U.S. intelligence on China now comes from electronic snooping—intercepting phone calls, emails and every other form of digital communication, the current and former officials indicated. Such signals intelligence can rarely replace human spies in divining an adversary’s true intentions or weaknesses, officials say.  

Recruiting, or even meeting, Chinese agents is more perilous than ever. Beijing’s pervasive surveillance system uses big data analytics to mine feeds from millions of cameras in major cities, combined with armies of human watchers.

“We’ve got to find a way to be able to enhance our ability, with the deployment of new technology by China and other nations, to be able to operate within their countries to gain intelligence,” said Turner, the House Intelligence Committee chairman.

China’s practices extend abroad to third countries, where CIA operatives try to recruit Chinese officials and businessmen. The former senior U.S. official recounted how U.S. intelligence officers in a Latin American country, supposedly operating undercover, were followed by a team of Chinese personnel, who videotaped them as they sat in a restaurant. 

In Russia, the CIA has had greater success. It obtained President Vladimir Putin’s secret Ukraine invasion plan, stole and then publicized Kremlin disinformation plots and gave the White House a heads up before Wagner Group chieftain Yevgeny Prigozhin launched his mutiny in June.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow in December. PHOTO: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL

Putin’s Russia, with its feuding fiefdoms and elite discontent over the costly Ukraine war, is a “target-rich environment” in espionage parlance, rife with disaffected officials, military officers and businessmen who might be persuaded to trade inside knowledge for cash. Both the CIA and FBI have posted advertisements on social media, pitching Russians who might be willing to work with the U.S. government. 

“That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity” to recruit spies, Burns said in a speech in July. “We’re not letting it go to waste.”

The challenge in China is different, and U.S. intelligence officials acknowledge that collecting human intelligence there is hard. “It is high risk and it is true that sometimes things get compromised,” David Marlowe, the CIA’s deputy director for operations, said in a rare public appearance in May, apparently referring to agents who are exposed. “But it doesn’t lessen our responsibility to be successful.”

China’s Ministry of State Security said in August it had arrested two Chinese nationals spying for the CIA, both of whom had been recruited outside China. If accurate, the revelations illustrate both the continued U.S. spying push and China’s aggressive counterespionage campaign.

Burns, at a July security forum in Aspen, Colo., said the CIA is recruiting well-placed Chinese officials and businesspeople to spy for Washington. “We’ve made progress and we’re working very hard over recent years to ensure that we have a strong human intelligence capability to complement what we can acquire through other methods,” he said. 

There are potential openings in China, too, intelligence officials say, in the growing disaffection with Xi’s autocratic leadership and a creaky economy.

“They are a hard target,” one of the intelligence officials said, “not an impossible one.”

Write to Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com

2. Iran warns Israel will pay after top IRGC commander killed in Syria

Excerpts:

Mousavi was considered to have been close to Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the Quds Force who was killed by a US drone in January 2020, according to Iranian media. Israeli media referenced Mousavi as the highest-profile targeted killing since Solemani.

No other casualties were reported in the alleged airstrike.

Iran warns Israel will pay after top IRGC commander killed in Syria

Iranian state-owned media confirmed the death of IRGC commander Seyed Razi Mousavi, identified as "a senior advisor" in Syria.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF

DECEMBER 25, 2023 15:41

Updated: DECEMBER 25, 2023 21:49

Jerusalem Post

Iran vowed that Israel would "pay" for the killing of Sayyed Reza Mousavi, a senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in an alleged Israeli airstrike in the vicinity of the Syrian capital of Damascus on Monday.

"Undoubtedly, the usurper and savage Zionist regime will pay for this crime," Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement read on state TV. "This action is another sign of frustration, helplessness, and inability of the occupying Zionist regime."

Local media outlets reported that explosions were heard in the area of Set Zaynab in the Damascus countryside.

Footage shared on social media showed a cloud of smoke near the Damascus International Airport, a site targeted frequently due to its use by Iranian proxies in the region.

#عاجل | قصـ ـف "إسرائيلي" استهدف منطقة الأهداف في محيط #دمشق على طريق مطار دمشق في #سوريا pic.twitter.com/DZ3ve1Qonx

— قناة القدس (@livequds) December 25, 2023

The Iranian Foreign Ministry released a statement on Monday evening, warning that Tehran "reserves the right to respond at the appropriate time and place to the assassination" of Mousavi.

Tehran added that the suspected assassination "is a sinful and cowardly act and a sign of the terrorist nature of the Zionist regime." Hezbollah released a statement on Monday night mourning the death of the IRGC official, whom the Lebanese terrorist organization called "one of the best brothers who worked to support the Islamic resistance in Lebanon for decades."

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Funeral of members of Iran's IRGC who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Syria, in Tehran (credit: MAJID ASGARIPOUR/WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY) VIA REUTERS)

Top Iranian commander killed identified as Sayyed Razi Mousavi

Iranian state-owned media confirmed the death of IRGC commander Sayyed Razi Mousavi, identified as "a senior advisor" in Syria.

According to unconfirmed reports from Iranian opposition media, Mousavi was responsible for coordinating the of financing and transfer of logistics from Tehran to Iranian proxies in Syria.

The Israeli Air Force eliminated an Iranian commander who was identified as Seyed Razi Mousavi, Iranian state media confirmed. Mousavi was considered one of the closest IRGC commanders to Qassem Soleimani and the commander of Iranian forces in Syria. pic.twitter.com/0UhyqZuGIC

— Charles Weber (@CWBOCA) December 25, 2023

Mousavi was considered to have been close to Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the Quds Force who was killed by a US drone in January 2020, according to Iranian media. Israeli media referenced Mousavi as the highest-profile targeted killing since Solemani.

No other casualties were reported in the alleged airstrike.

This is a developing story.

Jerusalem Post

3. U.S. Strikes Iran-Backed Groups in Iraq in Round of Retaliation

U.S. Strikes Iran-Backed Groups in Iraq in Round of Retaliation

The New York Times · by Helene Cooper · December 25, 2023

The strikes followed a drone attack hours earlier by members of Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups on Erbil air base in Iraq that injured three American service members, officials said.

“My prayers are with the brave Americans who were injured,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement.

By

Reporting from Washington

Dec. 25, 2023, 10:33 p.m. ET

The United States conducted a new round of airstrikes early on Tuesday in Iraq, most likely killing militants and destroying three facilities used by Iranian proxies that had been targeting American and coalition troops, U.S. military officials said.

The American strikes were in retaliation for a series of assaults, including a drone attack hours earlier by members of Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups on Erbil air base in Iraq, U.S. officials said. The drone attack injured three American service members, one of them critically, officials said.

“My prayers are with the brave Americans who were injured,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement.

The latest strikes targeted facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah, a militia group in Iraq that is considered a proxy of Iran.

After the Erbil attack, which took place on Christmas morning Eastern time, President Biden ordered the Department of Defense to prepare response options, White House officials said, and later in the day authorized the strikes.

Mr. Biden chose specific Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated facilities that had been used to launch unmanned aerial drone attacks, officials said.

In a statement, U.S. Central Command said that early assessments indicated that the U.S. airstrikes destroyed the targeted facilities and most likely killed a number of militants. The statement said that there were no indications of civilian casualties.

“These strikes are intended to hold accountable those elements directly responsible for attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and Syria and degrade their ability to continue attacks,” Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla of U.S. Central Command said in the statement. “We will always protect our forces.”

Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent. More about Helene Cooper

The New York Times · by Helene Cooper · December 25, 2023

4. ‘Glory to the Heroes’ documents the resilience of those on Ukraine’s front lines

Excerpts:

Ali Rogin:

You visited Ukraine this was your 11th trip there since the beginning of this war. One of the things that struck me the most was when you were embedded with soldiers on the frontlines. One soldier says, if we had more ammunition, we could finish the job. Do you agree with that?

Bernard-Henri Levy:

I'm more than agree. I saw it. I saw how they have 20 shelves for the week, and they don't know when a new delivery will come. And they haven't done yet. How many would they use? One? Two? Three? Not more.

So the scarcity, the non-delivery, though your lack of promises, or the betraying of promises of the West, this is a reality of which I am a personnel witness.

‘Glory to the Heroes’ documents the resilience of those on Ukraine’s front lines

PBS · by — Ali Rogin By — Harry Zahn · December 24, 2023

By — Ali Rogin

By — Harry Zahn

Transcript

With aid for Ukraine caught in a partisan fight on Capitol Hill, it can be easy to lose sight of the human toll of the war. In a new documentary “Glory to the Heroes,” director Bernard-Henri Lévy turns the focus back on those he calls the heroes, from the fighters on the front lines to the civilians who remain in Ukraine in an act of defiance. Ali Rogin speaks with Lévy about the film.

Read the Full Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

• John Yang:
• While aid for Ukraine has become entangled in a partisan fight on Capitol Hill, it can be easy to lose sight of what's at stake in the war and the human toll it's taking. In a new documentary Glory to the Heroes, French writer and filmmaker Bernard-Henri Levy turns the focus back on those he calls the heroes, not just the fighters on the front lines, but also the civilians whose decision to remain in Ukraine is in itself an act of defiance.
• From the flooded streets of Kherosn after Russia destroyed a dam under its control, to the Eastern Front were battles raised in Bakhmut from Kharkiv in the north and Odesa in the South. Viewers experience Ukraine summer counter offensive through Levy's lens.
• Ali Rogin recently sat down with Bernard-Henri Levy to discuss the film.
• Ali Rogin:
• Bernard-Henri Levy, thank you so much. Welcome back. You say at the beginning of this film, that your goal is to make sure that Ukraine does not become a forgotten war. Do you think it's at risk of becoming one?
• Bernard-Henri Levy, Filmmaker, "Glory to The Heroes": There was a risk and what is happening these days on Capitol Hill. What is happening in most of the world great capitals, increase the risk. There is a fatigue about Ukraine. And this worries me so much I did this film. I went on frontline, I went in the trenches in order to try to prevent this becoming a forgotten war, which is the worst for people to be victim or forgotten — of a forgotten war. It is the worst Destiny possible on Earth.
• Ali Rogin:
• Ever since this full scale invasion of Ukraine began there have been many conflicts all over the world. But none seem to have captured the attention of the world quite like the war between Israel and Hamas. I don't mean to diminish the importance of that conflict by asking this question.
• But are you concerned that the war in the Middle East is taking attention away from what's happening in Ukraine?
• Bernard-Henri Levy:
• It's an illness of our time, a plague of our time, and not to be able to focus our attention on two things at the same time. We have to understand the war of Hamas against Israel. The war of Putin of Russia against Ukraine are two parts of the same picture. For many regards. The actors are linked on the two sides.
• Hamas and Putin are linked we know that. We know that Moscow is the only big capital in the world where Hamas was received with red carpet before the October 7 forum and after the October 7 forum.
• Ali Rogin:
• You visited Ukraine this was your 11th trip there since the beginning of this war. One of the things that struck me the most was when you were embedded with soldiers on the frontlines. One soldier says, if we had more ammunition, we could finish the job. Do you agree with that?
• Bernard-Henri Levy:
• I'm more than agree. I saw it. I saw how they have 20 shelves for the week, and they don't know when a new delivery will come. And they haven't done yet. How many would they use? One? Two? Three? Not more.
• So the scarcity, the non-delivery, though your lack of promises, or the betraying of promises of the West, this is a reality of which I am a personnel witness.
• Ali Rogin:
• Another reality that you capture is the incredible resilience, the passion of the Ukrainian people, the civilians, the fighters, what did you take away about those moments with the Ukrainian people?
• Bernard-Henri Levy:
• My family is entitled Glory to the Heroes I mean it. These guys who come with the violin, with their music instruments with who try to rehands, upgrade the morale of the troop of soldiers who lost their brothers, a few hours before. The old lady who is growing some cucumbers and some tomato, on the Makkadam (ph) of her Street, the house is destroyed. There is just the pavement of the street. And there, she puts some (inaudible) and she grows from cucumber. She's a hero too, and she will not move.
• Ali Rogin:
• Another really striking set of moments in the film is when you talk to Russian captives, prisoners of war, who have been captured, they are incredibly demoralized. And then you contrast that with the spirit of Ukrainian fighters, men who have lost limbs, and who can't wait to get back on the front lines.
• Bernard-Henri Levy:
• As you will say, I had your chance and a privilege to film both. And I see the difference. The Russians were really poor guys. They were taken out of jail. They were brought on frontline, nobody told us that they will fight. They were sold lie slave for 25,000 rubles each by the official officers of the official army to a private companies like Wagner, you know.
• So when you compare that the high morale of the Ukrainians, and the low or no moral, not morale at all, of the Russians, there is a logic since the antiquity you cannot win a war when you don't know why you do it. And you cannot lose it when you have such a high morale.
• Now, the question of the weapon without F-16, without French Caesar cannons, of course, the war will last, so it has to end quickly with the capitulation of the Russian army, which is logical if we deliver what is needed for that.
• Ali Rogin:
• And to that end, what is your message to lawmakers as they debate funding for this war.
• Bernard-Henri Levy:
• I'm here since a few days. I hear that the borders are a big topic here at the Congress and so on border, border, border.
• Ali Rogin:
• Right. Funding is connected to our border.
• Bernard-Henri Levy:
• I want border. Okay. I would like to say with all my respect to speak of Johnson to Senator Graham that the border of America, the border of Europe today is in Ukraine. Those who defend the border of these brave Ukrainian fighters whom I depict in dust in my movie and others, the border is there.
• If we let Putin win the war, or even lose it half, it would be a terrible signal given to all those who hate the liberal values, the democratic way of life, the sense of freedom, which are cherished, still in a big part of Europe and North America. It will be horrible, terrible signal given to all the enemies of that in our countries and around.
• Ali Rogin:
• The new documentary is Glory to the Heroes. Bernard-Henri Levy, thank you so much.
• Bernard-Henri Levy:
• Thank you, Ali. Thank you.

PBS · by — Ali Rogin By — Harry Zahn · December 24, 2023

5. Network of current, former intel officials boosts leftist agendas, says ex-CIA agent

​Agent or officer?

Network of current, former intel officials boosts leftist agendas, says ex-CIA agent

washingtontimes.com · by Bill Gertz

From left, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sit together in the front row before President Barack Obama spoke about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance in this Friday, Jan. 17, 2014, … From left, FBI Director James Comey, … more >

By - The Washington Times - Monday, December 18, 2023

Current and former American intelligence officials jettisoned objectivity as part of leftist political policies implemented under former President Barack Obama, waging political warfare against then-candidate Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, according to a new book by a former CIA agent detailing what he says was a clear politicization of the mission of the nation’s premier intelligence agency.

John Gentry, a veteran of both executive branch and congressional intelligence agencies and now an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, also warns that the politicization of the intelligence community, particularly the CIA, created a problem that threatens American security to this day.

Created to be a strictly neutral service for both Republican and Democratic administrations, the politicization within the CIA first became an issue during the 1990s when CIA analyst Robert Gates ordered analysts to skew reports in favor of political narratives of elected officials, Mr. Gentry states in his book, “Neutering the CIA: Why U.S. Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences.”

But what happened since 2016 has been far more serious and damaging to the agency’s role and mission, writes Mr. Gentry, a 12-year employee of the agency, including two years as a senior analyst on the staff of the National Intelligence Officer for Warning, who now teaches Missouri State University’s School of Defense and Strategic Studies. The author is also a retired Army Reserve officer who spent time with special operations and intelligence units.

“A new, dramatically stronger and damaging form of politicization — partisan, political activism willing to damage or destroy politically a sitting American president — had taken root in parts of the U.S. intelligence community,” Mr. Gentry writes. “It dwarfs the politicization episodes of the past in magnitude and importance, and it promises to have lasting, negative consequences.”

Mr. Gentry said his expose is not meant as a defense of Mr. Trump, who criticized intelligence agencies as a candidate and as president. The point of the book is to highlight how ideological opposition to Mr. Trump damaged the spy agencies themselves.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the book and referred to remarks last summer by CIA Director William Burns.

Asked about politicization at his agency, Mr. Burns said his obligation “is to offer the best intelligence that we can collect and analyze straight up, even when that’s inconvenient to policymakers.”

Activism and social engineering

But Mr. Gentry traces the current politicization abuses to the Obama administration, which he contends first introduced ideological activism and social engineering to the once politically neutral intelligence agencies.

“The activism is concentrated in the CIA, the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] and the FBI,” he said in an interview, adding that the CIA‘s analysis directorate remains “a center of partisan political activity.”

Mr. Obama, who served from 2009 to 2017, and his appointees “made and institutionalized significant changes, largely by creating new structures, policies, and incentives designed to alter organizational cultures in ways congruent with Obama‘s political agenda,” Mr. Gentry said.

For instance, he said, the Obama administration hired Democratic activists who “shifted leftward the collective, politically salient worldview of the intelligence bureaucracy.”

Quoting current intelligence officials with knowledge of internal activities, Mr. Gentry believes the number of radical activists within the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, is small. But their influence is significant and driven by the offices set up under Mr. Obama to promote and enforce so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.

The first sign the nonpartisan nature of the intelligence community was being upended came in 2016, when former CIA analyst Michael Morell wrote an op-ed in the New York Times endorsing Democrat Hillary Clinton for president and sharply criticized Mr. Trump, her Republican challenger at the time. That set in motion a movement of former intelligence officials who were recruited by intelligence activists inside the government to promote policies they supported and oppose mainly Republican leaders and policies.

The work of the unofficial group of former senior officials culminated in the 2020 letter signed by 51 former high-ranking intelligence officials asserting salacious and damaging information contained on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the son of now-President Joseph R. Biden, was likely a Russian disinformation ploy – even though U.S. intelligence agencies had determined at the time the laptop was genuine, Mr. Gentry stated.

U.S. officials have since concluded that Russian disinformation agencies had no role in the laptop or its contents.

Mr. Gentry says politicization at the FBI became evident with the bureau’s embrace in the midst of the 2016 campaign of the Christopher Steele dossier, which was later determined to contain false damaging information regarding Mr. Trump. The dossier was championed by the very top FBI leaders, including former FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and fired FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok, Mr. Gentry said.

The politicization problem did not end with the Trump administration although the political activism — including leaks of sensitive information against Trump and his aides — subsided after President Biden entered office in 2021.

“While activists tried hard to keep observers’ focus on Trump and his exceptionalism, the preponderance of evidence points strongly to the continued existence of a politicized [intelligence community] that will cause problems for years to come — long after Trump has left the political scene,” Mr. Gentry stated.

Mr. Gentry cites in the book a source in government who told him that serving CIA officers since 2016 have used classified and unclassified government communications systems to “share anti-Trump messages among themselves and outsiders.” The messages prompted no disciplinary action despite current technology that closely monitors such communications for unethical behavior, he said.

Fixing the problem

To restore integrity for intelligence, Mr. Gentry calls in his book for eliminating the offices of diversity within the various intelligence agencies.

“Restoring the objectivity of intelligence means revising the [intelligence community’s] ‘diversity and inclusion’ policies and substantially reforming or eliminating the offices that implement them. These offices are centers of ideology-driven political activism,” he said.

Asked if an intelligence “Deep State” of powerful behind-the-scenes activists exists, as some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have suggested, Mr. Gentry says the closest thing to such entities are the diversity offices. All intelligence agencies now have such offices, which critics say impose politically charged “woke” personnel policies and enforce them by punishing those that do not comply.

The leftward political orientation of American universities, the prime recruiting ground for incoming intelligence analysts, also has contributed to the politicization phenomenon, Mr. Gentry argues. Younger intelligence officers entering the workforce did not share the past respect for traditional norms of secrecy and believed they were entitled to voice partisan political views.

“Not least, many were indoctrinated by teachers with increasingly left-wing politics who, like them, desired to spread the word,” Mr. Gentry said.

Mr. Gentry‘s book targets several top former intelligence officials for the decline in political impartiality in the intelligence community, including former DNI James Clapper and John Brennan, who headed the CIA in Mr. Obama‘s second term.

Both men pushed policies on intelligence agencies that were in line with Mr. Obama‘s leftist political agenda, including those related to racial equity and sexual diversity in the workforce.

“Brennan, like Clapper at ODNI, told CIA personnel to participate overtly in political activities, internally or externally, in ways that were ideologically motivated and were designed to thwart the freedom of action of his duly appointed successors,” Mr. Gentry wrote. “Like Clapper, he came close to explicitly calling for insubordination against Trump. It was a radically different approach than any other [CIA director] before him had taken and was inappropriate.”

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, CIA director from 2006 and 2009, also helped to politicize U.S. intelligence, according to Mr. Gentry‘s account, along with Edward “Ned” Price, a career CIA officer who resigned in protest during the Trump administration, citing candidate Trump’s criticisms of the intelligence agencies and his apparent siding with Russia in a dispute over whether the Kremlin had interfered with the 2016 election.

“Despite claiming to be an apolitical civil servant, Price had a long history of working for Democratic politicians and causes,” Mr. Gentry said.

Mr. Price is currently a senior State Department official. He did not immediately respond to an email request for comment

Another former official, former FBI agent Josh Campbell, who was a former aide to Mr. Comey, resigned from the FBI in 2018 after writing an anti-Trump op-ed for the New York Times.

In a later book, Mr. Campbell stated that Mr. Trump was a threat to the FBI and thus a threat to U.S. security, Mr. Gentry said.

The CIA years ago created the position of politicization ombudsman. However, the work and reports from the ombudsman are not publicized.

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2023 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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6. Somalia says U.S. drone strike killed mastermind of attack on Americans

We are sustaining combat operations in multiple theaters or regions within theaters..

Somalia says U.S. drone strike killed mastermind of attack on Americans

The Washington Post · by Katharine Houreld · December 22, 2023

NAIROBI — A U.S. drone strike has killed a senior Somali militant accused of masterminding a 2020 attack on a military base in Kenya that killed three Americans, a top Somali official told The Washington Post on Friday.

Moalim Ayman, who led a unit in the militant al-Shabab group responsible for terrorist attacks in Kenya and Somalia, was killed by a drone in the group’s stronghold of Jilib in southern Somalia on Dec. 17, Information Minister Daud Aweis said.

Jaysh Ayman, as his unit was known, emerged in 2014 as al-Shabab’s main unit in Kenya, and has attacked churches, police stations, hotels and coastal communities. In 2015, it attacked Garissa University, killing 148 people, almost all of them students. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy.

“We can confirm 100 percent that it was him,” Aweis said. “It took a few days to make the final confirmation, we made it yesterday.”

The delay in announcing his death was likely due to the need to source material to make a genetic match. Aweis declined to say how the death was confirmed or give further information, including anything on how the strike was planned, simply saying “he was a target for a very long time … intelligence gathering done in collaboration with our partners and we cannot give any more details.”

The U.S. Africa Command, which announced the Dec. 17 airstrike, said “we’ve seen the reporting and can confirm that U.S. Africa Command conducted the strike on Dec. 17. We have not yet confirmed the target of that strike.”

The U.S. government said Ayman masterminded a Jan. 5, 2020 attack on a military base in Kenya that killed two U.S. contractor pilots and an army specialist. A third U.S. contractor and two other U.S. service members were injured. Six U.S. aircraft were also destroyed.

U.S. troops used the base for surveillance flights into Somalia and providing training and counterterrorism support to East African partners. After the attack, Ayman had a $10 million bounty on his head under the U.S. Rewards for Justice Program.

Al-Shabab, which already controlled large parts of Somalia, declared war on Kenya after Kenyan forces entered Somalia in October 2011 in response to a string of kidnappings on Kenyan soil. Al-Shabab says Kenyan civilians are legitimate targets because they voted for the government that declared war on the group.

The militant group has been at war with the United States since 2006, when Ethiopian troops entered Somalia with U.S. support to topple an Islamist government that had offered sanctuary to militants that had bombed U.S. embassies in the region in 1991. “Al-Shabab,” which means the youth were the military wing of that government, which was born out of an Islamist movement opposing Somali warlords.

President Donald Trump pulled U.S. troops out of Somalia, a decision later reversed by President Biden. The internationally backed Somali government led by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has been fighting an offensive against al-Shabab, assisted by clan militias. But the offensive slowed after divisions emerged between some of the clan militia leadership and the government, and recent pushes have encountered fierce resistance.

The Somali military has been doing the vast majority of the fighting. There are nearly 17,000 African Union peacekeeping troops in Somalia, responsible for securing main routes, bases and other key installations and providing air support and training. But 4,000 are due to leave within the next four months and another 10,000 by the end of 2024. The Somali government is planning to recruit, train, and equip nearly 24,000 troops to replace them.

Somali troops have already taken over responsibility for securing the Parliament and presidential villa.

But although al-Shabab has lost some territory to the government and allied forces, it maintains control of swaths of southern Somalia and retains the ability to mount devastating bombings and assassinations inside Somalia as well as cross-border attacks. U.N. investigators also say it accrues more than $100 million in revenue annually.

The Washington Post · by Katharine Houreld · December 22, 2023

7. Biden orders strike on Iranian-aligned group after 3 US troops injured in drone attack in Iraq

Biden orders strike on Iranian-aligned group after 3 US troops injured in drone attack in Iraq

AP · by AAMER MADHANI · December 26, 2023

President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. military to carry out retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups after three U.S. servicemembers were injured in a drone attack in northern Iraq.

National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said one of the U.S. troops suffered critical injuries in the attack that occurred earlier Monday. The Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, under an umbrella of Iranian-backed militants, claimed credit for the attack that utilized a one-way attack drone

Biden, who is spending Christmas at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, was alerted about the attack by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan shortly after it occurred on Monday and ordered the Pentagon and his top national security aides to prepare response options to the attack on an air base used by American troops in Erbil.

Sullivan consulted with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Biden’s deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, was with the president at Camp David and convened top aides to review options, according to a U.S. official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity.

Within hours, Biden convened his national security team for a call in which Austin and Gen. CQ Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed Biden on the response options. Biden opted to target three locations used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, the official said.

The U.S. strikes were carried out at about 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday in Iraq, less than 13 hours after the U.S. personnel were attacked. According to U.S. Central Command, the retaliatory strikes on the three sites, “destroyed the targeted facilities and likely killed a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants.”

“The President places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm’s way,” Watson said. “The United States will act at a time and in a manner of our choosing should these attacks continue.”

The latest attack on U.S. troops follows months of escalating threats and actions against American forces in the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the devastating war in Gaza.

The dangerous back-and-forth strikes have escalated since Iranian-backed militant groups under the umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria began striking U.S. facilities Oct. 17, the date that a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. Iranian-backed militias have carried out dozens of attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria since the start of the Israel-Hamas war more than two months ago.

Last month, U.S. fighter jets struck a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and command and control node, following a short-range ballistic missile attack on U.S. forces at Al-Assad Air Base in western Iraq. Iranian-backed militias also carried out a drone attack at the same air base in October, causing minor injuries.

The U.S. has also blamed Iran, which has funded and trained Hamas, for attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militants against commercial and military vessels through a critical shipping choke point in the Red Sea.

The Biden administration has sought to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a wider regional conflict that either opens up new fronts of Israeli fighting or that draws the U.S. in directly. The administration’s measured response — where not every attempt on American troops has been met with a counterattack — has drawn criticism from Republicans.

The U.S. has thousands of troops in Iraq training Iraqi forces and combating remnants of the Islamic State group, and hundreds in Syria, mostly on the counter-IS mission. They have come under dozens of attacks, though as yet none fatal, since the war began on Oct. 7, with the U.S. attributing responsibility to Iran-backed groups.

“While we do not seek to escalate conflict in the region, we are committed and fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities,” Austin said in a statement.

AP · by AAMER MADHANI · December 26, 2023

8. USS Laboon shoots down four drones in Red Sea

But are we going to go after the launch locations and systems for these attacks?

USS Laboon shoots down four drones in Red Sea

navytimes.com · by Diana Correll · December 24, 2023

The Navy destroyer Laboon shot down four unmanned aerial vehicles Saturday in the Red Sea that U.S. officials say originated from Iran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to U.S. Central Command.

The incident is the most recent instance where U.S. warships in the Middle East have intercepted air drones and missiles, and comes exactly a week after Navy destroyer Carney took down 14 attack drones in the Red Sea.

U.S. Central Command said that the Laboon shot down the drones, which “were inbound” to the destroyer, as it conducted a patrol in the Southern Red Sea as part of a multinational security initiative to safeguard commercial ships. No injuries or damage occurred due to the incident.

After shooting down the drones, the Laboon responded to distress calls after two commercial vessels came under attack on Saturday.

RELATED

Are more Navy engagements in the Red Sea coming soon?

Navy warships are being contested in the Red Sea at an unprecedented rate in modern times.

“The M/V BLAAMANEN, a Norwegian-flagged, owned, and operated chemical/oil tanker, reported a near miss of a Houthi one-way attack drone with no injuries or damage reported,” CENTCOM said in a statement Saturday. “A second vessel, the M/V SAIBABA, a Gabon-owned, Indian-flagged crude oil tanker, reported that it was hit by a one-way attack drone with no injuries reported. The USS LABOON (DDG 58) responded to the distress calls from these attacks.”

“These attacks represent the 14th and 15th attacks on commercial shipping by Houthi militants since Oct. 17,” CENTCOM said.

CENTCOM also said that two Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles were fired into international shipping lanes in the Southern Red Sea from Houthi controlled areas of Yemen on Saturday, but that no ships reported being harmed during that episode.

The Laboon, in addition to destroyers Carney and Mason, have all taken down drones in recent weeks and provided help to commercial vessels amid heightened tensions in the region stemming from the Israel-Hamas war.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement earlier this month that the U.S. has “every reason to believe that these attacks, while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran.” In response to the attacks, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Dec. 18 the creation of a multinational task force to help protect civilian ships in the region.

The Laboon is part of the Dwight D. Eisenhower’s carrier strike group, which departed Norfolk, Virginia, in October for a scheduled deployment. The carrier transited the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf last month.

9. Junior enlisted pay to be key congressional focus in 2024

Is this a key part of the recruiting solution?

Junior enlisted pay to be key congressional focus in 2024

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · December 22, 2023

Military pay will be a key focus of Congress in 2024, with conversations centered not only on the size of future raises for all troops but also whether junior enlisted personnel should see even higher hikes.

Lawmakers earlier this year backed plans for a 5.2% pay raise for all service members on Jan. 1, the largest annual pay raise in 22 years. The boost is not a result of congressional or executive branch generosity, but instead reflects the federal formula tying military salaries to civilian pay trends.

By that formula, the 2025 pay raise for troops should be 4.5%, the third consecutive year of pay hikes above 4% for military members.

White House officials or members of Congress could change that increase in their budget battles over coming months, either raising it to make up for higher cost-of-living concerns or dropping it to save money for other military priorities. But that has not happened since the early 2010s.

RELATED

Pay boosts for junior troops not yet a priority for Pentagon planners

Defense Department officials are scheduled to finish their review of military compensation in early 2025.

Lawmakers are more likely to keep the 4.5% raise mark and instead focus on targeted increases for troops with high-demand skills and junior enlisted personnel, a group whose annual base pay typically does not top $30,000.

Last summer, House Republicans advanced legislation to guarantee that even the lowest-ranking service members make at least $31,000. But the legislation was opposed by the White House, in part because of questions surrounding the cost and the other compensation those troops receive — things like housing stipends and enlistment bonuses.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s special military quality of life panel, has said he plans to make the junior enlisted pay issue a key focus of the committee’s work on the annual defense authorization bill this summer.

Pentagon leaders have pushed to postpone the debate until they complete their Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, a periodic review of troops’ pay and benefits. But work from that group isn’t expected to be finished until January 2025. Bacon has said the issue needs to be addressed sooner.

Work on the authorization bill is expected to start in February, but delays in Congress passing a full federal budget for fiscal 2024 could delay some of those hearings and debates.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · December 22, 2023

10. Taiwan not seeing signs of large-scale Chinese military activity pre-election

All warfare is based on deception. Do not assume your enemy will not attack, make yourself invincible. 

Taiwan not seeing signs of large-scale Chinese military activity pre-election

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-not-seeing-signs-large-scale-chinese-military-activity-pre-election-2023-12-26/?utm

Reuters

December 25, 202311:07 PM ESTUpdated 8 hours ago

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 26 (Reuters) - Taiwan is not seeing any signs of large-scale Chinese military activity before elections next month but is keeping a close watch on China, the island's defence ministry said on Tuesday.

Taiwan's Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary election will shape the Chinese-claimed island's relations with Beijing, which has over the past four years ramped up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims.

As the election approaches Taiwan has been reporting Chinese fighter jets and warships around the island, as well as balloons crossing the sensitive Taiwan Strait, though the military says they are most likely for weather monitoring purposes.

"So far we haven't seen signs they're making big moves, but nothing today doesn't mean there won't be something tomorrow or the day after tomorrow," Taiwan defence ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang told reporters in Taipei.

"We are watching all the time," he added.

China has not hidden its dislike of the presidential frontrunner Lai Ching-te from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, regularly denouncing him as a separatist and warning any moves towards Taiwan's formal independence means war.

Lai has repeatedly offered talks with China that have been rebuffed. He says Taiwan is already an independent country called the Republic of China, its formal name.

The defeated republican government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong's communists who declared the People's Republic of China.

Taiwan's defence ministry gives a daily update on Chinese military activities near the island, including how many aircraft it has detected.

Over the past year and a half China has staged two major rounds of war games near Taiwan.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

11. Opinion - There Is Finally Hope of Ousting Myanmar’s Military Junta

Who will assist the resistance?

Excerpts:

A U.S. framework for supporting the resistance already exists in the BURMA Act. Passed last year, it calls for supporting the struggle for democracy, imposing sanctions on perpetrators of the coup and human rights violations, providing nonmilitary aid for pro-democracy forces, and it authorizes Congress to appropriate necessary funding. However, follow-through has been slow, disappointing many in Myanmar.

Washington must meet the moment provided by the rebels’ success by fulfilling the pledges of the BURMA Act and persuading Myanmar’s neighbors Thailand and India to facilitate provision of more aid across their borders. The United States should also engage China with the message that the junta is the fundamental source of Myanmar’s instability and encourage Beijing to view resistance success favorably. The United States can also play an important role in funding and facilitating political discussions across the groups opposed to the military’s rule to ensure that they work toward a mutually acceptable framework for future government.

If the United States is serious about a free and open Indo-Pacific, then doing what it can to ensure the success of Myanmar’s growing resistance is not only the right thing but also a vital American interest.

Opinion - There Is Finally Hope of Ousting Myanmar’s Military Junta - The New York Times

nytimes.com · by Lucas Myers · December 22, 2023

Guest Essay

Myanmar’s Resistance Is Gaining Ground, but It Needs U.S. Help

Dec. 22, 2023

Credit…Adam Dean for The New York Times

By Ye Myo Hein and Lucas Myers

Mr. Ye Myo Hein researches Myanmar politics. Mr. Myers is an expert in Southeast Asian geopolitics.

For decades, Myanmar’s military junta has withstood both foreign pressure and an array of armed rebel groups opposed to its dominance of the country. But over the past two months, the generals’ aura of invincibility has been significantly dented at home. Resistance forces galvanized by the junta’s coup in 2021 — which seized power from a democratically elected government — have made unprecedented gains, seizing a growing number of towns, more than 400 military outposts and the strategic initiative.

These gains, achieved without significant international support, bring Myanmar to a critical point in the long struggle to throw off the yoke of the junta. It is imperative that the United States and its democratic allies provide real help to the resistance and start preparing for a future free Myanmar.

The military seized power in 1962 and has dominated Myanmar ever since, committing gross human rights abuses and imposing a self-isolation on the country that has led to some of the lowest living standards in Asia.

The United States, which under the Biden administration has elucidated a vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, should have a clear interest in supporting Myanmar’s resistance. Strategically located, a democratic Myanmar could better stand up to increasing Chinese and Russian influence, strengthen the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — which is perennially torn by divisions over how to deal with both China and Myanmar — and strike a blow against authoritarianism, a fight that Mr. Biden has put at the center of his presidency.

But the international community has long ascribed to a pessimistic narrative about Myanmar. It goes something like this: This moment is no different from past uprisings that were crushed, and divisions among Myanmar’s many ethnic groups will be impossible to overcome and could ultimately thwart any real democratic progress. Viewed in this light, the junta is often seen as the only force capable of preventing Myanmar from fragmenting. The United States has been far more supportive of democracy in Myanmar than most other countries have, but there is still concern in U.S. foreign policy circles over whether the resistance can defeat the military and the post-junta outlook.

The resistance’s success shows that those notions must be put aside.

It’s true that the junta enjoys military superiority over the rebels in terms of weaponry, such as heavy artillery and warplanes, which it has used in attacks that have laid waste to civilian areas. But the regime is under pressure across several fronts, and low troop morale has contributed to high rates of attrition, defection and desertion; whole battalions have reportedly surrendered.

By contrast, the resistance movement has been gaining ground, and the successful offensives launched by more than a half dozen rebel groups since late October have displayed a degree of military integration and coordination not seen before. There are signs that this is shifting the balance in their favor.

No longer is Myanmar’s conflict fundamentally about a number of ethnic minorities fighting separately against domination by the Bamar, the country’s majority ethnic group. It has become a shared struggle across ethnicities against a small cadre of Bamar ultranationalists in the military government who ignore the country’s diversity and desire for democracy.

Since the coup, the resistance movement has grown into a loose coalition that includes ousted members of the parliament from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and other parties, civil society actors, ethnic armed groups that have fought the junta for decades and, crucially, a younger generation that was raised with the hope that Myanmar was moving toward true democracy — until the coup snatched that away.

To be sure, there is as yet no consensus within the movement on a future political framework beyond a broad desire for an inclusive, federal democracy. Reaching such a consensus will be critical if the junta eventually falls — and will take great effort. But the battlefield coordination that we have seen in the past two months bodes well for a future of working together and may indicate that the risk of fragmentation is overstated. At any rate, it is a risk that countless people in Myanmar have shown they are willing to take to finally topple the generals.

The recent successful offensives took months of planning and consultation between the National Unity Government, a civilian shadow government that was formed to oppose the junta after the coup, and ethnic armed groups. Importantly, there has also been integration at the tactical level between People’s Defense Forces — largely comprising disaffected Bamar who took up arms in the wake of the coup — and the long-established ethnic militias. In recent fighting in northern Shan State, drone operators under the command of the National Unity Government fought alongside ethnic Kokang, Palaung and Rakhine units. A key challenge ahead for the resistance will be to build on this cooperation and avoid being split by the junta’s longtime divide-and-conquer strategy of playing off ethnic groups against one another.

China also is a potential threat to unity in the resistance and another important reason the United States should get more involved. Beijing has long pursued a strategy of hedging its bets in Myanmar, maintaining political, economic and military ties to the junta while also wielding influence among rebels along its border. It wants to maintain leverage in Myanmar to ensure border stability and safeguard its multibillion-dollar plans for an economic corridor that would run through the country, linking southwestern China with the Indian Ocean.

But China, which has stepped up its backing for the junta over the past year, may have become worried that the continuing rebel offensive had been too successful. Earlier in December, China used its influence to get representatives of the Three Brotherhood Alliance — which includes groups that operate near the Chinese border and spearheaded the recent offensives — to sit down for peace talks with the junta. Alliance members subsequently reaffirmed their commitment to defeating the military junta, and fighting has continued. But China could weigh in more forcefully if the resistance scores further gains.

A U.S. framework for supporting the resistance already exists in the BURMA Act. Passed last year, it calls for supporting the struggle for democracy, imposing sanctions on perpetrators of the coup and human rights violations, providing nonmilitary aid for pro-democracy forces, and it authorizes Congress to appropriate necessary funding. However, follow-through has been slow, disappointing many in Myanmar.

Washington must meet the moment provided by the rebels’ success by fulfilling the pledges of the BURMA Act and persuading Myanmar’s neighbors Thailand and India to facilitate provision of more aid across their borders. The United States should also engage China with the message that the junta is the fundamental source of Myanmar’s instability and encourage Beijing to view resistance success favorably. The United States can also play an important role in funding and facilitating political discussions across the groups opposed to the military’s rule to ensure that they work toward a mutually acceptable framework for future government.

If the United States is serious about a free and open Indo-Pacific, then doing what it can to ensure the success of Myanmar’s growing resistance is not only the right thing but also a vital American interest.

Ye Myo Hein @YeMyoHein5 is a fellow with the United States Institute of Peace and Wilson Center who researches Myanmar’s politics and its armed conflict. Lucas Myers @Lucasdeanemyers is senior associate for Southeast Asia at the Wilson Center, focusing on Indo-Pacific geopolitics and security and Chinese foreign policy.

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

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nytimes.com · by Lucas Myers · December 22, 2023

12. What War Games Really Reveal

Excerpts:

War games are not crystal balls, but they are powerful tools of influence. Domestically, war games can rally constituencies in Congress, the armed services, opposing political parties, or the public. Internationally, games can signal a country’s intentions and help bolster the credibility of steps it has taken to deter conflict. War games reveal what states care about, what domestic political actors want, and how states believe wars will occur and play out. The immersive quality of such games and the way they bring people together for a shared experience make them uniquely effective forms of persuasion. As Bloomfield, the political scientist and statesman, wrote of the games run by MIT during the Cold War, reentering the real world after a game was “like coming out of a deep sleep after a particularly vivid dream. It takes time for the carryover of emotional content from the game to reality to wear off.”

The richness of that experience is what makes war games so engaging and what helps them illuminate otherwise unpredictable situations. But they can be biased toward a specific conclusion and in this way become dangerous tools of propaganda to make a case for war. Done wrong, they can also turn the horrific reality of war into an abstraction, which could make a conflict seem less deadly. That is the effect that the sociologist Irving Horowitz had in mind in 1963 when he criticized Cold War-era thinkers such as Kahn, Schelling, Wohlstetter and Henry Kissinger as inhabitants of “a world of nightmarish intellectual ‘play.’”

On the other hand, as Gallagher has pointed out, war games can also demonstrate the cost and seriousness of war, leading states to carefully build deterrence and defensive capabilities. Games about why wars start, not just who wins, can reveal patterns of inadvertent escalation and suggest mechanisms or strategies that opposing countries can take to avoid war in the first place. Furthermore, games can play an important diplomatic role in building trust between both allies and adversaries.

War games can be biased toward a specific conclusion.

It would be harder for organizers to manipulate war games if the press and the public better understood them. That means asking the right questions about the games’ outcomes, including how the players arrived at those outcomes. Who is paying for and convening the game? What are their motivations for running the game? Who is playing the game? What assumptions and rules are embedded in the game? Are details of the game being leaked, publicized, or disseminated in a way that could benefit the sponsors? Asking and answering such questions does not nullify the utility of a game’s findings; instead, it provides necessary context for interpreting them.

The true value of war-gaming is its ability to immerse policymakers in a scenario that might be otherwise unthinkable and in which they might learn something about themselves. This is why war games do not predict the future but can shape it. Today’s war games do not foresee a future war between the United States and China. But the fact that they are being played at all should be viewed as a warning about where things are headed.

What War Games Really Reveal

Outcomes Matter Less Than Who Pays and Who Plays

By Jacquelyn Schneider

December 26, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Jacquelyn Schneider · December 26, 2023

Last January, the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives created a special committee to examine the economic and military challenges China poses to the United States. Mike Gallagher, a Republican representative from Wisconsin who is one of Washington’s most vocal China hawks, was an obvious choice to lead the panel. For the past year, Gallagher has used the committee to sound the alarm on China and rally support for new measures that could hinder Beijing in its competition with the United States.

In his quest to build political consensus around a tougher approach to China, Gallagher (and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Raja Krishnamoorthi) has employed one particularly effective tool: the war game.

In April, Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi convened a bipartisan group of lawmakers to spend an evening playing a war game that simulated a conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan. In Gallagher’s opening remarks, he said he hoped that playing the game would impart “a sense of urgency” and demonstrate “that there are meaningful things we can do in this Congress through legislative action to improve the prospect of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” Players were asked to act as advisers to the president, recommending diplomatic, economic, and military responses to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. These members of Congress gathered around a campaign map, their foreign and domestic moves adjudicated by a war-gaming facilitator from a Washington think tank. Their goal was to deter China, represented by a team made up of think-tank staff members. According to Gallagher, the game revealed that the United States needed to “arm Taiwan to the teeth”—a strong endorsement for a multibillion-dollar package of Taiwanese military aid that his China committee was considering at the time. Since then, Gallagher has taken his war game on the road, playing a version with Wall Street executives in New York City in early September, and he says he plans to play a similar game with leaders of American technology companies.

These congressional games came on the heels of a series of high-visibility unclassified Taiwan war games played in 2022 at prominent American think tanks. The outcome of these games made waves in American media, securing segments on the Sunday morning news shows and headlines in The New York Times and The Washington Post. The games drew broad attention partly because of who was playing them: among the participants were Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense and a possible future secretary of defense in a Democratic administration, and General James “Mike” Holmes, the retired four-star commander of Air Combat Command. Although run with different players and designs, these games demonstrated that there would be “no quick victory” for either side, that all military forces involved would suffer dramatic casualties, that the United States desperately needs more munitions, and that such a conflict would have a dangerous potential for escalation—even to nuclear war.

Despite the attention devoted to these outcomes, the games did not reveal anything novel or surprising about China or weaknesses in the U.S. military arsenal. But they did reveal something about policymaking and influence-peddling in the United States, where advocates of various foreign and domestic policies have come to see war games as a useful tool in advancing their agendas.

War games go beyond predicting futures; they are interactive and evocative experiences for players and compelling stories for domestic and foreign audiences. They can be used (knowingly and unknowingly) to influence choices about budgets, weapons, foreign policies, and, ultimately, international power. By designing and framing a war game carefully, planners can create an outcome of their choosing. Accordingly, a war game often reveals more about the interests and intentions of the players than it does about the outcome of the game itself.

In the case of the Taiwan games that are so popular in Washington right now, their value is not in informing defense leaders that a war between the United States and China would be difficult to win. U.S. officials don’t need war games to tell them that. The games are more useful to officials—and to outside observers—for what they reveal about the factions and players in American politics pushing the country to start preparing for war with China.

REHEARSING WAR

It is important to understand what war games are. While the Chinese game of Go is often credited as the first “war game,” it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that war games became professional military tools. The military campaign game Kriegsspiel introduced maps, dice, and rule sets created by Prussian officers. The games were interactive and engaging, and—for the first time in war-gaming history—realistic enough to simulate military battles. As the Prussian field marshal Friedrich Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Müffling exclaimed in 1824 after being introduced to it, “This is no ordinary game—this is a school of war!” The games were used so extensively in Prussian campaign planning and military training that many argued that they were key to Prussia’s victory over Austria in 1866. The combination of immersion and vividness captured the attention of Europe’s new industrial-age military leaders, who were keen to apply new scientific approaches to the large ground wars of the Napoleonic era.

Kriegsspiel focused on ground wars. In the United States, however, the most influential war games focused on naval warfare. As early as the turn of the nineteenth century, the U.S. Navy employed war games as part of its budgeting and planning process, and it was the Navy that professionalized military war games in the United States by making them a part of officer training. Similar to Kriegsspiel, which was modified by officers as they experimented with military campaign tactics, the Navy war games between World War I and World War II modified rules, scenarios, and players to account for different tactics, technologies, and points of view—all while gaming a Pacific war against Japan.

These interwar games shaped the naval tactics, logistics, and aircraft carrier deployments of the Pacific campaigns of World War II. After the war, Admiral Chester Nimitz told an audience at the U.S. Naval War College, “The war with Japan had been reenacted in the game room here by so many people in so many different ways that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise—absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war.”

During the Cold War, U.S. war games evolved to incorporate the impact of nuclear weapons. This new generation of games, played by the economist Thomas Schelling and the political scientist Lincoln Bloomfield at MIT; Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, and Herman Kahn at RAND; and officers at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon were largely free play, with limited rules or strict parameters. Unlike the Navy’s interwar games, designed to train military officers, these games involved senior civilian officials placed in highly immersive scenarios meant to recreate the high-stakes decision-making of a nuclear crisis. In one instance, a group convened for three straight days at Camp David in Maryland to war-game a scenario that foreshadowed the Berlin crisis of 1961. Red and blue cells had four hours to make each move, their actions adjudicated in heated debate among top experts of the day. The experience was so absorbing that Schelling, one of the organizers, remembered that “these were games in which people got desperately involved. . . . Their pride, their self-esteem, and sometimes even their local reputations were very much wrapped up.”

War games are not crystal balls.

War games reached an important inflection point in the 1960s with a series of games code-named Sigma that were focused on Indochina. These games included highly detailed scenarios, limited rules built by and adjudicated by a staff of experts (some sources claim that each scenario involved more than 1,000 man-hours to create) and played by senior decision-makers from across the federal government. The games’ findings—that strategic bombing would fail to convince the North Vietnamese to surrender and that the United States would end up stalemated in a bloody conflict in Vietnam—were remarkably prescient.

Despite the Sigma games’ success at predicting the outcome of the Vietnam War, senior government officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, distrusted the heavy emphasis placed on human decision-making. McNamara sought to decrease the subjectivity of games by replacing human play with computer simulations of warfare. The proponents of this “scientific” approach argued that computer-run war games could solve nuclear conflict by reducing human error caused by irrationality and emotion.

Ultimately, the drive to automate war games created a backlash as scholars at RAND and other war-gaming centers criticized the attempt to trivialize the human decision-making part of war. In the years after McNamara’s departure, the Pentagon returned to games that evoked the large-scale, richly detailed scenarios of the earlier Sigma games. Worried about potential nuclear escalation with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the Reagan administration called on Schelling to once again design immersive political-military games. Dubbed the Proud Prophet games, the series ran over seven weeks in 1983 and included 200 players.

Perhaps paradoxically, the normalization of games within defense planning led to a kind of stagnation in game design as they began to mirror the bureaucratization of the national security state. When Robert Work became deputy defense secretary in 2014, he concluded that war games were not evolving or providing valuable information. He tried to lead a renaissance, investing in war-gaming initiatives throughout the Pentagon, including the creation of a large library of games.

GAMING WASHINGTON

The history of war games shows how game designers and conveners can influence outcomes through their choice of players, rules, and scenarios. This is why, even though war games are ostensibly designed to help understand how a war might play out, the results of this “inner” game can reveal only so much. Instead, it is the outer game—who convened the game, who is playing it, how the game is played and distributed, and ultimately why it is played—that offers real insight.

The essential puzzle piece to understanding the outer game is the decision to run the game in the first place. Games are costly. The most famous U.S. war games—such as the Sigma, Global War Game, or Proud Prophet series—required thousands of man-hours to prepare and took senior decision-makers away from their primary duties for extended periods of time. Games can require so much logistical support that even the top gaming facilities in the Department of Defense, such as the one at the Naval War College, can run only a few a year. Because of the resources involved, there is a behind-the-scenes bureaucratic and political fight to determine which games will be “sponsored” and prioritized. The act of gaming a particular region, weapon capability, or doctrine signals who is currently wielding the most power in the Department of Defense and what that person or group cares about. For example, a 2019 “Global Integrated War Game” seemed at first glance to be an innocuous and jargon-heavy future warfighting scenario. A closer look at the sponsoring institutions—the Joint Chiefs of Staff and functional commands such as Cyber Command, Strategic Command, and Special Operations Command—revealed how the games were being used to influence a power shift within the Department of Defense away from the combatant commands, which focus on specific geographic regions, toward “global integrators,” commands whose functions span the globe.

Games played outside of government can also signal public sentiment and political will, providing adversaries with clues to the level of popular support for a particular scenario. If war games about a specific adversary are played widely in civilian society, this could be a sign that this society is considering the prospect of a future war. In Washington, games run by different think tanks can signal convergence around a policy problem. For example, today’s Taiwan games are being funded and run by think tanks that span ideologies and political parties.

The selection of participants can also reveal intentions. Game conveners may choose players who they believe will help them get to a certain outcome and avoid players that might derail their purpose. Alternatively, conveners can choose players based on how these participants might influence policy after playing the game. In this case, players become part of an entrepreneurial policy initiative in which the highly evocative experience of the game compels players to adopt a policy position. For example, for the 20XX future military capability games played from 1995 to 2000, the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment carefully chose the players, selecting up-and-coming civilian and military leaders who the team believed might influence defense policy on military technology for decades. One of those was Work, the future U.S. deputy secretary of defense, who cited the influence of these games on his technology-centered Third Offset Strategy, which called for investments in autonomy, unmanned systems, and network technologies.

U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher at a war game in Washington, D.C., April 2023

Amanda Andrade Rhoades / Reuters

Sometimes the mere act of attendance in a war game can lend credibility to the game’s outcomes. In his book Obama’s Wars, the journalist Bob Woodward describes a war game the Pentagon was running to help decide how many troops would be needed for the surge of U.S. forces into Afghanistan in 2009. According to Woodward, Douglas Lute, President Barack Obama’s special assistant and senior coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time, argued that the National Security Council, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department should boycott the game because he believed it was designed to find a certain outcome (namely, the number of troops the Pentagon believed should be sent to Afghanistan). As Woodward recounts, Lute told his colleagues: “We should not participate in this. First of all, we don’t need the war game. I can tell you what the answer’s going to be. So I’m not spending a day over there in the Pentagon drinking lousy coffee to get to the self-evident conclusion. . . . If State and DNI and NSC participate in this war game, we’re going to give it the legitimacy that it does not deserve.”

Choices about scenario, assumptions about adversaries’ objectives and capabilities, rules about how participants can play and what capabilities they can use, and the way in which outcomes are assessed can significantly affect the outcome of a game. These variables often shed light on what the game’s conveners want to achieve from playing it. For example, in the early twentieth century, U.S. Army advocates of airpower called for the integration of the airplane into war games at the Army War College, hoping that this would help bolster their case. Facilitators restricted how aircraft could be used, however, effectively assuring that airpower played very little role in the outcome of the game. To the chagrin of airpower enthusiasts, those who opposed building out the army’s airpower capabilities had new evidence to stymie investment in aircraft when the game was over.

Finally, how the outcome of a war game is shared or publicized reveals the intentions of the game’s conveners. This is especially true for games played within the Department of Defense, where games are usually classified and their distribution is highly restricted. Declassifying or leaking games suggests that organizations have incentives to publicize the results—as a deterrent threat or to send a bureaucratic signal. In 2020, for example, the Department of Defense disclosed at a news briefing that it had conducted a war game focused on Russian tactical nuclear weapons. The department revealed that the game was played at Strategic Command and included Mark Esper, then the secretary of defense, as a player. Much about the game was unusual: the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the participation of a sitting secretary of defense, and the almost unprecedented disclosure of highly classified strategic gaming. But the war game and its publicization came at an important moment in a bureaucratic fight. The Trump administration had supported the development of tactical nuclear weapons in its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. With the Trump administration in its final months, advocates saw a closing window of opportunity to secure funding and support for the controversial weapons. This may be why the administration decided to declassify and advertise the war game, which concluded that the United States needed a tactical nuclear weapon option to deter the Russians from using one.

THE DRUMS OF WAR

The circumstances surrounding today’s U.S.-Chinese games—who plays them, what they focus on, how they are played, and how they are publicized—provide important clues about the future path of U.S. policy toward China. The games’ findings—that Taiwan will urgently need arms and supplies from the United States, that the United States needs more munitions, and that the fight could be long and bloody—reflect what U.S. defense officials have been saying for almost a decade. But now those conclusions are being generated by a bipartisan bloc in Congress, reflecting the emergence of a faction within U.S. domestic politics that is keen to increase military and economic aid to Taiwan.

Two assumptions that undergird most of these games reveal how U.S. policy toward China is becoming more hawkish. The first is that the defense of Taiwan is a strategic interest for the United States. Players are asked not to debate whether the United States should aid Taiwan but instead how to do so. It is easy to imagine a different outcome if players were told to debate that basic objective. The second vital assumption is that China intends to invade Taiwan. “Last night’s exercise reaffirmed what we already know: Xi is running hypothetical invasion scenarios in his head every single day,” announced Ashley Hinson, a Republican representative from Iowa, after the congressional game in April. But the game, which provides no new information about Xi’s intentions, could not have reaffirmed anything of the sort: what is inside Xi’s mind is unknowable.

A few years ago, it may have been more likely to hear about war games involving inadvertent conflicts with the Chinese in the East or South China Sea. Those games focused on crisis de-escalation and deterrence and generally led to calls for the kind of power projection the United States has been comfortable conducting in the region over the last two decades: carrier group transits, combat patrols of U.S. fighter and intelligence aircraft, and exercises with allies and partners. The new war games, however, imagine a deliberate invasion of or attack on Taiwan by an overtly aggressive China. For the players representing the United States in these newer games, the goal is not just to de-escalate a simmering crisis but rather to defend the island—a mission that calls for a different set of policies than games designed to mitigate the danger of an attack rather than defeat it.

U.S. Marines at a military camp in the Philippines, April 2019

Eloisa Lopez / Reuters

It is worth considering what Beijing might conclude from watching the public discussion of these war games. For starters, the games likely reduce the uncertainty of Washington’s stated position of “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to the question of whether the United States would use force to defend Taiwan: it’s hard to imagine anything less ambiguous than a loud, public, and bipartisan discussion of the pros and cons of various options for how the U.S. military could help protect the island. The games might also signal to Beijing that anti-Chinese factions are gaining power and influence inside the U.S. political system, with a consolidation of support among powerbrokers in favor of military industrialization, restrictive trade, and increased arms sales to Taiwan.

China might also look at these war games and conclude the United States is on an unalterable course toward war. That would be a mistake: the games all fall short of calling for American forces to be stationed in Taiwan or for the United States to unambiguously, preemptively declare a military alliance with its government. They also do not anticipate or call for a U.S. military campaign against mainland China. These are important omissions from the games, although Chinese policymakers may interpret these omissions to be strategic rather than indicative of genuine restraint on Washington’s part.

DON’T GET PLAYED

War games are not crystal balls, but they are powerful tools of influence. Domestically, war games can rally constituencies in Congress, the armed services, opposing political parties, or the public. Internationally, games can signal a country’s intentions and help bolster the credibility of steps it has taken to deter conflict. War games reveal what states care about, what domestic political actors want, and how states believe wars will occur and play out. The immersive quality of such games and the way they bring people together for a shared experience make them uniquely effective forms of persuasion. As Bloomfield, the political scientist and statesman, wrote of the games run by MIT during the Cold War, reentering the real world after a game was “like coming out of a deep sleep after a particularly vivid dream. It takes time for the carryover of emotional content from the game to reality to wear off.”

The richness of that experience is what makes war games so engaging and what helps them illuminate otherwise unpredictable situations. But they can be biased toward a specific conclusion and in this way become dangerous tools of propaganda to make a case for war. Done wrong, they can also turn the horrific reality of war into an abstraction, which could make a conflict seem less deadly. That is the effect that the sociologist Irving Horowitz had in mind in 1963 when he criticized Cold War-era thinkers such as Kahn, Schelling, Wohlstetter and Henry Kissinger as inhabitants of “a world of nightmarish intellectual ‘play.’”

On the other hand, as Gallagher has pointed out, war games can also demonstrate the cost and seriousness of war, leading states to carefully build deterrence and defensive capabilities. Games about why wars start, not just who wins, can reveal patterns of inadvertent escalation and suggest mechanisms or strategies that opposing countries can take to avoid war in the first place. Furthermore, games can play an important diplomatic role in building trust between both allies and adversaries.

War games can be biased toward a specific conclusion.

It would be harder for organizers to manipulate war games if the press and the public better understood them. That means asking the right questions about the games’ outcomes, including how the players arrived at those outcomes. Who is paying for and convening the game? What are their motivations for running the game? Who is playing the game? What assumptions and rules are embedded in the game? Are details of the game being leaked, publicized, or disseminated in a way that could benefit the sponsors? Asking and answering such questions does not nullify the utility of a game’s findings; instead, it provides necessary context for interpreting them.

The true value of war-gaming is its ability to immerse policymakers in a scenario that might be otherwise unthinkable and in which they might learn something about themselves. This is why war games do not predict the future but can shape it. Today’s war games do not foresee a future war between the United States and China. But the fact that they are being played at all should be viewed as a warning about where things are headed.

• JACQUELYN SCHNEIDER is a Hoover Fellow and Director of the Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Foreign Affairs · by Jacquelyn Schneider · December 26, 2023

13. France completes military withdrawal from Niger, leaving a gap in the terror fight in the Sahel

France completes military withdrawal from Niger, leaving a gap in the terror fight in the Sahel

BY CHINEDU ASADU

Updated 6:33 PM EST, December 22, 2023

AP · December 22, 2023

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — France on Friday completed the withdrawal of its troops after they were asked to leave Niger by the country’s new junta, ending years of on-the-ground military support and raising concerns from analysts about a gap in the fight against jihadi violence across the Sahel region of Africa.

The last French military aircraft and troops departed Niger by the Dec. 22 deadline set by the junta which severed ties with Paris after the coup in July, the French Army General Staff told The Associated Press by email. France already announced this week that it would close its diplomatic mission in Niger for “an indefinite period.”

However, the country would continue to be involved in the Sahel — the vast expanse south of the Sahara Desert which has been a hot spot for violent extremism — although differently, President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday during a visit to a base in Jordan.

“I decided on some important reconfigurations,” Macron said. “We will continue to protect our interests over there but our armies won’t be as present permanently, will be less stationary and also less exposed,” he said.

Niger’s junta described the end of the military cooperation with France as the start of “a new era” for Nigeriens.

“Niger stands tall, and the security of our homeland will no longer depend on a foreign presence,” it said via X, formerly known as Twitter. “We are determined to meet the challenges before us, by consolidating our national military and strategic capabilities.”

But analysts say a vacuum will be created by the troops’ departure. It will “leave Niger and the entire Sahel worse off” in terms of overall counterterrorism efforts as Niger was seen as the last remaining Western partner in the decade-long fight against jihadi groups in the region, said Ryan Cummings, director of Africa-focused security consulting company Signal Risk.

Some 1,500 French troops were training and supporting the local military in Niger, which had been envisioned as the base for counterterrorism operations in the region after anti-French sentiment grew in Mali and Burkina Faso, both run by juntas that have also forced French troops out.

But after deposing Niger’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, the nation’s junta led by Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani severed military relations with France and other European countries. Instead, he sought defense cooperation with Russia, whose private mercenary Wagner Group is already active in parts of Africa but faces an uncertain future there following the death of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The withdrawal of foreign military missions is already affecting security in Niger, where the number of attacks has surged, according to Oluwole Ojewale with the Dakar-based Institute for Security Studies.

“The country has not demonstrated sufficient military capabilities to fill the vacuum created by the withdrawal. Strategic attacks are being launched by the various armed groups who now roam freely in the ungoverned spaces in the country and incidents have remained on the rise,” said Ojewale.

The junta in Niger has formed a security alliance with the military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso to coordinate counterterrorism operations across the Sahel.

However, much of the immediate impact of the departure of French troops would be felt in western Niger’s Tillabéri region which has been the hot spot for extremism in the country, said Ryan with Signal Risk consulting.

“Violent extremist organizations may utilize the vacuum created to exploit and expand their operations” in the Sahel, he said.

—-

Associated Press writer John Leicester in Paris contributed.

AP · December 22, 2023

14. Escaping Xi’s China by paddleboard: ‘I rushed into the water and thought if they catch me, they catch me’

Escaping Xi’s China by paddleboard: ‘I rushed into the water and thought if they catch me, they catch me’

Dissidents face an uncertain future in Taiwan and South Korea after fleeing

Helen Davidson and Chi Hui Lin in Taipei

Sun 24 Dec 2023 05.00 EST

The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · December 24, 2023

When Li Cheng En pushed his standup paddleboard off the Xiamen beach on China’s Fujian coastline, a mother and son stood nearby, watching him. It was dark, and he moved quickly, but felt sure he’d be caught. Li had spent the day scouting for a secluded beach from which he could launch his bold plan to flee China. But everywhere he went there were fences or security guards and cameras.

“At around 7.30pm, when I decided to go, I thought that there was no more choice for me,” he says. He waited for the security guard shift change. “I rushed into the water and thought that if they would catch me, they would catch me.”

Li entered the heavily guarded waters that span the shortest distance between China and Taiwan. As a surfer, he says he was confident on the board and the water was calm, but it was January, and cold. He passed by what he says were Chinese alarm systems, setting one off.

map

“It started blaring. I became very nervous at that moment, and I paddled away from that location as fast as I could.”

Hours later, he could sense land in front of him. He arrived on an empty island beach in the Kinmen archipelago, which belongs to Taiwan but sitting is just over three miles from China.

“When I arrived at the Kinmen beach, the wave knocked me off the board. But at the same time, I saw the Blue Tears, it was so beautiful,” he says, referring to the seasonal phenomena of bioluminescence. “Each wave carried blue light, and it made me really happy to see it.”

Li is speaking to the Observer in Taipei. A quietly spoken middle-aged man, he is now living legally but temporarily in Taiwan, restricted from working or leaving the city area. Li is not his real name, which he asked not to be used for fear of repercussions for his family left behind in China. The Observer has verified parts of his story through court documents, GPS tracking of his journey, and Chinese media reports.

Li is among a growing list of dissidents fleeing the increasingly authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping in China. Under Xi, the Chinese Communist party authorities have cracked down on activists, lawyers, counter-culture groups and human rights campaigners. Many have been imprisoned or had exit bans placed on them, preventing them from leaving the country and forcing them to flee by less conventional means.

My family is my biggest concern. The police still go to visit them and pressure them

Li Cheng En, human rights campaigner

Earlier this year, Lu Siwei, a Chinese former human rights lawyer, fled over the border to Laos but was detained by Laotian police while trying to board a train to Thailand, and was deported back to China. In August, a Xi critic, Kwon Pyong, fled China by jetski to South Korea, towing barrels of fuel behind him. In September, an activist, Chen Siming, travelled via Laos and Thailand before boarding a plane which made a stopover in Taiwan. He refused to reboard, and spent two weeks living in the airport transit lounge before flying on to Canada for asylum.

In China, Li was an activist, bringing litigation suits against local authorities to defend community rights, and campaigning for human rights causes, including in Hong Kong and Myanmar. He has been questioned, detained and fined. He says that friends who campaigned with him have recently been jailed and he is still under investigation for “subversion of state power”.

“The sentence would be four to 15 years, so I didn’t think I could stay in China any longer,” he says. So he left.

Li’s arrival at Kinmen went undetected, and he says he walked for an hour until he found someone to take him to a police station where he could turn himself in. Court documents reveal the coastguard confiscated two phones, one life jacket, one standup paddleboard, and a paddle.

He spent three months in detention. The Kinmen district court found he had violated immigration and customs laws, and sentenced him to time served. He is now living in the community but cannot support himself and says that NGO-provided assistance will end soon. His passport has expired. While he says that some third countries have said he can travel to them, they wil not allow it without valid documents.

Li has not spoken of his journey publicly before, and has been advised not to. But he feels it could help him. “My family is my biggest concern. The police still go to visit them and pressure them. They even showed my family the photos and videos they had of me on the beach in Xiamen when I was about to leave, to warn them.”

Staying in Taiwan is almost impossible. There is no UNHCR office in Taiwan, which is not recognised as a country by the UN. Taiwan recently decriminalised arriving unlawfully to seek political asylum, but it has no refugee programme, and governments are sensitive to community fears about Chinese infiltration.

Authorities can make case-by-case assessments, and have assisted some Hongkongers to resettle. But the Taiwan Association for Human Rights said that no Chinese national has been granted the right to reside as a “refugee” on a long-term basis “due to the abstract concepts of requirements and stringent conditions” imposed by regulations. Li hopes a third country will let him travel to its borders so that he can claim asylum, resettle, and bring his family out of China. “Taiwan’s government won’t solve this problem for me, and the third countries also think that this is beyond their responsibilities,” he says.

The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · December 24, 2023

​15. How We Deterred Iran in the Gulf Last Time

How We Deterred Iran in the Gulf Last Time

After an Iranian mine ripped open a U.S. ship, Reagan made it costly for Tehran.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-we-deterred-iran-in-the-gulf-last-time-reagan-navy-operation-praying-mantis-580b3c95?mod=commentary_article_pos5

By William J. Luti

Dec. 25, 2023 1:13 pm ET

USS Samuel B. Roberts underway after the ship struck a mine in the Persian Gulf, April 14, 1988. PHOTO: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

“We’re not in an armed conflict with the Houthis,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh recently stressed, and “part of why we are in the region is to bolster our deterrence.”

Such words aren’t assuring for our Navy ships in the Red Sea, which have been fending off missiles and attack drones fired by the Iran-backed rebels for the past several months. Yes, the Navy’s boast in an Army-Navy Game day video that one of our destroyers is 22-0 against Houthi fire is impressive and a testament to the skill of our Navy crews. But if the scoreboard flips to 100-1, Americans will demand to know why Iran didn’t feel all that deterred by our naval deployments and why our sailors were injured or killed.

Actually bolstering deterrence requires the political will to impose a cost that far outweighs any gain the Houthis could hope to attain. Anything else is posturing that puts our sailors on the defensive and in harm’s way.

Fortunately, we know how to re-establish deterrence. We’ve been here before.

On April 14, 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts was hit by an Iranian mine while escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. The explosion lifted the ship out of the water, ripped a 30-foot hole below the waterline, destroyed a 15-foot section of the keel, and seriously injured 10 sailors.

As recounted in Bradley Peniston’s gripping account, “No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf,” the crew welded steel plates and strung cables to keep the ship’s stern from breaking off in a heroic case of damage control.

Four days later, at the direction of President Reagan, the U.S. Navy, in combined surface-ship and air attacks, engaged the Iranian Navy in a daylong battle named Praying Mantis.

When my crew and I manned up for the early launch from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, we didn’t know the ensuing fight would become the largest naval and air battle since World War II.

Praying Mantis remains a case study in strengthening deterrence. Our victory kept Iran’s navy at bay for more than two decades and helped change the course of the Iran-Iraq War, which had upended the region for eight bloody years. Iran never laid mines in the Gulf again.

Like the eponymous insect, our retaliatory strike was swift and savage. Our mission required the destruction of two Iranian oil platforms that served as staging bases for attacks on Gulf shipping and sinking one of two notorious Iranian frigates that had targeted merchant-ship bridge crews with machine-gun fire.

My squadron of EA-6B Prowler electronic attack aircraft was tasked to shut down Iranian fire-control radars and communications so our aircrews could safely reach their targets.

U.S. Marines inspect an anti-aircraft gun on the Iranian Sassan oil platform during Operation Praying Mantis, April 18, 1988. PHOTO: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

The battle’s opening salvo damaged the oil platforms with naval gunfire and explosive charges. Iran responded by sending into the developing fray two F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft, a guided-missile patrol boat and a swarm of armed Boghammer speedboats.

We dispatched these threats unrelentingly. One Phantom was damaged, and both were chased off by surface-to-air missiles. The USS Wainwright and USS Simpson sank the patrol boat with missiles and naval gunfire. A-6E Intruder aircraft attacked the Boghammers, sinking one and damaging others. The remaining boats fled back to base.

Later that afternoon, an Intruder piloted by Cmdr. Bud Langston took fire from the Iranian frigate Sahand, which had sortied from port in reaction to our earlier strikes. He and his crew returned fire with missiles and a laser-guided bomb just as a missile fired by the USS Joseph Strauss hit Sahand. Another Intruder and A-7 Corsairs arrived overhead, delivered a barrage of missiles and bombs, and set the ship ablaze.

Several hours later the Sahand rolled over and sank. Boldly, if not foolishly, its sister ship, the Sabalan, arrived on scene and fired at another Intruder, piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Jim Engler. He and his crew returned fire with a single laser-guided bomb down the stack, exploding the frigate’s engine room. A remarkable feat.

As other Enterprise air-wing aircraft began their bombing runs, Reagan called off the attack after Joint Chiefs Chairman William Crowe said, “We’ve shed enough blood for one day.” Iran later towed the severely damaged Sabalan to port.

Iraqi ground advances in April coincided with Praying Mantis and the USS Vincennes’s accidental downing of an Iranian airliner in July. The combined effect convinced the ayatollah that the risk was too high to keep fighting. Iran was exhausted. By August the Iran-Iraq War was over.

Now history repeats itself. The multinational naval task force deployed to escort Red Sea shipping amid Iranian proxies’ hostility is a welcome step. But if the Biden administration wants the Houthis to stop, it should remember that Houthis can’t fire missiles and drones they no longer have.

Mr. Luti is a retired U.S. Navy captain and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 26, 2023, print edition as 'How We Deterred Iran in the Gulf Last Time'.

16. Taiwan ranked 14th-richest country

• Home Business

Tue, Dec 26, 2023 page12

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2023/12/26/2003811149

Taiwan ranked 14th-richest country

• Staff writer, with CNA
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•  
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• Taiwan was the 14th-richest among 193 countries and territories in the world this year, an analysis by Global Finance magazine based on GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power showed last week.
• The world rankings released by the magazine on Thursday last week listed Ireland as the richest country in the world, ahead of Luxembourg in second, with Singapore third, Qatar fourth, Macau fifth, the United Arab Emirates sixth, Switzerland seventh, Norway eighth, the US ninth and San Marino 10th.
• Also finishing ahead of Taiwan were Brunei (11th), Hong Kong (12th) and Denmark (13th).
• 
  

People walk past the Taipei 101 skyscraper on April 28.

• Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
• Among other important economies, Germany ranked 19th, South Korea 30th, the UK 31st, Japan 38th, Russia 60th and China 77th, the report said.
• Global Finance said its rankings are based on GDP per capita data from the IMF, which are adjusted to take into account inflation rates, and the cost of local goods and services in each economy.
• The resulting figure, known as purchasing power parity, is expressed in international dollars to allow comparisons between different countries, the report said.
• Many small countries that hit above their weight economically placed near the top of the rankings, often due to to their sophisticated financial systems, tax programs to attract foreign investment, large stores of hydrocarbons or other natural resources, the report said.
• Citing the IMF, the magazine said that some of those figured should be taken with a pinch of salt, as many countries in the rankings, including first-placed Ireland, are tax havens.
• This means that the wealth of such countries “was originally generated elsewhere, which artificially inflates their GDP,” and often benefits multinationals far more than the average person, the report said.

17. Taiwan holds first live-fire training of rifles and handguns at bathing beach

Taiwan holds first live-fire training of rifles and handguns at bathing beach | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

www3.nhk.or.jp

Taiwan's army has conducted its first drills using live ammunition in rifles and handguns outside military facilities.

The exercise took place on Tuesday at a swimming area in the northern city of Taoyuan on the scenario that enemy forces were trying to land at the beach. About 50 personnel took part.

The army said the drill was aimed at boosting soldiers' skills in a realistic environment amid China's mounting military pressure on Taiwan.

The practice site is close to Taoyuan International Airport and within 30 kilometers of central Taipei and the presidential office.

The site is thought to be one of the likely landing areas in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

In the practice, soldiers armed with rifles and handguns fired at mock targets from set positions using live ammunition. They then examined their accuracy.

An army colonel said the military wants to improve individual soldiers' abilities through drills in a realistic coastal environment.

www3.nhk.or.jp

18. Five Ukrainian Spectacular Long-Range, Special Ops Strikes Carried Out in 2023

Five Ukrainian Spectacular Long-Range, Special Ops Strikes Carried Out in 2023

The front line of Ukraine’s war with Russia stayed pretty much stagnant this year, but that certainly didn’t prevent Ukrainian special operations from hammering key long-range Russian targets.

by Stefan Korshak | December 26, 2023, 8:56 am | Comments ( 1)

kyivpost.com

May 13 – Patriot missiles ambush five Russian aircraft

In mid-April Ukraine announced the arrival of its second donated Patriot system, NATO’s most effective and long-range air defense system. Where it was going to be set up and its role was a military secret. It was widely assumed that the first system, received earlier in the year, was covering air space over the capital, Kyiv.

On May 13 Kremlin military aircraft flying routine supply and training missions over Russia’s western Bryansk region suddenly started falling out of the sky disturbing local residents used to a totally peaceful life more than 70 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. According to later reports, two transport helicopters, a rare and difficult-to-replace electronic warfare helicopter, a strike jet and Russia’s latest Su-35 fighter jet all were hit by something before disappearing from radars.

Russian media later estimated that its air force had lost close to $100 million worth of aviation assets in one morning. Russian air traffic controllers immediately grounded all flights.

In November Ukraine’s Air Force confirmed widespread speculation that Ukrainian air defense forces had somehow secretly moved the not-particularly-mobile Patriot system close to the Russian border, and staged an ambush firing its deadly long-range anti-aircraft missiles into air space the Russian military considered completely safe.

On Dec. 5 something shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber, more than 80 kilometers from the Ukrainian mainland well out over the Black Sea. It was only the third Su-24 destroyed by Ukrainian fire since the war began. Both air crew died. Russian military social media reported that, once again, the Ukrainians had moved the Patriot missile battery to another area and caught the Russian air force unawares.

Other Topics of Interest

Russia Plans to Mobilize Ukrainian Children in Occupied Territories

Leaked conscript files and registration showed Russia’s plan to mobilize Ukrainian children born in 2007 for its invasion, said Mariupol mayor advisor.

August and September – Ukraine kamikaze drones strike military airfields in Russia

On Aug. 19 images appeared on Russian social media showing a Tu-22 strategic bomber, an aircraft used by Russia to fire cruise missiles against Ukrainian cities, burning on the ground at Soltsy air base near the city of Novogorod. A drone strike was blamed. Another plane was damaged. The airfield is some 650 kilometers. from Ukraine-controlled territory.

Two days later at least 12 Ukrainian Mugin drones, each the size of a motorcycle, hit another airfield near the Russian city Kursk. According to some reports cardboard Australian drones were used to spoof Russian radars. According to early reports five modern combat aircraft and two air defense systems intended to protect the airfield from drone strikes were hit in the raid. Russia said that damage was minimal and then all aircraft were evacuated from the airfield.

On Sept. 1 a Russian Il-78 air fuel tanker, was hit by a drone on an airbase near the city Pskov, more than 700 kilometers from the nearest Ukraine-controlled territory. Video showed the aircraft, of which there were only 20 in the entire Russian air force, burning on the tarmac.

Ukraine’s military later announced all the attacks were launched by behind-the-lines operatives

September – Storm Shadow destroys Russia’s main naval base, headquarters, and ships

In late August Ukrainian commandoes landed on the Russia-occupied Crimea peninsula and among other acts of sabotage blew up a critical early-warning radar and a nearby long-range anti-aircraft system.

A little less than two weeks later, Ukrainian air and naval forces launched a raid of at least ten British-French Storm Shadow / SCALP cruise missiles, and at least three kamikaze robot boats, all targeting major warships from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Kremlin’s main Sevastopol naval port, in occupied Crimea.

The Kremlin said all the missiles were shot down and damage was minor.

Satellite overflights and Russian social media gave a very different picture: a missile-carrying submarine had been totally destroyed, an amphibious assault ship wrecked and set on fire, and all three of the military drydocks in Sevastopol badly damaged. This left the Russian navy facilities in Sevastopol not only unable to fix the damaged ships already there, but to undertake any other repairs in the near future.

Three days later a pair of Storm Shadow missiles plowed into Black Sea Fleet headquarters while a command-level meeting was in progress. According to reports dozens of senior naval staff were injured or killed, including, possibly, the Black Sea Fleet commander.

The Russian navy evacuated Sevastopol to temporary bases on the eastern Black Sea coast a week later. The last time the Russian navy abandoned Sevastopol, was in 1941 when German troops took over the port. Independent observers said it was Russia’s worst naval defeat in decades. The Kremlin said the rebasing was temporary.

Oct. 17 – Ukrainian ATACMS missiles wipes out most of a regiment of Russian helicopters

Ukraine’s biggest request to America, since day one of the war, was for long-range precision-guided missiles. Washington dragged its feet on the decision for more than a year on fears handing over accurate surface-to-surface ballistic missiles to Kyiv might provoke Russia.

According to US media, the Biden administration in September reversed that position and decided to hand over around 20 MGM-140 M39 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles to Ukraine. The M39 is relatively outdated with a range of about 165 kilometers and a cluster-munition warhead configured to blast a large area with shrapnel and explosives, rather than penetrating deep into a bunker or a warship.

Ukrainian strike planners launched as many as 18 missiles on Oct. 17, against airfields and nearby military support facilities close to the occupied cities of Berdyansk and Luhansk.

Once again, the Kremlin claimed damage was minor, but, satellite overflights over the next few days showed at least nine attack or transport helicopters totally destroyed, with at least as many damaged by shrapnel and explosions. Ammunition bunkers had been flattened, and at least two anti-aircraft missile systems positioned to protect the airfields had been hit as well.

Russian helicopter gunship almost constant presence above the key Donbass and Zaporizhzhia front lines, prior to the attack, effectively disappeared overnight. The Kremlin evacuated both airfields. Russian mil-bloggers later called the attack the Russian Air Force’s worse day since World War II.

Nov. 30 / Dec. 1 – Ukrainian saboteurs blow up Siberian train in tunnel blocking most China freight

During the night of Nov. 30 five freight cars loaded with diesel or aviation fuel blew up inside a rail tunnel in the Russia’s Buryatia Oblast, a region bordering Mongolia. The explosion took place on the Baikal-Amur railway, Russia’s main rail line for freight moving between Russia and China.

Rapid excavation and removal of the wrecked and burnt rail cars was effectively impossible due to the unstable rock and soil around the tunnel, multiple geological faults in the area, water flooded the tunnel due to broken drainage systems, and extreme cold.

Russian railway planners rerouted traffic onto a steeply-gradient line leading around the tunnel and through a high mountain pass.

The Muya Mountain range is located in some of Russia’s most rugged and isolated terrain. The region has few roads.

The next day a train on the bypass was crossing a bridge over one of the gorges leading to a pass in the Muya Mountains when it also was blown up, making the bypass impossible to use.

Ukraine’s national intelligence agency the SBU took credit for the attacks. Repair work was in progress but according to Russian media the smashed train debris had frozen under meters of ice and clearing the line would probably take months.

kyivpost.com

19. Understanding Ukraine: 12 Books in English

For those who still need to conduct their area study in preparation for support to Ukraine.

Understanding Ukraine: 12 Books in English

Ukrinform has prepared a selection of English-language books dedicated to Ukraine-related topics and published this year.

by UkrInform | December 26, 2023, 9:22 am

kyivpost.com

Ukrinform has prepared a selection of English-language books dedicated to Ukraine-related topics and published this year.

Ukraine still remains in the focus of global attention. To understand this war, to learn more about Ukraine and read Ukrainian writers, we have prepared a selection of new titles published in English. This selection includes translations from Ukrainian into English, along with English-language books about Ukraine and the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Invasion by Luke Harding

This is an account of Russia’s war against Ukraine by British journalist Luke Harding.

“[T]his elegantly written, deeply researched … history … [makes] Invasion a valuable reminder of those momentous months where ‘unthinkable things happened… things which seemed impossible in the 21st century’”, writes The Guardian about this book authored by Luke Harding, its foreign correspondent caught by the war in Ukraine.

Invasion is his personal experience of traveling to Ukraine after the full-scale invasion — talking to people, visiting hot spots and areas of hostilities. Harding captures this pivotal moment in history with candour, insight, and an unwavering focus on the human stories at its core.

The journalist claims that one of the main goals of his book is to convey to foreign readers that what happened in Ukraine could happen to them, their sons, sisters, and daughters.

The book was released by Guardian Books and shortlisted for the 2023 Orwell Prize. The Ukrainian translation by Vivat Publishing House was announced at the 2023 Lviv Book Forum in October. The writer presented his book in person.

Other Topics of Interest

President Zelensky's Christmas Address in Full

"For the second year now, we have learned another form of it, another dimension. This is Christmas in times of full-scale war."

Luke Daniel Harding (April 21, 1968) is a British journalist, a correspondent for The Guardian, who worked in Russia from 2007 until denied re-entry and deported upon his return from the UK on February 5, 2011. The Guardian said his expulsion was linked with his critical articles on Russia, a claim denied by the Russian government. Harding’s book Mafia State, published in 2011, discusses his experience in Russia and the political system under Vladimir Putin.

The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy

The American historian and professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University wrote a book about the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II. It was released in the U.S. in February 2023, and in Ukraine in August.

In the book, the historian analyzes Russia’s full-scale invasion, its origins, course, and potential consequences for Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and the world; he also describes the process of Western unification against the backdrop of the war and Russia’s movement toward isolation.

“On the one hand, this book is a way of overcoming trauma. The other reason why I decided I had to write it is that the war stemmed from many things, but one of them was the mockery made of history in Vladimir Putin’s speeches and also in his article on the unity of Russians and Ukrainians. From the very beginning, there was a very important historical context to which I, as a historian, could respond,” Mr. Plokhy said during the presentation of his book at Ukrinform.

The British edition of The Telegraph included Serhii Plokhy’s new book in its 50 best books of 2023.

“Perhaps the most definitive account of the history leading up to today’s war in Ukraine, from the author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy,” is how Mr. Plokhy’s book is described in the rankings.

The Zelensky Effect by Henry Hale and Olga Onuch

The book was written by Henry Hale, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and Olga Onuch, Professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester. The book is dedicated to the history of leadership and national identity in the context of corruption and war.

“You cannot understand the historic events of 2022 without understanding Zelensky. But the Zelensky effect is less about the man himself than about the civic nation he embodies: what makes Zelensky most extraordinary in war is his very ordinariness as a Ukrainian,” the book’s description reads.

The book was released in English late last year, and Choven Publishing House has already announced the translation of the book into Ukrainian.

War Diary by Yevgenia Belorusets

In March, the Kyiv war diaries of Yevgenia Belorusets, translated into English by Greg Nissan, were co-published in the U.S. by New Directions and ISOLARII.

“[War Diary] … is a monumental, deeply penetrating document of life in Kyiv during the first forty-one days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” New Directions notes.

War Diary will be published with a new preface by Belorusets and new entries that discuss the ongoing war, Russian nationalist propaganda and its relation to the 2014 war in Donbas.

From February 24 to April 5, Belorusets, who remained in her native Kyiv, wrote and photographed daily for the German weekly Der Spiegel, describing everyday life, the normality of which was lost overnight in a brutal war of aggression. These texts were later collected in the printed book In the Face of War. The collection also included Kyiv Wartime Diary. In November last year, Belorusets was awarded the 2022 Horst Bingel German Literary Prize for this work.

Yevgenia Belorusets is a Ukrainian artist, journalist, photographer, translator, and writer. She co-founded Prostory, a literary and artistic magazine, and is a member of the Khudrada curatorial group. As previously reported by Ukrinform, Yevgenia received the Women of Europe Award in 2023.

77 Days of February, a collection of personal essays

77 Days of February, an English translation of collected essays, was released in the U.S. in the electronic and audiobook formats.

The audiobook was narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, winner of the 2019 Best Male Narrator Audie Award and 2022 Audie Award nominee. The publisher is Scribd, a U.S.-based company which specializes in affordable services of all e-book formats, podcasts, and presentations from around the world.

77 Days of February includes reports written by journalists of Ukraine’s Reporters Magazine between February 23 and May 9 — two symbolic dates in Russian military ideology.

"The invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine suspended the count of days and threw Ukrainians into an intertemporal period where February, the month when the great war began, is still going on. Pain, fear, hatred, and sometimes despair is felt in this period and in these candid stories. But most importantly, there is hope. This is a naked nerve and an honest voice of the new Ukrainian reality, recorded first-hand by the journalists and authors of Reporters Magazine,” reads the description.

The War Came to Us by Christopher Miller

The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine by the American journalist Christopher Miller was published simultaneously in the U.S. and UK by Bloomsbury.

“The book traces my journey in parallel with Ukraine, through peacetime, revolution and war. It is a story about the people and events that have shaped a new Ukrainian identity and nation along the way, as well as the conflict and threats they are currently experiencing. I want to share their stories with the world,” Mr. Miller wrote about the book.

Christopher Miller is a former correspondent of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. He worked in Kyiv for more than 10 years, covering events in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states. He also contributed to Politico and BuzzFeed News. Since October 2022, he has been working at the Financial Times.

The cover of the book features a photo of the Ukrainian flag from Ilovaisk by Ukrainian photographer Maks Levin who died in Kyiv Oblast in March 2012.

Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War

In the UK, Penguin Books published a collection of 22 essays written by nine Ukrainian authors and translated into English for the first time.

These selected works convey the realities of life in Ukraine during the first year of the full-scale invasion.

As the publisher notes in the description of the book, the authors document everyday life, ponder the role of culture amid conflict, denounce Russian imperialism and revisit their relations with the world, especially Europe and its ideals, as they try to comprehend the horrors of war.

MARIUPOL #HOPE by Nadiya Sukhorukova

Nadiya Sukhorukova kept notes in March-April 2022, when Mariupol was being captured by Russian troops, and posted the texts on social media. The book recreates the story of what Mariupol residents experienced after the Russian army invaded the city.

The book was translated from Ukrainian to English by Kseniia Kaian, the author’s colleague and one of the protagonists in the Mariupol. Unlost Hope documentary filmed on the basis of diaries by the Organization of Ukrainian Producers.

Fragments from #MARIUPOL #HOPE were quoted during a speech made in the European Parliament in 2022 by Edgars Rinkēvičs, former Foreign Minister of Latvia and the country’s incumbent President. British actress Greta Bellamacina also narrated excerpts from the diary during a charity gala in support of Ukraine, which took place in the UK in 2022.

Behind the Scenes of the Empire by Vira Ageyeva

In her book, literary scholar Vira Ageyeva analyzes the Ukrainian resistance to the empire and the struggle for the preservation of collective memory through the prism of the cultural process.

Vira Ageyeva is a literary scholar and literary critic. She holds a doctoral degree in Philology. Since 1996, she has been a professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Ms Ageyeva is a member of the jury at the BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year contest. She researches the problems of stylistic differentiation in the 20th century’s Ukrainian literature and specific features of the development of Ukrainian modernism. She has authored more than 20 literary studies.

The book was published in English by ibidem Press.

A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails by Halyna Kruk

A collection of poetry by Halyna Kruk was released in May by Arrowsmith Press, a U.S.-based publishing house.

Most of the verses in the collection were written after February 24, in Ukrainian and English simultaneously.

“These stunning poems of witness by one of Ukraine’s most revered poets are by turns breathless, philosophical, and visionary. In a dark recapitulation of evolution itself, Kruk writes: ‘nothing predicted the arrival of humankind…/ nothing predicted the arrival of the tank…’” reads the description of the book.

The collection was translated by Yulia Ilchuk, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Stanford University, and Amelia M. Glaser, Professor of Literature at UC San Diego.

In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine

Arrowsmith Press, a U.S.-based publishing house, released a poetry collection under the title In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine, edited by poets Ilya Kaminsky and Carolyn Forché.

The anthology includes poems by Anastasia Afanasieva, Yuri Andrukhovych, Alex Averbuch, Natalka Bilotserkivets, Dmitry Bliznyk, Andriy Bondar, Ekaterina Derisheva, Boris Humenyuk, Yurii Izdryk, Aleksandr Kabanov, Kateryna Kalytko, Iya Kyva, Marianna Kiyanovska, Lyudmila Khersonska, Boris Khersonsky, Halyna Kruk, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Oleh Lysheha, Yulia Musakovska, Viktor Neborak, Lesyk Panasiuk, Marjana Savka, Iryna Shuvalova, Ostap Slyvynsky, Lyuba Yakimchuk, Oksana Zabuzhko, and Serhiy Zhadan.

“This is the silence before the explosion, between volleys of rifle fire, the silence of foreboding, of fear and insomnia, and the silence of complicity. The poems were written in the hour of war, in the lyrics of passing through fire…” the compilers Tnote in their introduction.

Who Will Make the Snow? by Taras and Marjana Prokhasko

Who Will Make the Snow? is the first children’s book by Taras Prokhasko and Marjana Prokhasko’s first experience as an illustrator. This is a warm fairy tale about a family of moles and their thirteen little kids, about friendship and mutual help, care and home comfort, and about who really makes the snow.

“Originally published in Ukraine, this sweet, strange, lightly philosophical book, illustrated with soft, scribbly drawings, features newborn twin moles who live in a whimsically imagined woodland community. The title comes from the moles’ belief that when they die, they will rise to the clouds and make the snow for those left behind”, wrote The New York Times.

The book was first published in Ukrainian in 2013, won the BBC Book of the Year and LitAccent of the Year awards, was included in the White Ravens world catalog, travelled the world, and was translated into many languages.

The English translation by Boris Dralyuk and Jennifer Croft for Elsewhere Editions was included in the Best Children’s Books of 2023 selection by The New York Times.

ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR 2024

In January 2024, the long-awaited book about the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, written by Time Magazine correspondent Simon Shuster, will see the light. The books The Showman (in the U.S.) and The Fight Is Here (in the UK) will be printed by HarperCollins Publishers.

This month, the American Tilbury House will publish a book by Ukrainian children’s writer Oksana Lushchevska Quiet Night, My Astronaut.

In the spring of 2024, a novel by the Ukrainian writer Sophia Andruhovych entitled Felix Austria will be released in the U.S. The book was translated into English by Ukrainian literary critic and translator Oleksandr Chernetskyi.

In May 2024, Olena Stiazhkina’s book Ukraine, War, Love. A Donetsk Diary will be released. The book was translated by Anne O. Fisher and will be published as part of the series from the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.

In June 2024, Penguin Books, one of the UK’s most famous publishing houses, will release Job’s Call Sign by Oleksandr Mykhed. This year, the author became a winner of the 2023 Shevelov Prize for the best book of essays.

kyivpost.com

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