Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"States can rise and fall simultaneously: they may seize territory or arm themselves rapidly, even as their economies wheeze and stumble. The anxiety caused by relative decline, not the confidence that comes from rising strength, can make ambitious powers erratic and violent. Finally, apocalyptic wars can occur even when power transitions do not: once-rising challenges have gone down fighting when they realized that they had provoked rivals they wouldn't otherwise catch. Understanding this deadly pattern from the past – call it the "peaking power trap" – is critical to preparing for a dark future that is unfolding faster than you might think. The steaks are hardly academic. "The history of failure in war," General Douglas MacArthur explained in 1940, "can almost be summed up in two words: too late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance; too late in standing with one's friends." It would be "the greatest strategical mistake in all history," he added, if America failed to grasp 'the vital moment.'"

– Micheal Beckley, Hal Brands, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

"My mission is to communicate. To wake people up. To give them my energy and accept theirs. We are all in it together. And I respond emotionally as a worker, a mother, an artist, and a human being with a voice. We all have a voice. We all have the responsibility to exercise. To use it."

– Patti Smith

"Resist much, obey little."

– Walt Whitman

As a thought exercise on the last day of 2025 : How many articles in today's National Security News and Commentary are related to cognitive warfare and narrative intelligence? I am not just talking about the obvious one where I have commented. Just to assist:

The NATO Chief Scientist Research Report frames Cognitive Warfare as a contest for “cognitive superiority” in which adversaries use synchronized military and non-military activities to influence how people perceive, make sense of events, and decide and act, at individual, group, and societal levels. It stresses that modern technologies expand reach and effectiveness, since the openness and connectedness of democracies can be exploited via propaganda, disinformation, deepfakes, and other information threats that degrade trust and polarize societies. The report treats Cognitive Warfare as broader than classic InfoOps, PSYOP, STRATCOM, or cyber operations. It is often not aimed at narrowly defined target audiences or outcomes, and it can be designed to create chaos and complexity below the threshold of armed conflict.

And with that, the long term exercise is to consider how many articles over the last year are related to the description above? (my answer: too many for me to count).

1. Iran Vows to Address Economic Problems as Protests Enter Fourth Day

2. Russia Doubles Down on Allegations Ukraine Targeted Putin Residence

3. Five Takeaways From China’s Military Drills Around Taiwan

4. Trump’s Latest Venezuela Tactic: Revealing a Secret Strike to World

5. Venezuela Detains Americans Amid Growing U.S. Pressure

6. The Separation: Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership

7. China drills feed info war targeting faith in Taiwan’s defenses

8. Assessing “Cognitive Warfare”

9. Ukraine Now Has Europe’s Biggest Military. What Happens to It When the War Ends?

10. The Blogs: When Money Collapses So Does Consent: Iran’s Currency Crisis and Bazaar Behavior

11. Iran on the brink? Key information about the protests

12. Deterrence by Disruption

13. Afghanistan, A History Already Forgotten: Counterinsurgency Lessons U.S. Senior Military Leaders Must Not Ignore

14. ‘We’ve Metastasized Russia’s Military,’ Say Ukrainian Partisans

15. A Middle Way for American Foreign Policy

1. Iran Vows to Address Economic Problems as Protests Enter Fourth Day

Summary:

Iran is facing a fourth day of protests driven mainly by economic distress rather than overt anti-regime demands. Officials are signaling a more conciliatory posture than in past uprisings, with limited arrests and no clear evidence yet of large-scale police violence. President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged pressure on livelihoods and urged the interior ministry to hear grievances. A new central bank governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati, pledged to curb inflation after the rial’s sharp slide. Hard-line justice officials warned of swift punishment for “currency fluctuations” and firm responses to unrest or property damage. Food inflation hit 64.2% (Oct 2025), and executions are running far above last year.

Comment: De opresso liber (to help the oppressed free themselves). Do we have a way to communicate with the Iranian people who are resisting? Where is VOA Persian Service and Radio Farda when we need them? What is one way to reduce the resistance? Listen to and solve the grievances of the people. WIll Iran do that or will it conduct harsh crackdowns to suppress all resistance?

Iran Vows to Address Economic Problems as Protests Enter Fourth Day

WSJ

Still, hard-liners are promising a harsher crackdown if protests spiral out of control.

By Benoit Faucon

Dec. 31, 2025 12:24 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-vows-to-address-economic-problems-as-protests-enter-fourth-day-98f949c6?mod=hp_lead_pos6

Demonstrators gathered Monday in Tehran. Zuma Press

Iranian officials are saying they will address the economic problems that have brought protesters to the streets for a fourth straight day, but some conservative leaders are warning of a harsh response if things escalate.

Government officials appear so far to be taking a more conciliatory tone than they have toward past mass demonstrations that were more sharply aimed at the Islamic Republic’s rule. While some arrests have been made, there hasn’t yet been evidence of the kind of police violence that resulted in hundreds of deaths in 2022 demonstrations over the country’s strict religious codes.

Part of the reason, say analysts, is that the protests are focused on economic concerns and not on toppling the government. Iran cracks down harshly on political dissidents and has executed more people in 2025 than in any year in the past four decades.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Monday that the government was aware of the pressure on people’s livelihoods and urged the interior ministry to hear their demands.

Iran appointed a new central bank governor this week, Abdolnaser Hemmati, who promised to get a grip on inflation. His predecessor resigned Monday after protests by merchants broke out over the precipitous drop in value of the rial, the country’s currency. “We must stabilize the country’s economic conditions so that people can find peace,” said Hemmati.

Iranian Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, who has played an important role in political repression, has called for “the swift punishment of those responsible for currency fluctuations.” Mohammad Movahedi-Azad, Iran’s general prosecutor, warned that any attempt to turn economic protests into a tool of “insecurity” or “destruction of public property will face a legal, proportionate and firm response,” according to judiciary news agency Mizan.

A woman shopped Wednesday in Tehran, where food-price inflation has provoked discontent. Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA/Shutterstock

Iran’s food inflation reached 64.2% in October, according to the World Bank, the second highest in the world after South Sudan. The rial has lost 60% of its value since the June war with Israel that decimated much of Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure. The rial’s weakness also stems from international sanctions after Iran failed to clinch a deal with the U.S. over its atomic program earlier this year.

Even some of the country’s leading conservatives have vowed to hear out the demonstrators. Parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a former commander in the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told lawmakers Tuesday that “protests must be treated with generosity, responsibility and full accountability.”

Authorities on Wednesday released six students detained during protests at Tehran University, the university’s student council said. Five workers at a western Iranian sugar factory who had been striking for better pay were released late Tuesday, according to the Free Workers’ Union of Iran, the country’s main federation of independent trade unions.

Mustapha Pakzad, a geopolitical analyst focused on Iran, said repression could rapidly harden if the protests turn overwhelmingly against the Islamic Republic. “The regime is saying it wants to listen to protesters’ harsh language, but we are past talk therapy, and many people want a fresh beginning, a new system,” he said.

More than 1,870 people have been executed in Iran so far this year, around twice as many as last year, according to data collected by the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, an advocacy group that documents human-rights violations in Iran. More than 490 people have been executed since Nov. 1 alone, surpassing the total for all of 2021.

People walked past closed shops Tuesday in Tehran following protests over a plunge in the value of Iran’s currency. Majid Asgaripour/Wana News Agency/Reuters

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

WSJ

2. Russia Doubles Down on Allegations Ukraine Targeted Putin Residence

Summary:

Russia claims Ukrainian drones targeted POTUS Vladimir Putin’s heavily defended Novgorod residence, citing interception of scores of drones and releasing limited video it says shows wreckage, but it has provided no verifiable evidence and Ukraine denies any attack. Moscow is using the allegation to justify tougher retaliation threats and to harden its posture in Trump-led peace talks, portraying Kyiv as engaging in “state terrorism.” The claim surfaced after POTUS met Zelensky and discussed U.S. security guarantees, which Russia rejects. European officials call the allegation a distraction meant to derail negotiations. China and India urged restraint and continued talks.

Comment: Do we know for sure if this took place or not? Is this an information operation? If so, who is behind it and what effect do they hope to achieve (e.g., Russia and it hopes to divide Ukraine and the US?). It seems like Russia is leaning into this - are the Russians trying too hard?

Russia Doubles Down on Allegations Ukraine Targeted Putin Residence

WSJ

Officials use the alleged attack as a pretext to threaten retaliation, tougher negotiations

By Thomas Grove

and Georgi Kantchev

Updated Dec. 31, 2025 6:55 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-doubles-down-on-allegations-ukraine-targeted-putin-residence-61dab799

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. Mikhail Metzel/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/EPA/Shutterstock

It is known as Dolgiye Borody, or Long Beards, and it is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favored official residences, built on a lake shore in the country’s northwest. In the past, it was used by Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev.

The Kremlin has alleged that Ukrainian drones targeted the well-protected site in Novgorod and is using its claim to justify a hardening of its stance in peace negotiations. After the Kremlin declined to provide evidence to back up its assertions, Russia’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday published a video of what it said was a downed Ukrainian drone. The footage, shot in a snowy forest at night, couldn’t be independently verified.

Ukrainian officials from President Volodymyr Zelensky on down have vociferously denied undertaking any such attack. That hasn’t stopped Putin from trying to use the accusations to sour relations between Washington and Kyiv as it looks to weaken Ukraine’s negotiating hand.

Russia says it intercepted 91 drones aimed at the Novgorod residence, which is ringed by sophisticated air-defense systems, according to satellite images reviewed for a 2024 report by the Institute for the Study of War.

President Trump said he was “very angry” after Putin leveled his allegation in a phone call Monday. Asked if the U.S. had evidence such an attack had taken place, Trump replied: “You’re saying, maybe the attack didn’t take place—that’s possible too, I guess, but President Putin told me this morning it did.”

Officials in Moscow have seized on it as a warrant to increase its punishment of Kyiv and target government buildings. Russia also says it is a reason to recalibrate its negotiating points with Trump. So far, Russia has made no concessions or softening of its demands during months of talks toward ending the war, plans for which have become increasingly unacceptable to the Kremlin.

President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said weekend talks in Florida made progress toward ending the war in Ukraine. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

No independent intelligence assessments been made public to confirm the veracity of Russia’s allegation. Russia’s Defense Ministry also released what it said was a witness account of a man living in the area who said he was woken by loud noise.

The Kremlin made its accusation a day after Trump’s nearly three-hour meeting with Zelensky on Sunday, a discussion which the U.S. president praised as “excellent” and even raised the prospect that he might travel to Kyiv to press his case for peace.

Zelensky said Trump had agreed to U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine to deter another Russian invasion, though he acknowledged the duration of the assurances was still a discussion.

The apparent progress toward bringing the two leaders onto the same page put Putin on the back foot, analysts say.

“From Putin’s perspective, the last Mar-a-Lago summit went badly. Russia cannot accept any security guarantees for Ukraine,” said Slawomir Debski, visiting professor of strategy and international relations at the College of Europe in Natolin, Poland. “Since these are precisely the issues that matter, Moscow’s interest is not compromise—but another breakdown of talks.”

Peace talks have evolved in recent weeks from a 28-point plan that was largely informed by Russia’s vision for the end of the conflict, to a 20-point plan that more closely reflects Ukrainian and European concerns.

Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov said Putin told Trump that the alleged attack would require “the most serious response,” during their call Monday. The Kremlin declined to say whether Putin was at the residence in question at the time.

For Kyiv’s European allies, the Russian allegation was a deliberate distraction. “Moscow aims to derail real progress towards peace by Ukraine and its Western partners,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, said on X on Wednesday. “No one should accept unfounded claims from the aggressor who has indiscriminately targeted Ukraine’s infrastructure and civilians since the start of the war.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the targets and timing of retaliatory strikes had already been determined. He said that while Russia would remain in Trump-led peace talks, its negotiating positions would alter given Kyiv’s embrace of “state terrorism.”

Ukraine has acknowledged its role in some assassinations and sabotage attacks deep inside Russian territory but is adamant that it wasn’t behind any attack on Putin’s residence.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said on X on Tuesday that the lack of plausible evidence from Russia was evidence that the attack didn’t happen.

Since the start of the year, Trump has insisted that Putin is committed to peace, but the Kremlin leader has made no significant steps in that direction, refusing to relinquish his maximalist demands.

In recent weeks, the Russian president has increasingly appeared on national television dressed in military fatigues promising to achieve his goals in Ukraine—in particular the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the entire Donbas region—either through negotiations or by force.

A Ukrainian serviceman walking near buildings damaged by Russian attacks in Kostiantynivka, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, earlier this month. Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters

Putin has dangled numerous business opportunities in Russia in front of the U.S. president, in an attempt to maintain momentum in warming bilateral relations, all while refusing to make a peace deal.

“The game may have been up for Putin trying to stay on Trump’s good side without actually ending the war,” said Samuel Charap, a veteran Russian analyst and political analyst at Rand, an American nonprofit global-policy think tank. “Either he was given or made up an excuse to take a harder line.”

Russia’s allies China and India urged Moscow to eschew intensifying the war and called for the continuation of negotiations.

Leonid Slutsky, the head of a pro-Kremlin far-right party in Russia, said punishment should be swift. “It’s not just a provocation against Russia, but sabotage against American peace efforts,” he said.

Meanwhile, Zelensky on Tuesday said the possibility of U.S. troops being stationed in Ukraine was under discussion but would be for Trump to decide. He also announced further meetings between Ukraine and its European allies for early January, including in Ukraine.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 31, 2025, print edition as 'Russia Insists Ukraine Targeted Putin Residence'.

WSJ

3. Five Takeaways From China’s Military Drills Around Taiwan

Summary:

China’s “Justice Mission 2025” drills encircled Taiwan with fighters, naval units, and coast guard ships, while rockets splashed down in nearby waters, signaling a rehearsed blueprint for isolation, coercion, and, if needed, amphibious assault. Seven declared exclusion zones functioned as a blockade warning and a message to deter U.S. intervention. Beijing also aimed the signal at Japan, citing “external interference” amid major U.S. arms sales and Tokyo’s Taiwan-contingency rhetoric. POTUS publicly downplayed the drills, though allies voiced concern. Taiwan answered with rapid-response drills, tracking vessels and dispersing missile defenses. The operational effect was limited, but ambiguity and readiness improved.

Comment: "Justice Mission" - sounds a little reminiscent of "Just Cause" (as a naming convention only).

The Five:

1. China is preparing to strangle Taiwan and fend off the U.S.

2. Beijing wants the U.S. and Japan to stay out of it

3. Trump shrugged

4. Taiwan is practicing, too

5. China is taking the long view

China is taking the long view, unitil it isn't. When does China shift to the near term? How do we know when the shift to the near term comes?

Five Takeaways From China’s Military Drills Around Taiwan

WSJ

Beijing encircled the island this week and warned outsiders to stay away

By Joyu Wang

Dec. 31, 2025 5:53 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/five-takeaways-from-chinas-military-drills-around-taiwan-47c64aee

Chinese military drills under way. Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images

TAIPEI—China’s steadily expanding military forces conducted large-scale drills around Taiwan this week, dispatching jet fighters, naval ships and coast guard vessels to encircle the island and firing rockets into nearby waters.

China’s military announced the start of the “Justice Mission 2025” exercises on Monday morning and on Wednesday afternoon declared the drills “successfully completed.” Here are five takeaways:

1. China is preparing to strangle Taiwan and fend off the U.S.

Beijing said it was performing maneuvers that would be needed to isolate and seize Taiwan—demonstrating how Chinese forces would try to strangle the self-ruled island and pressure it to surrender or else embark on a painful and risky amphibious invasion. Beijing claims the self-ruled island as its own territory, to be seized by force if necessary.

China warned aircraft and ships to avoid seven designated drill zones around Taiwan, an effective blockade. On Tuesday, China fired 27 rockets from its eastern coast, some landing closer to Taiwan’s main island than ever before, said Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-sheng, a Taiwan military intelligence official.

An image released by China's military shows helicopters involved in this week's exercises. Eastern TheatER Command/Reuters

Rockets with such range—more than 120 miles—could be used to target Taiwan’s supply lines, subsea internet cables and LNG terminals—all Achilles’ heels for the island—said Lin Ying-yu, an associate professor at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.

Performing exercises on all sides of the island also sent a message of deterrence to the U.S. and any other forces that might consider stepping in to defend Taiwan.

“This exercise is markedly different because it presented us with two concurrent and mutually supporting objectives: sea control within the strait; and sea denial east of the strait,” said Alessio Patalano, a professor of war and strategy in East Asia at King’s College London.

2. Beijing wants the U.S. and Japan to stay out of it

China’s Defense Ministry opened the drills on Monday with “a stern warning to Taiwan independence separatists and external interference forces.”

That pointed to two recent developments: the Trump administration’s approval for over $11 billion in weapons sales to Taiwan and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s November comment that Japan could be drawn into a conflict over Taiwan—a remark about a so-called “Taiwan contingency” that drew fury from Beijing.

A Taiwan jet fighter takes off from an air base in Hsinchu. Cheng Yu-Chen/AFP/Getty Images

“Beijing is warning Washington against increased efforts to defend Taiwan,” said Amanda Hsiao, a China director for the political-risk advisory firm Eurasia Group.

Beijing also intended to show Tokyo what kind of trouble a Taiwan contingency could cause, said James Yifan Chen, who teaches diplomacy and foreign policy at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.

3. Trump shrugged

Taiwan’s military is dwarfed by China’s, and the island’s ability to deflect a Chinese attack depends on whether the U.S. steps in. One big question from China’s drills this week was how Washington would respond.

When President Trump was asked about the China encircling Taiwan at a news conference on Monday, he shrugged. “Nothing worries me,” he said. “They’ve been doing that for 20, 25 years.” Trump has focused on the positive in his relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with the two leaders planning to meet in April.

The drills, however, prompted statements of concern about heightened tensions from U.S. lawmakers, and from around the world, including the European Union, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

4. Taiwan is practicing, too

Taiwan has been steadily building a deterrent force and reworking a defensive strategy that is aimed at making China’s military think twice before attacking.

Taiwan responded to the exercises with rapid-response drills, deploying mobile missile units, displaying Patriot missiles and sending tanks onto the streets, among other measures, the Taiwan military and its affiliated media said.

The Taiwan coast guard travels close to its Chinese counterpart. Taiwan Coast Guard/Reuters

The coast guard and navy followed the Chinese vessels in what the officials described as exercising its jurisdictional authority.

While dozens of flights within Taiwan were canceled and some international flights were delayed, shipping remained largely unaffected, and there were no reports of disruption to energy imports. The Taiwan stock exchange’s TWSE index gained 1% this week as of Wednesday’s close.

5. China is taking the long view

China would prefer to take Taiwan under its control without force. “Justice Mission 2025” was an amped up version of Beijing’s long-running, multifaceted pressure campaign to convince the people of Taiwan that they would be better off submitting to Beijing.

But Beijing’s military is continuing to modernize and grow, including with the expansion of what is already the world’s largest naval fleet. China’s ambitions extend beyond Taiwan, projecting power past the so-called first island chain, a string of territory that includes Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, and the drills illustrate China’s intent to challenge U.S. supremacy in the Indo-Pacific region.

China has carried out periodic large-scale military drills around Taiwan in recent years, and the latest round could have been planned well in advance—likely before the U.S. arms sales approvals were announced on Dec. 17, according to some military analysts. Tamkang University’s Lin said it would take at least two weeks for China to carry out a major operation like this one.

But China is “now in a position to enact large-scale exercises on short notice,” said Patalano. “Above all it creates a greater challenge to anticipate whether an imminent action is an exercise or ‘the real thing’.”

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

WSJ

4. Trump’s Latest Venezuela Tactic: Revealing a Secret Strike to World

Summary:

POTUS chose to publicize a covert U.S. strike on a Venezuelan dock, an operation U.S. officials say was conducted by the CIA under expanded authority to target drug traffickers and elements tied to the Maduro government. POTUS disclosed the action on Dec. 26 and later added detail while refusing to name the agency, trading deniability for overt signaling. The episode marks an escalation in pressure on Caracas and a departure from typical practice of keeping covert action plausibly unacknowledged. Some CIA officials reportedly objected to the exposure. Critics on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Chris Murphy, condemned the strike as unlawful and strategically misdirected.

Excerpts:

Trump’s decision to use the spy agency to conduct attacks inside Venezuela, despite a significant U.S. military buildup in the region, might be due in part to the debate on Capitol Hill over whether he needs congressional approval for military operations against Venezuela, said Geoff Ramsey, who follows Venezuela at the Atlantic Council.

Attacks on targets such as the one Trump disclosed might not accomplish the administration’s objectives, Ramsey said. “Maduro is unlikely to be intimidated by covert actions if they are aimed at low-level drug traffickers,” he said.

The CIA has a long history of engaging in covert action in Latin America, including operations several decades ago that backed regime change in Guatemala, Chile and Nicaragua. More recently, the agency has largely shifted to working with and sharing intelligence with regional allies.

In May, CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said the agency was applying counterterrorism tactics to what has long been considered a law-enforcement issue.

“At the end of the day, we’re talking about dismantling a network,” Ellis said at the time on a conservative political podcast. “And that is something that CIA has spent two decades in the war on terror learning how to do.”

Comment: It should go without saying that POTUS has the authority to reveal any covert action.

Trump’s Latest Venezuela Tactic: Revealing a Secret Strike to World

WSJ

CIA attack on Venezuelan soil represents a major escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign

By Shelby Holliday

, Dustin Volz

and Costas Paris

Updated Dec. 30, 2025 5:59 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trumps-latest-venezuela-tactic-revealing-a-secret-strike-to-world-b6dcd7d9

President Trump speaking this week at a Mar-a-Lago press conference. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

A Central Intelligence Agency strike on a dock in Venezuela earlier this month was the first-known operation inside the country since President Trump authorized the spy agency to operate clandestinely against its drug traffickers and government.

It was Trump who decided the strike wouldn’t remain a secret.

He first mentioned it on a radio show that aired Dec. 26, saying the U.S. had destroyed “a big plant or facility where ships come from.” He has revealed more details in recent days, including that the target was believed to be an “implementation area” where boats were loaded with drugs.

Pressed by a reporter on which arm of the government was responsible, Trump replied: “I don’t want to say.” But according to several U.S. officials, the CIA conducted the attack.

When Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro made no public comment after the operation, Trump might have decided that disclosing it himself would send a clear message. “Trump is likely leveraging covert operations to pressure Maduro,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned the reported strike in a post Tuesday on X.

“Airstrikes on land targets. The illegality of Trump’s insane war in Venezuela is out of control,” Murphy said. “Remember, this has NOTHING to do with stopping drugs from entering America. Venezuela produces cocaine bound for Europe.”

The U.S. is dedicating significant firepower to taking out alleged drug boats around South America. Here is how the AC-130J Ghostrider gunship and the MQ-9 Reaper drone work.

Trump’s willingness to disclose the activities of the CIA without naming the agency is far different from the practices of most other presidents, who have for decades rarely mentioned drone strikes and other secret operations it has conducted. Use of the CIA is often intended to sidestep debate about using legally questionable methods abroad.

In 2019, Trump tweeted a classified image of a damaged Iranian facility that had been captured by a spy satellite. He was indicted in 2023 for retaining classified documents that were found at his Mar-a-Lago residence after his first term, though the charges were later dismissed.

Trump said in October that he had given permission for covert action in Venezuela, telling reporters he had “authorized” it because Caracas has “emptied their prisons” and were sending drugs to the U.S., allegations that Venezuelan officials dispute.

Some CIA officials were upset that Trump publicized an operation normally intended to be secret or at least have no obvious links to the U.S. government, current and former officials said.

“There was near-universal dismay among former intelligence officials that President Trump chose to disclose what almost certainly was intelligence community covert action,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations officer.

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Normally, such an operation would allow for public deniability while sending a message to Maduro that more strikes can come at any place or time, he said.

The CIA declined to comment. The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment about Trump’s remarks. It couldn’t be determined whether there were casualties in the attack.

Covert action, which is authorized in what is known as a presidential finding, can involve a range of secret activities including paramilitary and lethal operations meant to influence political, economic or military conditions in foreign countries.

The dock attack, which was reported earlier by CNN, represents a major escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuela. It couldn’t be determined by The Wall Street Journal whether the CIA had engaged in other activities inside the country.

Trump’s decision to use the spy agency to conduct attacks inside Venezuela, despite a significant U.S. military buildup in the region, might be due in part to the debate on Capitol Hill over whether he needs congressional approval for military operations against Venezuela, said Geoff Ramsey, who follows Venezuela at the Atlantic Council.

Attacks on targets such as the one Trump disclosed might not accomplish the administration’s objectives, Ramsey said. “Maduro is unlikely to be intimidated by covert actions if they are aimed at low-level drug traffickers,” he said.

The CIA has a long history of engaging in covert action in Latin America, including operations several decades ago that backed regime change in Guatemala, Chile and Nicaragua. More recently, the agency has largely shifted to working with and sharing intelligence with regional allies.

In May, CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis said the agency was applying counterterrorism tactics to what has long been considered a law-enforcement issue.

“At the end of the day, we’re talking about dismantling a network,” Ellis said at the time on a conservative political podcast. “And that is something that CIA has spent two decades in the war on terror learning how to do.”

Write to Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com, Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com and Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 31, 2025, print edition as 'Trump Reveals Secret Venezuela Strike'.

WSJ

5. Venezuela Detains Americans Amid Growing U.S. Pressure

Summary:

Venezuelan security forces have detained several Americans since the Trump administration shifted from prisoner talks to a military and economic pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, according to a U.S. official. Some detainees face legitimate charges, but Washington may designate at least two as wrongfully detained. The arrests include three Venezuelan-American dual nationals and two U.S. citizens with no known Venezuela ties; most identities remain unknown. Earlier negotiations led to the release of 17 Americans and permanent residents, but releases stopped after talks were suspended. The detainee count rose again in the fall, alongside U.S. naval deployments, strikes on alleged drug boats, and actions targeting Venezuelan oil exports.

Comment: If we strike I assume we have plans to rescue these Americans.

Venezuela Detains Americans Amid Growing U.S. Pressure

NY Times · Edward Wong · December 31, 2025

By Anatoly Kurmanaev Annie Correal and Edward Wong

Anatoly Kurmanaev reported from Caracas, Venezuela.

Dec. 31, 2025

Updated 2:56 p.m. ET

The number of American citizens held in Venezuela has grown since the start of the U.S. military and economic campaign against President Nicolás Maduro.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/world/americas/venezuela-detained-americans.html

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela at a rally in Caracas, the capital, earlier this month.Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times

Venezuelan security forces have detained several Americans in the months since the Trump administration began a military and economic pressure campaign against the government of the South American nation, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

Some of the detainees face legitimate criminal charges, while the U.S. government is considering designating at least two prisoners as wrongfully detained, according to the official. Those arrested include three Venezuelan-American dual passport holders and two American citizens with no known ties to the country, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has long used detained Americans, whether guilty or innocent of serious crimes, as bargaining chips in negotiations with Washington, his greatest adversary.

President Trump has made the release of Americans held overseas a priority in his two presidencies, and sent his envoy, Richard Grenell, to Venezuela to negotiate a prisoner deal days after the start of his second term.

The ensuing period of talks between U.S. and Venezuelan officials resulted in the release of 17 American citizens and permanent residents held in Venezuela.

But the Trump administration’s decision to suspend those talks in favor of a military and economic pressure campaign against Mr. Maduro put an end to prisoner releases. The number of detained Americans in Venezuela began to rise again in the fall, according to the U.S. official. That rise coincided with the deployment of a U.S. naval armada in the Caribbean and the start of airstrikes against boats that Washington says transport drugs on Mr. Maduro’s orders.

U.S. Air Force Hercules aircraft in Puerto Rico, in December, which are part of the buildup of U.S. forces in the region.

The United States further escalated its pressure campaign this month, targeting tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and paralyzing the country’s biggest source of exports.

The U.S. Embassy in Colombia, which deals with Venezuelan affairs, declined to comment on American detainees in Venezuela, and referred questions to the U.S. State Department.

The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Venezuela’s Communication Ministry, which handles the government’s press requests, did not respond to a request for comment.

The identities of most of the Americans detained in Venezuela in recent months are unknown.

The family of a traveler named James Luckey-Lange of Staten Island in New York City, reported him missing soon after he crossed Venezuela’s volatile southern border in early December.

The U.S. official said Mr. Luckey-Lange, 28, is among the recently imprisoned and is one of the two Americans who may be designated as wrongfully detained.

Mr. Luckey-Lange is the son of the musician Diane Luckey, who performed as Q Lazzarus and is best known for her 1988 single “Goodbye Horses.” A travel enthusiast and amateur martial arts fighter, Mr. Luckey-Lange worked in commercial fishing in Alaska after graduating from college, according to friends and family.

James Luckey-Lange, of Staten Island, N.Y., was reported missing in Venezuela by his family in early December.Credit...Eva Aridjis Fuentes

He embarked on a long trip across Latin America in 2022 following the death of his mother. His father died this year.

“He has been traveling around, figuring out what to do with his life,” said Eva Aridjis Fuentes, a filmmaker who worked with Mr. Luckey-Lange for a documentary about Q Lazzarus. “He has had so much loss.”

Mr. Luckey-Lange wrote in his blog in early December that he was doing research on gold mining in the Amazon region of Guyana, which borders Venezuela. On Dec. 7, he wrote a friend that he was at an unspecified location in Venezuela, and he last spoke to his family the following day. He said he was heading to Caracas, where he was planning to catch a flight on Dec. 12 that would eventually bring him home to New York.

It is unclear if Mr. Luckey-Lange had a visa to enter Venezuela, as the country’s law requires of American citizens.

His aunt and next of kin, Abbie Luckey, said in a phone interview that she has not been contacted by U.S. officials, and is seeking any information about his whereabouts.

Some American citizens who have been released from prison in Venezuela earlier this year have described abusive conditions and lack of due process. Many were not charged with any crimes, and few were convicted.

A Peruvian-American named Renzo Huamanchumo Castillo said he was detained last year after traveling to Venezuela to meet his wife’s family, and charged with terrorism and conspiring to kill Mr. Maduro.

He said the charges made no sense. “We realized afterward, I was just a token,” he added.

Mr. Huamanchumo, 48, said he was frequently beaten and received one liter of muddy water each day while detained in a notorious Venezuelan prison called Rodeo I. “It was the worst thing you can imagine,” he said.

He was freed in a prisoner swap in July.

At least two other people with U.S. ties remain imprisoned in Venezuela, according to their families: Aidel Suarez, a U.S. permanent resident born in Cuba, and Jonathan Torres Duque, a Venezuelan-American.

Genevieve Glatsky, Tibisay Romero, Mariana Martínez and Nicholas Casey contributed reporting. Georgia Gee contributed research.

Anatoly Kurmanaev covers Russia and its transformation following the invasion of Ukraine.

Annie Correal is a Times reporter covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.

See more on: State Department, Nicolás Maduro, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump

NY Times · Edward Wong · December 31, 2025

6. The Separation: Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership

Summary:

The report portrays a U.S.-Ukraine partnership fraying under erratic, personality-driven decision making and a Pentagon shift toward rationing munitions for other priorities, especially China. Key episodes include repeated pauses and diversions of 155mm shells and scarce air-defense interceptors, internal factional fights led by Ukraine skeptics, and diminishing authority for traditional Ukraine hands. Kyiv, under pressure, signaled willingness to accept a cease-fire near current lines while seeking protections and critical terrain, yet Moscow stayed maximalist. Public diplomacy oscillated, while covert channels and intelligence support enabled Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy assets. Overall, uncertainty eroded trust and leverage, deepening Ukraine’s battlefield risk.

Comment: This is a long read. I have only posted the introduction. Please go to the link to read the entire document

The Separation: Inside the Unraveling U.S.-Ukraine Partnership

NY Times · Adam Entous · December 30, 2025

Adam Entous conducted more than 300 interviews over more than a year with government, military and intelligence officials in Ukraine, the United States, Britain, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Turkey.

Dec. 30, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/30/world/europe/ukraine-war-us-russia.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A1A.FiSD.ZGB1jpmPa9ce&smid=url-share

The train left the U.S. Army depot in the west of Germany and made for Poland and the Ukrainian border. These were the final 800 miles of a trans-Atlantic supply chain that had sustained Ukraine across more than three long years of war.

The freight on this last day in June was 155-millimeter artillery shells, 18,000 of them packed into crates, their fuses separated out to prevent detonation in transit. Their ultimate destination was the eastern front, where Vladimir V. Putin’s generals were massing forces and firepower against the city of Pokrovsk. The battle was for territory and strategic advantage but also for bragging rights: Mr. Putin wanted to show the American president, Donald J. Trump, that Russia was indeed winning.

Advertising their war plan, the Russians had told Mr. Trump’s advisers. “We’re going to slam them harder there. We have the munitions to do that.” In Washington, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had been talking about munitions, too, testifying to a Senate appropriations subcommittee that those earmarked for Ukraine by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. were “still flowing.”

Three months earlier, in fact, Mr. Hegseth had, unannounced, decided to hold back one crucial class of munitions — American-made 155s. The U.S. military’s stocks were running low, his advisers had warned; withholding them would force the Europeans to step up, to take greater responsibility for the war in their backyard.

Day after day, then, thousands upon thousands of 155s earmarked for Ukraine had lain waiting on pallets at the ammunitions depot. The American commander in Europe, General Christopher G. Cavoli, had fired off email after email, pleading with the Pentagon to free them. The jam had been broken only after intervention from Jack Keane, a retired Army general and Fox News contributor who was friendly with the president.

But on July 2, as the train approached the Ukrainian border, a new order came in to the U.S. military’s European Command: “Divert everything. Immediately.”

Exactly why the liberated shells had been taken captive again was never explained. In the end, they waited for just 10 days, in a rail yard near Krakow. Yet to U.S. military officers who had spent the last three and a half years fighting to shore up the Ukrainian cause, the interrupted journey of the 18,000 shells seemed to encompass the entirety of America’s new, erratic and corrosive role in the war.

“This has happened so many times that I’ve lost count,” a senior U.S. official said. “This is literally killing them. Death by a thousand cuts.”

A worker handling a 155-millimeter artillery shell, a key munition provided to Ukraine, at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania last year.

Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

It was to hold back the Russian tide, perhaps even help win the war, that the Biden administration had provided Ukraine with a vast array of increasingly sophisticated weaponry. The Americans, their European allies and the Ukrainians had also joined in a secret partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology, its workings revealed earlier this year by The New York Times. At stake, the argument went, was not just Ukraine’s sovereignty but the very fate of the post-World War II international order.

Mr. Trump has presided over the partners’ separation.

The headlines are well known: Mr. Trump’s televised Oval Office humiliation of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in February. The August summit with Mr. Putin in Alaska. The furious flurry of diplomacy that led to the Mar-a-Lago meeting on Sunday with Mr. Zelensky, the latest high-stakes but inconclusive negotiation in which the fate of Ukraine has seemed to hang in the balance.

It is still unclear when, and if, a deal will be reached. This is the chaotic and previously untold story behind the past year of head-spinning headlines:

The Ukraine specialists at the Pentagon afraid to utter the word “Ukraine.” Mr. Trump telling his chosen envoy to Russia and Ukraine, “Russia is mine.” The secretary of state quoting from “The Godfather” in negotiations with the Russians. The Ukrainian defense minister pleading with the American defense secretary, “Just be honest with me.” A departing American commander’s “beginning of the end” memo. Mr. Zelensky’s Oval Office phone call, set up by the president, with a former Miss Ukraine.

This account draws on more than 300 interviews with national security officials, military and intelligence officers and diplomats in Washington, Kyiv and across Europe. Virtually all insisted on anonymity, for fear of reprisal from Mr. Trump and his administration.

Mr. Trump had scant ideological commitment. His pronouncements and determinations were often shaped by the last person he spoke to, by how much respect he felt the Ukrainian and Russian leaders had shown him, by what caught his eye on Fox News.

Policy was forged in the clash of bitterly warring camps.

Mr. Biden had left the Ukrainians a financial and weapons nest egg to cushion them for an uncertain future. Mr. Trump’s point man for peace negotiations presented him with a plan to maintain support for Ukraine and squeeze the Russian war machine.

But that strategy ran headlong into a phalanx of Ukraine skeptics led by the vice president, JD Vance, and like-minded officials he seeded at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the administration. In their view, instead of squandering America’s depleted military stocks on a sinking ship, they should be reapportioned to counter the greatest global threat: China.

A cold wind — what one senior military officer called “a de facto anti-Ukraine policy” — swept through the Pentagon. Time and again, Mr. Hegseth and his advisers undermined, sidelined or silenced front-line generals and administration officials sympathetic to Ukraine.

Against that backdrop, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Hegseth and other subordinates wide latitude to make decisions about the flow of aid to Ukraine. On several occasions, when those decisions brought bad press or internal backlash — as with the 18,000 shells — Ukraine-friendly commentators at Fox stepped in and persuaded the president to reverse them.

Even as Mr. Trump bullied Mr. Zelensky, he seemed to coddle Mr. Putin. When the Russian stiff-armed peace proposals and accelerated bombing campaigns on Ukrainian cities, Mr. Trump would lash out on Truth Social and ask his aides, “Do we sanction their banks or do we sanction their energy infrastructure?” For months, he did neither.

But in secret, the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military, with his blessing, supercharged a Ukrainian campaign of drone strikes on Russian oil facilities and tankers to hobble Mr. Putin’s war machine.

Day to day, Mr. Trump was inconsistent. But he was still a deal maker determined to broker a deal — and convinced that, in the calculus of leverage, the advantage lay with the stronger. Both sides fought a war within the war, to shape the president’s perceptions. “They look invincible,” he told aides in May after seeing footage of a military parade in Moscow. Three weeks later, after Ukraine mounted an audacious covert drone operation inside Russia, Mr. Zelensky sent a parade of aides to the White House with his own victory message: “We are not losing. We are winning.”

Yet on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, Mr. Trump kept pushing the Ukrainians deeper and deeper into a box. What he underestimated was the Russian leader’s refusal to budge from his demands.

The origin point of this story was the president’s belief in what he saw as his personal connection to Mr. Putin. On the campaign trail, he had promised to broker peace quickly, perhaps even before taking office. After he won the election, European and Middle Eastern leaders began calling, offering to help smooth the way for talks with the Russians during the transition.

Mr. Trump’s aides knew he was eager to get started, but they were also aware of the shadow that outreach to Russia had cast over his first term. Then, several aides’ undisclosed contacts with the Russians before the inauguration had become part of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump took to bitterly calling it “the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.”

This time, his aides decided, they needed official cover.

“Look, we’ve been getting all kinds of outreach,” Mr. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told his Biden administration counterpart, Jake Sullivan. “We’d like to go ahead and start testing some of these, because Trump wants to move quickly.”

And so Mr. Waltz made a request, never before reported, for a letter of permission from Mr. Biden.

A Ukrainian tank that was struck by a drone a few miles from the Kursk region of Russia.

Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

7. China drills feed info war targeting faith in Taiwan’s defenses

Summary:

China paired “Justice Mission 2025” military drills around Taiwan with an information campaign designed to erode confidence in Taiwan’s defenses, especially among overseas audiences. The article argues Beijing wants the drills to illustrate blockade, strike, and anti-submarine competence, while shaping perceptions that Taiwan’s forces and equipment cannot hold out. It links the surge to a reported $11 billion U.S. arms sale to Taipei and cites Chinese official rhetoric framing “reunification” as a core national mission. It also highlights claims of paid influencer operations, including a leaked pitch offering large monthly payments for “neutral” messaging that subtly advances PLA narratives and suppresses support for Taiwan.

Comment: Cognitive warfare? An assessment of the recent NATO report on Cognitive Warfare:

The NATO Chief Scientist Research Report frames Cognitive Warfare as a contest for “cognitive superiority” in which adversaries use synchronized military and non-military activities to influence how people perceive, make sense of events, and decide and act, at individual, group, and societal levels. It stresses that modern technologies expand reach and effectiveness, since the openness and connectedness of democracies can be exploited via propaganda, disinformation, deepfakes, and other information threats that degrade trust and polarize societies. The report treats Cognitive Warfare as broader than classic InfoOps, PSYOP, STRATCOM, or cyber operations. It is often not aimed at narrowly defined target audiences or outcomes, and it can be designed to create chaos and complexity below the threshold of armed conflict.

China drills feed info war targeting faith in Taiwan’s defenses - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · Jeff Pao

Live‑fire drills follow record US arms sale as Beijing doubles down on improving its information warfare

by Jeff Pao

December 31, 2025

https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/china-drills-feed-info-war-targeting-faith-in-taiwans-defenses/

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) this week launched new military exercises near Taiwan, stepping up pressure on the self-governing island after Washington announced a US$11 billion arms sale to Taipei.

Alongside the shows of force, Beijing has also ramped up information warfare aimed at undermining confidence in Taiwan’s defenses. An overseas Chinese military commentator said the campaign seeks to persuade overseas audiences that Taiwan’s forces and equipment would be unable to withstand a PLA attack.

On Monday (December 29), the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command carried out joint drills involving naval vessels and aircraft in waters and airspace around Taiwan. The exercises focused on simulated strikes against sea and land targets, air‑control operations and anti‑submarine missions.

The drills aimed to show tighter coordination between China’s air and naval forces. They escalated on Tuesday with long‑range live‑fire exercises in waters around Taiwan.

The provocations followed Washington’s December 18 announcement of a new arms sale to Taiwan, the largest ever approved for the island. The deal includes rocket artillery systems, long‑range missiles, self‑propelled howitzers, unmanned surveillance platforms and related military software.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday denounced the US arms sale, framing the deal as part of what he called repeated provocations linked to “Taiwan independence.”

“The Taiwan question is China’s internal affair. It is at the heart of China’s core interests,” Wang said in a speech at the Symposium on the International Situation and China’s Foreign Relations. “Realizing complete national reunification is a lawful action of safeguarding sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a historical mission that we must fulfill.”

“We are seeing more and more countries stand with China. They not only reaffirm their commitment to the one China principle and recognize Taiwan as China’s territory, but also unequivocally oppose all separatist activities for ‘Taiwan independence’ and support China’s reunification cause,” he said.

“Since Lai Ching‑te became Taiwan’s leader, he has intensified his push for ‘Taiwan independence’ by relying on military means and seeking United States support,” Yu Laiming, director of the Institute of Taiwan Studies at Wuhan University, writes in an article published by China Daily. “Essentially, Lai is walking further down the wrong road of destroying Taiwan and selling out the island.”

Four military options

Since Lai was inaugurated as Taiwan’s president on May 20, 2024, Beijing has upped the scale of its military drills near Taiwan.

In April 2024, the PLA launched large-scale joint exercises around Taiwan under the name Joint Sword-2024A, spanning the Taiwan Strait and waters near the Kinmen and Matsu island groups, as well as areas to the north, south and east of the island. The exercises were followed by Joint Sword-2024B in October.

Earlier this year, the PLA also carried out Strait Thunder-2025A in April, before launching the current round of exercises, dubbed Justice Mission 2025, underscoring a sustained pattern of military pressure on Taiwan.

In its annual report on China’s military and security developments, the US Department of War (DoW) outlined four broad options Beijing may consider if its leaders decide to invade Taiwan:

Coercion short of war: China could try to force negotiations through sustained military pressure combined with economic, information and diplomatic tools, including cyber and limited strikes, to undermine confidence in Taiwan’s defenses.
Joint firepower strike campaign: The PLA could use precision missile and air strikes against key military and command targets to weaken Taiwan’s defenses, though such operations would demand complex coordination across services.
Joint blockade campaign: Beijing could seek to cut Taiwan’s maritime and air links through prolonged blockades, combined with missile strikes and information operations to isolate the island.
Joint island landing campaign: A full amphibious invasion would be the most risky and complex option, requiring air and maritime superiority, but would also offer the most decisive means of forcing unification.

On December 8, the New York Times published an editorial warning that the US military could be overmatched in a conflict over Taiwan. Citing a highly classified Pentagon assessment known as the Overmatch Brief, the paper said war games showed US fighter squadrons, major warships and even satellite networks could be crippled early in a conflict.

Prepared by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, the report said China’s growing arsenal of cheaper, rapidly produced weapons could exploit US reliance on fewer high-end systems.

It highlighted Beijing’s long-range precision missiles, counter-space capabilities and an estimated stockpile of about 600 hypersonic weapons as key factors placing US forces at a disadvantage.

Some Chinese commentators said the Pentagon’s annual China military report and the Overmatch Brief amounted to an acknowledgment that the US is losing its long-held advantages in a potential conflict with China, particularly at sea.

“The US military itself now acknowledges that its past ‘overwhelming advantage’ is eroding,” a Chinese commentator writes. “This is not a routine update, but a sign of strategic repositioning, with China shifting from a regional issue to a central factor in America’s global military planning.”

“The Overmatch Brief exposes structural weaknesses in US military power,” says Hou Junyi, a commentator with the state-owned Shenzhen Media Group. “China’s ability to mass-produce weapons such as hypersonic missiles and submarines has undercut US reliance on aircraft carriers, and in modern warfare, the survivability of carriers on the battlefield is extremely low.”

Promoting Beijing’s narratives

The DoW’s report also noted that China has recognized the need to control internal and external narratives in a conflict scenario and is developing methods to implement information warfare better.

It said the PLA’s Strategic Support Force (SSF), responsible for reconnaissance and electronic and cyber warfare, was dissolved in April 2024. At the same time, the PLA’s Aerospace Force, Cyber Space Force and newly created Information Support Force were placed directly under the Central Military Commission.

Between December 2015 and April 2024, the SSF paid large numbers of online commentators, commonly known as “Wumao (or 50 cents),” to publish pro‑Beijing and anti‑US content. Beijing later found that such propaganda was too blatant and ineffective.

An Italy‑based Chinese military commentator known as “Xumouren” recently made public a 43-minute phone recording in which a PLA middleman, “Bright_hawkins” (nicknamed “Sunset Pirate”), offered him 40,000 euros (US$47,000) per month to promote the PLA.

During the phone call, Sunset Pirate suggested Xumouren maintain a politically neutral image on his YouTube channel while implicitly promoting the message that Taiwan’s military equipment is outdated and that Taiwan cannot defend itself.

He also suggested that Xumouren discuss the Ukrainian army’s weaknesses so audiences could imagine the disadvantages Taiwan would face in a war with the PLA. Sunset Pirate, a self-claimed Catholic, said Xumouren’s neutral image and high credibility could help suppress “Taiwan independence.”

He said he had previously worked for Beijing’s public security department, but left the “system” years ago and moved to Philadelphia. He said he was later approached by his ex-boss and paid to establish and manage a team to promote Chinese Communist Party (CCP) narratives, adding that he had cleared his huge debts through the work and now wanted to earn more for his US-based family.

He said he would take a 30% commission if Xumouren joined his team, which included some music, travel and auto commentators based in Japan, Italy and the United States. He added that team members could criticize the CCP but not Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that it was better not to mock former Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

In a separate video, Xumouren said an extremely hardworking YouTuber could earn about 20,000 euros a month, which is probably why the offer was set at 40,000 euros. He stressed that money couldn’t buy his integrity.

Some observers said Beijing aims to weaken Taiwanese society’s morale and reduce its willingness to resist, paving the way for a rapid invasion before the US and Japan become directly involved.

Read: China cries foul after topping ASPI tech rankings

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

asiatimes.com · Jeff Pao

8. Assessing “Cognitive Warfare”

Summary:

Frank Hoffman argues “cognitive warfare” remains conceptually muddy, with no agreed definition or even consensus that a distinct cognitive domain exists, yet adversaries, especially the PLA, treat cognition as central to modern conflict. He frames it as non-kinetic competition where the message is the munition and the mind is the target, enabled by algorithmic amplification, synthetic media, and emerging neuro and AI tools. He contrasts U.S. kinetic, platform-centric strategic culture with China’s emphasis on will, perception, and decision disruption, and notes Russia’s parallel practice through reflexive control and broad influence campaigns. Hoffman proposes a framework that spans degradation, defense, and cognitive enhancement, and warns U.S. capacity to monitor and respond is eroding.

Comment: Again we should be thankful for the Irregular Warfare Initiative and Small Wars Journal partnership so we can read important articles more than once. I think Frank's assessment and the NATO report on cognitive warfare (https://www.sto.nato.int/document/cognitive-warfare/) should be read in tandem and they should both be used by the Pentagon to answer the Congressional tasker in the NDAA. The Pentagon has to get this right.

The language from the NDAA:

https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/119th-congress/senate-report/39/1

See p. 200:

"Narrative intelligence and cognitive warfare

The committee recognizes that the rapidly evolving global

security landscape and the increasing sophistication of

information-centric threats pose significant strategic

challenges, particularly as peer and near-peer competitors

increasingly prioritize efforts and investments in this domain

of warfare. The committee notes that the People's Republic of

China, for example, is actively engaged in developing what it

terms ``informatized warfare'' and ``intelligentized warfare,''

with a strong emphasis on cognitive domain operations,

involving the integration of information warfare across

military and civilian sectors and viewing information as a

critical domain for achieving strategic advantage in great

power competition. The committee believes there is an urgent

need for a coherent understanding of and investment in

cognitive warfare to address these challenges.

The committee notes that despite multiple congressional

actions, there remain ambiguities and challenges in core

definitions relating to information warfare, with frequent

conflation of terms such as information warfare, information

operations, cyberwarfare, cognitive warfare, and influence

operations. The committee believes this definitional ambiguity

contributes to a lack of strategic clarity.

Therefore, the committee directs the Secretary of Defense

to provide a report on cognitive warfare and narrative

intelligence to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate

and the House of Representatives, not later than March 31,

2026. In this report, the Secretary of Defense shall define

cognitive warfare as it relates to the Department of Defense

and assess how this definition aligns with or relates to

existing doctrinal elements, including information warfare,

psychological operations, and military information support

operations. Additionally, the committee directs the report to

include an assessment of which Department of Defense

organizations contribute to and have functional responsibility

for cognitive warfare efforts. Finally, the report must include

an examination of the relative value of narrative intelligence,

defined as intelligence of the story or narrative an adversary

is attempting to build, to cognitive warfare and related

disciplines. The committee expects this evaluation to consider

how narrative intelligence can enhance military operations,

including information operations and irregular warfare."

Assessing “Cognitive Warfare”

irregularwarfare.org · Frank Hoffman

December 31, 2025 by Frank Hoffman

https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/assessing-cognitive-warfare/

Editor’s Note: this article is being republished with the permission of Small Wars Journal as part of a republishing arrangement between IWI and SWJ. The original article was published on 11.14.2025 and is available here.

Despite its introduction over a decade ago by the People’s Liberation Army, there is no common understanding of Cognitive Warfare. Nor is there an agreement on the existence of a human or cognitive domain. These concepts compete in a crowded and confusing field centered around information technology and the related information dimension of statecraft. While the US intelligence community notes the increasing prevalence of Chinese concepts and research for what they term Cognitive Domain Operations (as well as active Russian activities), there is little appreciation for the implications of Cognitive Warfare in the US military as described by the pacing threat.

Scholars have generated numerous labels to capture the ongoing evolution of information technologies as a vector to influence decision-makers and impact public opinion. See Figure 1 for a partial list. Recently, US government agencies have been using Foreign Malign Influence or just Influence Operations to address the threat.[1] RAND has published studies on cyber-enabled Influence Operations, Virtual Societal Warfare, and Next Generation Psychological Warfare to capture the contest in the information environment.[2] Related studies on Russian disinformation are also common, and with overlapping definitions.

War in the future will not be “wars of attrition but wars of cognition.”

Now the concept of Cognitive Warfare is competing in this crowded space, with no accepted definition or understanding of how it fits within the national security agenda. While information and narratives have shaped wars in the past, ongoing technological developments provide extremely efficient tools to expand this battlespace and substantially raise the potential and salience of Cognitive Warfare. New communication tools now offer infinite possibilities for digital distortion, opening the way to achieving desired objectives in opponents’ minds. Key competitors from autocratic states are not content to merely control their own population; instead, they have “weaponized” social media with “algorithmic amplification” against Western societies.[3] In the words of one expert, war in the future will not be “wars of attrition but wars of cognition.”[4] The joint warfighting community is aware of the challenge, but the national security community is reducing its ability to monitor and respond effectively.

Figure 1. Information Warfare Variants

To the historically oriented, the fight for the minds of decision-makers and noncombatants does not expand the battlespace, but it does expand or at least challenge long-held Western conceptions about war.[5] Those encultured with violent visions, per Clausewitz, will struggle with this concept. The acolytes of the Prussian sage think in terms of physical violence as the essence of war and overlook his description of war as a clash of wills, as well as his discussions about rational and irrational factors in human conflict.

Thus, Cognitive Warfare runs against the grain for the selective Clausewitzian reader, as it goes after a much softer target: the human mind. Because of this bias, Cognitive Warfare faces a steep uphill fight for acceptance within the US military establishment. The American predisposition to kinetic operations and attrition stems from the defense establishment’s strategic culture. This stress on hard power is part of the prevailing conventional US strategic and military culture, which privileges strike operations in the physical realm over more unconventional approaches and especially those involving the human domain.[6] As Colin Gray noted long ago, the US military culture is thoroughly conventional, firepower-centric, and technologically oriented.[7]

This assessment reviews the literature and ongoing dialogue on Cognitive Warfare within the research community. The reviewed scholarship details relevant material from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as well as from other international sources. The paper then moves to coverage on the subject in the United States. This analysis concludes with a brief assessment to further develop this framework.

Defining Cognitive Warfare

In Cognitive Warfare, the message is the munition, and the target is the mind of either specific individuals (e.g., elites, influencers, policymakers) or the collective population of a democratic state. Distorting what these individuals think is a precursor to how they think, and thus how they behave.

Early advocates such as the French officer, Francois du Cluzel, defined Cognitive Warfare as “the art of using technologies to alter the cognition of human targets, most often without their knowledge and consent.”[8] This early conception stressed Cognitive Warfare as an offensive form of cyber conflict; however, he recognized that countermeasures and preventive measures were required. Du Cluzel differentiated psychological operations from cognitive operations, but it is unclear whether the distinction is valid or of value. For du Cluzel, psychological warfare attempts to change what the target audience thinks, but Cognitive Warfare aims at shaping how they reason and their resultant behavior. This distinction lies at the heart of why human cognition is the central objective.

Cognitive War is the application of targeted and tailored messages and nonviolent methods used against civilian and military decision-makers or the general population of a target state to gain a positional advantage in the cognitive domain or gain desired political, military, and informational outcomes.

While Cognitive Warfare is not new, there are a number of novel technologies that significantly enhance the reach and efficacy of activities that target the way decision-makers and individuals think about a crisis situation. Some have seen this as social media-based influence operations.[9] These technologies can be combined to “assess, access, and affect the cognitive space.”[10] While our competitors think in terms of systems and confronting and deceiving us, Western militaries orient on hardware, maneuver platforms, and kinetic operations.

Cognitive Warfare but can be refined to capture a clear theory of victory focused on tailored actions in the information domain. My starting definition of Cognitive War is the application of targeted and tailored messages and nonviolent methods used against civilian and military decision-makers or the general population of a target state to gain a positional advantage in the cognitive domain or gain desired political, military, and informational outcomes. This definition aligns with most Western theorists, who focus on social media manipulation of civilian populations. There are limitations with this approach, which are addressed later.

State of the Security Literature

International Perspectives

There are numerous research articles throughout the international security community on this topic. NATO has continued to build upon Du Cluzel’s work.[11] Du Cluzel also recognized the array of new technologies that would increase the salience of Cognitive Warfare, including the weaponization of neuroscience and the potential convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, gene editing, computer science, information technologies, and cognitive sciences. His most recent work defined Cognitive Warfare as “an unconventional form of warfare that uses cyber tools to alter enemy cognitive processes, exploit mental biases or reflexive thinking, and provoke thought distortions, influence decision-making and hinder action, with negative effects, both at the individual and collective level.”[12]

In the last two years, there has been a surge in interest in this mode of conflict in Europe and Asia.[13] Japanese military officers have tracked PLA developments closely and analyzed Russian efforts in Ukraine to assess how effective the information activity has been.[14] They assess the PLA’s interest in what they call “Cognitive Domain Operations” (discussed in depth later) as strong and growing. Military analysts in India have also assessed PLA writings on the topic.[15]

Taiwan has studied and faced this threat. Their scholars erroneously think that cognitive warfare is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy of “unrestricted warfare” (超限戰). However, Taiwanese strategists correctly recognize that Cognitive Warfare targets human perception, attitudes, and decision-making through information manipulation, propaganda, and psychological operations with the intent of gaining strategic objectives. The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense (MND) describes it as an effort “to sway the subject’s will and change its mindset. Psychologically, the PRC is trying to cause mental disarray and confusion, in order to weaken fighting will and determination to defending ourselves.”[16] The MND also assesses that cognitive warfare “originated from the [disciplines] of intelligence warfare, psychological warfare, and public opinion warfare.” As a clear target in China’s crosshairs, the government in Taiwan has set up a research center tasked with deflecting the PRC’s narratives.[17] This research concluded that the PRC has not been very effective despite continued pressure campaigns against Taipei.[18]

China and Cognitive Domain Operations

In contrast with US strategic and military culture, China has embraced the existence of a cognitive domain and has expanded its thinking about contemporary warfare. It views the cognitive space as increasingly central to future conflict. “The cognitive domain will become another battle domain next to the land, sea, air, space, electromagnetic, and cyber domains of warfare.”[19] The PLA has been discussing the relevance of psychological conflict for several generations, but began writing about the cognitive domain as far back as 2002, with a steep increase in 2014. Some of these early Chinese writers stressed the novelty of the cognitive space as “a brand-new battlefield.”[20] [21]

Back in 2017, Major General He Fuchu forecasted, “The sphere of operations will be expanded from the physical domain and the information domain to the domain of consciousness (意识域); the human brain will become a new combat space.”[22] Consequently, success on the future battlefield will require achieving not only “biological dominance” (制生权) but also “mental/cognitive dominance” (制脑权) and “intelligence dominance” (制智权).

Chinese analysts employ a deep historical perspective about the impact of technology over time, and they note that each industrial revolution has extended the reach and impact of information. Our current era, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is said to extend the multimedia of the previous period with AI and image processing technologies to create deepfakes that can be used by the military to fool the enemy. “Throughout the continuous evolution of technology, more and more media can be used,” one Chinese author notes, “to influence the enemy’s thinking, judgment, and cognition, thus creating new modes of cognitive domain combat.”[23]

Chinese analysts have studied this aspect of modern conflict, and the government has supported research on how to translate the concept into an advantage for the PLA. This comports with the famous Sun Tzu maxim that equates winning without fighting as the highest form of the art of warfare.

Many scholars think this remains a key feature of Chinese strategic culture. Evidence for thinking that this is an operative concept can be seen in the activities of the Political Work department inside the PLA and the promulgation of its “Three Warfares” concept.[24] These include 1) public opinion warfare to influence domestic and international public opinion, 2) psychological warfare to demoralize enemy soldiers and civilians, and 3) legal warfare to gain international support through both international and domestic law. Only the latter element is outside what most people term influence operations or cognitive warfare.[25]

Chinese literature on cognitive warfare (認知作戰) is as diffuse as Western research is about influence operations. The volume of Chinese writings on the topic is significant, indicating the emphasis and interest within China’s leadership.[26] Recent articles address the value of confrontation via the social media battlefield.[27] Researchers from China’s psychological warfare unit call for the PLA to “speed up the research for online propaganda technology targeted toward the real-time release on social platforms, voice information synthesis technology using deep learning and other technology, as well as online netizen sentiment trend analysis using big data analytics.”[28]

One pair of Chinese researchers identified another aspect of intelligent operations in the form of “cognitive confrontation” (认知对抗), in which the key objective is to achieve decisive supremacy over enemies in terms of information and awareness. They forecast that future operations should attack enemy perceptions and understanding of the battlespace by “taking the cognitive initiative and damaging or interfering with the cognition of the enemy based on the speed and quality of the cognitive confrontation.”[29] Such a struggle will replace traditional warfare concepts that have emphasized control over physical domains such as land, air, and sea. This extends the concept from purely social media manipulation towards an operational application that US military planners may need to worry about.

China has read Clausewitz, and PLA analysts recognize that war “is ultimately a contest of human will. The key to victory is the ability to impose one’s will on the audience. Cognitive domain warfare takes people’s will, spirit, and psychology as the goal of confrontation, strengthens one’s own will and weakens the enemy’s will.”[30] They recognize that modern technology, including generative AI, has increased the ability to target the cognitive domain with “cognitive ammunition.” Yang Cunshe talks of increasing the fog of war for the opponent through cognitive interference, confusion, and blocking in order to increase the likelihood of the opponent making wrong decisions and actions.

The PLA has long extolled “disintegrating the enemy” via politico-psychological attacks and subversion as a means of undermining an opponent’s will to fight.[31] Chinese researchers appear to be interested in exploring methods of impacting key decision-makers, rather than just the general public. They are also interested in various physical means of targeting and affecting human targets beyond social media and other information systems.

Evidence of this is seen in Chinese military analysts writing about Cognitive Domain Operations, which is defined narrowly and focused on degrading both the military will to fight and generating friction and uncertainty. As one trio wrote:

Cognitive domain operations take the human brain as the main combat space and focus on striking, weakening, and dismantling the enemy’s will to fight, using human psychological weaknesses such as fear, anxiety and suspicion as a breakthrough point, focusing on soft-kill methods to create an atmosphere of insecurity, uncertainty and mistrust within the enemy, and increasing their internal friction and decision-making doubts.[32]

Some Chinese writers think in terms of multi-domain operations and creating dilemmas just as US joint doctrine authors do. In this regard, one author admits that physically destroying enemy decision-making centers, command hubs, and early warning systems is necessary. But he goes on to stress the greater need to work at “soft killing” through cognitive shaping, induction, intervention, and control, by embedding cognitive domain operations into “hard destruction” efforts to generate an asymmetric advantage.[33]

Some PRC researchers feel that the emerging metaverse will vastly expand the target set and success rate for CDO.[34] Some others write in terms of hearts and minds and impacting the emotions of target audiences.[35] Other scholars are more technologically oriented and see the potential for cognitive enhancement through Brain-Computer Interfaces.[36] As reported by Elsa Kania, the Chinese are interested in more than the employment of modern information technologies. Their research programs include work in brain sciences, human enhancement, biotech, as well as military applications of neuroscience.[37]

Chinese officials do not anticipate that the application of cognitive sciences and technologies will be used only against adversaries. They envision employing these technologies to enhance their own human performance as well. As noted in the CCP’s leading theoretical journal:

Brain Strengthening is to enhance human cognitive functions by means of neurofeedback technology, electromagnetic stimulation technology, etc., to improve the effectiveness of military training of personnel and enhance their combat capability. Real-time neurofeedback techniques can train and reshape the brain to improve its cognitive functions, thereby enhancing cognitive combat capabilities.[38]

Russia’s Version

There is little in the Russian literature that discusses Cognitive Warfare in those terms. However, indirect modes of warfare are a familiar strain in Russian scholarship and practice, including notable writings about ‘Subversion Wars’ (Myatezhevoyna) during the Cold War.[39] Moscow has employed so-called “active measures,” including cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, as well as limited coercive measures, to advance its interests for generations.[40] The Russian intelligence services are well-practiced in designing and conducting campaigns to utilize coercive actions and information tools.[41] Western analysts tend to divide Russian practice through various lenses, including propaganda, information operations, or disinformation.[42]

The latest wrinkle in Moscow’s longstanding practice is the exploitation of social media, which is seen as an extension of the battlespace.[43] Election interference in Europe and the United States is another aspect of this playbook, but a critically important one to deflect if we expect to preserve democratic freedom.[44]

While the term may not be common, the pursuit of cognitive effects is clear. President Putin’s advisors brag openly about the Kremlin’s influence campaigns. “Foreign politicians talk about Russia’s interference in elections and referendums around the world,” one such advisor stated, but “In fact, the matter is even more serious: Russia interferes in your brains, we change your conscience, and there is nothing you can do about it.”[45] Experts warn that a general understanding of Russia’s malign influence playbook is lacking.[46]

The closest concept to Cognitive Warfare is the Russian concept of Reflexive Control. This has been defined as consisting of “transmitting motives and grounds from the controlling entity to the controlled system that stimulate the desired decision. The goal of reflexive control is to prompt the enemy to make a decision unfavorable to him.”[47] This definition notes a key requirement: the need to tailor false information to the specific target, to impact the target’s responses and reactions. Reflexive control involves targeting decision-making through multiple vectors — adversary information processing, as well as emotional, psychological, and cultural frames within which decisions are made. Reflexive control appears to have evolved in Russian discussions and is now displaced by perception management.[48]

As early as 2010, influential Russian military authors noted the superiority of Western military power and began to stress the need for more asymmetric approaches.[49] This idea was expanded upon in subsequent articles, which saw a role for information confrontation to disorganize military command and control and state administration.[50] They further extended their thinking to stress the role of non-military attacks in what they labeled the Initial Period of War (IPW). They argued that this period can be decisive in future wars, and that it would include subversive acts, provocations, information operations, and psychological attacks in conjunction with military operations.[51] Their assessments also found that success could be accomplished by the employment of “military, economic, and IT measures in combination with efficient psychological information campaigns.”[52] These authors later argued for a concept called New Generation Warfare (NGW), a “new” form dominated by “information and psychological warfare seeking to achieve superiority.”[53] The Russian Chief of Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, expanded on this aspect in his noted talk on future warfare, going so far as stating that “The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.”[54]

There has been a recent link between Russia’s indirect methods and cognitive warfare produced by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). According to this research, “The primary objective of Russian cognitive warfare is to shape its adversaries’ decision-making and erode our will to act.” [55] Their study identifies the multi-modal character of Russia’s disinformation efforts. The Kremlin uses all platforms that transmit information, not just social media, but conferences, international frameworks, diplomatic channels, and influential individuals as means of employing Cognitive Warfare. According to the analysts at ISW, Russia’s version goes well beyond the dissemination of information and includes physical activities in peace, crisis, and war. These physical means include military exercises, sabotage, cyber-attacks, combat operations, and exaggerations of Russia’s military capabilities and battlefield progress.

This was not news to dedicated scholars of the Russian way of war.[56] In both theory and practice, the Russians employ a broader conception of war than most Western states.[57] This includes forms of subversion against political leaders and the general population, as well as other hostile measures that combine physical and cognitive means and effects.[58] Like the Chinese, Russian writers are becoming less concerned with attrition of the opponent’s order of battle and increasingly interested in targeting the adversary’s perception and will. To be sure, traditional military means are not overlooked either, as they too can impact perception and will. More recent scholarship highlights the potential impact of Artificial Intelligence on Russian disinformation efforts.[59]

United States

The earliest US author on this topic is James Lewis from CSIS. His in-depth 2018 study of cyber conflict highlighted the generation of what he termed “cognitive effects.” The goal in future conflict, Lewis concluded, “is not a kinetic effect (achieved with shells and bombs), but a cognitive effect, in other words, manipulating information to change thoughts and behavior. The strategic goal is to influence morale, cohesion, political stability, and, ultimately, to reduce the opponent’s will to counteract.” [60] His view aligns well with Russian thinking and the PLA.

The US intelligence community has monitored this development as well. In its annual threat assessments, both in 2022 and 2024, the Director of National Intelligence devoted coverage to the evolution of Chinese writings from psychological warfare to CDO, which they describe as combining psychological warfare with cyber operations to shape adversary behavior and decision-making. The assessment also noted that the PLA is looking at generative AI to generate synthetic media, including deepfakes.[61]

Analysts at RAND have identified China’s growing interest in systems and information confrontation.[62] One RAND researcher, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, has extensively studied the PLA’s development of Cognitive Domain Operations.[63]

While the Chinese military seems intensely interested in cognitive warfare, the American professional military journals are fairly quiet. Yet, there have been few articles in the professional journals. One pair of Marine officers wrote about how CDO is tied to Maneuver Warfare because of its emphasis on human will (and presumably psychological dislocation) and argued that “the United States must develop its approach to CW—defensively as well as offensively.”[64]

One relatively recent article tied Cognitive Warfare to actions below the threshold of warfare, the so-called ‘gray zone.’[65] This seems to be tied to a very limited reading of both Chinese and Russian publications. The article’s criticism of Joint doctrine was noteworthy, as were its series of recommendations to enhance the readiness of the Joint warfighting community. The subject is not entirely unknown to readers of this journal.[66]

Assessment

There are many and varied definitions of this topic, and its complexity is exacerbated by the nature of the technologies involved, including those in the cognitive and neurosciences. It is further complicated by vague connections to larger conceptions like gray zone tactics and influence operations. The literature is scattered and contains limited evidence on tactics and technologies being considered.

Cognitive warfare could be viewed as a concept that may help promote the cognitive domain and squeeze out “the ounces of cognitive effect” the JCS Chairman has called for.[67] While I have some reservations about introducing a new term into a crowded field, the term “cognitive” is superior to broad terms like information or influence. Psychology is a broad field, and cognition narrows the subject to key features. It directs attention to the target and desired effect. I am less enthralled with the “warfare” label and think the Chinese terminology is better.

Arguably, some of the effects expected by the conduct of Cognitive Warfare can be conceived as part of the under-appreciated concept of subversion.[68] Some scholars believe we have entered an age of algorithm-fueled propaganda and superpowered subversion.[69] This is a valid term, but it is not traditionally employed in the US military lexicon. A RAND study almost two decades ago found the term vague at best.[70] It has not become any clearer over the last two decades, given the proliferation of terms.

The term “cognitive” is superior to broad terms like information or influence.

Scholars in this field have addressed cognitive warfare as a form of subversion. This would be fine if we limited the concept to non-military targets by non-military forces. The writings and efforts by the PLA and Russian military would beg to differ here and suggest that more than informational subversion is involved.

Subversion is not traditionally seen as a complement or component directed at conventional forces in warfare as understood in the West. It is clear that China and Russia expect to exploit psychological and cognitive effects in wartime as well, and seek to target military decision-making and combat effectiveness. We should expect military formations and their leaders to be targets as well. In short, the employment of cognitive confrontation against national security leaders or military commanders and their staff in wartime does not square with subversion.

If US adversaries were solely oriented on manipulating domestic audiences, a strong argument could be made that labeling this as a form of “warfare” over-militarizes the problem and distorts the search for solutions that would best address the issue. But as China and Russia use both intelligence and military assets, and seek to target political and military command systems, Cognitive Warfare seems to warrant greater consideration over subversion.

Analytical Framework

To help promote the potential development of this concept, we will need an analytical framework that explains the scope of the cognitive domain and the potential for applications of maneuver/confrontation in that domain. To grasp the potential of cognitive warfare, including its offensive use and appropriate defensive countermeasures, a broader analytical framework was conceived that captures a range of perspectives and authors. This framework helps define the potential scale and scope of the concept and its applications. Figure 2 offers an initial depiction to stimulate discussion and debate.

This framework depicts a larger or more comprehensive conception of cognitive warfare that captures both offensive and defensive contributions. The matrix reflects a continuum of targets—from individuals to collective populations—along the horizontal axis. The vertical axis separates actions and technologies that degrade human cognition (entire lower half of the matrix) from those that enhance individual decision-making (upper left) and those that counter cognitive warfare by improving social cohesions and resilience (upper right quadrant). Along the vertical continuum, political decision-making processes and military commands are in the middle of the matrix.

Figure 2. Analytic Framework for Cognitive Warfare/Domain Operations

As seen in the literature review, most of the research focuses on cognitive degradation, especially through the manipulation of social media against target societies (lower right quadrant). The majority of PLA authors fall in the lower half of the matrix, emphasizing the projected need to successfully apply information confrontation against a sophisticated, large-scale competitor. But they also include discourse on enhancing human performance and strengthening civil society. Overall, Chinese military authors touch upon every quadrant as opposed to Western analysts, who look at social media manipulation.

The most interesting quadrant is the individual block, which would address how we prepare future leaders to be able to design and conduct campaigns, as well as detect and deflect adversary Cognitive Domain campaigns. In this quadrant, we can conceive of applications of neurosciences and AI-enabled agents to enhance the cognitive function of military commanders and staffs through machine learning and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) of various types.[71] There are advances in BCI technologies that may extend the ability of decision-makers and warfighting operators to make sense of their situational context and make timely decisions.[72] DARPA is funding projects that examine how to augment human cognition via its SCEPTER study.[73] Investments targeting enhanced decision augmentation are represented in this portion of the matrix, as well as defensive measures to thwart neurological weapons and technologies. The legal, moral, and ethical framework for this work should be established first.

The converging role of AI and the neurosciences is going to impact command and control, and should include an ability to detect and deflect adversary CDO.[74]

Revised Definition

Accepting this framework would require some modifications to how we define Cognitive Warfare. Rather than just manipulating or degrading target audiences, the scope of Cognitive Warfare would have to incorporate efforts to develop and attain cognitive advantage at both the individual and collective level, as well as detecting and defending against cognitive domain operations.

This leads to a revision of my original definition: “The application of information and cognitive sciences to enhance or degrade the decision-making process and resulting behavior of political and military leaders, and civilian society, in order to obtain a positional advantage in the information environment and designated political objectives.” This is a concise initial stab that can be refined. It is not the final answer, but it does capture the offense/defense or enhancement/ degradation continuum to a greater degree than others.

Revision of Information Operation

Advancing the concept will face an uphill battle with the existing crowded terminological minefield in information warfare. A conceptual schema for placing Cognitive Domain Operations (CDO) that builds upon the existing joint information operations taxonomy is presented in Figure 3. A few adaptations are embedded in this proposed schema. This deliberately excludes operational security and deception as inherent to sound operational planning. Consideration could be given to including public media engagement for both domestic and foreign audiences. The interface between CDO and MISO needs further study regarding a division of labor. The inclusion of CDO within the joint doctrine pertains solely to the military’s use of or defense against CDO, and is not intended to suggest applications to domestic contexts.

Figure 3. Relationship of Information Operations and Cognitive Domain Operations

Tomorrow’s Cognitive Confrontation

The convergence of physical and moral forces during conflict will continue in this century. The advances in neuroscience, brain sciences, computational technologies, and AI-enabled models have altered the strategic environment and should change how we conceive of and prepare for conflict. These advances have enhanced the ability of competitors to “expanding the attack surface that foreign adversaries can exploit using cognitive manipulation.”[75] As the technological advances in artificial general intelligence (AGI) and machine learning become more operational, they can create mass disruption using low-cost but possibly impactful forms of influence. In the near term, distinguishing between real and manufactured products will become more difficult, if not impossible. The orchestration of physical and cognitive means to generate changes in human behavior and decision-making will thus accelerate with the advances in cognitive and neurosciences. The eventual development of AGI offers the potential for the perfect storm in Cognitive Warfare. A pro-Chinese influence operation in 2022 involved video content with AI-generated fictitious ‘people’ acting as newscasters, created using artificial intelligence techniques. In the future, competitors will continue to experiment with AI technologies, producing increasingly convincing media that are harder to detect and verify.[76]

Some states will find these technologies uniquely suited to sow divisions and undermine public support in free and open Western societies. Ongoing advances in generative AI will undoubtedly promote the proliferation of deepfakes.[77]

As authoritarian states such as Russia and China exploit these technologies, the global competition in influence or cognitive operations is going to intensify. Studies have identified variation in methods but convergence in narratives between Russian and Chinese foreign information manipulation and interference operations.[78] Veteran intelligence experts believe the United States is losing the battle for cognitive superiority.[79] However, the US government has shuttered intelligence and law enforcement cells and agencies designed to thwart foreign malign information efforts.[80] An objective assessment of this challenge suggests it is misguided and should be reconsidered. Strategies to address authoritarian influence campaigns, including Cognitive Warfare, need to be developed.[81] Our special operations personnel bring a lot to this arena, coupled with the cyber and information professionals.[82] Embracing the conceptual challenge and addressing capabilities is the first step toward reversing this widening gap.

Conclusion

Information warfare has a long historical foundation in conflict. The concept is linked to our understanding of war’s fundamental nature and its essential element of human will. New technologies and methods have altered how information and beliefs can be manipulated to generate effects that impact will and its underlying beliefs, which are producing changes in war’s evolving character today. These technologies can also enhance or degrade critical decision-making processes and influence the key contributions that human expertise brings to bear.

Whatever we choose to call it, ignoring our adversaries in this field places the Nation in peril. The United States is presently underprepared to contest intrusions in its information space and will remain so until we recognize the problem and conceive of a more holistic counter approach. Mastering the opportunities and vulnerabilities within the cognitive domain will be increasingly relevant to strategic success in the 21st Century.

Dr. Frank Hoffman retired from the National Defense University in 2024 after 46 years of service in the Department of Defense. He has served in senior executive positions at OSD and the Department of the Navy. He received his Ph.D. from King’s College, London.

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9. Ukraine Now Has Europe’s Biggest Military. What Happens to It When the War Ends?

Summary:

Ukraine has built Europe’s largest, most combat-hardened force, but a postwar Ukraine will face a brutal tradeoff between deterrence and affordability. Kyiv and European leaders talk about sustaining roughly 800,000 troops, yet demobilization pressure, fiscal limits, and a shrinking population will push Ukraine toward a smaller active force with deeper reserves. The likely model is a force optimized for long-term denial: dense air and missile defense, long-range strike, and massed, inexpensive unmanned systems, with mines and mobilization to compensate for manpower. The hard choices will center on costly “big ticket” items, especially fighter fleets, versus cheaper asymmetric advantages like drones and integrated air defense. Ukraine’s push for domestic production also aims to reduce reliance on fickle foreign supply.

Comment: Seems like the logical answer for Ukraine to join NATO. But I know that is one of the foundational problems and one of the reasons Putin executed his war against Ukraine in the first place.

But the tradeoffs that have to be made to build a long term denial force in Ukraine will hopefully drive unique solutions and the same creativity that Ukraine demonstrated as it transformed its military for the current fight will be applied in the postwar period as well. And maybe (hopefully) we can all learn a thing or two from them.

Ukraine Now Has Europe’s Biggest Military. What Happens to It When the War Ends?

WSJ

By Alistair MacDonald

Dec. 30, 2025 11:00 pm ET

Europe needs a strong bulwark against Russian aggression, but building and maintaining it will be challenging

https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-military-size-russia-war-1f04969b

When the war with Russia eventually ends, Ukraine will be left with a military larger and with more recent experience than any of its European backers’.

Whether it can outlast Russia’s long-term designs in the event of any peace deal is a question for the entire continent, which now sees Ukraine as a bulwark against Moscow’s ambitions.

Finding the money and personnel to maintain 800,000 troops and piles of equipment while devising new capabilities will be among the Ukrainian government’s hardest tasks in the immediate aftermath of the war. European Union leaders recently said they would lend Ukraine 90 billion euros, around $105 billion, fending off a looming cash crunch in Kyiv and helping the Ukrainian army keep fighting as Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compete for President Trump’s ear.

If a peace deal can be agreed on, soldiers conscripted to fight on the front lines would likely want to demobilize, while a lack of funds suggests Ukraine would find it hard to pay them anyway. The country will likely rely more on reserve forces and cheaper equipment like drones, many defense analysts say.

Other, longer-term, decisions would have to be made.

Ukraine’s priority should be spending the money it has on expensive air defense and long-range missiles, but it should avoid costly items like jet fighters, some say.

Kyiv also wants to become more self-reliant through domestically produced weapons that will also help rationalize the hodgepodge of donated Western equipment it currently uses.

Ukrainian workers make parts for drones. Svet Jacqueline for WSJ

A drone engineer at a Ukrainian military research and development lab. Sasha Maslov for WSJ

“Ukraine’s military will have to be based around capabilities that are more cost effective, like drones, like mines, and mobilization based on reserves,” said Michael Kofman, a military expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank.

“Big-ticket elements like aircraft can easily consume much of Ukraine’s defense budget,” he said.

While Ukraine’s military has proven mainly successful at holding the much-better-resourced Russians back, it may not be what Kyiv wants to replicate when war ends.

“A lot of what Ukraine is doing now is not viable long term, it’s what they can build up quickly under the constant pressure of the ongoing conflict,” said Frank Kendall, who served as the U.S. Air Force secretary during the Biden administration.

To build up an air force, for instance, would take a lot of time to train pilots, acquire aircraft and build bases, he said.

Ukraine’s government and military declined to comment for this article.

Zelensky has said Ukraine needs to maintain 800,000 active-forces personnel, rejecting Russian demands that its military be capped at 600,000 as part of peace negotiations. European leaders recently agreed on Zelensky’s figure and said they would pay for it.

But funding a large military is particularly expensive. Ukraine spends around 30% of its GDP on defense, even with allies picking up the tab elsewhere. Russia’s Defense Ministry is responsible for 7.3% of the country’s GDP.

Europe, the U.S. and others have spent around $350 billion on Ukraine’s military and public services, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a research group in Germany. The U.S. has already stopped its funding and cash-constrained European nations may be less willing to fund Kyiv after the war is over.

At $105 billion, the EU’s new loan would be a short-term boost, the approximate equivalent of Germany’s expected military spending for next year. While wages and other costs are higher in Germany, it has around a quarter of Ukraine’s current personnel.

European leaders, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. envoys met in December as peace talks continued. Remko de Waal/ANP/Zuma Press

The U.K., often viewed as Western Europe’s most potent military, has only 147,000 active members and 32,000 reservists. The U.S., the world’s largest economy, has 1.3 million active-duty personnel.

Expensive to maintain, a large force would also take 800,000 people out of Ukraine’s economy with its fast-declining population.

Rather, Ukraine should aim for 300,000 to 500,000 and maintain the rest as reserves, said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at Ukrainian government research body the National Institute for Strategic Studies. Ukraine had fewer than 300,000 personnel just before Russia’s full-scale invasion, and that clearly wasn’t enough to cover one of the largest borders in Europe, he said.

Aside from troop numbers, Ukraine has given few public hints as to how it will shape its postwar military.

In a March publication, the Defense Ministry said it wanted to deploy at least 29 additional radar posts to create a cohesive missile-defense network. The country has a medley of different Soviet and Western systems that have to be integrated into a single system.

Ukrainian officers and outside defense analysts are almost united in saying that air defense and long-range missiles should be Ukraine’s top priorities.

“If I were to single out one area, I would probably focus on air defense, because we can all see what is currently happening with the enemy’s strikes deep inside our country,” said Lt. Col. Serhii Kostyshyn, deputy commander of the 72nd Brigade.

Russia bombards Ukraine almost daily with hundreds of long-range drones and missiles. Air defense at the front line is essential, as Russian drones cause damage and losses to Ukrainian troops and logistics, he said.

A photo of the front-line town of Kostyantynivka provided by the Ukrainian military. Ukrainian Armed Forces/Reuters

Investing in air defense is a priority for Ukraine. Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty Images

The Defense Ministry’s March document says Ukraine would increase its use of unmanned ground vehicles, such as drones to evacuate casualties, to 80% of its “maneuver brigades,” or mechanized infantry.

“Ukraine’s future armed forces should be built on one core principle: It shouldn’t be people fighting, it should be drones,” said Halyna Yanchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker who heads a parliamentary task force on defense investment.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defense minister, said the proliferation of drones and missiles means people will be gradually phased out of the battlefield and unmanned vehicles will take over. He said most of the Ukrainian military experts and front-line officers he talks to agree.

In such a world, Ukraine is unlikely to stock up on the sort of expensive tanks and other armored vehicles that Western nations continue to buy, analysts say. Kyiv already appears to have walked back from an earlier plan to manufacture 200 German Panther tanks in Ukraine.

Ukraine has made clear that it wants to be more self-sufficient in weapons, reducing its exposure to the whims of foreign suppliers like the U.S. In October, the government said that over 40% of the weapons used on the front line were Ukrainian-made and set a target of half by the end of this year.

A big debate surrounds jet fighters.

Zelensky recently signed MOUs with Sweden and France to buy up to 250 Gripen and Rafale jet fighters. That would give it a fighter fleet around the size of the U.K. and France’s combined, given that Ukraine already has 66 combat-capable aircraft, including donated F-16s and Soviet-era jets, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

Jet fighters are notoriously expensive both to buy and maintain, costing millions of dollars a year to run, which is why some analysts suggest they might not be the best way for Ukraine to spend its limited funds. Colombia, for instance, recently said that it would be spending the equivalent of $3.6 billion on just 17 Gripens.

Zagorodnyuk, who is also the chairman of the Ukrainian Center for Defence Strategies think tank, said aircraft shouldn’t be discounted, given they are a platform to both launch missiles and defend against them.

“If you don’t have that you are risking that your enemy can occupy the sky and establish windows of air superiority,” he said.

Write to Alistair MacDonald at Alistair.Macdonald@wsj.com

WSJ

10. The Blogs: When Money Collapses So Does Consent: Iran’s Currency Crisis and Bazaar Behavior

Summary:

Iran’s newest protest wave is driven by monetary breakdown, not ideology. In late December 2025 the rial slid to about 1.42 million per dollar, inflation ran above 40 percent, and food prices surged, making routine commerce chaotic. When Tehran’s Grand Bazaar shut its doors, the signal was systemic: merchants who anchor credit and contracts were announcing that prices, trust, and the social bargain were failing. A multi-tier exchange-rate regime fuels anger because insiders get cheap dollars while ordinary traders face market pain, turning inflation into perceived injustice. As dollar and gold pricing spreads, the rial stops functioning, and legitimacy erodes.

Comment: How to help the oppressed free themselves?

The Blogs: When Money Collapses So Does Consent: Iran’s Currency Crisis and Bazaar Behavior

blogs.timesofisrael.com · Vincent James Hooper · December 31, 2025

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/when-money-collapses-so-does-consent-irans-currency-crisis-and-bazaar-behavior/

Iran’s latest wave of protests was not sparked by ideology, elections, or identity. It was sparked by money — or rather, by the sudden realisation that money no longer works.

In late December 2025, the Iranian rial collapsed to around 1.42 million per US dollar, a historic low that rendered everyday commerce incoherent. Headline inflation reached 42 percent, with point-to-point inflation surging to 53 percent. Food prices rose more than 72 percent year-on-year, and wages lost value faster than they could be spent. What followed was not abstract anger but immediate revolt — beginning in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and rapidly spreading to Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, and Yazd.

This matters because in Iran, when the bazaar closes, the system is already in trouble.

The Bazaar as Economic Barometer

On December 28, merchants in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar shuttered their shops and chanted against economic mismanagement. Within 48 hours, similar scenes unfolded nationwide. Security forces responded with tear gas, but the symbolism was already irreversible. Historically, bazaari mobilisation has marked regime-level crises — from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.

Unlike students or urban youth, merchants are not habitual protesters. They sit at the intersection of trade, credit, and social stability. When they revolt, it signals not merely political dissent, but the collapse of price signals, contracts, and trust.

What distinguishes 2025 from earlier protest waves is the social base. The unrest of 2018 was driven by fuel prices and the urban poor. The protests of 2022 were rooted in social freedoms and youth mobilisation following Mahsa Amini’s death. This wave is different: it is led by the commercial middle — the class that depends most on monetary stability and that historically anchors regime legitimacy.

Exchange Rates as Political Rationing

The rial’s collapse did not occur overnight. It fell from roughly 430,000 per dollar in 2022 to over 1.4 million in 2025, reflecting years of structural erosion. Sanctions, oil revenue volatility, the June 2025 war with Israel, and geopolitical isolation matter — but they do not explain everything.

Equally corrosive has been Iran’s multi-tiered exchange-rate system, which has turned monetary policy into a mechanism of political allocation. Official, semi-official, and free-market rates coexist, granting privileged access to cheaper dollars for state-linked firms and insiders while exposing ordinary merchants to brutal market pricing. The result is not merely inflation, but institutionalised rent capture.

For bazaar traders, the problem is not just that prices rise — it is that competitors with political connections can survive currency swings that others cannot. This converts economic hardship into perceived injustice, a far more combustible force.

Dollarisation and the Death of the Rial

As confidence in the currency evaporates, Iranians have adapted in predictable ways. Informal dollarisation from below is accelerating: rents, appliances, dowries, and even wholesale food contracts are increasingly priced in dollars or gold. Rial wages, paid with delay and eroded by inflation, have become symbolic rather than functional.

This behavioural shift is critical. Once a population abandons its own currency in practice, monetary stabilisation becomes vastly harder. The rial is no longer merely weak — it is losing its role as a unit of account, a store of value, and a social contract.

Inflation as an Intergenerational Crisis

Inflation in Iran is often discussed as a macroeconomic problem. In reality, it is becoming an intergenerational one. Small businesses cannot pass shops or savings to children when inventories are wiped out by exchange-rate swings. Young Iranians face a labour market where wages lag far behind prices and asset ownership becomes impossible.

This explains why an initially economic protest cycle rarely stays confined to economics. When families lose the ability to transmit stability across generations, legitimacy erodes faster than repression can contain it.

Guns, Subsidies, and Monetary Exhaustion

Iran’s leadership faces a narrowing set of fiscal choices. Regional conflict and military commitments — intensified by the twelve-day war with Israel in June 2025 and ongoing proxy engagements — absorb resources that might otherwise stabilise prices or protect real incomes. The September 2025 reimposition of UN sanctions through the snapback mechanism further constrained external financing. Subsidies are trimmed, deficits widen, and the central bank fills the gap through monetary expansion.

The result is a quiet but relentless tradeoff: external confrontation versus internal currency stability. No amount of personnel reshuffling can resolve that tension.

The resignation of Central Bank Governor Mohammad Reza Farzin was intended as a signal of accountability. Instead, it underscored how little policy space remains. When Farzin took office in 2022, the rial traded at 430,000 to the dollar. Personnel changes cannot compensate for sanctions-constrained revenues, fiscal exhaustion, and a politicised monetary system.

A Regional Warning, Not an Iranian Exception

Iran’s crisis is extreme, but it is not unique. Across the Middle East, currency instability has become a recurring trigger of unrest: Lebanon’s lira collapse destroyed savings, with the currency losing more than 98 percent of its value since 2019; Syria’s pound freefall hollowed out wages; Egypt’s managed depreciations have strained social tolerance.

The lesson is consistent. Currency stability is not a technical indicator — it is a pillar of political consent. When money stops making sense, repression cannot restore order because order depends on predictability, not fear.

The Closing Window

Iran’s protests are not revolutionary — yet. But they are systemic. Bazaar-led unrest historically signals that economic breakdown has reached the commercial core of society. Once that happens, temporary crackdowns buy time but not resolution.

Stabilising the rial would require restoring external economic channels, rationalising exchange rates, curbing fiscal monetisation, and confronting the economic costs of permanent confrontation. Without such changes, protests may subside temporarily — but the next collapse will come faster, deeper, and with fewer shock absorbers left.

History suggests that revolutions do not begin when people are angry. They begin when prices stop making sense.

In Iran today, nothing does.

Table 1: Iran’s 2025 Currency Crisis — Drivers, Social Transmission, and Political Risk

Dimension What Changed in 2025 Why It Matters Politically Exchange Rate Rial fell to ~1.42 million per USD; widening gap between official and market rates Signals loss of monetary credibility; accelerates capital flight and hoarding Inflation Headline inflation 42%; point-to-point 53%; food prices up 72% Transforms discontent into survival politics; erodes real wages rapidly Exchange-Rate Dualism Multiple currency tiers favour insiders with access to cheap dollars Converts inflation into perceived injustice; fuels elite rent capture narratives Dollarisation Informal pricing in USD and gold spreads across housing, trade, and savings Marks functional death of the rial; makes stabilisation far harder Social Base of Protest Bazaar merchants and middle-class traders lead unrest Historically associated with systemic crises and regime-level pressure Intergenerational Impact Savings wiped out; asset transfer to youth disrupted Links economic crisis to long-term legitimacy erosion Fiscal–Military Tradeoff Defence and regional commitments crowd out stabilisation spending Forces monetary financing → inflation → protest Policy Space Sanctions + fiscal exhaustion limit central bank autonomy Leadership reshuffles cannot substitute for structural reform Regional Context June 2025 war with Israel; September 2025 UN snapback sanctions Compounded external pressure accelerates currency decline Political Risk Outlook Protests episodic but structural pressures unresolved High probability of recurrent unrest tied to currency shocks

Table 2: Currency Collapse and Protest Risk — Iran in Comparative MENA Perspective

Country Currency Trajectory (Recent Years) Core Driver of Depreciation Social Impact Political Response Protest Risk Profile Iran Rial from ~430k/USD (2022) to ~1.42m/USD (2025) Sanctions, fiscal monetisation, exchange-rate dualism, conflict Bazaar closures, middle-class erosion, informal dollarisation Repression + personnel reshuffles; no structural reform High and recurrent — systemic legitimacy risk Lebanon Lira lost >98% of value since 2019 Banking collapse, debt default, political paralysis Savings wiped out, mass impoverishment State retreat; de facto dollarisation Chronic but normalised — collapse without revolution Syria Pound freefall amid war economy Conflict, sanctions, state fragmentation Wage collapse, humanitarian crisis Coercion + aid dependency Contained by repression, not recovery Egypt Managed devaluations (2022–2024) External debt, FX shortages, IMF conditionality Cost-of-living stress, subsidy pressure Preemptive controls, Gulf support Latent — stability contingent on financing Turkey Lira depreciation with episodic stabilisation Unorthodox monetary policy, credibility loss Inflation fatigue, wage erosion Electoral adjustment, partial orthodoxy Politically absorbed, not resolved

blogs.timesofisrael.com · Vincent James Hooper · December 31, 2025

11. Iran on the brink? Key information about the protests

Summary:

Andreas Noll with Deutsche Welle describes a fast-moving protest cycle sparked by a sharp currency slide and now widening into open anti-regime dissent. The rial is around 1.45 million per dollar, down from roughly 820,000 a year ago, crushing wages to near $100 a month and turning basic food into a full-income expense. What began with bazaar shopkeepers striking in Tehran has spread to cities like Isfahan and Mashhad, with chants such as “Death to the dictator” and echoes of “Woman, Life, Freedom.” The bazaar’s involvement is treated as a warning sign because it has historically underwritten regime stability. Authorities are already using force to contain momentum.

Comment: When I was in college in the 1980s as I studied political science (focusing on political revolution) I had the good fortune to have as my academic advisor and professor for multiple classes, the late Dr. Mostafa Rejai at Miami University who came from Iran in the 1960s. It was certainly fascinating to have classes with him in 1979 after the US embassy was seized. We had an ongoing case study in our classes as we watched the Iranian revolution unfold and his insights were incredible (I recall journalists from the Y Times and others waiting outside of our classes as they tried to ambush him with questions. He refused any interviews as he still had family in Iran. But he shared his deep knowledge and insights and first hand experiences and he predicted almost everything we saw days or weeks before it happened. My only professional regret is that I did not continue to study Iran when I entered the military and I wish I had continued to develop knowledge of Iran so I could better understand what is happening today.

Iran on the brink? Key information about the protests – DW – 12/31/2025

Andreas Noll

13 hours ago13 hours ago

Iran has been gripped by demonstrations amid the country's economic crisis, with social discontent fueling open protest against the regime. Media and authorities have pinned the blame on foreign intelligence services.

https://www.dw.com/en/iran-on-the-brink-key-information-about-the-protests/a-75346485

Thousands of people have protested in Iran in recent days against the dramatic devaluation of the currency, amid an economic crisis that has engulfed the country.

What began as a strike by shopkeepers and bazaar merchants on Sunday has become an outcry of political anger, with some even chanting "Death to the dictator!" The spontaneous protests have already spread from Tehran to other cities, such as Isfahan and Mashhad.

Is the currency crash an inflationary crisis?

One US dollar is currently worth 1.45 million Iranian rials. A year ago, the exchange rate was 820,000 rials, meaning the monthly wages of an average Iranian in full-time work are now only worth slightly more than $100 (€85).

Basic food supplies can easily consume an entire monthly income. In a heavily import-dependent country like Iran, an inflationary shock like this has had immediate, destabilizing social consequences.

Protests in Iran began among merchants in the Tehran bazaar on SundayImage: UGC

Gissou Nia, a human rights lawyer and Iran expert from the Atlantic Council think tank, sees the economic crash as the catalyst for the protests, but not as its core issue. "As with the protests since December 2017, there's often an economic catalyst," she told DW. "But if we listen to the slogans, and the extent of the protests, it's about profound dissatisfaction with the Iranian regime and the desire for that regime to disappear."

It appears many Iranians no longer see the country's economic collapse as a crisis that can be rectified, but as a systemic failure of the regime of aged revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Nia underlined the radical nature of the slogans, and their continuity. "We're hearing things like 'Zan, Zendegi, Azadi' — Woman, Life, Freedom, a reference to the protests of 2022. We're also hearing 'Death to the dictator.' The regime has got to go," she said.

Previous protests made demands on the leadership for reform, but these have now mostly disappeared. The system itself is the target, and the movement is uniting different generations and their politics.

What role does the bazaar have to play?

The fact that these protests began in the bazaar is a historic shift. For decades, the bazaar has been the economic lifeline of the system, and the anchor of its political stability. The market is seen as a political early warning system and a potential multiplier of the protests. A strike by merchants in Tehran's Grand Bazaar played a crucial role in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which overthrew the monarchy.

Strikes in the bazaar have hit not just the food supply, but also the conservative backbone of the Islamic Republic. Nia described it as the "lifeblood of Iran's central markets. The shop owners and others gathered to protest because the current economic situation is no longer tenable."

Iranian women unveiled: A shift in hijab enforcement?

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has little political leeway for making concessions to the demonstrators. In a moment of unusual openness, he recently admitted, "If the problems aren't solved, we cannot govern." Some argue that this is tantamount to a declaration of political bankruptcy.

The government's draft budget for 2026 envisages tax rises of 62%, with inflation at 50%, which many on the street see as straightforward robbery. Public reactions suggest Iranians no longer differentiate between "reformers" and "hard-liners" in their political leadership, but instead see the entire political class as devoid of credibility.

Intense drought has led to increasing water shortages in IranImage: Majid Asgaripour/WANA/REUTERS

How badly is the crisis affecting people?

The economic crisis has broadened into a crisis of Iranian society and infrastructure. Savings have been devalued, and food and medicines are hard to come by and barely affordable. Water and electricity supply cuts have become increasingly common. And it's not just those on the margins who are affected, but broad swaths of the urban middle classes.

"The reality is that people can't afford to buy food. There are many things they can't pay for," said Nia. The water supply in many cities is now regularly cut off, which could make political mobilization easier. When a person has nothing more to lose, they are more likely to be prepared to risk standing up to state violence.

Iran turns to cloud seeding to relieve Tehran drought

For decades, the Islamic Republic has invested billions in its "axis of resistance," which was intended to secure the loyalty of militias in Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza. The protests in Iran now explicitly oppose this policy of regional intervention, shattering an ideological taboo. "What we're hearing is rejection of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran," said Nia.

The nationalization of the protests shows that loyalty is no longer seen as religious or transnational, but rather in terms of the Iranian state and society. Every dollar sent to Hezbollah or Hamas is now regarded by some as theft from the Iranian people.

Can the regime stop the protests?

Even as the political leadership in Tehran sends signals aimed at placating the people, security forces have started violently suppressing the protests. Compared to previous waves of protest, the regime is trying to quash this movement at an earlier stage with violence and intimidation. This suggests that it is very nervous.

"We're seeing videos online that show the security forces using tear gas," said Nia. "We're also seeing peaceful demonstrators being shot at."

The Iranian government is already cracking down on protestsImage: UGC

It's a tricky balancing act for the Iranian regime. The earlier the state resorts to violence, the more clearly it signals its weakness. But its usual routine of repression is no longer an effective deterrent: For many demonstrators, it is simply confirmation that the regime has no political solutions to offer.

In the past, the Iranian regime's knee-jerk reaction to waves of protest has been to explain them away as the result of interference by foreign intelligence services. These accusations have primarily been directed at the United States, and at Israel.

After Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, publicly called for people to support the latest protests, Iranian media and security services have again disseminated the narrative of "guided destabilization." But neither the speed nor the social breadth of the mobilization could realistically be controlled from outside.

For many Iranians, the reference to "foreign conspiracies" does not confirm the strength of their leaders, but their refusal to acknowledge reality.

This article was originally written in German.

12. Deterrence by Disruption

Summary:

Paul Zgheib argues that weak states can deter stronger powers by disrupting the systems that translate military capability into political results, rather than trying to destroy high-end platforms or achieve parity. He links classic asymmetric conflict theory on will, endurance, strategy mismatch, and moral constraints to modern mechanisms such as kill-chain disruption, multi-domain pressure, alliance integration, and information resilience. The defender targets decision-making, legitimacy, sensors, networks, and narratives, creating delay and uncertainty that make aggression politically unattractive. The article applies the logic to small maritime states, emphasizing deception, dispersion, cyber and EW effects, and credible legal and narrative posture. Deterrence holds when quick victory becomes unlikely.

Excerpts:

Deterrence by denial is therefore a realistic strategy for small states. They can impose uncertainty through deception, cyber disruption, dispersed command, legal legitimacy, and narrative control. These tools raise the cost of aggression and deny the attacker a rapid victory. When a strong power cannot promise success without political damage, deterrence holds.

Force remains necessary but is insufficient on its own. Modern deterrence rewards coherence, adaptation, and legitimacy. The actor that shapes the environment controls escalation. In this era, the weak do not need to match the strong. They only need to make aggression uncertain, slow, and politically unrewarding. That is how small states survive in a world of great powers.

Comment: I love to see the Go/Wei CHi/Baduk board in the photo at the link. I played multiple games on my iPad on the return flight from Seoul today when I could not connect to wifi. (And as usual I lost every one to the computer - but I continue to gain territory!)

Deterrence by Disruption

by Paul Zgheib

12.31.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/31/deterrence-by-disruption/

Strategy-based Chinese board game "go"

Abstract: This article argues that weak states can deter stronger powers by disrupting the systems that convert military power into political outcomes. Drawing on classical asymmetric conflict theory and contemporary concepts like kill-chain denial, integrated deterrence, and information resilience, it shows how small maritime states can impose delays, uncertainties, and political risks on superior forces. Deterrence by disruption offers vulnerable states a realistic way to survive and shape superior power behavior without seeking parity.

Introduction

Powerful militaries can lose wars to weaker opponents, and small states can deter stronger ones. These outcomes contradict the conventional theory of force and show that military power alone does not guarantee political success. Modern conflicts reveal that this is not an anomaly but a recurring pattern. Great powers possess advanced platforms and precision weapons yet often struggle to achieve their political outcomes against less capable adversaries. Where small states cannot force victory, they can impose deterrence by shaping the costs and uncertainties that make aggression politically unattractive. Understanding why the weak endure, and how they deter, is a central problem for contemporary strategy.

Scholars provide explanations for parts of this puzzle. Andrew Mack argues that asymmetric conflict is shaped by interest and survival. Jeffrey Record demonstrates that strong powers lose limited wars when domestic patience collapses. Ivan Arreguin-Toft shows that weaker actors prevail when they adopt methods that undermine the stronger. Gil Merom explains how democracies defeat themselves when moral costs rise. Yarger links success to a coherent strategy that aligns ends, ways, and means. However, most of this literature focuses on irregular warfare and insurgency. There is less attention on how the same logic now appears in deterrence, especially at sea and in multi-domain competition.

This paper argues that contemporary asymmetric deterrence works by disrupting systems rather than destroying platforms. A weaker defender targets the attacker’s decision-making, legitimacy, and operational networks. If a strong power cannot fight quickly, decisively, or confidently, aggression loses value. The following section connects classical theories of will, method, moral constraints, and strategy to contemporary deterrence mechanisms such as kill-chain disruption, alliance integration, multi-domain pressure, and information resilience.

The Logic of Asymmetric Success

Asymmetry of Will, Method, and Political Endurance

War outcomes are shaped by which side views the war as vital. This is the core of Andrew Mack’s logic on asymmetric conflict: weaker actors fight as if survival is at stake, while stronger actors often fight a limited war for peripheral aims. The strong actor rarely faces an existential threat and therefore fights under political and moral limits that shorten its tolerance for loss. As a result, determination rather than military capability often predicts who prevails. Mack’s insight reframes success as a contest of commitment, not a math problem of force ratios. The Vietnam War is the clearest illustration: despite overwhelming U.S. military superiority, Hanoi treated the war as a matter of survival. It absorbed losses that the United States could not politically sustain and eventually forced the United States to withdraw. Therefore, political will is the foundation of asymmetric success. The side that fights for survival accepts greater losses and uses time to erode its opponent’s legitimacy.

Strong powers lose limited wars when domestic patience collapses before the military can achieve their strategic objectives. Jeffrey Record shows that post-1945 U.S. failures (e.g., Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia) occurred against weaker opponents that outlasted America’s political will. Democratic societies are accountable to public opinion and media scrutiny, and they hesitate at prolonged costs when national survival is not at risk. In Vietnam, the conflict was peripheral for the United States and existential for Hanoi. The gap in stakes translated into nominal endurance. Because each side valued the war in different ways, persistence—not superior weapons—determined the outcome.

War is not determined by will alone, but also by how each side’s methods interact. Ivan Arreguin-Toft’s strategic interaction theory argues that success depends on the relationship between direct and indirect approaches. When both actors use similar fighting methods—direct vs. direct or indirect vs. indirect—the stronger side’s quantitative military advantage dominates. However, when the weak adopt the opposite approach, especially employing irregular tactics against conventional forces, their chances of success rise sharply. The indirect strategy allows the weak to attack the enemy’s plan rather than its strength. Arreguin-Toft found that weaker actors win most of the asymmetric wars when they exploit this mismatch in strategy. This mismatch creates a psychological and political advantage for the weak, as the strong becomes trapped in a costly war that cannot end quickly. The mujahideen used this method against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and forced Moscow into an unwinnable war of attrition.

Moral Constraints, Adaptation, and Strategic Coherence

Democracies strengthen this vulnerability by placing moral and legal limits on the use of force. Gil Merom’s study of France in Algeria demonstrates that battlefield superiority erodes when the domestic front rejects the unethical methods necessary to sustain control. France’s use of conscription and torture triggered a societal backlash that made the continued occupation of Algeria politically impossible. The decisive battle occurred in French public opinion, not in the Algerian desert. Merom shows that the weak can turn the strong side’s moral restraints into a weapon by exploiting them over time. In France, the Algerian war forced the public to choose between democratic values and the brutal means used to preserve the empire, and most citizens rejected the latter. Massive anti-war protests in Paris and within the French Army proved that political collapse, not battlefield defeat, forced the withdrawal from Algeria.

Adaptation turns endurance into results by exploiting the strong side’s rigidity. When the strong adheres to doctrine or technology, the weak shifts tempo and terrain. In Algeria and Vietnam, insurgents turned tactical losses into political gains by demonstrating resilience. Their approach resembles what Arreguin-Toft observed: match opposites, not equals. This is why North Vietnamese forces avoided U.S. conventional superiority and instead fought through small mobile units, hit-and-run tactics, and political warfare. Every tactical loss became a strategic message that the United States could not win quickly.

Weak actors innovate by substituting new ways when the means are scarce. This is how small states design credible deterrence without parity: they seek denial, not domination.

A coherent strategy converts limited resources into sustainable advantage. Yarger defines strategy as the balanced relationship among ends (objectives), ways (methods), and means (resources). Failure occurs when these elements lose proportion, or when ambitions exceed resources, or when methods contradict goals. Strong powers often pursue expansive ends with limited political means or employ methods that do not align with the character of the war. Weak actors survive by aligning modest ends with creative tactics. In an asymmetric fight, clarity of purpose is a form of power. Weak actors innovate by substituting new ways when the means are scarce. This is how small states design credible deterrence without parity: they seek denial, not domination. When an aggressor realizes that a quick victory is unlikely and costly, they will be deterred by uncertainty. Yarger’s framework explains that coherent ends, ways, and means create a strategy that endures pressure and avoids overreach.

Asymmetry of interest also operates through economic and diplomatic ties. Douglas Borer’s analysis of “inverse engagement” shows that when powerful states rely on interdependence to control weaker partners, the weaker partner can manipulate the relationship to its advantage. In the 1980s, U.S.-Iraq economic engagement empowered Baghdad rather than moderating it. This is the same logic that appears in irregular war. When the strong assumes compliance, and the weak prioritizes survival, the side with greater leverage and lower dependency converts the stronger actor’s assumptions into liabilities. The United States believed agricultural credits and trade would restrain Saddam Hussein. Instead, Iraq used those resources to expand its military power. This dynamic also appears in alliance politics, where weaker actors may exploit humanitarian law, media attention, or coalition politics to constrain a stronger attacker. Instead of controlling Iraq, the United States unintentionally expanded Baghdad’s autonomy. This demonstrates how a weaker actor can bend a larger power’s expectations to its own advantage.

These classical mechanisms explain why the weak endure. They also reveal how the weak deter. The logic of will, method, and coherence now shape state-level deterrence in multi-domain competition. Modern deterrence emerges not from matching the strong platform for platform, but from disrupting the systems that allow the strong to convert capability into political outcomes.

From Asymmetric Warfare to Deterrence by System Disruption

Contemporary deterrence allows weaker actors to counter stronger militaries by targeting systems, rather than platforms. Alan Brechbill’s “Sink the Kill Chain” explains that modern naval power depends on the ability to find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess. If a defender breaks any one step, the attacker loses tempo and certainty. Brechbill notes that “a fleet that cannot hide cannot fight,” which means the fight now depends on deception, dispersion, and disruption. When the strong cannot complete the kill chain, they cannot promise a quick victory. The kill chain gives small states a clear target: the enemy’s command system. Satellites, radars, data links, and tracking networks are easier to disrupt than attacking aircraft carriers or destroyers. If satellites fail, missiles lose accuracy. If targeting networks are confused, ships cannot fire with confidence. This allows a defender with limited resources to deny sea control by forcing the attacker to search rather than strike.

Alliances expand this denial strategy across every area of warfare. Douglas A. Borer and Shannon C. Houck argue that partners can block Chinese military success without matching China ship for ship. Integrated deterrence links air, sea, cyber, space, and land systems into one network. Intelligence and targeting data can flow across allied forces and service branches. A ship in one country can fire based on sensors in another. This networked model means a small state becomes part of a larger defensive system, where any strike can trigger a response from multiple partners. In the Pacific, joint forces spread sensors, decoys, and missile batteries across various states so that China cannot neutralize a single target with a single attack. This denies an aggressor the ability to isolate one defender.

A U.S. Naval vessel testing an anti-air missile.

Combination warfare expands this idea beyond the battlefield. Callard and Faber explain that modern conflict combines conventional military power with non-military forms of war and above-military forms of war; they refer to this as “combination warfare,” where pressure comes from multiple directions simultaneously. A defender cannot protect every network, port, or public narrative at the same time. The result is overload and confusion. For example, cyber tools can shut down logistics or public services without firing a shot, forcing a stronger power to respond politically and economically, not only militarily. A state that cannot fight a naval fleet can still disrupt logistics, paralyze sensors, and challenge political will.

Strategic culture reinforces this approach. David Lai explains the Chinese concept of shi through the game of Go. In Go, victory does not come from one decisive battle but from shaping positions and forcing the opponent to overextend. China seeks a gradual positional advantage, not a rapid, decisive victory. Lai shows that advantage grows from shaping space, time, and perception. This logic fits asymmetric deterrence. A small state cannot match ships but can shape the environment. Coastal missiles restrict movement. Unmanned boats and drones complicate surveillance and targeting. Cyber defenses slow decision-making. Alliances and international law add political risk. Each layer forces the attacker to spend more time and resources and accept more uncertainty.

Integrated deterrence reflects the logic of strategic mismatch. Strong actors rely on rapid precision strikes, while weaker actors counter by disrupting sensors, jamming satellites, dispersing assets, and breaking the attacker’s plan.

Legitimacy, Information Resilience, and Political Cost

Legitimacy and narrative are parts of the same system. Power depends on perception. A strong military becomes vulnerable if it cannot justify its actions to its own public, allies, or neutral observers. A weaker actor can undermine the stronger power’s legitimacy just as effectively as it disrupts targeting or operations. When a small state survives, communicates, records attacks, or exposes violations of law, it changes the political cost of aggression. Borer refers to this as the political aspect of asymmetric conflict. This legal and moral resistance is the final layer: international law, documentation of strikes, transparent communication, and humanitarian restraint contribute to building credibility. If a weak state acts within a legal and moral frame, allies stay close, and public support remains strong. Once a strong power loses the moral narrative, escalation becomes politically expensive.

It [small maritime states] can create delay, confusion, and political embarrassment. Delay creates pressure, and the pressure creates restraint.

Information resilience is now a real form of defense. Russia launched “a wide-reaching, high-volume, and multichannel disinformation campaign” targeting Ukrainian soldiers, civilians, and international audiences. Ukraine responded through government institutions, civil-society organizations, and public education. They employed a tactic called “prebunking,” which involves exposing disinformation before it spreads. Helmus and Holynska conclude that Ukraine fought on three information fronts at once: the domestic population, the invading force, and the international community. This helped maintain morale, ensured support from partners, and prevented Russian narratives from dominating. Cognitive stability becomes part of deterrence by denying the attacker psychological leverage.

These ideas converge in small maritime states. A coastal defender cannot defeat a carrier group at sea, but it can interrupt the kill chain. It can deploy unmanned boats, decoys, jammers, cyber tools, and coastal missiles that force the attacker to search instead of strike. It can shape global opinion by documenting civilian harm and exposing disinformation. It can create delay, confusion, and political embarrassment. Delay creates pressure, and the pressure creates restraint.

Ultimately, modern deterrence is about disrupting systems. Weaker actors do not need to destroy ships or hold territory; they target the opponent’s ability to decide, coordinate, and justify. Brechbill focuses on machines, Callard and Faber focus on multi-domain pressure, Lai focuses on strategic position, Holynska on cognitive resilience, and Borer on alliances and legitimacy. These are different methods, but they share one principle: the strong lose advantage when the system breaks faster than platforms can win battles.

Conclusion

Weak actors continue to deter and sometimes defeat stronger militaries because power in modern conflict depends on sophisticated systems, not platforms. Classical asymmetric theory explains why determination, survival stakes, and strategic mismatch erode the advantages of superior forces. Scholars show that the weak turn time, morality, and creativity into weapons. These findings overturn the assumption that large militaries can always convert firepower into political outcomes. When the stakes are unequal, the side fighting for existence endures longer than the side fighting for limited aims.

Contemporary deterrence extends this logic into new domains. Weaker states no longer seek parity; they seek disruption. Brechbill shows that naval power collapses when the kill chain fails. Borer and Houck demonstrate that alliances create a networked shield where any strike risks regional escalation. Callard and Faber describe multi-domain pressure that turns logistics, sensors, and information into targets. Lai shows that positional advantage replaces decisive battles. Helmus and Holynska prove that information resilience protects morale, international support, and battlefield effectiveness. Together, these ideas reveal that the strong lose advantage when their system breaks faster than the weak can be destroyed.

Deterrence by denial is therefore a realistic strategy for small states. They can impose uncertainty through deception, cyber disruption, dispersed command, legal legitimacy, and narrative control. These tools raise the cost of aggression and deny the attacker a rapid victory. When a strong power cannot promise success without political damage, deterrence holds.

Force remains necessary but is insufficient on its own. Modern deterrence rewards coherence, adaptation, and legitimacy. The actor that shapes the environment controls escalation. In this era, the weak do not need to match the strong. They only need to make aggression uncertain, slow, and politically unrewarding. That is how small states survive in a world of great powers.

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Tags: asymmetric warfare, combination warfare, kill chain, maritime strategy, systems

About The Author

Paul Zgheib
LCDR Paul Zgheib is an officer in the Lebanese Navy and a student in the Special Operations and Irregular Warfare program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His research focuses on asymmetric maritime security, deterrence by denial, and small-state strategy in contested littorals.

13. Afghanistan, A History Already Forgotten: Counterinsurgency Lessons U.S. Senior Military Leaders Must Not Ignore

Summary:

Rix and Livermore argue Afghanistan should be remembered as a major U.S. strategic loss, and that senior leaders risk repeating it because counterinsurgency lessons are already being eclipsed by a return to conventional war focus. Using Galula as a baseline, they identify six failures: treating counterterrorism as the main effort while lacking an enduring political cause; prioritizing democracy-building over securing and mobilizing the Afghan people; failing to isolate the population from the Taliban; permitting external sanctuaries and support networks, especially in Pakistan; building national forces optimized for raids and base defense instead of persistent local security; and then politically undercutting the Kabul government through a peace process that empowered the Taliban. Their warning is that future wars will be hybrid, and these errors will recur.

Comment: We usually learn more from failure than we do from victory. Hopefully we will not fail to heed the lessons.

Grpahics at the link.

Afghanistan, A History Already Forgotten: Counterinsurgency Lessons U.S. Senior Military Leaders Must Not Ignore

by Daniel Rix, by Doug Livermore

12.31.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/31/afghanistan-a-history-already-forgotten-counterinsurgency-lessons-u-s-senior-military-leaders-must-not-ignore/

The United States fought a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, resulting in the loss of 2,448 U.S. military, 3,846 U.S. contractor, and over 100,000 Afghan lives and costing trillions of dollars. Bookended by al-Qaeda’s attacks on the U.S. homeland and Afghans clinging desperately to the tires of an Air Force C-17 during the evacuation of Kabul while Marines were slaughtered at Abbey Gate, the war in Afghanistan will be remembered as one of the greatest strategic losses in American history. Worse than the collapse of the South Vietnamese government, which persisted for two years after U.S. troop withdrawals, Ashraf Ghani’s Afghan government fell even before the U.S. military frantically departed the Hamid Karzai International Airport. Even the Soviet-backed Afghan government remained in power for three years after the Red Army left, highlighting the ineptitude of U.S. conduct in this conflict. This article identifies clear strategic failures throughout this counterinsurgency that the United States must learn from and endeavor never to repeat. An inability for U.S. senior military leaders to understand them and effectively apply appropriate lessons in a future counterinsurgency or hybrid war, in which counterinsurgent and irregular warfare tactics will indeed manifest, will result in more lives lost unnecessarily and another U.S. strategic failure.

Scope

The task of postmortem on America’s longest war is, no doubt, a massive undertaking. One that scholars, politicians, and military experts will debate for years to come. Many intellectuals will delve deeply into the failures in Afghanistan, such as the congressionally mandated Afghanistan War Commission. There will be no shortage of analyses and opinions on why the most powerful nation in the world lost a counterinsurgency war against a financially, technologically, and tactically inferior group of insurgents. This article seeks to add to the body of knowledge in a small way by identifying clear counterinsurgency failures in the campaign to root out the Taliban. It focuses on the counterinsurgency against the Taliban, not on counterterrorism targeting al-Qaeda, though the latter is used to explain failures of the former. It also does not attempt to address the counterinsurgency in Iraq, which no doubt limited resources into Afghanistan. Finally, it will not describe the interplay between other sources of instability, such as the Haqqani Network in eastern Afghanistan. Though not comprehensive, this article identifies six strategic failures largely based on David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, recognizing that there are other counterinsurgency frameworks with which to conduct analysis. David Galula, a veteran of World War II and the Algerian War, observed and experienced several insurgencies before codifying a simple framework of complex principles to counter seditious activities.

Failure 1: Counterterrorism vs. Counterinsurgency, Lacking an Enduring Cause

An insurgency is a protracted struggle designed to overthrow an existing power, which is measured in years and decades rather than months. The longer the struggle, the better it is generally for an insurgency as it takes root within the populace. Mao Zedong’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, for example, was preceded by 22 years of guerrilla warfare against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Japanese invaders. Mao’s theory of insurgency allows for an insurgency to move back and forth between phases – latent and incipient organization, guerrilla warfare, and conventional “war of movement”– as conditions require to ensure survival. Additionally, there can be synchronized efforts between conventional and insurgent forces, or hybrid warfare, based on the need as was the case of North Vietnamese Army regulars and Viet Cong insurgents operating in different areas in South Vietnam against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. Throughout this protracted struggle and its shifting phases, an insurgency needs a galvanizing cause that helps drive a wedge between the people and the established government.

Figure 1: Maoist Phases of Insurgency (author contribution)

The counterinsurgent must have an equally compelling cause. Though the United States had the political will to fight a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, spanning four presidencies – no small feat – it lacked a coherent and enduring cause or overarching goal to unify the Afghans, and by extension, the American people, against the Taliban. From the heights of optimism following the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001, Afghan popular support for the subsequent governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani saw a consistent downward spin in approval amid widespread incompetence, corruption, and tribal cronyism – all issues that the Taliban had popularly positioned themselves against in their initial rise in 1994.

The United States’ justifiable cause in the early days after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, was counterterrorism focused: punish and defeat al-Qaeda for perpetuating the largest terrorist attack on America. The Taliban regime was merely a stumbling block to get to this terrorist organization. Their refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader, to the United States put them in the crosshairs of military action beginning on October 7, 2001.

Aside from installing the rag-tag Northern Alliance and providing humanitarian aid, there was no holistic U.S. counterinsurgent strategy to consolidate gains after toppling the Taliban regime, let alone a unifying cause around which to rally the Afghan people. In fact, the U.S. National Security Strategies (NSS) throughout this conflict highlighted the counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan with little to no mention of counterinsurgent activity, often lumping the Taliban in with al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization instead of an insurgent group. This gave the remnants of the Taliban regime time to morph back into an insurgency and codify their own cause (and legitimacy) against a foreign “infidel” power. Though a stated cause becomes less important as the conflict drags on and the people pine for a clear winner, in the latent or incipient stages of an insurgency, it is the driving force behind the movement. Unfortunately, the failure of the United States to help provide an indigenous-led cause to the Afghan people gave the Taliban an open door to exploit for their own purposes.

Figure 2: Enduring Cause of an Insurgency. This is most critical in the Latent / Incipient Phase and then becomes less important as the conflict continues. (author contribution)

Eight years later, the U.S. government remained engrossed in disrupting, dismantling, and defeating the al-Qaeda terrorist group, not on fighting the counterinsurgency against the Taliban. This cause was so ingrained in the U.S. collective psyche that even after Osama bin Laden was killed in the infamous Special Operations Force (SOF) raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011 there was serious debate amongst government officials on ending the war in Afghanistan. This clearly demonstrated the overall lack of counterinsurgency emphasis. Years later while U.S. forces were still embroiled in conflict in Afghanistan, the 2017 NSS makes only one mention of counterinsurgency but in a regional context, while the focus in Afghanistan remained on counterterrorism, an idea mirrored in the 2021 Interim NSS Guidance.

Following the successful raid on al-Qaeda’s chief, then Vice President Joe Biden stated that “the Taliban per se is not our enemy,” illustrating the United States’ bifurcated posture on destroying al-Qaeda versus defeating an insurgency led by the Taliban who were instrumental in facilitating the 9/11 attack. Never did a consistent, comprehensive counterinsurgent strategy undergird U.S. decisions in Afghanistan. Rather, it was an afterthought that frequently changed with every new political administration and rotation of military leadership. The maxim that typified this wavering counterinsurgency approach in Afghanistan and spread amongst military service members was “we didn’t fight one 20-year war; we fought 20 one-year wars.” Counterinsurgency, instead of being its own line of effort, was subservient to, rather than being in tandem with, counterterrorism efforts. Without a clear, enduring cause and supporting counterinsurgent strategy, the default U.S. policy in Afghanistan became the amorphous goal of spreading democracy.

Failure 2: A Battle for Democracy, Not the Afghan People

The U.S. efforts to counter the Taliban insurgency lacked strategic focus on the clear center of gravity required to win: the Afghan people. Insurgencies are won and lost based on the active and passive support they receive from the population it seeks to influence; so too are counterinsurgencies. Famed 19th century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz postulated that the nature of war is a constant tension between the policies of the government, the violence and passions of the people, and the currents of chance and probability that influence the outcome of military operations.

Figure 3: Clausewitzian Paradoxical Trinity (author contribution)

This simple, yet profound imagery, known as the Paradoxical Trinity, has influenced and informed the Western way of warfare for almost 200 years. It reflects the pressure that exists within a nation that goes to war with another nation. Though all three elements exist in an insurgency conflict, the protracted struggle is for influence over the people within a nation. The conflict is within itself. Dueling paradoxical trinities fight over the population for support. One trinity is the legitimate government with its military and the people that support both. The other is the insurgent’s shadow government, dutiful guerrillas, and the people it seeks to win over. The more the people support an insurgency, the more legitimate it becomes until it usurps the authority of the counterinsurgent government.

Figure 4: Dueling Paradoxical Trinities in an Insurgency (author contribution)

The counterinsurgent’s support from the population must be built at the grassroots level and scaled methodically, chiefly centered on security. Not only was the United States not primarily focused on the population, it also suffered from an ill-fated delusion that it could force the Afghan people from a Deobani Islamic theocracy into a democracy, counter to their religion, culture, and values. U.S. strategic documents speak to this fallacy. The NSS of 2006, for example, mentions that Afghanistan (and Iraq) “replaced tyrannies with democracies,” but made no mention of counterinsurgency efforts. By 2010, the NSS mentioned counterinsurgency in Afghanistan once, but failed to develop an effective framework other than “working to secure key population centers,” an ill-advised method that will be explained later. Rather, the focus was to spread “democracy abroad” by “supporting the human rights of all of Afghanistan’s people.”

The spread of liberal democracy as a means to stave off future wars and increase U.S. interests abroad is theoretically feasible, but it should not be considered a blanket solution to all international problems. Such a change for an agrarian, rural-based society, like in Afghanistan, could take generations. This is certainly not feasible during an ongoing conflict with insurgents where the local population could not receive the most basic government service: security. This says nothing for the lack of food, water, and power in the hinterlands of the country.

It was this basic concept of security that catapulted Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s leader into prominence during the transition period following the collapse of the Soviet-backed Afghan government in 1992 at the hands of the mujahideen. To undermine the transitional mujahideen government, Pakistan first supported Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, known as the “Butcher of Kabul” for his indiscriminate bombardments of Afghanistan’s capital during this period. The resulting civil war between guerrilla factions produced lawlessness, rape, and murder. When Hekmatyar failed to capture Kabul and was driven off by the mujahideen led by the famed Ahmad Shah Massoud, the “Lion of Panjshir,” Pakistan was forced to find alternate proxies through which to assert its influence over Afghanistan.

The Pakistanis then elected to support Mullah Omar’s group of students or “talib,” turned fighters, allowing them to first operate out of the Pakistani city of Quetta. Projecting from this safe haven, Omar’s Taliban provided security and administered harsh justice across the border into the southern provincial capital of Kandahar, which the local population desperately wanted. His strict adherence to Islam spread until taking over the country in 1996. Unfortunately, five years later, the U.S. focus on development over security ensured misplaced efforts and wasted funds after overthrowing the Taliban’s regime. For example, newly constructed schools in Afghan villages often went unoccupied as prospective students were not safe enough from threatened Taliban reprisals to attend class. Rather, Afghans used the buildings as open bays for human excrement. They became expensive outhouses paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, an unfortunate metaphor of U.S. strategic efforts.

U.S. security, governance, and development efforts were akin to those of the Soviet’s occupation of Afghanistan, concentrating on the larger, more secure key urban areas, such as Kabul and Kandahar, which were interconnected by the “Ring Road” within the interior of the country. Unfortunately, there was little to no security efforts in the rural areas during the first half of the conflict, areas from which the Taliban recruited the majority of its supporters. General William Westmoreland, the Commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, eventually recognized the importance of security at the local level when faced with a similar counterinsurgency in South Vietnam. “There is no doubt whatsoever that the insurgency in South Vietnam must eventually be defeated among the people in the hamlets and towns,” he stated, “However, in order to defeat the insurgency among the people, they must be provided security.”

It wasn’t until 2010 that the U.S. military’s SOF initiated grassroots, local security programs dubbed Village Stability Operations (VSO) and Afghan Local Police (ALP). A modernization of the Vietnam-era Strategic Hamlet Program, and a similar program used during the Philippine Insurrection, SOF used VSO to set the conditions in a targeted local area for ALP to establish security in specific Afghan districts. VSO and ALP programs were methodically built based on thoughtful, conditions-based analysis. Despite its initial success, the programs were started too late in the conflict, causing them to be hastened to produce greater results. Unfortunately, quantity was prized over quality, resulting in a rush to failure. Proper vetting could not be adhered to as many ALP recruits were secretly Taliban insurgents, corrupt thugs who brutalized the locals, or nonexistent and counted solely so ALP commanders could pocket the appropriated salaries.

Additionally, U.S. and NATO’s support to the newly established Afghan government was often tied to Western ideology, such as women’s rights, freedom of religion, and universal elections. Though noble ideals and rightly to be pursued in incremental phases, these democratic values were foreign to the population that the United States was trying to influence. Unfortunately, this had the opposite impact, alienating the patriarchal-minded, Pashtun-led and deeply Islamic population base. The appeal to democratization came largely from those in the capital, Kabul, but it did little to impress the locals who had lived under tribal authority for centuries amid countless government changes. To pursue such a lofty goal was ill-conceived, forgetting the United States’ own founding and incremental progress. The constitutional republic that is the United States was not formed until 1787, 11 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The newly established nation had four years of peace after the Treaty of Paris ended the war with Great Britain with which to develop its government. Even then it did not end the institution of slavery until 1865 or gain women’s suffrage until 1920. The United States expected the Afghan people to adopt radical social changes all while still fighting a counterinsurgency. For all its efforts, what did U.S. democratization accomplish? The women of Afghanistan are, unfortunately, no better off today than before the U.S. invasion of the country after 9/11.

Failure 3: Not Isolating the People from the Insurgency

Inherent in building a security apparatus at the local level is the need to isolate the people from insurgents, thereby cutting off the center of gravity and their source of recruitment and power. This requires the difficult reality of developing mechanisms that monitor and regulate the population. The use of a census, curfews, and passes to leave a village are just a few methods that local security and government officials must implement and strictly enforce to be effective. In the 21st century, such approaches seem overly harsh and authoritarian, and clash with the naïve perspective that the U.S. military were the “liberators” of the Afghan people. However, not all Afghans welcomed the United States as such or supported its “logical” approach to bringing freedom to Afghanistan.

An early 20th century counterinsurgency example provides much more effective methods of isolating the people from an insurgency. The hamlet program during the Philippine Insurrection from 1899-1902, grew from 50 to over 500 local garrisons and was marked with harsh punishments for failure to abide by control measures. Collective punishments involved families and communities. Municipal leaders were held responsible for issues in their villages; prisoners were detained until they or their families and friends gave intelligence on insurgents; and crops, buildings, and other property could be destroyed or confiscated. Captured insurgents were executed in accordance with anti-insurgent regulations. Also, U.S. military and Filipino law enforcement rewarded those who proved their loyalty to the cause, such as willingly giving information on insurgents. Though brutal, this was an extremely successful program that ended the Filipino insurgency in three years. However, 100 years later the United States forgot these methods, failing to ensure the Afghan people were effectively isolated from Taliban insurgents.

The infamous PowerPoint slide showing the interconnection between the Taliban, the Afghan people, and the U.S.-backed government described by General McChrystal’s staff was complex. It was characteristic of how insurgents blend into the population, rooting themselves within the people and creating confusion for the counterinsurgents. However, that same staff failed to provide a solution to cut off the Taliban from the people through strict implementation of harsh anti-insurgent rules and laws at the local level. Rather, modern sensibilities on the perceived abuse of the law resulted in injustice as insurgents were sent to westernized, central Afghan judiciaries where they were often set free shortly after being arrested due to unreasonable evidentiary procedures and intimidated witnesses. Insurgents were empowered, while local tribal leaders and law enforcement were rendered impotent, forcing them to broker deals with those they sought to displace. U.S. counterinsurgent efforts failed to produce a metaphorical shield for the people against the insurgents.

Figure 5: PowerPoint slide of the Afghanistan COIN dynamics under General Stanley McChrystal

Failure 4: Difficult Terrain, but Little Denial of Safe Havens, Outside Support

The type of terrain within a nation engulfed in an insurgency can either help or hurt the insurgent’s cause. As an archipelago with over 7,600 islands, the Philippines, for example, offered a difficult environment for the Filipino insurgency of the late 1800s to flourish. Fortunately for the Taliban, Afghanistan’s mostly rough, mountainous terrain, extensive international borders, and underdeveloped, dispersed population all significantly benefitted them. A land historically renowned as a crossroads for traders and invaders alike, U.S. and Afghan counterinsurgent forces could never realistically monitor or control the country’s porous border crossings. As a result, the Pashtun-dominant Taliban insurgency found a quick and easy safe haven across Pakistan’s extensive border amongst a sympathetic Pashtun population. Throughout the war, the Taliban maintained its senior leadership, recruitment centers, and training camps inside Pakistan, sending new insurgents across the border each spring at the start of the “Fighting Season.”

After being ousted from Afghanistan in December 2001, the Taliban found unabated support in Pakistan, to include the freedom to recruit, train, finance, and plan operations. For example, Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, was the notorious location for Taliban senior leaders to plan and issue guidance on attacks into Afghanistan; this was known as the Quetta Shura. Despite decades of U.S. aid and military support, the Pakistani government not only willfully ignored U.S. entreaties to stop the Taliban in its country, it directly supported the efforts of its historic puppet from the Afghan civil war, believing that a revived Taliban government would ultimately benefit Pakistan.

Unfortunately, U.S. sanctions on the Taliban and a few Pakistani firms did little to stop the Taliban’s lucrative underground fundraising. Money was filtered using the virtually undetectable “hawala,” or Islamic-compliant money transfer system. For instance, extortion, drug trafficking, and other illicit activities accounted for up to $400 million from 2011 to 2012 alone. The lack of local security allowed the Taliban to enforce religious taxes on the Afghan people and continue poppy cultivation in a country producing 80% of the world’s opium. Instead of targeting opium production directly as a major source of Taliban income, the United States viewed poppy as a European drug problem, not a counterinsurgent one. Moreover, widespread allegations persisted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, exploited his power as the “Kingpin of Kandahar” to profit from protection and trafficking networks in the opium economy. As a result, no full-scale efforts were ever made to destroy poppy cultivation once local security was established in a specific area and the Taliban continued to rake in their own profits to fund the insurgency.

Additionally, save from a few examples, there was little attempt to cut the Taliban off from their safe havens in Pakistan. Viewing the international and political fallout too great, the United States only used its proverbial sword in the form of SOF raids and drone strikes sparingly to disrupt Taliban efforts across Afghanistan’s southern border. The first known use of precision raids and strikes wasn’t until 2008, almost seven years after the United States overthrew the Taliban with the aid of the Northern Alliance. Their use ebbed and flowed throughout the counterinsurgency. However, like the ebb and flow of the bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War, there was no consistency in precision strikes, limiting their effectiveness against the Taliban over the course of the conflict. Often, these special operations were carried out as counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda, such as the Osama bin Laden raid, not counterinsurgent operations against the Taliban.

Failure 5: Right Training for the Wrong War

Effective counterinsurgents must have specialized education. Conventional warfare training in the form of large force-on-force battles with tanks, fighter jets, and the latest technology hold little relevance against an insurgency who do not wear uniforms and rarely mass their forces. Rather, large numbers of light infantry with some indirect support, such as robust intelligence collection, mortars and artillery, and mobile transportation are more apropos. This allows for quick, flexible responses to insurgent activity. Additionally, as counterinsurgent forces move into local areas to increase security and establish local law enforcement, they will require a variety of skills to bolster governance and development of that area. Understanding politics, culture, language, history, law, and religion are critical for counterinsurgents as they help the local people rid themselves of insurgent influence. Counterinsurgents must be integrated into the populace, living amongst them to assist the people and using them to identify, arrest, and prosecute insurgents. To reiterate, governance and development cannot be enacted without security as the primary effort.

The U.S. military spent no effort on developing an Afghan security apparatus in the early years of the Afghan War, relying instead on unilateral strikes and raids throughout the country to defeat the Taliban. Once it finally realized the need for indigenous security personnel, the U.S. poured billions of dollars into building an Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police upwards of 350,000 personnel through the remainder of the conflict. Even if this number is to be believed and known corruption in counting “ghost soldiers” is discarded, the reality is that Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) were not usually stationed at the local level. These national assets, though necessary for conventional fights, were not trained or equipped to counter an insurgency at the community level. ANSF often stayed on protected bases for fear of breaking or losing U.S.-acquired materials on operations so often ceding the hinterland to the Taliban, a tremendous advantage for an insurgent. They were also not trained in how to instill local security, governance, and development.

Figure 6: Raids and strikes only temporarily displace and disrupt insurgents in an area, but do not ultimately change their level of influence over a local population. (author contribution)

Even the highly trained strike force, the Afghan Commandos, did not remain in a local area long enough to provide consistent security. As amongst the most competent and capable of the ANSF, the limited number of available Commandos constantly deployed from one hot zone to another like a proverbial fire brigade. While comprising an exceedingly small portion of the overall ANSF, Afghan Commandos accounted for an outsized percentage of operational effects against the Taliban. Though a necessary Afghan government “sword” against insurgents, they did not provide the “shield” needed to protect the local populace. Raids as a “sword,” though they may kill some insurgents, will at best only disrupt insurgent activity for a short time. If used effectively, it can allow the necessary time and space needed to develop the “shield” of a consistent security presence with the local people. Also, advisors are a critical aspect to the counterinsurgent cause when an outside entity or nation is helping develop the legitimate government, much like the U.S. military support to local security forces in the Philippines in 1899.

It wasn’t until the establishment of the U.S. SOF’s VSO and ALP programs that local security started to flourish. Eventually, the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command, which housed the Afghan Commandos, built Afghan Specials Forces units with many of the skills necessary to establish local security. These units, formed after their U.S. counterpart, worked with U.S. Special Forces in local areas to enable the VSO and ALP programs. Unfortunately, there were too few of them to make a lasting impact. Additionally, the ALP program dwindled after control was taken away from U.S. SOF advisors in 2013 due to, yet another changing political strategy involving troop withdrawals. The program crawled along under the Afghan’s Ministry of Interior, but by 2020, the funding for ALP dried up and its doors were shuttered. This ended the best chance for counterinsurgents to defeat the Taliban insurgency.

Figure 7: Local security establishments, combined with disruption raids, can permanently displace insurgents in an area, causing their level of influence over a local population to be reversed. (author contribution)

Failure 6: Undercutting the Government Made in the U.S. Image

Military action in any conflict is the extension of political aims. If this is the case in conventional warfare, how much more is it in counterinsurgency where conventional battles do not matter as much as the political ones? In 1975, Colonel Summers, a Vietnam War veteran, visited the country that he had been twice wounded in and spoke to Vietnamese Colonel Tu. During their conversation, Colonel Summers said “You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield.” To which Colonel Tu replied, “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.” Colonel Tu rightly inferred that the political end to the Vietnam War was the only victory that mattered. An insurgency does not have to win battles; it just cannot lose the war. As a result, there must be intense political pressure, enabled by military action, to force an insurgent to capitulate.

An insurgency must be cut off from the population – the center of gravity – and its safe havens through military and law enforcement activities as previously described. Additionally, there needs to be an opportunity for the insurgent to reconcile with the government it was trying to overthrow. This, of course, must be done from a position of strength over the insurgent, and with strict safeguards to ensure the reconciled party does not resume seditious activities against the legitimate power. This is only feasible when an insurgent is so defeated and demoralized that he sees no other option but to make amends with the government. This brings a quicker end to an insurgency, allowing guerrillas to come out of their proverbial foxholes instead of fighting to the bitter end.

Unfortunately, after almost 20 years of counterinsurgency, U.S. political will came to a grinding halt. Instead of negotiating from a position of power, the United States sought to quickly make a peace deal with the Taliban, to the detriment of the Afghan government it had created. In 2020, the U.S. government signed a peace treaty with the Taliban, which did not include the internationally recognized Afghan government. Though the specifics of the treaty required the Taliban to begin negotiations with Ashraf Ghani’s administration, the insurgent group had no intention of doing so. The Taliban viewed the government as a puppet regime of foreigners; one they refused to recognize. Rightly discerning that the United States was more interested in ending the war than they were, the Taliban waited out its foreign adversary to the point where it would be unwilling or unable to protect the Afghan government from collapse. Instead of ensuring the Taliban recognized and integrated under the Afghan government, the United States undercut and sidelined the very institution it strove to build up and legitimize since late 2001. Even when it became obvious that the Taliban would not abide by the treaty’s negotiation clause, the United States could not or would not reinitiate military action against the insurgents. As deposed President Ghani flew to the United Arab Emirates on August 15, 2021, the newly established Taliban regime could easily say of the U.S. tactical victories, “it is also irrelevant.”

Conclusion

Much like after its failure in Vietnam, the U.S. military has quickly shifted focus from counterinsurgency to large scale combat operations, assuming that they are mutually exclusive, as it eyes China as its pacing challenge. Though claiming to not forget the lessons from 20 years in Afghanistan, the Army, as the chief of the land domain, has made no concerted effort to integrate recent counterinsurgency lessons into training. Rather, its focus is on a conventional mindset for large scale combat operations akin to the Cold War, albeit with the speed, precision, and technology currently unfolding in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Currently, counterinsurgent knowledge only resides within U.S. SOF, which should maintain this primacy. However, conventional forces must understand these lessons as well given that U.S. SOF will need additional support to effectively manage all counterinsurgency functions. Failure to incorporate counterinsurgency lessons into professional military education and other training venues will undoubtedly result in future strategic losses as U.S. senior military leaders will fail to provide sound advice to civilian leadership and policy makers on how to win the next war, which will be a hybrid one. This article identified six clear strategic failures in America’s longest war, which the United States can ill-afford to repeat. Hybrid warfare is coming, combining irregular units or insurgents with conventional military forces for a common purpose, and is already manifested in conflicts around the globe. More blood will be spilled, and treasure will be lost, if U.S. senior military leaders ignore these counterinsurgent failures before the next conflict.

Author’s Note: A special thanks to Mrs. Jamie Rix and fellow Green Berets, LTCs Todd Angstman, Marshall McGurk, and Andy Pfeiffer, for their contributions to this article.

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Tags: Afghanistan, counterinsurgency, Lessons Learned

About The Authors

Daniel Rix
Daniel Rix is a Special Forces Officer, who previously served on multiple counterinsurgent deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa. He is currently serving as the Battalion Commander for 2nd Battalion, 351st Infantry.
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Doug Livermore
Doug Livermore is the Director of Engagements for the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a member of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Group, the National Vice President for the Special Operations Association of America, National Director for External Communications at the Special Forces Association, and the Deputy Commander for Special Operations Detachment–Joint Special Operations Command in the North Carolina Army National Guard. He is a former senior government civilian, intelligence officer, and contractor in various roles at the Office of the Secretary of War, Department of the Navy, and Department of the Army.

14. ‘We’ve Metastasized Russia’s Military,’ Say Ukrainian Partisans

Summary:

Ukraine’s ATESH resistance movement says 2025 marked a shift from sporadic sabotage to a coordinated network operating across occupied Ukraine and inside Russia. Two alleged operatives describe their main achievement as shattering the idea of a “safe Russian rear,” claiming Russian units now face constant insecurity and internal suspicion. They highlight attacks on rail and logistics nodes, plus strikes on communications and radar that can “switch off” parts of the front by blinding commanders and delaying resupply. The interview depicts a broadened profile of partisans, including civilians with access and even Russian servicemembers, and emphasizes tight coordination with Ukrainian security and defense forces to cue precision strikes and sustain morale under occupation.

Comment: Long live the resistance. Play this video and remember the Partisans on this last day of 2025.

Kyiv Calling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWQUkRKqp2E

‘We’ve Metastasized Russia’s Military,’ Say Ukrainian Partisans

kyivpost.com · Kateryna Zakharchenko · December 31, 2025

In an exclusive interview, Ukrainian Atesh partisans told Kyiv Post that they have disrupted what Russia considered its “safe rear,” spreading concern inside Russia and in occupied territories.

by Kateryna Zakharchenko | Dec. 31, 2025, 12:09 pm

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/66430?utm_content=topic%2Fworld&utm

In 2025, Ukraine’s resistance movement has moved far beyond the traditional image of partisan warfare.

What once appeared as isolated acts of sabotage in occupied territories has evolved into a coordinated, nationwide network operating not only in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, but deep inside Russia itself.

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Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.

Combined with close coordination with Ukraine’s security and defense forces, the underground movement’s growing reach has made resistance activity a persistent and destabilizing – but sometimes overlooked – threat to Russia’s 2025 war effort.

In an exclusive interview, Kyiv Post spoke with “Selim,” a coordinator of the Atesh resistance movement, as well as “Yevpatoriy,” an underground agent operating in Russian-occupied Crimea.

Both described 2025 as a turning point, defined largely by the collapse of the long-standing myth of a “safe Russian rear.” According to them, Russian forces no longer feel secure, even far from the front.

“If earlier the occupier felt threatened only in Crimea or near Donetsk, today they flinch at every sound in the Moscow region or Volgograd. Atesh has become a truly all-Russian network,” one of them said.

The movement, he added, is no longer a loose group of sympathizers but a systemic force embedded across Russia’s military infrastructure.

The agents said their actions had left a significant psychological impact inside Russia. They said acts of sabotage against communications, logistics, and rail infrastructure have fueled deep paranoia within Russian units.

Russia Shows Video of Drone It Says Ukraine Fired at Putin Residence

Days after claiming without evidence that Kyiv had launched 91 drones at Putin’s Valdai residence, the Kremlin has published a video purporting to show a drone shot down in the attack.

“They no longer trust one another. Every officer suspects his deputy of working with Atesh,” one source noted.

Below is the full interview in Q&A format. Kyiv Post has not identified which of the two interviewees provided each answer, as per Atesh’s request.

1) 2025 is often described as a turning point for the resistance movement. Looking back, what was the most important outcome of this year for you?

The most important thing is that we have completely dismantled the myth of a “safe Russian rear.” If earlier the occupier felt threatened only in Crimea or near Donetsk, now he flinches at every rustle in the Moscow region or in Volgograd.

We have become a truly all-Russian network, and this is our main achievement. We are no longer just a group of patriots, but a systemic force that has metastasized throughout the military machine of the Russian Federation. And next year, these metastases will make themselves felt.

2) Which partisan operations of 2025 do you consider the most successful, and why did they change the course of events in the occupied territories?

The coolest cases are when we managed to “switch off” entire sections of the front by destroying communications hubs and radar systems.

Without “eyes” and “ears,” their vaunted generals in the rear and field commanders turn into blind kittens. Special mention should be made of the systematic hunting of railway infrastructure in Russia’s rear regions.

For example, Atesh agents successfully sabotaged a military electric locomotive on railway tracks in Bryansk. Bryansk is a key logistics hub, and the destruction of a locomotive there created significant problems in supplying the occupiers’ Northern grouping. Every burned relay cabinet or blown-up bridge means weeks of delays for equipment that never made it to kill Ukrainians near Pokrovsk or Kupyansk.

Such facts are a real motivational driver for further operations. However, it is still too early to talk about the loudest and largest-scale operations. The time will come.

3) How has the partisan movement itself changed over this year? Is it more people, new methods, a different level of coordination, or all of it together?

We have become more professional. This is no longer just about “throwing a Molotov cocktail.” This is the highest level of coordination.

Today, ATESH is a combination of experienced saboteurs, IT intelligence specialists, and, most importantly, officers inside the Russian General Staff itself. There are many more of us now, but we have become even more concealed and more influential.

4) What does it mean to be a partisan in 2025 today? Is it no longer just sabotage, but also information, technology, and assistance to the Ukrainian military?

It means being everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Today, an underground movement agent is not necessarily a person with a rifle in the forest. It is a waiter who overhears officers’ conversations in a café; a railway worker who knows the exact schedule of military trains; a technician who can “accidentally” disable an expensive radar.

This is a technological war: a smartphone and the critical information transmitted through it today kills occupiers no worse than a rifle.

5) Who are the people who become partisans? Do you have a general profile for age, profession, or life experience?

We do not have a “typical” agent. There are 19-year-old guys with fire in their eyes, solid men aged 30+, and even pensioners who watch military equipment pass by their windows. But you know what is most interesting?

More and more of our agents are Russian servicemen themselves. They see this madness, they see the “meat grinder,” and they understand that the only way to survive is to help us end this war faster. Or to watch their commander be torn apart by an explosion, the coordinates of which they can pass to us as an act of revenge.

6) What was the hardest moment for you in 2025, and how did the partisans get through it? What helps you not to break?

The hardest thing is seeing the enemy take out its anger on civilians when it cannot catch us. Repressions in Crimea and in the Donetsk region were very harsh. But you know what helps you not to break? Rage. When you see yet another atrocity by the occupiers, you do not cry. You go and plan a new operation. This is the best cure for despair.

7) Did you feel this year that the enemy is afraid of you? How does this manifest itself in practice?

Oh, they are complete paranoiacs. You should see how they run around offices when another “sabotage” happens in one of “their” units. They do not trust each other. Every colonel in that unit suspects his deputy of being an Atesh agent. This is excellent psychological pressure. They know we are everywhere.

8) How do you cooperate with Ukrainian law enforcement and intelligence structures? How does this affect the effectiveness of the resistance movement?

This is our foundation. We work as a single organism with the Defense Forces of Ukraine. Our data are the “eyes” for Ukrainian missiles. When a strike hits exactly on an ammunition depot or a headquarters, we know our work has paid off. This makes us not just insurgents, but part of a large army of liberation.

9) Partisans operate under constant risk. What helps people stay in the fight for months and years without betraying or giving up?

It is the drive of knowing that you are doing something truly important. When you realize that one phone call or one photo of yours saved the lives of an entire company of our soldiers, it keeps you going better than any stimulant. We do not give up because we have something to fight for: home, family, justice.

10) What would you like Ukrainians in government-controlled territories to better understand about life under occupation and the partisan movement?

Remember that occupation is not just “another authority.” It is a daily hell. But there are millions of people there who are waiting for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Do not give up on them. There is powerful resistance there; it is just quiet. Every Ukrainian flag painted at night, for example, in Mariupol, is a cry that Ukraine is there.

11) How did 2025 change life for civilians in the occupied territories due to partisan actions? Do they feel that Ukraine is close?

Yes, and precisely thanks to underground movement agents. When another collaborator is blown up, or communications disappear at the occupiers’ headquarters,

I am sure that people standing in queues whisper to each other, “Ours are working.” This gives them the strength to breathe. They see that the enemy is vulnerable, and therefore, de-occupation is possible.

12) If you had to describe 2025 for the partisan movement in one sentence, what would it be?It is the year when we proved that ATESH is a fire that cannot be extinguished, and it will burn the occupation machine from within.

kyivpost.com · Kateryna Zakharchenko · December 31, 2025

15. A Middle Way for American Foreign Policy

Summary:

Kupchan and Trubowitz argue the core U.S. problem is not simply “America First,” but the collapse of the domestic consensus that sustained post–World War II grand strategy. They see liberal internationalists and “America firsters” locked in a cycle that produces erratic policy because neither coalition can hold durable support. Their “middle way” calls for aligning foreign-policy ends with domestic means: a trade and investment agenda that benefits working regions, immigration reform that restores control without economic self-harm, and a pragmatic balance between deep multilateralism and unilateral rupture. Internationally, they favor “multilateralism-lite” and coalitions of the willing, plus more selective engagement, with the United States acting as balancer rather than global policeman.

Excerpt:

Nearly a century ago, Washington mended the domestic fracture of the interwar era with a steady statecraft that successfully navigated the global fractures of the Cold War. Today, the country again faces domestic and international fracture—simultaneously. Once more, it must overcome partisan division, reinvent its statecraft, and anchor U.S. leadership abroad in a new political consensus at home. As always, good policy requires good politics.

Comment: The middle way is usually the best way. The conclusion excerpted above is not wrong. But show me that it is wrong.

A Middle Way for American Foreign Policy

Foreign Affairs · More by Charles Kupchan

Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz

Neither Overreach nor Retreat Can Win Domestic Support

December 31, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/middle-way-american-foreign-policy

An American flag outside the White House in Washington, D.C., October 2025 Kylie Cooper / Reuters

CHARLES KUPCHAN is Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the forthcoming book Bringing Order to Anarchy: Governing the World to Come.

PETER TRUBOWITZ is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Phelan U.S. Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. He is a co-author, with Brian Burgoon, of Geopolitics and Democracy: The Western Liberal Order From Foundation to Fracture.

This essay emerged from the Lloyd George Study Group on Global Governance.

More by Peter Trubowitz

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The “America first” foreign policy of U.S. President Donald Trump has unsettled the world America made. Allies are questioning the United States’ reliability as a strategic partner and are concerned that Washington is now more foe than friend of the liberal rules-based order. They have reason to worry. The Trump administration believes that international pacts, open trade, and foreign assistance are degrading, not amplifying, U.S. power and influence. Trump has made quite clear his hostility to multilateralism, stating that he opposes “international unions that tie us up and bring America down.”

“America first” foreign policy may be the focal point of public debate over the future of U.S. leadership, and it is certainly setting the world on edge. But it is also a symptom of a broader challenge confronting the United States: the hollowing out of the domestic consensus that anchored U.S. grand strategy from World War II into the twenty-first century. Partisan, regional, and ideological divides have produced a disconnect between the country’s domestic politics and its foreign policy.

At one end of the political spectrum are the embattled liberal internationalists, firmly committed to the defense of the liberal order through the projection of American power, trade liberalization, multilateral governance, and the promotion of democracy. At the other are newly empowered “America firsters,” who are attempting to dismantle the liberal order by loosening foreign commitments, putting up tariff walls, disengaging from multilateral institutions, and abandoning efforts to spread democratic values. Neither vision can muster sustained domestic support. As a result, U.S. foreign policy has become erratic and inconstant, buffeted by competing visions of the country’s purposes and disagreement over how best to pursue them.

Such domestic division would matter less for the United States if it faced a benign and quiescent geopolitical landscape. Yet the country finds itself confronting mounting international challenges just when it has lost the political capacity to meet those challenges. If a fractured America is to steady a fractured world, U.S. leaders must bring international ends back into equilibrium with domestic means by persuading Americans from different walks of life to again get behind U.S. statecraft. Doing so will require pursuing a brand of foreign policy that appeals to the interests and aspirations of a broad majority of Americans, from the country’s urban metropolises to its rural hamlets.

To get there, the United States must make three key adjustments. It needs to repair the partisan divide between urban and rural America and rebuild an internationalist consensus that includes working families left behind by globalization. Such an effort will require a rebalanced trade policy that avoids both unfettered markets and protectionist excesses, a program of targeted investment in the country’s lagging regions, and an overhaul of a broken immigration system. Second, Washington needs to find a happy medium between deep multilateralism and a unilateralist breakout. To counter populist nationalism, the United States should reform existing multilateral institutions to produce a more equitable sharing of authority and burdens while enhancing the delivery of public goods such as common defense, humanitarian assistance, and cybersecurity. It should also promote coalitions of the willing that would allow states to work together on shared interests despite geopolitical and ideological differences. Finally, Washington must adopt a more discriminating approach to international engagement that avoids both the temptation of unrestrained globalism and the siren call of self-defeating retreat, prioritizing the country’s vital interests. The United States should continue to play the role of great-power balancer, but not global policeman.

Shoring up domestic support for a new American internationalism will be difficult, given the many divides now cleaving the country. But in an unruly world, poised and proactive U.S. leadership remains a necessity. The United States must find a midpoint between internationalist excess and nationalist retreat, stepping back from global overreach without stepping away from global engagement.

AN ELUSIVE CONSENSUS

This is not the first time in U.S. history that the country’s leaders have struggled to strike a balance between the competing pressures of international and domestic politics. Racked by deep partisan and regional divisions in the 1920s, the United States rebuffed international leadership. Congress rejected membership in the League of Nations, and the Republican administrations of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover favored commercial rather than strategic engagement abroad.

The laissez-faire credo that dominated the political landscape came to define U.S. foreign policy. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover recognized the need to stabilize the economies of a war-ravaged Europe but were fearful of excessive government involvement in world affairs and constrained by the demands of coalition building in an increasingly fractured GOP. They gambled that private initiative, rather than government activism, would be sufficient to steer the world away from economic fragmentation and toward interdependence and geopolitical stability. But relying on “dollar diplomacy” did the opposite; in the absence of U.S. leadership and strategic engagement, militarism and geopolitical rivalry spread. The Great Depression only deepened the United States’ retreat. Washington erected tariff barriers and sought to cordon itself off from the forces destabilizing Europe and East Asia. Only the worldwide war that broke out would end the United States’ isolationist delusions.

With the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, Washington finally assumed the mantle of global leadership that it had rejected after World War I. Abandoning isolationism while eschewing idealistic calls for world federalism, U.S. officials instead took a middle course and pursued liberal internationalism. The liberal international order that took shape in the late 1940s and early 1950s was made possible by a broad political alliance that spanned party, region, and class. Democrats and Republicans, Northerners and Southerners, bankers, factory workers, and farmers all found common cause in freer trade, forward defense, and foreign aid, which linked prosperity and security at home to economic and strategic engagement abroad.

This bipartisan internationalism provided the political grounding for the network of strategic and commercial partnerships that succeeded in containing the ambition and appeal of the Soviet bloc. Foreign policy and domestic politics were in broad alignment. Because international purposes generally enjoyed widespread domestic buy-in, liberal internationalism survived even the political tumult produced by the Vietnam War.

In an unruly world, poised and proactive U.S. leadership remains a necessity.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ideological triumph of the Western bloc, the United States’ foreign policy aims and its domestic politics began pulling in opposite directions. In the absence of a geopolitical rival, Washington’s unchecked international ambitions ballooned beyond the country’s political will. Neoliberal reformers rushed in to liberalize, deregulate, and globalize markets. Their economic policies, coupled with the scaling back of the U.S. welfare state at home, expedited the shrinking of the middle class and incubated a backlash against globalism. An influx of immigrants, primarily from Latin America, intensified this backlash, as politicians fused concerns about economic insecurity with identity-based grievance.

Washington also overreached strategically, taking on a broad array of new commitments and missions in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Clinton administration intervened in the Balkans and launched NATO’s enlargement in central and eastern Europe; the Bush administration pursued a war on terrorism that morphed into an effort to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into stable democracies; the Obama administration pledged to shift the focus to “nation-building at home” but ended up mired in Afghanistan and battling the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. These and other internationalist ambitions regularly failed to produce the promised results and stretched well beyond what voters would tolerate. Public doubts metastasized into widespread resentment.

Indeed, long before Trump unleashed his assault on globalism, popular support for free trade, institutionalized multilateralism, and democracy promotion and nation building abroad was waning. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, antiglobalist sentiment took hold in America’s left-behind locales, whittling away what remained of the postwar bipartisan foreign policy consensus. Trump harnessed the politics of grievance, promising to end Washington’s liberal internationalist compact. His “America first” foreign policy replaced open trade with economic protectionism; liberal immigration policies with a sweeping crackdown; internationalist ambition with nationalist pullback; multilateralism with unilateralism; and the promotion of democracy with indifference toward the spread of democratic values abroad.

U.S. President Joe Biden sought to reverse Trump’s foreign policy and bring ends and means back into balance by pursuing a “foreign policy for the middle class.” His administration attempted to revive liberal internationalism by framing its foreign policy as part of a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. But Biden failed to rebuild anything close to the postwar domestic consensus and many working Americans again rallied behind Trump’s “America first” alternative.

Strategic overreach has given way to self-defeating withdrawal.

Especially during his second term, Trump has overcorrected and underperformed. His tariffs risk fracturing the global economy and have only made it more difficult for working Americans to make ends meet. His inhumane detention and deportation of immigrants have strained the labor market and alienated voters. His unilateralism has isolated the United States by antagonizing longtime allies and undermining international teamwork. Trump has dismantled U.S. foreign aid programs and coupled his pullback from promoting democracy abroad with disregard for the rule of law at home, compromising the country’s moral authority.

Meanwhile, strategic overreach has given way to self-defeating withdrawal. Trump has backed away from supporting Ukraine while failing to apply coercive leverage against Russia, enabling Vladimir Putin to hijack ongoing negotiations and intensify the war. Trump did succeed in brokering an uneasy peace between Israel and Hamas, but his episodic engagement has produced virtually no progress in advancing a broader regional peace. The administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy announced a resuscitation of the Monroe Doctrine, which has amounted in practice to legally questionable military strikes against boats alleged to be trafficking drugs in the Caribbean and open musings about toppling Venezuela’s government. Meanwhile, a strategy for dealing with China has yet to materialize.

The United States is at an inflection point. Liberal internationalist policies that once served the country well no longer enjoy public backing. At the same time, support for Trump’s “America first” foreign policy is fast dwindling; opinion polls indicate little public appetite for tariffs, deportations, unilateralism, and international disengagement. At a time when Americans are facing great economic uncertainty and recognize they live in an interdependent world, they would be better off with a pragmatic foreign policy that strikes a more measured balance between international ends and domestic means.

GET YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER

Given the scope of the country’s political fracture, it will not be easy to bring U.S. foreign policy back into alignment with public preferences. Studies by political scientists, including Jacob Grumbach and Jonathan Rodden, indicate that urban-rural differences have become a vector for polarization. Since 2016, Trump has widened the urban-rural divide by ramping up political debate over globalization and immigration. Broadly speaking, urban Americans are more supportive of open trade and liberal immigration policies. Rural Americans tend to lean in the other direction, prioritizing the use of tariffs to protect U.S. jobs and a reduction in legal as well as illegal immigration.

This political divide is now firmly entrenched in America’s electoral system. By design, the Electoral College and the Senate enhance the influence of less populous, rural states, magnifying the effect of ideological and partisan polarization along the urban-rural fault line. During the Cold War, the positions that elected officials took on matters of trade and immigration rarely broke along party or ideological lines. No longer. Mobilized voters in “red” and “blue” America now consider politicians’ positions on these issues to be a litmus test of tribal loyalty, sharply reducing the room for political compromise.

U.S. policymakers need to go to the source of the problem: the socioeconomic imbalances that are pitting urban and rural Americans against each other. To bridge this gap and rebuild support for internationalism in the country’s lagging regions, Washington needs to simultaneously move on two fronts. It needs to craft a trade policy that does more for working Americans and to expand economic investment in the country’s stagnant locales. And it needs to revamp immigration policy, stopping illegal entry while continuing to admit the documented immigrants needed to contribute to the country’s economic vitality.

Washington needs to decisively break with the hyperglobalization of the 1990s.

Democrats and Republicans alike have begun to move forward on these fronts. Both parties have started to back away from open trade in favor of protectionist policies aimed at reshoring manufacturing jobs and select supply chains. The Biden administration also took steps to redress long-standing regional inequities in infrastructure investment. It sought to reduce broadband Internet gaps between urban and rural America and invested in “regional technology and innovation hubs” in up-and-coming metropolitan areas. But partly because of congressional resistance, these initiatives did not go far enough, with many projects needing more time to produce tangible benefits. And Biden moved far too slowly to curb the inflow of immigrants, leaving the implementation of measures needed to block illegal crossings of the southern border until his last year in office.

The Trump administration has focused intensely on the problems of unfair trade and illegal immigration. But it has used a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. High tariffs are only exacerbating a national affordability crisis. The promised manufacturing revival made possible by tariffs and industrial policy will not come close to employing a sizable portion of the U.S. workforce, most of which is already in the service sector. The administration’s draconian crackdown on immigration and massive deportations of undocumented migrants, opposed by two-thirds of the public, has led to labor shortages and rising consumer prices in agriculture, construction, hospitality, and other economic sectors.

To repair the partisan divide over trade and immigration, Washington needs to decisively break with the hyperglobalization of the 1990s and negotiate a more level playing field with trading partners, particularly China. But rebalancing trade does not require protectionist overkill, which risks fragmenting the global economy and punishing U.S. consumers. A better trade policy for urban and rural America needs to do more for U.S. workers, not just for corporate America. Washington should also couple place-based domestic investments with an overhaul of immigration policy to fill out the labor force and enhance economic security for working Americans.

MULTILATERALISM-LITE

The institutions of global governance are being attacked from both sides of the aisle. An array of domestic political forces in the United States is undermining support for multilateralism. Many “America firsters” view supranational bodies such as the UN and the World Trade Organization as encroaching on U.S. sovereignty and have thus embraced a stiff-necked unilateralism, aiming to hobble existing institutions and make it nearly impossible to create new ones. They see alliances as encumbrances and believe that the United States has shouldered a disproportionate share of the burdens of multilateralism while its allies and partners free-ride on the largess of the American taxpayer. Meanwhile, liberal internationalists, who generally support global teamwork, worry that in a world of mounting strife, rising economic inequality, and worsening environmental decay, multilateral institutions are no longer fit for purpose.

The United States is not the only country in which domestic support for institutionalized multilateralism is waning. Populist nationalism is gaining ground across Europe. China and Russia are leading efforts to create counterweights to post–World War II institutions that they see as dominated by the West. Bodies such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization offer new venues for organizing collective initiative. But they are also fracturing the institutional landscape and fostering distrust among competing multilateral platforms. Many developing countries see existing international organizations as outmoded, unrepresentative bastions of great-power privilege and dominance. It does not help that repeated efforts to reform the UN Security Council to make it representative of today’s world, rather than the world of 1945, have gone nowhere or that the current international architecture has failed to address climate change, reliably provide humanitarian assistance, or deliver on other fronts.

Despite these political blockages and institutional shortcomings, multilateral cooperation remains essential to marshaling the collective action needed to address global challenges. As the principal architect of the postwar order and the country best placed to reform this order, the United States needs to rebuild domestic and international support for multilateralism by updating existing institutions and supplementing them with informal coalitions of the willing, which are often able to deliver more quickly and efficiently than large, bureaucratic institutions.

The institutions of global governance are being attacked from both sides of the aisle.

Washington should take its cues from the U.S. and global public. Americans, along with the citizens of many other countries, oppose Trump’s deep cuts to U.S. foreign aid; they would respond favorably to efforts to enhance the capacity of the World Food Program. They are also united in their anguish over the human suffering in Gaza; Washington should enhance and showcase the UN’s ability to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians. And in the aftermath of the havoc caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington should be investing in and improving the World Health Organization, not walking away from it.

Washington should also look for ways to get other states to be more generous providers of public goods. Giving large countries from the developing world permanent seats on the UN Security Council, for instance, would demonstrate that the body is changing with the times, and could encourage countries such as Brazil, India, and Nigeria to contribute more. The United States remains the UN’s largest funder, contributing almost one-third of the body’s overall budget. Washington should continue to pay its UN bills, but it is time for other countries, including wealthy countries in the global South, to scale up their contributions in exchange for a greater voice.

As the global South seeks to increase its say in global governance, its regional institutions should assume more authority and responsibility in their respective zones of influence. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab League, the African Union, and other regional organizations can and should do more to provide public goods, including conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and the delivery of humanitarian assistance. The United States and other wealthier countries can foster greater regional self-reliance by helping lower-income countries build state capacity, alleviate poverty, hunger, and disease, and expand economic opportunity.

The United States must be prepared to operate in a messy and fluid institutional setting.

U.S. alliances are similarly in need of a rebalancing of responsibility. European and Asian allies that benefit from the United States’ military protection should boost their own defense spending and contribute more to collective defense. Trump’s arm-twisting has produced results, with NATO members on track to raise defense spending to five percent of GDP. But Washington should rely more on positive inducements than angry harangues, which end up alienating friends that the United States needs by its side. Better trade deals, preferential access to U.S. research and development programs, and favorable financing for major purchases of U.S arms would provide attractive incentives.

Rather than focus only on formal bodies, Washington should also more regularly rely on smaller and informal coalitions to tackle specific issues that are more difficult to resolve in large, slow-moving institutions. The Biden administration made good use of this approach, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, where it partnered with fellow democracies to counter Chinese ambition by teaming up with Australia, India, and Japan in the security partnership known as the Quad. Cooperation with democracies comes easily, but Washington must also reach across geopolitical and ideological divides to tackle pressing problems. The United States has experience fashioning such informal, ideologically diverse coalitions. The Clinton administration joined France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom in the Contact Group, which helped bring peace to the Balkans in the 1990s. The Obama administration joined China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom in the so-called P5+1, which negotiated a deal to contain Iran’s nuclear program in 2015. Such ad hoc groupings do not always produce results, but they do offer a model for working across ideological lines and sidestepping the bureaucratic and political snags that often stymie action by larger, more formal bodies.

Finally, Washington should look for ways to work with, rather than oppose, multilateral groups formed and headed by other countries, including rivals. It was a mistake for the Obama administration to oppose the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank by China in 2015. Washington should have joined the effort and sought to ensure that the new lending institution complemented and aligned with the work of the World Bank. Bodies such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, despite limited track records of serving the public good, have the potential to add value even if the United States and its allies are not members. These bodies also provide a vehicle for advancing dialogue across ideological dividing lines by including large democracies such as Brazil, India, and South Africa.

The United States must be prepared to operate in a messy and fluid institutional setting, measuring the merit of multilateralism through output and efficacy, not ideological affinity or Washington’s ability to call the shots. By devolving greater decision-making authority to other countries and persuading those states to assume greater responsibility for finding and funding solutions to global and regional challenges, U.S. leaders can accomplish two goals at once: securing broader international support for collective action and winning back a measure of the domestic support for multilateralism that has been lost since the 1990s. Progress will be slow and uneven; skepticism about multilateral governance runs deep in rich and poor countries alike. But modest, incremental changes will go a long way toward closing the gap that now exists between the demand for global public goods and the supply.

REPAIRING THE FRACTURE

The United States needs a more levelheaded brand of statecraft that occupies the middle ground between strategic overreach and indifference toward, if not detachment from, the outside world. Washington’s former role as global policeman breached the limits of U.S. power and the American public’s appetite for engagement abroad. But in an interdependent world, the United States does not have the option of returning to hemispheric isolation. It still needs to prevent China or Russia from dominating Asia and Europe, even as it retrenches from other regions, particularly the Middle East. The shift in power from Iran and its proxies toward Israel, the Gulf monarchies, and Turkey should enable the United States to downsize its military footprint in the region and pursue its interests primarily through diplomacy.

As it seeks to check the threats posed by China and Russia, the United States should focus on discrete challenges rather than amp up rhetoric about an existential clash between democracy and autocracy. Washington will ultimately need to work with Moscow and Beijing, as well as other autocracies, to deal with climate change, nuclear proliferation, and other global threats. The United States should keep trying to find a just end to the war in Ukraine and make improved relations with Moscow contingent on the Kremlin’s readiness to compromise and end its ongoing aggression. Similarly, Trump’s instinct to seek a trade deal with Beijing that could help dial down U.S.-Chinese rivalry is correct. Washington should embrace practical carrot-and-stick diplomacy, working with whatever regimes are willing to cooperate to address shared challenges.

A foreign policy more oriented toward problem solving would have strong public appeal. Americans on both sides of the aisle are concerned about job security, inflation, health care, and immigration. They would welcome leadership in Washington that lightens the country’s load abroad and invests more time and money in solving problems at home. They also have little appetite for protectionist and isolationist policies that only exacerbate economic insecurity for working families, needlessly increase suffering abroad, and leave the United States less secure. More pragmatism will play well with an American electorate that has grown skeptical of Washington’s ability to shoot straight and to deliver concrete gains at home and abroad.

Nearly a century ago, Washington mended the domestic fracture of the interwar era with a steady statecraft that successfully navigated the global fractures of the Cold War. Today, the country again faces domestic and international fracture—simultaneously. Once more, it must overcome partisan division, reinvent its statecraft, and anchor U.S. leadership abroad in a new political consensus at home. As always, good policy requires good politics.

Foreign Affairs · More by Charles Kupchan

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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Inflation as an Intergenerational Crisis

Guns, Subsidies, and Monetary Exhaustion

A Regional Warning, Not an Iranian Exception

The Closing Window

Table 1: Iran’s 2025 Currency Crisis — Drivers, Social Transmission, and Political Risk

Table 2: Currency Collapse and Protest Risk — Iran in Comparative MENA Perspective

Iran on the brink? Key information about the protests – DW – 12/31/2025

Is the currency crash an inflationary crisis?

What role does the bazaar have to play?

Iranian women unveiled: A shift in hijab enforcement?

How badly is the crisis affecting people?

Iran turns to cloud seeding to relieve Tehran drought

Can the regime stop the protests?

Deterrence by Disruption

Introduction

The Logic of Asymmetric Success

Conclusion

About The Author

Afghanistan, A History Already Forgotten: Counterinsurgency Lessons U.S. Senior Military Leaders Must Not Ignore

Scope

Failure 1: Counterterrorism vs. Counterinsurgency, Lacking an Enduring Cause

Failure 2: A Battle for Democracy, Not the Afghan People

Failure 3: Not Isolating the People from the Insurgency

Failure 4: Difficult Terrain, but Little Denial of Safe Havens, Outside Support

Failure 5: Right Training for the Wrong War

Failure 6: Undercutting the Government Made in the U.S. Image

Conclusion

About The Authors

‘We’ve Metastasized Russia’s Military,’ Say Ukrainian Partisans

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Russia Shows Video of Drone It Says Ukraine Fired at Putin Residence

A Middle Way for American Foreign Policy

Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz

Neither Overreach nor Retreat Can Win Domestic Support

AN ELUSIVE CONSENSUS

GET YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER

MULTILATERALISM-LITE

REPAIRING THE FRACTURE