Quotes of the Day:

“To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.”

– Confucius 

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."

– Thomas Jefferson (He wrote it in a letter to James Madison on January 30, 1787, discussing Shays' Rebellion and the nature of political dissent. Jefferson believed that occasional rebellion could be a healthy and necessary aspect of governance, akin to storms that clear the air in nature.)

“A coup is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership.”

1. US should blunt ‘collaboration’ by China, North Korea, Russia and Iran: senior officials

2. Trump May Find Things to Like About Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Foreign Policy

3. DoD Announces Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 5, 2024

5. Iran Update, December 5, 2024

6. Are Democracies Doomed to Gridlock and Dysfunction?

7. Beyond Human-in-the-Loop: Managing AI Risks in Nuclear Command-and-Control

8. Americans trust the military a bit more now, but much less than during war years, survey finds

9. Can American pressure change China?

10. American Kidnapped in Philippines Is Believed to Be Dead, Police Say

11. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, December 5, 2024

12. Why do still have VOA, RFE/RL, and the other broadcasters under USAGM?

13. The Forgotten Crucibles: The Korean War and the Balkans Wars as Markers of Geopolitical Flux

14. Can Martial Law Happen in America?

15. Why Ukrainian – Israeli Defense Cooperation Is in the U.S. National Security Interest

16. Dwarfed by China in Shipbuilding, U.S. Looks To Rebuild Its Defense Industrial Base

17. Report to Congress on Marine Littoral Regiments

18. U.S. Navy Bolsters Carrier Presence in the West Pacific

19. Vladimir Putin’s Nuclear Bluff

20. Misunderstanding Escalation Dynamics with Russia

21. West drawing near to 'third nuclear age,' says head of UK armed forces

22. After Trump's win, Russian disinformation aims to drive a wedge between the US and Ukraine

23. How a director of national intelligence helps a president navigate global threats

24. Far from the front lines, a spy war rages over Russian weapons

25. Solar Diplomacy: The Role of Renewable Energy in Great Power Competition - Irregular Warfare Initiative

26. Women in Leadership Roles in Special Missions Unit

1. US should blunt ‘collaboration’ by China, North Korea, Russia and Iran: senior officials

Sigh.... Perhaps the NSA is coming to the realization that appeasement or ignoring the problem for 4 years did not work. I find these statements from the current NSA incredible (this one and the one he made about the US not having enough munitions to fight a war with China). It makes us ask: "What have we been doing for the past four years?" and "if you can identify these problems why haven't you done anything about them while you had the chance?"

If you go back to the 2017 NSS written by Nadia Schadlow and HR McMaster you see the seeds for these threats identified and the failure to consistently address them for the last 8 years has put us where we are today.

US should blunt ‘collaboration’ by China, North Korea, Russia and Iran: senior officials

Outgoing national security adviser urges Trump administration to expand defence cooperation with allies amid ‘dangerous’ global landscape

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3289418/us-should-blunt-collaboration-china-north-korea-russia-and-iran-senior-officials?utm_source=rss_feed

Igor PatrickandKhushboo Razdanin Washington

Published: 7:30am, 5 Dec 2024Updated: 12:00am, 6 Dec 2024

Senior officials in US President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration stepped up their warnings about closer ties between China, North Korea, Russia and Iran on Wednesday.

Addressing the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke of “deepening patterns of collaboration” among the four countries and called for expanded defence cooperation with allies.

As the Biden administration winds down, Sullivan said his team has tried to galvanise defence industries, commercial companies, start-ups and venture-capital firms to develop systems that help the US and its allies counter “adversaries and competitors”.

Expanding and strengthening the defence industry’s capabilities would be necessary to “deter military aggression against Nato or Indo-Pacific allies … [and] equip our partners when they come under attack”, he added.

North Korean leader tells military to ‘go all out’ amid deployment fears

“I’m not suggesting we need to retool for a new Cold War, but we once again face a dangerous, complex and contested global landscape,” Sullivan said.

“Our adversaries and competitors are taking more risks, and importantly, they’re working together to strengthen each other’s defence capacity.”

Sullivan outlined “a road map for the next Congress and the next administration to carry this work forward”, stressing a need to align efforts with the challenges of a global landscape undergoing “a tectonic shift”.

“You see both dual-use capacity going from the PRC to Russia that is helping fuel Russia’s war machine,” he explained, “and Russia is reciprocating by providing certain types of soft technological capabilities to China that they’ve been behind on.”

“We are going to have to look for ways, through sanctions, export controls and other restrictive measures, to try to put a drag on or reduce or restrict or disrupt that flow that I just described among these actors,” the Biden administration official added.

Sullivan also discussed the impact of China’s recent decision to ban the export of critical minerals to the US.

On Tuesday, in response to Washington’s growing restrictions on China’s advanced chip industry, Beijing blocked the export of gallium, germanium and antimony to the US. The minerals have broad military applications.

Sullivan said the move had been anticipated, and he highlighted the importance of collaborating with like-minded countries to find alternatives for critical-mineral supply chains.

Susan Rice, who served as US national security adviser during the Barack Obama administration, has described China, North Korea, Russia and Iran as an “axis of authoritarianism”. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

It would be increasingly necessary to find suppliers of these commodities, he said, not only for military applications but also for strategic purposes such as semiconductor manufacturing, clean-energy generation and climate-change resilience technologies.

“We’ve taken some really important steps on this in the last few years. It has allowed us to diversify and become more resilient,” Sullivan added.

“But that too, just like the defence-industrial base, is a work in progress, and we need the next administration to continue working with Congress and the private industry.”

Meanwhile, closer collaboration between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran was a topic of discussion among former US national security advisers gathered at the Aspen Security Forum in Washington on Wednesday.

Susan Rice, who served in the role during the Barack Obama administration, said the Donald Trump administration would need to recognise that not just China but all of the countries in the grouping – which she described as an “axis of authoritarianism” – would pose major challenges in the future.

Trump’s first term in the White House was marked by a “very transactional, some might say dismissive approach to alliances in the Asia-Pacific as well as in Europe”, Rice added.

She warned that repeating the approach would undermine the ability to be “effective in this increasingly intensified competition”.

US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell previously served the Biden administration as national security council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific. Photo: Reuters

Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, said the international order that emerged after the second world war was “fraying”.

He contended it was “under attack from Russia, from China, from those who would like to reorder it in a way that favours their interests and favours their values”.

Hadley predicted that, in addition to these countries, Trump would encounter challenges elsewhere, including from Venezuela and Pakistan.

“The number of issues that this new team is going to have to face in the first six to nine months is really pretty overwhelming,” he added.

At the same event, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said the Indo-Pacific region would continue to play a critical role in global stability.

Considered an architect of America’s pivot to Asia meant to deepen ties there to blunt China, Campbell accused Beijing of being one of the “enabling forces on the battlefield in Ukraine” by supporting Russia’s defence-industrial base, along with North Korea, which has reportedly sent troops to the front lines.

“You can make an argument that the most decisive actors currently on the battlefield are Indo-Pacific actors, North Korea and China, affecting what’s taking place on the ground in Ukraine,” he said. “That’s something that we have to be very concerned by.”

Owing to the region’s rising importance to US strategic interests, Campbell said he believed “integration” between the US, Europe and Indo-Pacific partners would continue in the next Trump administration.

Igor Patrick

FOLLOW

Igor Patrick has worked in different media outlets in Latin America, mainly covering Brics and China. In addition to his bachelor's degree in journalism (PUC Minas), he holds two master's degrees from the Yenching Academy (Peking University) and Schwarzman Scholars (Tsinghua University). Before joining the Post, he was a fellow at the Wilson Center, where he wrote the book "Hearts & Minds, Votes & Contracts: China's State Media in Latin America".

Khushboo Razdan

FOLLOW

Khushboo Razdan is a senior correspondent based in Washington. Prior to this, she worked for the Post in New York. Before joining the team, she worked as a multimedia journalist in Beijing and New Delhi for over a decade. She is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School.

2. Trump May Find Things to Like About Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Foreign Policy

I hope that President-elect Trump will be able too take an enlightened view of our alliances during his second term. I hope he can accept credit for the increased contributions that alliancew have made to their defense and to collective defense in many areas and will continue to make with his leadership. But I hope he will use alliances in apositive way to support US national interests and transcend the immature view that alliances have to buy protection from the US. Alliances are incredibly valuable in supporting US interests if we work with them in a positive manner.

President Biden's gift to President-elect Trump is the strong silk web of friends, partners, and alliances which paradoxically President Biden was able to make strong because of President Trump's pressure on them to step up and contribute during his first term. Rather than tear this down, he should build on this.

Most importantly he must embrace the fact that we cannot fight and win multiple conflicts from strategeic competition to large scale combat oepraitons on our own or unilaterally. We can only fight and win with allied support. Therefore we must ensure we have military interoperability, base access, overflight access, logistics sharing, etc. We need partners in the arsenal of democracy because our industrial base is no long capable of supporting the US military in large scale combat operations, let alone mutiple ones. Alliances are key ot US national security.

Trump May Find Things to Like About Biden’s ‘Horrible’ Foreign Policy

The world is braced for disruption from the president-elect, but he may find more common ground with President Biden than many assume.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/trump-biden-world.html?utm

Beyond the glaring exceptions of Europe, Russia and Ukraine, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s initial approach to foreign relations could bear a surprising resemblance to the Biden status quo.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Michael Crowley

Reporting from Washington

Published Nov. 29, 2024

Updated Dec. 4, 2024

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

President-elect Donald J. Trump comes to office with a view of America’s place in the world that is dramatically different from his predecessor’s.

Branding President Biden’s foreign policy as “historically horrible,” Mr. Trump is vowing to reinstate an America First approach that in his first term swept away years of policy consensus and shook U.S. alliances around the world.

He wants friendly relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, may slash U.S. support for Ukraine and has threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He admires foreign autocrats and shows little interest in Mr. Biden’s goal of championing democracy abroad. He is hostile to international organizations and treaties including the United Nations and the Paris climate accord.

But amid the many areas of potential disruption, Mr. Trump will also find plenty of things to like in Mr. Biden’s policies. Beyond the glaring exceptions of Europe and his plans for Russia and Ukraine, Mr. Trump’s initial approach could bear a surprising resemblance to the Biden status quo.

One reason is that abrupt foreign policy swerves are rare and difficult to execute, analysts say. America’s military, economic and political power tends to provide a fairly fixed amount of leverage over other countries. Pressure from allies, Congress and the federal bureaucracy push commanders-in-chief toward consensus views.

“There tends to be more continuity between administrations of different parties — even administrations of very different styles, like Trump and Biden — than the casual observer might expect,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “We tend to focus on the big differences.”

One reason is that Mr. Biden continued several key policies from the first Trump term.

In his dealings with such countries as Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, China and even Israel, Mr. Biden broke with Mr. Trump’s approach in relatively modest or short-lived ways. National security strategy plans issued by both the Trump and Biden White Houses identified “strategic competition” with China and Russia as the north star of U.S. policy.

Image

President Biden initially branded Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over human rights abuses, but eventually accepted its oil-powered influence. He met with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and prime minister, in July 2022.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Saudi Arabia is a prime example. Mr. Biden initially branded the kingdom a “pariah” over the 2018 murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi and other human rights abuses. The president also suspended offensive weapons for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, which he said was causing a humanitarian disaster.

But Mr. Biden has since bowed to the reality of Saudi Arabia’s oil-powered influence. He restored the arms shipments and has sent aides to Riyadh in pursuit of a U.S.-Saudi security agreement that would bring the two countries closer militarily, on the condition that Saudi Arabia establish formal diplomatic relations with Israel.

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“Biden went from trying to make the Saudis a pariah to trying to make them a treaty ally of the United States,” Mr. Fontaine noted — an approach Mr. Trump is expected to continue.

Mr. Trump’s plans for China are hazy, beyond threats to impose huge tariffs on its exported goods. But Mr. Biden will hand off an approach built on foundations laid in Mr. Trump’s first term. They include a muscular U.S. military presence in East Asia to counter Chinese territorial aggression, tough action against Chinese technology that could threaten American security and existing tariffs — first imposed by Mr. Trump and left in place by Mr. Biden.

Image

President Biden and President Xi Jinping of China met in Lima, Peru, this month. Both the Trump and Biden White Houses identified “strategic competition” with China and Russia as the north star of U.S. policy.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

Mr. Biden has softened his competitive approach with dialogue and speaks regularly with China’s president, Xi Jinping — but so did Mr. Trump.

One wild card is Taiwan. Mr. Biden vowed to defend the democratic island from a Chinese invasion; Mr. Trump has sounded ambivalent. But several of Mr. Trump’s top national security picks, including Michael Waltz for national security adviser and Marco Rubio for secretary of state, are China hawks committed to Taiwan’s defense.

As a candidate, Mr. Trump claimed that Mr. Biden had lifted the sanctions he had piled onto Iran’s economy as part of his first-term “maximum pressure” policy. In fact, Mr. Biden left those sanctions intact. The difference was in the need for enforcement: Iran eventually found ways to increase its black market oil sales, reaping billions in revenue, but Mr. Biden took only modest steps in response. Trump advisers say he will crack down.

But Mr. Trump will face the same hard choices, including added tensions with China, the top customer for Iran’s illicit oil, and the prospect of higher oil prices caused by any loss in Iranian supply. After campaigning on inflation and high gas prices, Mr. Trump may be especially wary.

This time around, Mr. Trump will have no Iran nuclear deal to rip up, as he did in his first term. Mr. Biden tried without success to restore the Obama-era agreement, which slowed Iran’s progress toward a potential atomic bomb. Now, with Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, Mr. Trump sounds prepared to try again: “We have to make a deal,” he told reporters in September, calling an Iranian bomb an “impossible” outcome.

Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, said she expected “significant continuity in U.S. policy on Iran” under Mr. Trump, noting that both Democratic and Republican presidents have sought to coerce and negotiate with the country’s Islamic government. “That includes the first Trump administration,” she added. “The complexity of the challenges posed by Tehran provides few easy alternatives, as prior presidents have found.”

Mr. Trump, Ms. Maloney said, will most likely be more willing to take risks with Iran, as when he ordered the assassination of the Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. But his pressure campaign will probably include efforts to talk, she said.

Mr. Trump casts himself as Israel’s best friend in American politics, and he may give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wide latitude on security issues and his treatment of Palestinians. But so did Mr. Biden. While the Biden administration often criticized Mr. Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza, it took few concrete steps to restrain his behavior.

Image

A billboard in Tehran shows President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrayed against Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the commander in chief of the armed forces. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Some Biden officials fear that Mr. Trump could green-light an Israeli move to annex the occupied West Bank, something Mr. Biden would never accept. But in his first term Mr. Trump opposed a plan by Mr. Netanyahu to annex large parts of the West Bank, and such a move now could spoil his high hopes for a Saudi-Israel diplomatic agreement.

During his first term, Mr. Trump complained that the war in Afghanistan was “a waste.” But he never completed a U.S. withdrawal — another reminder that big strategic changes are hard to pull off quickly. Mr. Biden wound up solving the problem for him, by executing on a withdrawal agreement that Mr. Trump had negotiated with the Taliban. Mr. Trump even initially called that “a wonderful and positive thing to do,” before hammering Mr. Biden over the chaotic nature of the American exit. Neither has any inclination to deal with the Taliban leaders today.

And in Cuba, U.S. policy remains much as Mr. Trump left it four years ago — frosty and stagnant. As president Mr. Trump took measures to roll back the Obama administration’s diplomatic opening, including by restoring Cuba to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Mr. Biden never undid that move. Similarly, Mr. Biden has largely maintained heavy Trump-era sanctions on Venezuela meant to pressure its authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.

Even some foreign officials worried about Mr. Trump’s intentions are consoling themselves with the idea that his disruptive instincts may have limits.

One European diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Trump’s election had created a climate of uncertainty and alarm on the continent. But asked about the prospect that Mr. Trump would withdraw the United States from NATO, the diplomat said he and many of his colleagues thought that fear is overblown.

Few in Europe, he said, believe that Mr. Trump will actually take such a radical step.

Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state. More about Michael Crowley

3. DoD Announces Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems

The 2 page fact sheet is at this link: https://media.defense.gov/2024/Dec/05/2003599149/-1/-1/0/FACT-SHEET-STRATEGY-FOR-COUNTERING-UNMANNED-SYSTEMS.PDF

DoD Announces Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3986597/dod-announces-strategy-for-countering-unmanned-systems/

Dec. 5, 2024 |   

On December 2 Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III signed a classified Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems. The strategy unifies the Department's approach to countering these systems that looks across domains, characteristics, and timeframes.

Unmanned systems pose both an urgent and enduring threat to U.S. personnel, facilities, and assets overseas. Unmanned aerial systems, most commonly known as drones, pose the most significant threat at this time and increasingly in the US homeland. These threats are changing how wars are fought. By producing a singular Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems, the Secretary and the Department are orienting around a common understanding of the challenge and a shared approach to addressing it.

The strategy builds on other major DoD initiatives, including the standup of the Joint Counter-Small UAS Office, the establishment of a Warfighter Senior Integration Group to meet urgent operational needs, and the launch of the Replicator 2 initiative to defend against the threats of small aerial systems at our most critical installations and force concentrations. The recent designation of the Commanders of NORTHCOM and INDOPACOM as the lead synchronizers for operations to counter-UAS in the homeland also ensures a cohesive approach to this challenge.

Focusing on the near-term problem is not be enough. The Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems helps set the Department's gaze beyond the "five-meter target" to threats we may see in the future, acknowledging the rapid evolution of these capabilities.

Click here to see the unclassified fact sheet on the DoD Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems.

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 5, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 5, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-5-2024

The Kremlin is continuing to suffer significant manpower losses to make tactical advances in western Donetsk Oblast at the expense of Russia's ongoing war effort and the medium-term viability of the Russian economy. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD), citing data from the Ukrainian General Staff, reported on December 5 that the average daily Russian personnel casualties reached a new all-time high of 1,523 casualties per day in November 2024. The UK MoD noted that Russian forces suffered just over 2,000 casualties in a single day for the first time on November 28, 2024. Russian forces suffered an estimated 45,690 total casualties throughout November 2024, and the UK MoD noted that November 2024 was the fifth consecutive month that Russian casualties increased. ISW has observed geolocated evidence to assess that Russian forces advanced at a rate of roughly 27.96 square kilometers per day and seized a total of 839 square kilometers in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast in November 2024. ISW previously reported that Russian forces suffered increased casualties in September and October 2024 as well and that Russian casualties totaled an estimated 80,110 troops in exchange for roughly 1,517 square kilometers of gains in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast in those two months. Russian forces have thus suffered an estimated 125,800 casualties during a period of intensified offensive operations in September, October, and November 2024 in exchange for 2,356 square kilometers of gains. (Or approximately 53 Russian casualties per square kilometer of Ukrainian territory seized.)

Key Takeaways:

• The Kremlin is continuing to suffer significant manpower losses to make tactical advances in western Donetsk Oblast at the expense of Russia's ongoing war effort and the medium-term viability of the Russian economy.

• Russia's constrained labor pool is likely unable to sustain this increased casualty rate in the medium-term, and continued Western military support for Ukraine remains vital to Ukraine's ability to inflict losses at this rate.

• Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov undermined the Kremlin's information operation to portray Russia's November 21 Oreshnik ballistic missile strike against Ukraine as a defensive response to the US permitting Ukraine to conduct strikes in Russia with US-provided ATACMS missiles.

• Russian-North Korean military cooperation will likely continue to intensify in the coming months following the formal commencement of their comprehensive strategic partnership agreement on December 4.

• Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov continues to publicly position himself as a defender of migrants and Russian ethnic minorities in opposition to other senior Russian security officials, suggesting that senior Russian officials may be increasingly divided over Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to promote an inclusive Russian civic nationalism that ensures interethnic and interreligious harmony in Russia.

• Ukrainian forces recently advanced in Kursk and northern Kharkiv oblasts, and Russian forces advanced in the Toretsk, Kurakhove, and Vuhledar directions.

• Russian forces are reportedly increasingly recruiting women for combat and logistics functions.

5. Iran Update, December 5, 2024

Iran Update, December 5, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-december-5-2024

Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS)-aligned opposition groups have begun a campaign to capture Homs after capturing Hama City on December 5. HTS-aligned forces seized control of Hama City and Hama military airport from Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces on December 5. Fateh Mubin—a joint operations room led by HTS— announced after it secured Hama that its forces would advance south to secure Homs. Syrian opposition media posted footage reportedly showing a convoy of HTS-aligned fighters prepared to advance south along the M5 highway to Homs. Unverified reports claim that locals in Talbiseh, approximately 8 kilometers north of Homs, have started their own localized effort to liberate the town ahead of the opposition advance.

Syrian opposition groups are using negotiated settlements with localities to rapidly seize territory without fighting. Locals in two Christian-majority towns north of Hama reportedly negotiated surrender with advancing opposition forces, avoiding any large-scale fighting in the towns. Ismaili Shia officials in Salamiyah, southeast of Hama, also reportedly came to an agreement with opposition forces to avoid fighting. Regime forces reportedly withdrew from Salamiyah on December 5 after opposition forces advanced to the town’s outskirts on December 4. The decision by towns to abandon the regime appears to be a trend across Hama countryside. This trend may help HTS-aligned forces approach Homs within the next day without being slowed down by fighting through country villages.

Key Takeaways:

• Hama City-Homs City Axis: Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS)-aligned opposition groups have begun a campaign to capture Homs after capturing Hama City on December 5. Syrian opposition groups are using negotiated settlements with localities to rapidly seize territory without fighting.

• State of Regime Forces: Opposition groups may also advance rapidly towards Homs due to the rapid collapse of regime forces. Regime forces appear to be collapsing between Hama City and Homs City. The regime similarly failed to set up strong defensive lines until well into Hama Governorate after opposition forces seized Aleppo on November 30.

• Aleppo: HTS is establishing alternative political and security institutions in Aleppo City, consolidating control and support of the local population and former regime elements. 

• HTS Diplomacy: HTS is attempting to use diplomacy to prevent Iranian-backed Iraqi militias from bolstering Syrian regime forces after regime forces retreated south. HTS leader Abu Mohammad al Jolani asked Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani on December 5 to prevent the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) from intervening in the Syrian conflict.

• Lebanese Hezbollah: Secretary General Naim Qassem said on December 5 that Hezbollah is committed to “sheltering and rebuilding” in Lebanon and abiding by the ceasefire deal with Israel.

• Gaza Ceasefire-Hostage Negotiations: Egypt presented an Israeli-proposed ceasefire-hostage deal to Hamas on December 2. Israel desires to capitalize on Hamas’ ”willingness to be flexible” on implementing a partial deal due to the ceasefire in Lebanon, former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death, and the incoming Trump Presidency, according to two Israeli officials speaking to Axios.

6. Are Democracies Doomed to Gridlock and Dysfunction?

The nature of democracies and specifically republican forms of government with separation of powers and checks and balances are built to inject political friction to prevent tyrannical rule and thus are prone to gridlock (though they should not be prone to dysfunction).

What is lacking and what our Founding Fathers understood is that there is a virtue component necessary among political leaders. That is not something that can be procedurally imposed though it should be an election criteria (and it is obviously not in today's political battlefields, thus the gridlock and dysfunction).

But the good news is that it may be possible that South Korea could emerge as a stronger democracy than it was because the government institutions held and protected the democratic republic.

The rule of law can be said to have prevailed and perhaps like Nietzsche, that which does not kill me (or kill democracy) makes me (or democracy) stronger.  

Are Democracies Doomed to Gridlock and Dysfunction?

From France to South Korea, U.S. democratic allies are descending into political chaos.

By Emma Ashford, a columnist at Foreign Policy and a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, and Matthew Kroenig, a columnist at Foreign Policy and vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Foreign Policy · by Emma Ashford, Matthew Kroenig

• Politics
• South Korea
• Emma Ashford
• Matthew Kroenig

December 5, 2024, 1:33 PM

its-debatable-functional-tag

The Stimson Center’s Emma Ashford and the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig debate pressing issues for policymakers.

Matt Kroenig: Hi Emma! I believe you had some travel planned in this period. Where in the world are you today?

Emma Ashford: I’m in Paris. I was supposed to be here talking about European security and the future of transatlantic relations under the incoming Trump administration, but—I don’t know if you’ve heard—there are a few other things going on here this week. Would it be too much to ask for every U.S. ally not to have a constitutional crisis at the same time?

Matt Kroenig: Hi Emma! I believe you had some travel planned in this period. Where in the world are you today?

Emma Ashford: I’m in Paris. I was supposed to be here talking about European security and the future of transatlantic relations under the incoming Trump administration, but—I don’t know if you’ve heard—there are a few other things going on here this week. Would it be too much to ask for every U.S. ally not to have a constitutional crisis at the same time?

MK: Yes, people love to point out polarization in the United States, but Washington does not have a monopoly on political dysfunction. This week, we saw a vote of no-confidence in France, martial law declared and overturned in South Korea, and widespread antigovernment protests in Georgia.

I’d hate to tear you away from your café au lait, but maybe you could report on what’s going on in Paris?

EA: It’s midnight here, the French government just collapsed, and, trust me, people have moved on from coffee to something stronger.

But let’s back up a bit. The drama in Paris is only the latest problem in Europe’s shaky governance. The German government, you might recall, collapsed just days after the U.S. presidential election; we won’t get new elections and a new governing coalition in Berlin until well into 2025. Now, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party has succeeded in passing a no-confidence motion against the minority government of Michel Barnier, which has only been in power for a few months. Barnier was shoehorned into that position by President Emmanuel Macron, who was looking for a way to keep both the RN and left-leaning French parties out of government.

Now that the vote has succeeded, Le Pen can act in concert with the left to veto other prime ministerial candidates that Macron proposes. I suppose it’s possible that Macron could propose a left-leaning candidate who could cobble together enough support from the left and center to form a government, but the left couldn’t agree on a government this summer, and it would be tantamount to undoing his own policy legacy! He also can’t dissolve the assembly, and a caretaker government can’t manage a budget. It’s an absolute mess. Macron could potentially resolve it by resigning, but few think he would go voluntarily.

The EU’s two biggest powers are potentially out of the geopolitical picture for months.

MK: This reminds me of comparative political science debates about the advantages and disadvantages of presidential, parliamentary, and semi-presidential constitutional systems. Our readers may be surprised to learn, given my current interests, that my first book was on legislative powers.

EA: Let me guess: first-strike coalition management? Invoking the “nuclear option” in the U.S. Senate?

MK: Ha! Well, that research did help me understand why democracies outcompete autocracies in great-power rivalry. And a major advantage of presidential systems is their stability. Love or hate Trump, he will almost certainly be in office for the next four years. Political scientists debate whether parliaments are stronger in presidential or parliamentary systems. But the ability of parliaments to remove a sitting executive with a simple vote of no-confidence is a pretty amazing power.

In theory, a semi-presidential system, like France’s, is meant to combine the strengths of both. But we are seeing now that even semi-presidentialism is not immune to the instability induced by making executives vulnerable to a vote in parliament at any time.

EA: Well, the French are often the first in figuring out how political systems can fail, from the Bourbon monarchy to their various empires and republics. This is exactly the kind of conflict—a deadlocked parliament and no strong executive—that collapsed the French Fourth Republic back in the 1960s! It was undoubtedly more extreme: At that time, the war in Algeria was spiraling out of control, leading to popular unrest and a variety of right-wing conspiracies to overthrow the government. But the underlying problem was the same: Partisan divisions in the national assembly created gridlock, preventing any reasonable response to the crisis.

The Fifth Republic that replaced it strengthened the presidential component of the system, but evidently not enough. On the other hand, we have the Germans, where their highly proportional, purely parliamentary system always yields coalition governments, which often fail to get things done because the coalition parties fundamentally disagree.

But even systems that political scientists have always believed to be extremely strong—the Westminster system in the United Kingdom, for example—have had their problems in recent years. In 2010 and 2017, the U.K. had its first hung parliaments since the tumultuous 1970s. And for 14 years until July, the Tories were able to hold onto power even though the party often couldn’t decide what policies it wanted, thanks to facing a massively unpopular Labour Party and the disappearing Liberal Democrats.

It’s enough to make one wonder whether democratic systems are simply not responding adequately to the pressures of the current moment: economic, social, geopolitical. And if that’s the case, can reforms happen, or is it going to be something more dramatic? I doubt we’re headed for a Sixth Republic in France, but you never know.

MK: Well, should we turn from the failures of parliamentarianism to the failures of presidentialism? In Seoul this week, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law. Hours later, the national assembly—after many members scaled the walls of the legislative complex that had been cordoned off by soldiers—voted 190-0 against the measure, causing the president to back down.

Now there are huge questions about the future of governance in Seoul. Will Yoon resign, leading to snap elections? Will he be impeached? Will he try to hang onto power, turning himself not just into a lame duck, but a dead duck, until the next scheduled election in 2027?

What is your take?

EA: Honestly, the problem in Seoul is very similar to the problem in Paris—although I doubt Macron is about to declare martial law! But in both cases, we have a lame-duck president whose term exceeds that of his popular mandate and who is highly reluctant to allow the parliamentary majority to govern as they see fit.

In France, we got Macron’s installation of Barnier as a minority wedge between the far right and the far left. In Seoul, Yoon has railed against the opposition and now tried to remove it from power. We shouldn’t minimize the scope of what Yoon tried to do here; I don’t know if it was technically illegal or unconstitutional, but it was certainly antidemocratic. At the same time, I see both Macron and Yoon as essentially trying to solve the same problem.

MK: Well, you worried about the implications of German and French instability for geopolitics. I am equally worried about what instability in Seoul means for U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific. Yoon broke from his predecessors in a willingness to deepen trilateral cooperation with Tokyo and Washington and to more openly clash with China.

These positive developments may be tarnished by Yoon’s legacy, and a new South Korean leader may take the country in a different direction.

The strengthening of U.S.-South Korea ties under Yoon might be one reason Washington was slow to condemn his imposition of martial law. In fact, a group of South Korean officials had just touched down in Washington for meetings of the Nuclear Consultative Group at the Defense Department, and they had to turn around and head back to Seoul due to the crisis at home.

EA: Well, that’s another interesting parallel with Macron: Yoon’s foreign-policy choices weren’t always popular among South Koreans, particularly his decision to patch up relations with Japan. Korean society is still highly ambivalent about closer relations with Japan, which occupied Korea for decades, brutalized its people, and tried to erase their culture.

It might be half a century or more in the past, but it still matters. And Macron has been far more forward-leaning on foreign policy than his critics on the right—who think his commitments to potentially send troops to Ukraine go too far—and the French public, 69 percent of whom are opposed to doing so. From Washington, we see that these leaders might have been more in line with what the U.S. government wanted, but to the public in these states, the leaders were often out-of-step with their own people. Yoon’s call for martial law described the opposition as aligned with North Korea, for example.

In the South Korean case, it looks like we will find out sooner rather than later what the alternative is. Parliament is already seeking to impeach and remove Yoon from office. In France, there will be gridlock and budgetary uncertainty.

Let’s shift gears and move to Syria, where things have gotten out of hand since the last time we talked. It’s been years since we’ve had to talk about the so-called moderate rebels and the Bashar al-Assad regime, but apparently that conflict was paused, not resolved. The militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) unexpectedly overran the city of Aleppo and surrounding towns, reopening the potential for significant fighting in Syria itself.

Where do you come down on this? Is this a concern for U.S. policymakers?

MK: Let’s understand how we got here. The Assad regime has been a U.S. adversary for many years, and U.S. interests would be advanced by a stable, pro-American government in Damascus.

I was working on the Middle East desk at the Pentagon in early 2011, when the Arab Spring uprisings came to Syria. Until that point, the instability was only hitting American partners, like Egypt and Bahrain. I thought the possibility of overthrowing Assad presented an historic opportunity for the United States, but Washington did not take the opportunity. It endlessly debated intervention, and then, before anyone knew it, the Russians stepped in and sent forces to prop up Assad.

But what do we do now? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. With insurgents—backed by NATO ally Turkey—fighting the Assad regime, the best policy may be to sit back and let them destroy each other, at least for now.

EA: When the enemy of my enemy was literally part of al Qaeda, I feel like things become a little more complicated.

The problem is still essentially the same as it was then: The rebels can’t overthrow Assad alone, and even if they could, the result could easily be a Libya-style failed state, rather than anything coherent. The last time the United States tried this, they got the Islamic State. And today, I think many regional states have accepted that they’d rather have a stable government in Damascus than roll the dice once again on chaos and rebellion.

Just look at the overtures that the Gulf states have been making toward Assad, welcoming him back into the Arab League and slowly normalizing relationships. The United States’ regional partners are actively scrambling right now to try and stabilize Assad, not dethrone him! Is Washington now going to tell them to stop?

MK: The problem with a stable Syria is that it is part of the Russian-Iran-Hezbollah axis. That is the other important piece of this development. Russia’s struggles in Ukraine and Israel’s remarkably successful campaign against Iran and Hezbollah have fundamentally weakened Assad’s position, and the anti-Assad rebels spotted and seized the opportunity.

So, again, U.S. interests would be advanced with Assad out and a stable, pro-American government in. The policy question for which there is not yet a clear answer is: Can Washington now meaningfully affect that outcome at a reasonable cost?

EA: I will note that despite the Israeli strikes on Iranian assets inside Syria, it’s also the case that Assad has been clear he won’t get involved in the Hamas war or let Hezbollah escalate from Syrian territory. So he’s been walking quite a fine line on support for Iran and opposition to Israel in recent months.

But I think your question is fundamentally the right one. The answer is no, even if one sets aside concerns about the extremism of the rebels, escalation issues with the Russians, the question of whether a stable Syria is better than another potential civil war, or the position of regional allies—and that’s a lot of concerns to put aside!

I still don’t see what the United States could reasonably do here to improve the outcome. HTS has done well in its recent campaign, but it’s hardly likely to unseat Assad after all this time. I see this mostly as a reminder of the regional instability that Oct. 7, 2023, and the Israeli war with Hamas in Gaza have unleashed. It’s not something Washington wants to further.

MK: Indeed, the past two and a half years have seen the eruption of several new and unexpected conflicts. Let’s hope that 2025 will be a year of peace.

But in the meantime, I believe you are late for your aperitif?

EA: That was hours ago, Matt. Most folks watching the French no-confidence vote here with me were well into their second bottle of wine some time ago.

MK: Santé!

Foreign Policy · by Emma Ashford, Matthew Kroenig

7. Beyond Human-in-the-Loop: Managing AI Risks in Nuclear Command-and-Control

Excerpts:

Recommendations

Moving forward, the United States and China should build on their prescriptive commitment to human control and agree on a set of quantifiable safety objectives under the qualitative safety goal that the use of AI should not contribute to an increase in the risk of nuclear war, regardless of whether humans are in the proverbial loop. They should also take the lead in researching probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques that may be used to quantify the accident frequencies of AI-integrated nuclear command-and-control systems. That may include an endeavor to understand the failure modes of various AI systems and develop the appropriate AI safety performance evaluation frameworks. Perhaps most importantly, research should identify the limitations of the various techniques for evaluating AI risks when it comes to nuclear command-and-control applications. The diplomatic process involving the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review process can offer opportunities to bring other nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states to the table once Washington and Beijing have reached preliminary agreement. The “Responsible AI in the Military” domain summits may serve to involve more diverse stakeholders in the risk management discussion.

In the end, countries may well discover that it is infeasible to confidently quantify the risks of AI-integrated nuclear command-and-control, or that even the lowest reasonably achievable probability of an accident — whether 1 in 1,000,000 or 1 in 10,000,000 — still presents an unacceptably high risk to humanity. If so, the effort to quantify AI risks in nuclear command-and-control systems and to limit those risks below a quantitative threshold will have been worthwhile nevertheless, as it will have revealed the inadequacy of mere prescriptive commitments such as human control. Unless each nuclear weapon state can configure its command-and-control system to ensure that the likelihood of an inadvertent nuclear launch remains below a quantitative threshold, commitments to keep humans in the loop will provide little more than an illusion of safety.

Beyond Human-in-the-Loop: Managing AI Risks in Nuclear Command-and-Control - War on the Rocks

Alice Saltini and Yanliang Pan

warontherocks.com · by Alice Saltini · December 6, 2024

On Nov. 16, U.S. and Chinese leaders met on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima, Peru, jointly affirming “the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.” This declaration echoes a joint document submitted by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review process in 2022.

With countries increasingly prioritizing military applications of AI, integrating AI into nuclear weapons systems is becoming a distinct possibility, especially as nuclear arsenals undergo modernization. While some nuclear-weapon states have emphasized the importance of maintaining human oversight and control over decisions to employ nuclear weapons, it is too early to take a victory lap. Avoiding a “Skynet” scenario, where AI takes independent control of nuclear weapons, does little to reduce the real risks of unintended nuclear launches.

AI holds the promise of enhancing the performance and capabilities of nuclear command, control, and communications systems, which form the backbone of nuclear decision-making. However, if integrated with haste and without adequate risk assessment, safeguards, and redundancies, such integration could dramatically heighten the risk of unintended nuclear escalation. Escalation risks can arise from altered decision-making dynamics, accelerated processing speeds that outpace human supervision, or insidious errors that can propagate undetected through complex systems — regardless of whether humans remain in the decision-making loop.

To prevent nuclear calamity and ensure the responsible use of AI in nuclear command-and-control, states should move beyond mere prescriptive commitments to human oversight. Reducing the risk of unintended nuclear escalation requires a governance framework that establishes a quantitative threshold for the maximum acceptable probability of an accidental nuclear launch as a uniform safety benchmark. Valuable governance lessons can be drawn from civil nuclear safety regulation, in particular what regulators refer to as the “risk-informed” and “performance-based” safety governance approach. Applying these principles to nuclear command-and-control systems requires moving beyond the simplistic human-in-the-loop prescription to focus on assessing the system’s safety performance. The objective is to assess the quantitative likelihood of an accidental nuclear launch with a particular configuration of AI and non-AI subsystems and to ensure that that likelihood remains securely below an acceptable threshold.

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AI’s Impact on Nuclear Risks

Assessing how AI can impact the nuclear domain and contribute to unintended escalation is no easy task. The current limited understanding of the behavior of AI models, their rapid and unpredictable advancement, and the complexity and opacity of nuclear systems and subsystems that feed into the decision-making process make this discussion largely speculative. Despite this, it is still possible to foresee how states might consider implementing AI as part of broader efforts to modernize aging nuclear arsenals based on existing nuclear postures and states’ desire to gain a strategic advantage.

For instance, Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has pointed to AI’s potential to automate data collection, streamline processing, and accelerate data sharing with allies. Similarly, official statements and documents from other nuclear powers often frame AI as a tool to assist human decision-makers to make faster and more informed decisions, beyond the nuclear domain.

In principle, AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data from diverse sources is well-suited to identify threats quickly, analyze sensor data, automate the identification of objects, and evaluate potential courses of action. However, AI introduces a number of significant risks due to the inherent limitations of today’s advanced AI models.

First, AI is unreliable. Today’s AI can confidently generate false information that can lead to flawed predictions and recommendations, ultimately skewing decision-making. This phenomenon is termed “hallucinations.” Examples include a large language model generating incorrect facts about historical events, or a vision model “seeing” objects that are not there. Second, the opacity of AI systems — known as the “black box” problem — makes it difficult to fully understand how an AI system reaches its conclusions. This lack of transparency undermines trust and reduces the utility of AI in high-stakes environments like nuclear decision-making, where transparency is crucial. Third, AI systems are susceptible to cyberattacks, creating opportunities for adversaries to compromise the integrity of nuclear command-and-control systems. Finally, current AI models struggle to align outputs with human goals and values, potentially deviating from strategic objectives. The high-pressure environment of nuclear decision-making, combined with limited response time, exacerbates these dangers, as decisions may rely on inaccurate, opaque, compromised, or misaligned information.

Despite the declarations of some nuclear-armed states to maintain human control in nuclear decision-making, not all of them have explicitly committed to this, leaving room for grave consequences due to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of countries’ intent. But even if all nuclear states made similar declarations, there is no simple way to verify these commitments. Moreover, human–machine interaction itself can introduce severe risks. Operators may place excessive trust in an AI system, relying on its outputs without sufficient scrutiny, or they may distrust it entirely, hesitating to act when speed is critical. Both situations can skew decision-making processes even when AI systems function as intended. All of these limitations persist even when states maintain human oversight.

Further compounding these risks is the uncertainty surrounding AI’s future advancements. While current limitations may eventually be resolved, new risks could also emerge that remain unpredictable at this stage.

The Precedent of Civil Nuclear Safety Regulation

While the risks of AI-integrated command-and-control may seem novel, the management of nuclear risks with severe consequences for public health and safety is not a new challenge for governments. Indeed, the principles of risk-informed, performance-based, and technology-neutral regulation — drawn from the governance of civil nuclear safety — may usefully apply to the nexus of AI and nuclear command-and-control.

In the United States, the process of “risk-informing” the regulation of nuclear safety began with the 1975 Reactor Safety Study. This quantified the risks of accidents and radioactive releases associated with nuclear power generation using probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques such as event trees and fault trees. Simply put, these techniques map out the various sequences of cascading events, including system failures, that could ultimately lead to an accident, allowing the probabilities of various consequences to be quantified.

Prior to the quantification of risks, regulations were based primarily on prescriptive and deterministic requirements. For instance, regulators prescribed multiple redundant safety features to prevent certain foreseen accidents without explicitly considering the likelihood of any given accident sequence. After the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expanded its research into the more extensive application of probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques. This was recommended by investigations after the accident, culminating in a 1995 policy statement and subsequent plans to “risk-inform” the commission’s safety regulation.

Meanwhile, industry pushed for the more extensive use of performance-based regulation giving the licensee greater flexibility in determining how to accomplish a defined safety goal. Rather than specifying what safety features must be included in the reactor design, a performance-based regulatory requirement would simply establish a quantifiable safety outcome. In its public communication, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission illustrates its performance-based approach using a skydiving example. In this case, the regulator would institute a “performance requirement” that “the parachute must open above an altitude of 5,000 feet” without specifying whether that outcome should be ensured with a rip-cord or an automatic activation device.

Guided by the qualitative safety goal that nuclear power plant operation should not contribute significantly to individual and societal risks, by 1986 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had defined a measurable benchmark that “the overall mean frequency of a large release of radioactive materials to the environment from a reactor accident should be less than 1 in 1,000,000 per year of reactor operation.” That benchmark has since been refined into more operationalizable standards.

In recent years, as diverse and novel reactor concepts emerged, it became clear that many safety features prescribed for traditional reactors were no longer applicable. Regulators have therefore prioritized the development of technology-neutral regulations allowing greater flexibility in how reactor designs could satisfy safety performance benchmarks. In this context, the probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques and performance-based regulatory approach developed over the decades have proven critical for ensuring the adaptation of safety governance to technological advancement.

Applying Lessons from Civil Nuclear Safety to Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications

As Gen. Cotton admitted: “[W]e need to direct research efforts to understand the risks of cascading effects of AI models, emergent and unexpected behaviors, and indirect integration of AI into nuclear decision-making processes.” Indeed, the rapid evolution of AI is outpacing research efforts, leaving significant gaps in our understanding of how AI-integrated functions supporting nuclear decision-making might inadvertently lead to escalation.

Ongoing multilateral discussions on responsible AI integration in the military domain have yet to define what constitutes “safe” AI integration in nuclear command-and-control and adjacent systems, particularly given the high-stakes consequences that even a single error could trigger. To complicate matters further, nuclear-armed states are likely to integrate AI in different ways, driven by their unique doctrines, capabilities, and threat perceptions. For instance, states that perceive themselves as being at a strategic disadvantage may be willing to accept higher risks associated with AI integration if it offers strategic advantages such as faster decision-making and strategic parity.

Establishing quantifiable risk thresholds for AI integration is therefore essential. Risk assessment frameworks can help policymakers distinguish between high-risk and acceptable AI applications. To ensure that the risks of inadvertent escalation do not exceed established thresholds, they would analyze how specific AI models interact with nuclear command-and-control and adjacent systems and identify cascading failure points as well as their potential consequences.

This is where civil nuclear safety regulation can provide useful lessons. The management of AI risks in nuclear command-and-control should integrate probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques and adopt performance-based rather than prescriptive benchmarks, where performance refers to the reliability of AI systems, their ability to generate accurate and well-aligned outputs as well as the effectiveness of the system’s safety guardrails. Probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques are necessary because black-box systems are inherently resistant to deterministic fault analysis, and complex accident sequences require systematic risk quantification.

Additionally, technology-neutral safety governance demands a risk-informed, performance-based approach. While probabilistic-risk-assessment must take technology into account, bilateral and multilateral safety commitments must be applicable to a variety of technologies given the divergent ways in which states are likely to integrate AI into their command-and-control systems. Moreover, the rapid advancement of AI systems will give rise to novel failure modes to which prescriptive guardrails cannot always catch up. As such, rather than rigid prescriptions, which would in any case be exceedingly difficult to verify with an intangible technology like AI, it is far more practical for countries to agree on a set of broad safety goals. Countries could commit, for instance, to the overarching qualitative safety goal that AI systems integrated into nuclear command-and-control should not increase the risk of nuclear weapon use and on that basis develop measurable safety objectives — such as keeping the risk of an accidental nuclear launch under 1 in 10,000,000 per year. Probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques could then be used to evaluate whether a particular configuration of AI (or non-AI) systems will meet these objectives.

As an example, it is possible to plot an event tree to assess the probability that the hallucination of threat data as an initiating event may lead to accidental escalation. One branch of the tree may represent the probability of redundant systems correcting the data automatically. Another may represent the probability of human operators double-checking the source data from the early warning system. Yet another, associated with the probability that redundancy and human oversight both fail, may represent the threat data being transmitted onward and strike recommendations being formulated on that basis. The risk of an accidental escalation to nuclear war given this particular initiating event amounts to the probability of all guardrails failing — a risk that can be assessed quantitatively. If the risk across all initiating events exceeds the defined quantitative threshold, then the configuration of systems must adjust to either eliminate certain high-risk integrations or increase the effectiveness of guardrails.

When it comes to AI systems, risk assessment of this kind would consider both technological risks and integration risks. Technological risks have to do with a model’s reliability, transparency, and performance. Integration risks, on the other hand, focus on how and where AI is used — ranging from low-stakes tasks like improving communication efficiency to high-stakes functions such as formulating strike recommendations. The design and built-in redundancies of the system are also crucial factors within the assessment.

Prescriptive commitments — such as to the principle of human-in-the-loop or the exclusion of certain types of frontier AI systems — may seem categorical, but they are neither technology-neutral nor guaranteed to lower the risk of accidental nuclear use below a quantifiable threshold. Indeed, they create a false sense of security and foster the illusion that nuclear weapon possessors can meet their risk reduction obligations by following a set of prescriptions that do not evolve with time and are not guaranteed to keep accident risks below a defined order of magnitude.

To be sure, objective performance criteria cannot always be defined, which is why civilian nuclear safety regulators have retained some prescriptive requirements. Probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques also have their limitations, particularly in assessing risk contributions from human, organizational, and safety culture factors. Therefore, even as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission works to risk-inform its safety regulation, it has maintained its commitment to the principle of defense-in-depth, which refers to the practice of layering redundant safety systems that are highly unlikely to fail simultaneously. The same principle should be applied in the context of AI and nuclear command-and-control, but in a way that takes risk insights into account. Lessons from early civil nuclear safety regulation that relied exclusively on redundant safety systems showed that the defense-in-depth approach alone was suboptimal.

Ultimately, the responsibility to prevent accidental or inadvertent escalation rests with nuclear weapon possessors, regardless of whether their command-and-control systems rely on floppy disks or frontier AI. The safety outcome is what matters, and the approach to AI-nuclear risk reduction must align with its fundamentally performance-based logic.

Recommendations

Moving forward, the United States and China should build on their prescriptive commitment to human control and agree on a set of quantifiable safety objectives under the qualitative safety goal that the use of AI should not contribute to an increase in the risk of nuclear war, regardless of whether humans are in the proverbial loop. They should also take the lead in researching probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques that may be used to quantify the accident frequencies of AI-integrated nuclear command-and-control systems. That may include an endeavor to understand the failure modes of various AI systems and develop the appropriate AI safety performance evaluation frameworks. Perhaps most importantly, research should identify the limitations of the various techniques for evaluating AI risks when it comes to nuclear command-and-control applications. The diplomatic process involving the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review process can offer opportunities to bring other nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states to the table once Washington and Beijing have reached preliminary agreement. The “Responsible AI in the Military” domain summits may serve to involve more diverse stakeholders in the risk management discussion.

In the end, countries may well discover that it is infeasible to confidently quantify the risks of AI-integrated nuclear command-and-control, or that even the lowest reasonably achievable probability of an accident — whether 1 in 1,000,000 or 1 in 10,000,000 — still presents an unacceptably high risk to humanity. If so, the effort to quantify AI risks in nuclear command-and-control systems and to limit those risks below a quantitative threshold will have been worthwhile nevertheless, as it will have revealed the inadequacy of mere prescriptive commitments such as human control. Unless each nuclear weapon state can configure its command-and-control system to ensure that the likelihood of an inadvertent nuclear launch remains below a quantitative threshold, commitments to keep humans in the loop will provide little more than an illusion of safety.

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Alice Saltini is a non-resident expert on artificial intelligence with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Alice’s research centers on the intersection of AI and nuclear weapons. Recognized as a leading voice in this field, she advises governments on AI’s implications within the nuclear domain. She has published extensive research at the AI–nuclear intersection and presented it to various governments and international organizations. Alice has also developed a general-purpose risk assessment framework for analyzing these risks.

Yanliang Pan is a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, where he conducts research and facilitates Track 2 engagement initiatives focused on AI and nuclear energy. His commentary on nuclear energy issues has appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Electricity Journal, as well as the websites of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, World Politics Review, and Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

Image: United States Space Force via Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Alice Saltini · December 6, 2024

8. Americans trust the military a bit more now, but much less than during war years, survey finds

Americans trust the military a bit more now, but much less than during war years, survey finds

After several years of declining trust, Americans confidence in the military went up in 2024, a national poll found.

Matt White

Posted 15 Hours Ago

taskandpurpose.com · by Matt White

Slightly more than half of Americans have a “great deal of confidence” in the U.S. military, an increase from a year ago after several years of sharp drops, a national survey found. However, the level of trust between Americans and their military is still far below where it was during years of active combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The annual Reagan National Defense Survey released Thursday found that 51% of respondents held the survey’s most positive view, the first time more than half of those polled held that opinion since 2021, the year the Afghanistan war ended in a chaotic withdrawal.

However, the number is still far lower than when the war was still being fought. A high of 70% of respondents gave the military their highest marks in confidence in 2018.

The survey asked roughly 2,500 people to rank their confidence in various public institutions, with responses of a “great deal” of confidence, “some” confidence, “a little” or “not much at all.” The military got the highest scores of any institution with 82% at “some” confidence or higher.

Police and law enforcement were closest, with 77% having “some” confidence, but just 34% choosing “a great deal.” Scores of “some” confidence or higher in other areas of government included election administrators at 53%, the presidency at 45%, the Supreme Court at 48%, Congress with 39% — just 9% said they had a “great deal” of confidence in Congress — and the news media 33%.

The highest scores came when the pollster asked if the federal government should spend more money on the military. Nearly 4 out of 5 respondents (79%) favored more military spending with half strongly in favor. That level of support, Reagan officials said, was the highest ever registered in the polls, surpassing the 77% of a year ago.

The public appetite for military spending came just ahead of border security (74%) and far ahead of foreign aid (43%), but well behind Social Security (89%), infrastructure (89%), health care (84%), and education (83%).

The annual survey is produced by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, which describes itself as dedicated to the “unfinished work” and “timeless principles” of the staunchly conservative Republican president. The survey’s respondents, according to its reported data, were overwhelmingly registered to vote and 73% white, but split evenly in both their 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and in identifying as Republicans or Democrats. The respondents described themselves as “conservative” rather than liberal by a 34-27 margin, with 35% choosing the term “moderate.” Respondents were relatively evenly distributed in both their ages and geographically across the country.

About 1 in 5 said they were a military veteran or lived with one.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Matt White

9. Can American pressure change China?

Access the 16 page essay HERE

Can American pressure change China? 

Michael Mazarr

 Received: 14 September 2024 / Revised: 5 November 2024 / Accepted: 6 November 2024 

© The Author(s) 2024 

Abstract This essay explores the ongoing strategic debate in the U.S. regarding whether to increase pressure on China to change its behavior or governance. It critiques the “maximum pressure” strategy advocated by some analysts and former officials, which draws inspiration from the Cold War tactics used against the Soviet Union. The essay argues that such a strategy is unlikely to succeed and could lead to unintended consequences, including war. It highlights the historical inaccuracies in comparing the current U.S.-China rivalry to the Cold War, noting that the Soviet Union’s collapse was not solely due to U.S. pressure but also internal systemic failures. The article concludes that a strategy focused on coercive pressure may trigger a dangerous backlash from China. It stresses the importance of managing the rivalry in a way that acknowledges the limits of American influence.

10. American Kidnapped in Philippines Is Believed to Be Dead, Police Say

Another tragedy in the Southern Philippines.

Kidnap for ransom remains a business for terrorist/insurgent (but mostly criminal) groups.

American Kidnapped in Philippines Is Believed to Be Dead, Police Say

The police said they believed Elliot Eastman, 26, from Vermont, was killed during the abduction in October. They cited testimony from a suspect in custody.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/world/asia/philippines-kidnapping-american-elliot-eastman-dead.html

The police inspecting the area in Sibuco, the Philippines, where Elliot Eastman was kidnapped in October.Credit...Philippine National Police Regional Office 9, via Associated Press

By Claire Moses and Camille Elemia

Camille Elemia reported from Manila.

Dec. 5, 2024

Updated 8:01 a.m. ET

Elliot Eastman, an American living in the Philippines who was shot and abducted from the island of Mindanao in October, was most likely killed by his kidnappers, the Philippine National Police said on Thursday.

The police have taken four men into custody since the abduction, and testimony from one of the men led the police to believe Mr. Eastman died on the day he was taken, according to Jean Fajardo, a spokeswoman for the police. Four other suspects are still at large, the police said.

Mr. Eastman, who had been living in the Philippines since May, was taken from his home in the coastal town of Sibuco on Oct. 17 by men who falsely introduced themselves as police officers and carried him away on a boat. He sustained two wounds, one in the leg when he was first shot, and one in his stomach, the police said.

Mr. Eastman’s body had not yet been found, the police said, but they believe his abductors threw it overboard after he died on the boat.

Mr. Eastman, 26, of Vermont, had documented his life in the Philippines in videos on social media. On the YouTube page that appeared to belong to him, he said that he had met the “love of my life” in the mountains.

“I will be showing you my day to day life as the first and only foreigner to have ever lived here in Sibuco for a long period of time,” he wrote.

Image

Mr. Eastman had been documenting parts of his life in the Philippines on YouTube. Credit...ViralPress, via Reuters Connect

The channel included videos of his quiet life in the Philippines. In the titles of some of them, he referenced the reputation of coastal Mindanao as being dangerous for foreign travelers.

Mr. Eastman’s kidnapping was first reported by his father-in-law, AbdulMali Hamsiran Jala, who told the police that four men wearing black clothing and face covers had forcibly entered Mr. Eastman’s house in the Zamboanga del Norte Province.

Mr. Eastman resisted and ran before being shot in the leg with a rifle, the police said. The men then put him on a white boat and headed out to sea, according to the police.

The frequency of abductions in the area has lessened in the past decade as militant groups have weakened, but the United States is among several national governments that advise caution for its citizens while traveling in the region. Philippine military officials have blamed insurgent groups for organizing the kidnappings of foreign citizens in the country’s south.

11. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, December 5, 2024

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, December 5, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-december-5-2024

The People's Republic of China (PRC) warned against Republic of China - Taiwan (ROC) President William Lai’s upcoming transit through United States territory on his trip through the Pacific. Lai transited through Hawaii on November 30 and plans to visit Guam while en route to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Palau, which are Taiwan’s three remaining diplomatic allies in the Pacific. Lai stayed in Hawaii for two nights; Hawaii governor Josh Green presented him with a gift in Honolulu. Lai also had a phone call with US Representative Nancy Pelosi, who expressed well-wishes for Lai’s travels through the Pacific. The PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Lin Jian warned the United States on November 29 not to permit Lai’s transit and cited the PRC’s one-China principle, which states that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and the PRC is the sole legitimate government of that China. The United States does not recognize the one China principle but instead maintains a “one China policy” of maintaining diplomatic relations only with the PRC and not with Taiwan. The US policy acknowledges the PRC’s position but remains ambiguous about its own stance on the status of Taiwan. The PRC conflates international agreements that recognize the PRC as the government of China with its own one-China principle to claim falsely the existence an international consensus that the PRC is the rightful government of Taiwan and further Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation.

Key Takeaways

• The People's Republic of China (PRC) warned against Republic of China - Taiwan (ROC) President William Lai’s upcoming transit through United States territory on his trip through the Pacific.

• ROC former president Tsai Ing-wen urged US support for Ukraine at the Halifax International Security Forum on November 23.

• Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) reported sighting PRC balloons in Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) for the first time since April 2024.

• PRC Defense Minister Dong Jun declined to meet with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of a security forum in Laos in protest against US arms sales to Taiwan. The snub came days after the US-PRC leaders’ meeting in Lima, Peru, highlighted the resumption of bilateral defense talks.

• The PRC suspended Director of the Central Military Commission (CMC)’s Political Work Department Admiral Miao Hua on suspicion of corruption. It dismissed allegations from anonymous US officials that Defense Minister Dong Jun is under investigation, however.

• The PRC decried the US plans to deploy medium and long-range missile systems to Japan and the Philippines in case of a Taiwan emergency. The US HIMARS and Typhon missile launchers increase the survivability and mobility of missiles based in Japan and the Philippines.

• European authorities are investigating a PRC cargo vessel that likely cut two undersea cables in the Baltic Sea on November 17-18.

12. Why do still have VOA, RFE/RL, and the other broadcasters under USAGM?

No one in America knows more about these issues than Matt Armstrong.

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Why do still have VOA, RFE/RL, and the other broadcasters under USAGM?

That's a good question, especially when one doesn't understand what "telling America's story" means

https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/why-do-still-have-voa-rferl-and-the?utm

Matt Armstrong

Dec 05, 2024

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A decade ago, I was a Governor on the formerly-named Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). That agency has since been renamed the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) after the board was abolished through a bill that had no public comment, no hearing, was kept secret from the public, was withheld from most of the board, and supporters apparently deceived other stakeholders to support the proposed change to the agency.

The board was the real firewall for preventing the politicization of agency’s broadcast operations. The firewall was not and is not the Voice of America (VOA) Charter. This Charter is enshrined as 22 USC 6202 as “standards” and “principles” that are unenforceable and subjective. They can and have been subverted through benign neglect, incompetence, malpractice, willful actions, and malice.1 Enforcement is through leadership, whether at the language services, or higher managers, including network presidents, and headquarters staff and ultimately the board.

The decision to hire a CEO to run the agency was long overdue and finally made by my board cohort. That the CEO worked at the pleasure of the bipartisan board and not the White House was by design. Now, however, the CEO has the real potential to politicize the agency through hiring and management decisions without any meaningful or timely oversight that can quickly exercise real (corrective) authority.

The complete lack of oversight over the agency by the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy is, at this point, unsurprising.2 There was a lack of awareness and insight of the agency and its utility from different parts of the executive branch. For example, a proposal from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) I received firsthand proposed the BBG running ads on its networks. The OMB hoped this revenue could provide half of the agency’s operating budget, thus reducing the appropriation by 50%. It seemed the argument (made by me) that the nature of the BBG’s markets (my shorthand then and now for describing the BBG/USAGM markets: those places where DOD’s Special Operations Command is operating, was operating, or may soon operating) means limited advertising potential and likely significant reliance on large multinational whose products remain in these markets, like Coca-Cola. These advertisers would likely influence programming choices of VOA, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), and the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN). That didn’t seem to be persuasive, but the argument from my fellow board member did seem to kill the idea: the agency would need more money to setup and run an ad management function.

Then there was the time—while I was still a BBG Governor—I was at Stuttgart, Germany, for meetings with European Command and African Command. I was invited to listen into a wargame in progress and heard they were (in the wargame) establishing a public radio station to broadcast news and information to the people in the region. Apparently, they had asked State for a list of local broadcasters and none fit the bill for the wargame participants (DOD side, not a red team), so they created their own. I asked why they didn’t use VOA. “What’s VOA?” was the reply. The pain from this was particularly pronounced since VOA was the dominant news and information source in the target region.

Why do we still have these Radios?

It is a good question that is not discussed enough, and when it is, I find the discussion to be lacking insight and awareness of the intended markets and the agency’s intended utility. For now, I’ll answer the question with an email I wrote to an editor at a national newspaper in December 2016 regarding the future of the then-Broadcasting Board of Governors. The context of the exchange was discussing the bill to eliminate the board (that I was then a member of) and make the CEO a Senate-confirmed, Presidential appointee. The bill had been included in the National Defense Authorization Act the month before and was set to be signed by President Obama in days, with less than a month left in his term.

The email has been lightly edited for clarity.

I appreciate your interest in this. The impact of the BBG’s networks, including its internet freedom programming, is generally misunderstood, that is, when it is even known. As a journalist, you appreciate the power of journalism to inform and empower an audience. 

The people in the BBG’s target markets do not know or understand many of the fundamental concepts on which democracy is built. Whether it is VOA, or RFE/RL, or one of the other three networks, the BBG operates as a surrogate: the agency is the people’s news agency providing them news and information from their perspective. That last bit is the critical contextual element too many pundits and legislators fail to appreciate. VOA, RFE/RL, etc all report on the news in the context of the local audience. This is not merely translating into their language, but unpacking the elements of the story to convey deeper messages. The Detroit bankruptcy told to a Russian audience will explore elements of the affair that enlightens the audience: civic authorities can be held accountable, for example. Ferguson gives an opportunity to not just talk about race relations, which some target audiences read as ethnic or religious divisions as they project the story onto their own experience, but a chance to discuss police accountability and the grand jury system.

A vignette to “tell America’s story” is not really about us, but about the target audience: explaining how an American pays a speeding ticket is dull to us, but even in 60 seconds the audience can see an alternative system of law where a policeman doesn’t walk away with cash in hand. (In a meeting in Beijing, the number 2 of the Communist Party’s information office, the Communist party’s propaganda department, yelled at me to not tell Chinese how to vote when I shared the vignette — in concept — of how an American registers to vote.) 

There is so much more about this, but I think you get the gist. The agency’s motto of ‘… support freedom and democracy’ is misleading. The BBG does not ’support’ freedom or democracy. It creates the understanding of both and encourages the people to pursue the fundamental elements that lead to both. 

The BBG is a messaging platform, but one of ideals and of example. However, it can provide the White House and State Department, as well as societal leaders, a bullhorn into the markets. But this too is commonly misunderstood. The BBG doesn’t just permit an injection of the message into the marketplace, but through the long standing relationship with the audience, and at the time of delivery and subsequently, the language services unpack concepts our leaders employ in their statements. This is more than a translation service. 

A common refrain I heard was that CNN, MSNBC, Fox, BBC, whatever can and does the same thing VOA, RFE/RL, etc do. Wrong. CNN etc may be in the language (though it is not common, considering the BBG is in 59 languages now, a drop in two over the past 3 years), but they do not report from the perspective of the audience. Worse, these other agencies do not have reporters who are from and live in the target markets. The commercial enterprises parachute in and run away, while the BBG’s reporters are from there, live there, and often risk their lives for the sake of journalism for their target audience. Further, the majority of the markets the BBG operates in, commercial media does not reach. After all, by design, the BBG targets those markets of interest to U.S. foreign policy and lack a free local media. Indonesia for example is rare example of an open media market, but the journalism and news organizations are in very bad shape and desperate for professional help and products. But US media — CNN — that goes there is not reporting on China’s impact on the region and report on the salacious stories rather than newsworthy stories from the U.S. Most markets are not open, without any perceptible ROI for commercial broadcasters, and often require significant infrastructure outlays in niche (from the perspective of major media) languages, which is where BBG comes in. 

Which leads to two quick anecdotes showing how this administration does not understand what the BBG does. First, there was the effort to make the BBG reliant on commercial advertising. Besides the overhead of managing commercial advertising, there are only a few advertisers that will be interested in our markets, mostly internationals like Coca-Cola. At what point then, as the WH wanted the BBG to rely more on advertising and less on budget allocations, would the BBG market selection and content be beholden to internationals, whether Coca-Cola or Google or Toyota? 

Second, there was the notion the BBG can reduce to a few languages, say 5, and surge into the others as needed. This is not how the information, let alone news, business works. This ties into the effort a couple of years ago where the Administration tried to kill the BBG’s Balkan services. Why? Because the Senate appropriators missed the mention of the intent to close the service two years before. But the Balkans were crashing on press freedom, and with rising Russian influence and oligarch propaganda, they needed our journalism. That did not matter, the administration saw the chance to reduce the BBG’s budget.

Overall, the issue of oversight is key with regard to Congress. We can share with them what we do, but we can’t make the horse drink. I’ve met with many Members of HFAC and most hadn’t a clue what the BBG was or did. While the BBG was terribly — not just poorly — managed for years and had worse relations on the Hill than State, a hard to believe fact, that does not absolve responsibility of the oversight committees. You mentioned that hearings were held on the bill. That’s true but misleading. SFRC held one hearing, Nov 2015 (effectively triggered by my HASC hearing the prior month) that was nothing more than “hey, whatcha doing?” HFAC held a couple of hearings, but they never discussed details or impacts of proposed “reforms,” requirements or capabilities that were missing, or anything of that nature. They were filled with polemic rants. One hearing in Jan or Feb 2014, several months after Jeff Shell, Ryan Crocker, and myself were confirmed as part of the new board, HFAC had a hearing with three *past* governors. We asked to be included, I asked that we have hearings since… call me/us up to the Hill and grill me, hold me accountable. Never happened.

This bill [to eliminate the BBG board] is a vanity project: “anything I can get passed so I can claim that I reformed the BBG.” It may be interesting to look back at Royce’s earlier bill, like the one to split RFE/RL, RFA, MBN into a private entity untouchable and undetectable by the executive branch or the rump of BBG that was left so that it, the combined RFE/RL/RFA/MBN could do anything it wanted anywhere it wanted with a self-perpuating leadership beyond WH or Congress’s reach… [ed: see this post as a starter on that bill, which didn’t pass]

Regardless, whether anyone supports my view and vision of the agency is really besides the point. What is the point is that there has been no analysis or examination of how the proposed structure, developed in secret and apparently willfully withheld from (at least) a majority of the board will effect operations and recruitment and serve U.S. foreign policy. 

I believe two members of the board were aware of the bill and actively supported the bill. The deception involved claiming the board supported the change, when the majority of the board had clearly and unequivocally stated it did not support the changes as proposed before Congress’s 2016 summer recess, and instructed the agency CEO to make that clear in any further conversations or inquiries related to this issue. One member was a bit equivocal on the question. My conversations with people at State and in the Senate, they all said they raised questions about the bill but were told the board supported it, which suprised them but since “we” endorsed it, they didn’t object. Except “we” didn’t.

The Parting Shot

Riding the gravel bike three years ago almost to the day on my (formerly) local trails around Sihlbrugg, southwest of Zürich. I looked up the ride: 16 miles, 2100’ of ascent, -5ºC to -2ºC. Photo by me.

1

An example that combined incompetence with malpractice, VOA posted a story that read as if it was written by Russia’s foreign ministry. The story was subsequently edited 18-24 times and the headline changed often, though not as often as the story was edited. (I have the precise figures somewhere as I had the agency run an audit on this specific story.) The URL never changed as VOA then considered, as the VOA Director told me, their stories as living documents. Readers were expected to revisit the same URL and, it would seem, expect to see a new story even though their browser would show the link as visited and a cache may not refresh to show the updated content. This is also why stories didn’t have time stamps, let alone “updated on” time stamps. One can quickly see the problem as VOA implemented timestamps on their website after that. It wasn’t malice or a pro-Russia interest at work here, but a combination of bad practices that remained unchecked, bad management that failed to catch and correct these practices, and ignorance at how audiences consume content.

2

When I was the executive director of the commission, I proposed to the commissioners that they take a deep look at the then-Broadcasting Board of Governors operations. One commissioner expressed shock, saying it was outside the commission’s scope. No, in fact, the reason the commission exists was to provide timely, relevant, and expert advice to Congress, the Secretary of State, and the White House on the Voice of America. This was the advisory commission on information, established through the Smith-Mundt Act. A sister commission providing similar oversight to the exchange programs was also established then to reflect the different nature of the information program from the exchange program. These two commissions merged in 1977 to form the advisory commission on public diplomacy. Today, what value is the commission providing anyone other than the academic community? Seriously, do the commissioners even do anything? It seems from the transcripts that, if they even attend a meeting, they do not have any meaningful question, comment, or advice.

13. The Forgotten Crucibles: The Korean War and the Balkans Wars as Markers of Geopolitical Flux

The Korean War certainly still reverberates to this day. And we fail to heed its many lessons at our peril.

Excerpts:

Ultimately, the Korean War and the Balkans Wars serve as poignant reminders that even conflicts relegated to the periphery of collective memory can act as pivotal junctures in the ever-evolving landscape of global geopolitics, providing invaluable insights into conflict resolution and the importance of international cooperation. The Western Balkans today illustrate the enduring relevance of these historical lessons, as nations navigate the intricate dynamics of great power competition and strive toward a resilient, secure, and prosperous future.

While often dubbed “Forgotten Wars,” the Korean War and the Balkans Wars were far from insignificant in shaping contemporary global politics contours. Each conflict acted as a crucible for broader geopolitical and geostrategic shifts, setting precedents in military strategy, economic paradigms, and international humanitarian law. The Korean War entrenched Cold War divides and catalyzed strategic militarization in the Asia-Pacific, a legacy that persists in regional security dynamics to this day. The guiding American foreign policy for the Korean War, the so-called Truman Doctrine, aimed at containing the spread of communism and supporting democracies in their struggle against authoritarianism. Conversely, the Balkans Wars signified a post-Cold War recalibration, prompting redefined Western military doctrines and laying the groundwork for military-humanitarian operations (MHO) interventions and the expansion of Euro-Atlantic institutions. As the threat of communism faded, the Clinton Doctrine shifted American foreign policy to center on American national and humanitarian interests. However, American humanitarian interventionism was selective as the U.S. intervened in Bosnia and Somalia; while ignoring other regions that were stricken with grave human rights concerns, such as Rwanda.

As global actors continually navigate the complexities of a multipolar world, historical lessons gleaned from these “Forgotten Wars” provide invaluable insights into conflict resolution mechanisms, international cooperation imperatives, and the enduring quest for peace and stability in a world perpetually on the brink of change. The Korean War and the Balkans Wars serve as poignant reminders that even conflicts relegated to the periphery of collective memory can act as pivotal junctures in the ever-evolving landscape of global geopolitics.

The Forgotten Crucibles: The Korean War and the Balkans Wars as Markers of Geopolitical Flux

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/12/06/the-forgotten-crucibles/

by Dr. Isaiah Wilson III, by Michael Greenberg

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12.06.2024 at 06:00am

In the annals of modern conflict, the Korean War and the Balkans Wars represent significant yet often overlooked episodes overshadowed by larger or more prolonged military engagements. Both conflicts serve as pivotal points of geopolitical and geostrategic recalibration in their respective eras.

The Korean War (1950-1953) and the Balkans Wars (1989-2002) not only reconfigured regional power dynamics but also redefined global strategic paradigms.

The Korean War erupted during the Cold War, a period marked by ideological rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The invasion of South Korea by North Korean forces on June 25, 1950, quickly turned the peninsula into an arena for superpower contention. The rapid involvement of United Nations forces (primarily U.S.), in support of the South, and later Chinese intervention, in support of the North, underscored the global stakes involved in a region whose strategic importance exceeded its modest geographic size.

In contrast, the Balkans Wars occurred in the post-Cold War era, characterized by the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and ensuing turmoil. Ethnic nationalism and secessionist movements triggered horrendous acts of ethnic cleansing and atrocities. The United States, alongside NATO, intervened primarily in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995) and Kosovo (1998-1999) to stabilize a region essential for European security.

The Korean War entrenched the ideological division of the world into two antagonistic blocs. The armistice signed on July 27, 1953, solidified the 38th parallel as a geopolitical fault line, catalyzed military pacts such as SEATO, and bolstered U.S. commitments in Asia, serving as a deterrent to communist expansion. This conflict contributed to the militarization of the Cold War, sustaining an arms race and mutual suspicion.

Conversely, the Balkans Wars marked a reorganization of the European geostrategic landscape post-Soviet dissolution. The violent fragmentation of Yugoslavia exposed the frailties of nascent post-Cold War international structures and necessitated a reevaluation of collective security mechanisms. The post-Cold War structure also exposed the latent hostilities of different populations living along civilizational fault lines. NATO’s interventions during Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo shifted the alliance from a defensive posture to an assertive peace-enforcement entity, redefined European security paradigms, and integrated the Balkans into a broader Euro-Atlantic framework, setting precedents for humanitarian interventions. Finally, the Balkans Wars served as a face-saving moment for NATO, as the transatlantic alliance underwent an identity crisis, in the wake of the dissolution of the very empire that it was built to balance against.

Strategically, the Korean War highlighted the importance of flexible response doctrines, leading U.S. military strategies to evolve to encompass asymmetric warfare and power projection capabilities. It emphasized the criticality of air superiority and naval power in modern conflict, influencing U.S. military engagement in subsequent conflicts such as Vietnam and the broader Cold War theater. Moreover, the Korean War tested the concept of conducting a “limited war.” Particularly, this war revealed the complexities involved in integrating new technologies and theories, such as nuclear weapons and deterrence theory, into strategy and military doctrine. By losing the “nuclear monopoly”, the U.S. was faced with the strategic dilemma associated with the potential use of nuclear weapons, demonstrating how emerging technologies could complicate efforts to confine a conflict to specific parameters and prevent it from escalating into a broader, more destructive confrontation.

The Balkans Wars, especially the Kosovo conflict, served as testing grounds for modern precision-strike warfare and the use of airpower to achieve political objectives without extensive ground deployments. The reliance on technology, represented by advancements in satellite targeting, stealth aircraft, and precision-guided munitions, became hallmarks of NATO operations. These shifts underscored a transition towards network-centric warfare, which would later be exemplified in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Balkans Wars demonstrated how secondary parties are able to utilize asymmetric military capabilities to influence the outcome of conflict bereft of expending blood in the form of boots on the ground.

The economic ramifications of the Korean War were profound and multifaceted. It catalyzed a resurgence of the U.S. defense industry, injecting vitality into a post-World War II economy that was facing potential contraction. The Marshall Plan was extended to bolster European allies, ensuring economic stability amid geopolitical instability. South Korea’s post-war reconstruction laid the foundations for its eventual economic miracle, transitioning it from an agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse.

In contrast, the economic implications of the Balkans Wars were largely detrimental to the region, exacerbating the hardships of post-communist transition. The conflicts shattered infrastructure, stunted economic growth, and necessitated substantial international aid for reconstruction and stabilization. Large quantities of military and humanitarian aid were siphoned off by nefarious actors that used the conflict for personal enrichment in places such as Sarajevo and Brčko. As the rule of law faded, other opportunists exploited the conflict through the creation of human smuggling networks in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the post-conflict era saw the integration of Balkans states into broader European economic structures, with several nations becoming EU candidates or members, gaining access to development funds and investment opportunities.

Both conflicts wrought immense human suffering. The Korean War resulted in millions of casualties and refugees, leaving the Korean Peninsula divided and scarred by memories of conflict. Humanitarian channels were strained by the refugee crisis, compelling the United Nations and numerous non-governmental organizations to mount significant relief efforts.

Similarly, the Balkans Wars were marked by egregious human rights violations, including genocide, mass atrocities, and ethnic cleansing. The ensuing humanitarian crises prompted unprecedented international interventions, ranging from UN peacekeeping missions to NATO military campaigns. These interventions starkly highlighted the international community’s responsibility to protect civilian populations, a concept formalized in the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which has since informed global intervention policies.

Establishment of Geostrategic Precedents

The Korean War and the Balkans Wars each established critical geostrategic precedents that continue to influence international relations. The Korean War entrenched a permanent U.S. military presence in Asia, fortifying alliances in the Pacific and shaping the strategic landscape of East Asia. It signified the era’s bipolarity, with the U.S. and USSR leading opposing blocs, and marked a rare instance of collective security under the UN banner, legitimizing multinational interventions under UN aegis.

The Balkans Wars, on the other hand, prompted NATO’s strategic reorientation from a Cold War deterrent to an active peace enforcement and crisis management entity. The conflicts necessitated humanitarian intervention and contributed significantly to the evolution of the R2P principle, embedding it into international law and policy. The resolution of these wars also accelerated the integration of Eastern European states into Euro-Atlantic structures, reinforcing stability in a historically turbulent region.

The façade of a collective state under the tutelage of Yugoslavia’s socialist federation system gave way to the latent ethnic and religious hostilities which fractured the region throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s. Tribalism emerged in the vacuum of the collapsed Yugoslav state.

Furthermore, the Balkans Wars witnessed a unique phenomenon where a major sponsor, the United States, supported peoples outside of their cultural kin. In supporting the Bosniaks, the U.S. shifted foreign policy by backing a population who had little historical and cultural connection to the U.S. In contrast, other foreign backers of this conflict tended to support those within their cultural kin. The nascent Russian Federation firmly supported the Milosevic regime and the Slavic Eastern Orthodox Serbians. Ethnic Croats, who are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, found support mainly emanating from Germany and the Vatican. Finally, besides the U.S., the Bosniaks had extensive support from Islamic nations. These nations include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and ironically for the U.S., Iran; a recent historical caveat where the U.S. and Iran found themselves supporting the same group, albeit for different strategic objectives.

During the Korean War, sponsorship was almost exclusively ideologically driven. Like the Bosniaks, the homogenous Korea’s shared little cultural and historical connection to both the heterogenous bipolar powers. However, similar to most conflicts during the Cold War, sponsorship was given based on an ideology calculation, rather than based simply on being a part of the same civilization. An American foreign policy of containment, and faith in the Domino Theory, drove American national security interests in supporting the South Koreans. More broadly, the UN’s peacekeeping mission sought to support any group in their struggle for freedom and human rights as stipulated in the UN’s founding Charter. On the other hand, the Soviets came to the aid of their Marxist-Leninist counterparts in the nascent People’s Republic of China, who initially came to the aid of the North Koreans in order to ensure, at the very least, a buffer state between the Mainland and any Western-oriented country.

The long-term geopolitical ramifications of these conflicts are substantial. For the Korean Peninsula, the armistice line signed in 1953 left the region in a state of tension that persists to this day, highlighting the need for diplomatic solutions to address nuclear proliferation and regional stability. Currently, the Koreas are mainly divided by ideological differences rather than any fundamental differences in history, culture, or identity. The United States continues to view the Korean Peninsula as pivotal in balancing Chinese and North Korean influence in Asia.

In the Balkans, the post-war landscape has seen steady progress toward Euro-Atlantic integration. The façade of a collective state under the tutelage of Yugoslavia’s socialist federation system gave way to the latent ethnic and religious hostilities which fractured the region throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s. Tribalism emerged in the vacuum of the collapsed Yugoslav state. This identity crisis caused various ethnic groups in the region to no longer peacefully coexist with those that they had lived beside for generations. While ethnic tensions endure, EU enlargement and NATO partnerships have fostered relative peace and economic development. However, unresolved territorial disputes and the specter of ethnic nationalism continue to underscore the region’s long-term stability’s fragility.

The Western Balkans as a 21st Century ‘Geostrategic Pivot’

As the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century evolves, the Western Balkans re-emerge as a focal point in the intricate web of ‘compound security competition’ among great powers. This region, once a flashpoint of conflict and intervention, now finds itself at the nexus of strategic interests for several global actors. Understanding the contemporary importance of the Western Balkans necessitates a nuanced analysis of the region’s role in the ongoing geopolitical and geostrategic calculus.

The Western Balkans occupy a strategic geographic position, acting as a land bridge between Europe, the Near East, and the Eastern Mediterranean. This proximity to key maritime routes and critical energy corridors underscores their significance in broader European and trans-Eurasian geopolitics. NATO’s expansion into the Western Balkans, marked by the accession of Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020, aims to solidify a zone of stability and deter external adversaries, particularly Russia. The prospect of EU membership for countries like Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo represents both an incentive for democratic reforms and a strategic move to anchor these states within the European sphere of influence. Additionally, the Western Balkans are crucial for diversifying European energy supplies away from Russian dominance. Projects like the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) through Albania and other initiatives are pivotal in enhancing energy security for the continent.

Effective collaboration between Western Balkans states and international agencies is essential in countering radicalization and ensuring both regional and continental security.

In the current global order, great power rivalries intensify as the United States, European Union, Russia, and China each vie for influence in the Western Balkans. The United States continues its commitment to ensuring the region’s stability through NATO, viewing the Western Balkans as a bulwark against malign influence from Moscow and Beijing. Russia maintains strong cultural and religious ties with Slavic and Orthodox Christian populations in the Balkans, notably Serbia and Republika Srpska in Bosnia . Moscow leverages these connections to foster political influence, counter NATO expansion, and disrupt Western unity. Meanwhile, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has extended into the Western Balkans, with significant investments in infrastructure projects, creating a strategic foothold in the region . Chinese economic engagement aims at gaining influence in Europe’s periphery and securing access to crucial logistics and resource routes.

While geopolitical and strategic interests dominate the discourse, the Western Balkans’ economic development trajectory remains critical. Significant investments in infrastructure—such as the modernization of ports, railways, and energy facilities—are pivotal for economic integration with the European Union and other global markets.

These projects promise economic upliftment but also serve as battlegrounds for influence between Western powers and China. The demographic dynamics of the Western Balkans, including high youth unemployment and migration patterns, impact both regional stability and the labor markets of Western Europe. Managing these human capital flows is crucial for both economic stability in the Balkans and societal cohesion in receiving countries. The European Union’s financial aid through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) is also vital for reforms and development in the Western Balkans, helping to enhance governance, rule of law, and socio-economic standards, thereby aligning the region more closely with EU norms and standards.

In the realm of security, the Western Balkans present both a challenge and an opportunity for consolidating European stability and countering hybrid threats. The region’s history as a transit route and recruiting ground for foreign fighters necessitates robust counter-terrorism measures. Effective collaboration between Western Balkans states and international agencies is essential in countering radicalization and ensuring both regional and continental security. Additionally, the susceptibility of the region to hybrid warfare tactics, including disinformation campaigns and cyber-attacks primarily attributed to Russian interference, underscores the need to strengthen cybersecurity frameworks and information resilience to safeguard democratic processes and national sovereignty. Organized crime remains another persistent issue, with Western Balkans networks involved in trafficking and illicit trade across Europe. International cooperation and stringent law enforcement measures are critical to curbing these transnational threats and ensuring regional security.

The Western Balkans today stand at a confluence of geopolitical ambitions where convergence and divergence shape the regional and global landscape. Convergence points include transatlantic cooperation, as U.S. and EU policies align towards integrating the Western Balkans more deeply into Euro-Atlantic structures, promoting regional peace and stability. Shared interests in infrastructure development by different stakeholders, including Western, Russian, and Chinese actors, can potentially lead to economic growth and regional connectivity, albeit with differing strategic intentions complicating these efforts.

However, divergences are also evident in the diverging strategic goals of NATO and the EU vis-à-vis Russia and China, manifesting in proxy contests over political influence, military presence, and economic leverage in the Western Balkans. The interplay of external powers often exacerbates local political fragmentation and ethnic tensions, making governance and regional cooperation more challenging.

To navigate the complex web of interests and maintain stability in the Western Balkans, a multi-pronged strategic approach is recommended. This includes strengthening the role of regional mechanisms like the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) and enhancing the capacities of Western Balkans countries to address collective security threats. Encouraging balanced economic integration by leveraging investments from multiple sources while safeguarding national sovereignty and ensuring adherence to international norms and regulations is crucial for sustainable development. Intimately linked to this is the need to intensify security cooperation through NATO and bilateral agreements to counter hybrid threats, enhance cybersecurity resilience, and disrupt transnational criminal networks.

Promoting sustainable development is another key strategic recommendation. Infrastructural investments should be linked to sustainable development goals, ensuring that projects funded by external actors contribute to long-term socio-economic benefits rather than creating debt dependencies. Additionally, fostering societal resilience by supporting civil society and initiatives that promote democratic values, governance reforms, and societal resilience against disinformation and external political pressure is critical for ensuring regional stability and good governance.

In conclusion (‘epilogue as prologue’), the Western Balkans reassert their importance as a barometer of broader geopolitical dynamics in the contemporary theater of great power competition. The region’s stability and prosperity hinge not only on local governance but also on the strategic inclinations of external powers. By understanding the multifaceted roles and competing interests in the Western Balkans, stakeholders can better navigate the complexities of 21st-century compound security competition, fostering a more stable, secure, and integrated European periphery. Through nuanced, cooperative engagement, the historical lessons from the Korean and Balkans wars inform contemporary policies and strategies, ensuring a continued quest for peace and stability in regions that once again stand at crucial geopolitical crossroads.

Ultimately, the Korean War and the Balkans Wars serve as poignant reminders that even conflicts relegated to the periphery of collective memory can act as pivotal junctures in the ever-evolving landscape of global geopolitics, providing invaluable insights into conflict resolution and the importance of international cooperation. The Western Balkans today illustrate the enduring relevance of these historical lessons, as nations navigate the intricate dynamics of great power competition and strive toward a resilient, secure, and prosperous future.

While often dubbed “Forgotten Wars,” the Korean War and the Balkans Wars were far from insignificant in shaping contemporary global politics contours. Each conflict acted as a crucible for broader geopolitical and geostrategic shifts, setting precedents in military strategy, economic paradigms, and international humanitarian law. The Korean War entrenched Cold War divides and catalyzed strategic militarization in the Asia-Pacific, a legacy that persists in regional security dynamics to this day. The guiding American foreign policy for the Korean War, the so-called Truman Doctrine, aimed at containing the spread of communism and supporting democracies in their struggle against authoritarianism. Conversely, the Balkans Wars signified a post-Cold War recalibration, prompting redefined Western military doctrines and laying the groundwork for military-humanitarian operations (MHO) interventions and the expansion of Euro-Atlantic institutions. As the threat of communism faded, the Clinton Doctrine shifted American foreign policy to center on American national and humanitarian interests. However, American humanitarian interventionism was selective as the U.S. intervened in Bosnia and Somalia; while ignoring other regions that were stricken with grave human rights concerns, such as Rwanda.

As global actors continually navigate the complexities of a multipolar world, historical lessons gleaned from these “Forgotten Wars” provide invaluable insights into conflict resolution mechanisms, international cooperation imperatives, and the enduring quest for peace and stability in a world perpetually on the brink of change. The Korean War and the Balkans Wars serve as poignant reminders that even conflicts relegated to the periphery of collective memory can act as pivotal junctures in the ever-evolving landscape of global geopolitics.

Tags: Balkans War, Geopolitical Dynamics, Korean War, proxy strategy, proxy warfare

About The Authors

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• Dr. Isaiah Wilson III
• Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III earned his PhD in Government (Intl Relations and American Politics) from Cornell University and is a professor of practice with the School of Politics & Global Affairs at Arizona State University (ASU). He is president emeritus of the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), a partner with Gainful Solutions Ventures Inc., and president and CEO of Wilson W.i.S.E. Consulting LLC, which provides advisory services on strategy and operational planning, technology & teaming integration, transitions (change) leadership coaching and organizational re-design and innovation. A decorated combat veteran with combat tours in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and direct strategic and operational planning and advisory service to six (6) 4-Star Commanders, three Secretaries of Defense, numerous ambassadorial chiefs of mission, and the presidents of three foreign country partner nations, Wilson’s civil-military career has spanned troop-leading, staff-planning, strategic advisory and teaching assignments. He has published extensively on organizational politics, civil-military relations, national security (defense) policy, and grand strategy. His book, Thinking beyond War: Civil-Military Relations and Why America Fails to Win the Peace, along with his service on the 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group, helped to increase public attention to the problems and errors in U.S. post-war planning for the Iraq War and sparked governmental movement toward policy reforms. He founded the West Point Grand Strategy Program and has executive directed, taught, and conducted research at several top-tier and top-ranked colleges and universities, including Yale, Columbia, West Point, and the National War College. He is a Life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Future Security Initiative Fellow with New America.
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• Michael Greenberg
• Michael Greenberg earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with an emphasis in International Relations from the University of Arizona and a Master of Arts (with distinction) in Global Security from Arizona State University. He currently holds an embedded analyst position in an Intelligence Operations Center for a Fortune 500 company.
• View all posts 

14. Can Martial Law Happen in America?

Sigh... Lots of reporting from those who want to apply South Korea to the incoming US administration (some sensational like Lucian Truscot here: Seoul survivor: Could martial law happen here? https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/seoul-survivor-could-martial-law?utm or Donald Kirk here: Why Trump Is Watching South Korea’s Martial Law Horror https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-terrifying-lesson-trump-may-learn-from-south-koreas-near-coup/  I will just include this one with these comments. But this must be discussed, particularly among our military services and government agencies and all those who take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That statement cannot be a cliche and requires deep reflection and the strongest commitment.

I make these comments with some trepidation because I know I am vulnerable to criticism and the expert opinions of legal and Constitutional scholars. That said, in the end it will be people with whom I have served who will be making decisions and exercising judgment so it is imperative that we all think these issues through. But I do look forward to the critiques from legal and Constitutional scholars and experts.

First of all the US Constitution allows for the suspension of habeas corpus which may in effect martial law.  That is a presidential decision and one which he will make based on his assessment of the threat to the constitution and the nation.

Second, South Korea demonstrated the importance of republican government with a separation of powers and checks and balances.  When the people's representatives spoke, the military sided with the legislature and the people, not with the executive. This is because the ROK and US constitutions are constructed with the express purpose of preventing a dictator. That is what republican government is all about.

In the US there is a reason why Article I is the legislative power and Article II is the executive power - that is because Art I represents the people and the power of the people which is the priority of our country - representative government. But this is why dictators (or dictator wannabees) always do two things - suspend the legislative functions and control the press. In South Korea, despite initial orders to the contrary, the military ultimately allowed the legislature to act and its decision represented the will of the people and the military respected that.

If there is one thing I have learned in the study of resistance and revolution and coups as well as from my good friend Greg Scarlatoiu and his experience in the Romanian Revolution is that the outcome of any such event depends on the decisions made by the military. If the military refuses to put down resistance and suppress the population the people will prevail. 

There is a reason why a US military officer's oath does not swear to obey the orders of the president of the US but only to support and defend the Constitution. (unlike the enlisted oath where soldiers swear to obey the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over them - see the oaths below). That is because the military is the dominant instrument of power because it controls the application of violence in the highest form and which way the military goes, so goes the nation.

All of this rests on the judgment of military officers and the assessment and interpretation of the rationale for the suspension of habeas corpus (and order of martial law) by the President. This is the ultimate "gray area" and requires judgment. And the judgment requires a decision on how best to support and defend the constitution. There is no black and white checklist or litmus test (the only litmus test is whether you support and defend the Constitution or not, but how to do so is never clearly spelled out, thus it is a gray area). It requires deep study, reflection, and experience.  

While officers will initially obey a lawful order - and martial law may be a lawful order – military officers will not blindly follow the president if they deem the president to be acting in contravention to the Constitution or bringing harm to the Constitution and the nation. This is all situation dependent and dependent on the judgment of those who wield power, ultimately those who can control the application of violence which is the only thing that can suppress the will of the people. The question is would the US military obey an order to suspend the legislature and prevent the exercise of the will of the people or obey an order to suppress the free press? All military people know (or should know and understand) that the will of the people and accountability of the free press are critical to the defense of the Constitution. There is almost no situation that should or could arise where anyone would support suspending the legislature or the free press despite the current (and historical) mistrust of both Congress and the free press. Without them our country cannot survive. I could support martial law and the use of the military to quell violence and ensure public safety but I would not support martial law for political purposes. It seems that the ROK military did not believe the alleged threats of communist and north Korean sympathizers in the opposition political party was a sufficient threat to the Republic of Korea to warrant the suspension of the political process and the power of the free press. I hope the same would be true in the US. But all of this can (and should be) "what if'd" in discussions as there are so many scenarios to consider and all can never be identified and addressed.

Although not exactly foreseen by Clausewitz this is where his concept of coup d'oeil (or the inward looking eye of military genius) where an officer is able to cut through the fog and friction of uncertain situations and make a sound judgment based on their experience and education.

Oath of Commissioned Officers

I ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. (Title 5 U.S. Code 3331, an individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services).

https://www.army.mil/values/officers.html

Oath of Enlistment

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

https://www.army.mil/values/oath.html

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David French

Opinion

Can Martial Law Happen in America?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/opinion/trump-south-korea-martial-law.html?smtyp=cur&smid=bsky-nytimes

Dec. 5, 2024

Credit...Illustration by George Douglas; source photographs by Enrique Díaz/7cero and Keystone-France, via Getty Images

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By David French

Opinion Columnist

Well, that was dangerous — and absurd.

On Tuesday, the president of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, suddenly declared martial law. He suspended political activity in one of the world’s most advanced and prosperous democracies and attempted to place the media under government control.

Seemingly confused and surprised troops struggled to contain a rebellious National Assembly, which voted immediately to end military rule, but not before a series of chaotic scenes that shocked the nation. The president backed down, mere hours after triggering a political crisis that threatened democratic rule.

As the drama played out in South Korea, my phone lit up with a question from friends and media colleagues — including from some of the most sober-minded people I know. Can this happen here? Can an American president — or any other American leader — create a similar political emergency?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is yes — if a president (or a governor) exploits ambiguities in American law.

Let’s deal with the short answer first. Unlike South Korea, the United States has no clear constitutional mechanism for a president to simply declare military rule. State governors do have the ability to declare martial law in the event of an emergency, but governors can’t abrogate the federal Constitution, and any declaration of state military control is subject to judicial review.

There have been a number of limited declarations of martial law in American history. Gen. Andrew Jackson declared martial law in New Orleans for three months during the War of 1812, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared martial law in Hawaii after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to give two examples.

In addition, President Abraham Lincoln declared martial law in 1862 and applied it to “all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors, within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia draft or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to rebels against the authority of the United States.” But there is no American constitutional authority for military rule comparable to the one in the South Korean Constitution.

The longer answer, however, is far less reassuring. While there is no constitutional mechanism for military control, history demonstrates that American leaders will sometimes press their war powers beyond the constitutional breaking point (while Roosevelt’s declaration of martial law in Hawaii was defensible, his internment of Japanese Americans was not).

Even worse, there is a statutory basis for military intervention in domestic affairs, and the statute — called the Insurrection Act — is so poorly drafted that I have come to call it America’s most dangerous law.

The Insurrection Act is almost as old as the United States itself. The law dates to 1792, and it permits the president to deploy American troops on American streets to impose order and maintain government control.

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There is nothing inherently wrong with granting a president such power, so long as it is properly circumscribed. There are numerous examples of lawless defiance of government authority, from the Whiskey Rebellion in George Washington’s second term, to the Civil War, to southern resistance to Reconstruction and to the Los Angeles riots in 1992 (the last time the act was invoked).

But the statute itself is terribly written. The first section isn’t problematic — it permits the president to deploy the military upon the request of a state legislature or governor, if the legislature can’t convene. That makes sense. If a governor has lost control, he should be able to appeal to federal forces for help.

The next two sections of the statute, however, are much worse. Section 252 of the act gives the president the authority to deploy troops domestically “whenever the president considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

Section 253 has similar language, granting the president the power to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”

Note the extreme trust placed in the president. He can call out troops when he considers it necessary. There is no congressional oversight. If he believes he needs troops in the streets, he can order troops in the streets.

And in fact, Trump almost invoked the Insurrection Act during his first term. In the summer of 2020, he considered ordering federal troops to suppress the urban unrest that exploded after the murder of George Floyd, but he ultimately backed down after his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, publicly stated his opposition to Trump’s plan.

Since he left office, however, Trump has openly regretted not deploying troops in 2020, and his allies have urged him to use the Insurrection Act during his second term, to control the border or to suppress demonstrations. Or both.

But the Insurrection Act isn’t the only dangerously ambiguous and open-ended provision of American law that could expand the authority to use the military for domestic law enforcement. Presidents aren’t the only American leaders who can cause chaos, and a number of Republican governors are seeking to expand their own authority to use force.

Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution denies states the power to engage in war unless they are “actually invaded.” Article I, Section 9 protects the writ of habeas corpus (an ancient legal doctrine that allows an imprisoned person to petition for release) “unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it.”

Lincoln relied on Article I, Section 9 when he revoked habeas corpus during the Civil War, an obvious case of rebellion.

You might think that the meaning of these passages is clear, that an invasion is easy to define. Think, for example, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or of North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950 — violent attacks that are intended to destroy or occupy sovereign nations.

Yet a number of red-state governors — including, most notably, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas — have deemed the surge of migrants at the border an “invasion.” Texas used this purported invasion to justify placing barriers in the Rio Grande, although those barriers would otherwise violate federal law.

Earlier this year, Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason, wrote a piece in Lawfare explaining the original public meaning of “invasion” in the Constitution. In the words of James Madison, the term refers to “an operation of war,” and “to protect against invasion is an exercise of the power of war.”

Frank Bowman, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law, wrote in Just Security that throughout the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the ratification debates, “With a handful of exceptions where ‘invasion’ is used metaphorically, as when referring to an ‘invasion of rights,’ the word invariably refers to a hostile armed incursion into or against the territory of the states or the nation, an incursion that must be met with a military response.”

In a decision issued in July, the Fifth Circuit held that the Texas barriers did not conflict with federal law, but they did so without answering whether the migrant surge constituted an invasion within the meaning of the Constitution.

In a concurring opinion, however, Judge James Ho — who is reportedly on Trump’s short list to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy — wrote that it’s not for courts to decide whether an invasion occurred. That’s a political question, to be decided by the elected branches of government. Under this reasoning, if the president says there’s an invasion, then there’s an invasion. Similarly, if a governor says there’s an invasion, then there’s an invasion.

If Ho’s reasoning was adopted by the Supreme Court, then unscrupulous presidents and governors would enjoy immense new authority over war, peace and due process. Economic migrants and asylum seekers could be treated as enemy combatants. Presidents could order large-scale detentions, without granting detainees access to federal courts.

Before the Trump era, not that many Americans perceived how much our democracy’s very survival depended on the honor and decency of American presidents. Yes, our Constitution is full of checks and balances, but it doesn’t address every contingency, and broad statutes give presidents far too much potential authority.

President Biden and his allies in Congress did important work to shore up American democracy. By amending the Electoral Count Act, they helped protect presidential elections from another effort at a Trump-style coup, to give one example. But the Biden administration focused on preserving elections, not on reforming the powers of the presidency.

Trump can still use the Insurrection Act to call out the troops when he wants to call out the troops. He can declare an invasion and dare the courts to disagree. Neither power is as broad as a South Korean president’s power to declare martial law, but they are dangerous to American democracy.

We have long trusted presidents not to abuse their power, and most presidents have proven worthy of that trust. Trump is not. While we can hope that the courts and Congress will restrain him in his second term, American law gives him more power than he should rightfully possess.

Some other things I did

I’ve written quite a bit since my last newsletter. My column on the last Sunday in November warned about two potential Trump legal maneuvers that could magnify the power of the presidency beyond its constitutional bounds:

These are the times that try a constitutional conservative’s soul.

Donald Trump and his allies have proposed two legal maneuvers that could have profound consequences for the function of the federal government. He has proposed confirming presidential appointments through an abuse of his power to make recess appointments, and his allies have proposed reviving a mostly banned practice called impoundment, under which the president can refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.

These proposals together would gut core constitutional functions of Congress and could make Trump our nation’s most imperial peacetime president.

My column last Sunday was part of our annual Times Opinion giving guide. I wrote about a wonderful Nashville charity called Room in the Inn:

I won’t forget the first time I volunteered for a Nashville homeless ministry called Room in the Inn. It was decades ago, in 1990, on a cold night in the dead of winter. I drove to my church, walked into the kitchen and immediately started cooking more food than I’d ever made in my life. We were making lasagna for roughly 20 men who were due to arrive at the church at any moment.

The model for the ministry was simple. In the late afternoon, homeless and vulnerable people would arrive at a central location in downtown Nashville, and dozens of church buses, vans and other vehicles would take them in small groups to a participating church in the city. Once our guests arrived, we’d make them a good meal, and we’d hang out while they washed their clothes or showered or just relaxed.

My first night at Room in the Inn, I played basketball with a small group of Guatemalan migrants. Another night, I listened while a young Mexican immigrant gave a practice sermon in English. He wanted to be a pastor, and he was trying to work his way off the streets. On still another night, I ached for a trucker who described a life of indescribable loss.

I also wrote about Trump’s announcement that he wants to replace the current F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, whose term is supposed to end in 2027, with a sycophant named Kash Patel:

The perfect expression of the authoritarian approach to the rule of law comes from a former Peruvian president, Óscar Benavides: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” The truly corrupted legal system combines impunity for the ruling class with punitive repression of political dissent.

When Jack Smith moved to dismiss his federal cases against Donald Trump, that clearly signaled Trump’s impunity. It was a representation of the adage that might makes right. He won, so he now enjoys a privilege from prosecution.

The selection of Kash Patel to lead the F.B.I. — a move that would require firing or forcing the resignation of Christopher Wray, the current F.B.I. director, well before the end of his 10-year term — demonstrates Trump’s commitment to repression and revenge.

On Tuesday, I joined my colleagues Patrick Healy and Ross Douthat to discuss President Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter. I was not a fan:

As a father, I think it would be very, very hard to watch your son go to prison — especially if you have the power to set him free. I can’t imagine the pain of watching Hunter’s long battle with substance abuse and then watching his conviction in court. But in his role as president, Biden’s primary responsibility is to the country and the Constitution, not his family.

As president, this pardon represents a profound failure. Biden was dishonest — he told us that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter — and this use of the pardon power reeks of the kind of royal privilege that is antithetical to America’s republican values.

And finally, I participated in a podcast discussion with several of my colleagues to talk about what Biden should do in these final weeks of his term. My proposal was simple: Help Ukraine:

From the beginning of the war, Western powers froze more than $200 billion in Russian assets. That is a sum of money that could really assist in propping up the Ukrainian economy, propping up Ukrainian arms purchases. It would be a tremendous assistance to the Ukrainian war effort, plus a real blow to Russia if it were permanently deprived of those assets.

And so, the proposal is that President Biden spend at least some of his remaining time in office trying to persuade our Western allies to not just freeze the assets but seize the assets for the use of the Ukrainian war effort, thus dealing an immense financial blow to Russia and providing a financial windfall to Ukraine that Ukraine could use to continue its war.

More on whether it can happen here

Opinion | David French

It’s Time to Fix America’s Most Dangerous Law

Dec. 3, 2023

Opinion | Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith

Trump Is Not the Only Reason to Fix This Uniquely Dangerous Law

Dec. 27, 2023

Opinion | Carlos Lozada

Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are

Nov. 6, 2024

Opinion | Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Why Autocrats Love Emergencies

Jan. 12, 2019

David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag). 

15. Why Ukrainian – Israeli Defense Cooperation Is in the U.S. National Security Interest

Excerpt:

Overall, strengthening cooperation between Israel and Ukraine should be a top priority on both a bilateral and a multilateral level. Both countries have gained invaluable experience and expertise on the modern battlefield and within their institutions as well. The West has many lessons it needs to learn from based upon their experiences, this will pose them as critical allies in critical times in critical places. Last but not least, these lessons learned should be employed as a credible deterrent against China with Taiwan.

Why Ukrainian – Israeli Defense Cooperation Is in the U.S. National Security Interest

By Benjamin Bardos

December 06, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/12/06/why_ukrainian__israeli_defense_cooperation_is_in_the_us_national_security_interest_1076880.html?mc_cid=589f682420

Cooperation between Israel and Ukraine and the wartime experiences of both sides can live up to their unrealized potential amongst one another, as well as endowing the United States with valuable lessons on how warfare has evolved, which can be a formidable deterrent against China.

The wars in both regions have been viewed as two entirely separate conflicts with no outstanding connections between them beyond the obvious, being that the United States plays a pivotal role in both. However, the reality could not be further from this, as the adversaries on the opposing sides of the collective Western partners have increasingly coalesced to form a front around a few geopolitical objectives, namely, the blatant standoff against the United States and its allies.

First and foremost, as said by Lt. Col. Sobolevskyi on a panel at the Warsaw Institute, it is the harsh reality that this impromptu axis of Russia, China, D.P.R.K., Iran, and their proxies are “performing well” especially if “you estimate their abilities to help each other, you will see”. This can be acutely observed in Russia’s war effort, where its ‘allies’ have provided immense support, ranging from an economic lifeline provided by China to Iranian drone technology and production and all the way up to D.P.R.K. troops and ammunition.

This clearly demonstrates that the war is no longer solely Putin’s or even just Russia’s war effort. Instead, it has evolved into a unifying force, bringing together countries that have now become allies through shared circumstances. While their shared common interests are limited if not even conflicting at times, regardless, the implications of such cooperation speak volumes to the effectiveness and impactfulness of such a multi-nationally interwoven support network.

While it may seem that it’s centered around Russia, the fact of the matter is that it goes both ways. For example, Iranian-Russian relations have experienced a broadened scope, especially in terms of drones and ballistic missiles, leading to a relationship that aids and abets each other’s war and geopolitical goals. This format applies to the D.P.R.K as well, whereby they, too, have received technological aid from Russia in turn for material support in their war efforts in Ukraine. With this in mind, it is Lt. Col. Sobolevskyi who summarizes this predicament best: “It’s a pity to say, but they (Russia, D.P.R.K., China, etc.) are performing better than the entire[ty] of [the] Western allies.”

Drones have not only come to heavily effect wars on the battlefield but also on a more geostrategic level, where drone cooperation in terms of production, sharing, and cooperation has come to be an ever-influencing factor. Or Yissachar, the Vice President at the Israeli Defense and Security Forum, explained, “Drones [are] symbolizing the cooperation not just between Russia and Iran but also between the larger axis against western hegemony”. These present themselves as “common targets,” wherein Iranian drone support for the Russians is as much of an interest in Ukraine as it is for Israel. This all goes to say that “shared interests are a force multiplier[s]” which couldn’t be closer to the truth, meaning the collective West, approach must not look at Israel and Ukraine in a piecemeal fashion but rather as two symptoms of an identical issue.

This suggests that the same impromptu axis’s resolve must be matched by the collective West in response. The West must bring a broader perspective beyond the limited confines of regional conflicts. In other words, as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said, it is an “interconnected web of threats” with a “China-led axis.”

Furthermore, were this concept to be engaged more in-depth by both sides, such as in the case of Iranian weapons capabilities stemming from Russia, those can be the subject of Ukrainian operations, and vice versa for Russian capabilities stemming from Iran, which falls more into the purview of Israeli operations. Meaning, that by way of “[channeling] these challenges between Israel and Ukraine into a full-fledged cooperation”, as Or Yassachar said, could not only benefit Israel and Ukraine in their near future war efforts, but also aid the United States and the collective Western efforts in curtailing hostile actions by state and non-state actors in Europe and the Middle east.

Moreover, with the currently unfolding events in Syria, it presents itself as a renewed pressure point for the West towards the Russians and the Iranians, emphasis on the first. Whereby, forcing the Russians to commit more resources to keep Bashar Al Assad’s regime afloat can directly serve to hamper Russia’s efforts in Ukraine and elsehwere. Furthermore, the aforesaid cooperation between Israel and Ukraine could now have tangible and quick ramifications for the war in Ukraine as well as in Syria.

Overall, strengthening cooperation between Israel and Ukraine should be a top priority on both a bilateral and a multilateral level. Both countries have gained invaluable experience and expertise on the modern battlefield and within their institutions as well. The West has many lessons it needs to learn from based upon their experiences, this will pose them as critical allies in critical times in critical places. Last but not least, these lessons learned should be employed as a credible deterrent against China with Taiwan.

Benjamin Bardos is a Defense Policy Expert at the Warsaw Institute, Warsaw, Poland

16. Dwarfed by China in Shipbuilding, U.S. Looks To Rebuild Its Defense Industrial Base

Excerpts:

Several researchers at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said China’s rapid military buildup could allow the country to prevail over the U.S., especially in case of a prolonged conflict.

“China’s massive shipbuilding industry would provide a strategic advantage in a war that stretches beyond a few weeks, allowing it to repair damaged vessels or construct replacements much faster than the United States,” the researchers wrote in June.

On Thursday, the congressional panel heard suggestions from experts who said it would take time to rebuild the defense industrial base, but for quicker fixes, the U.S. could innovate to make low-cost and autonomous systems and tap resources of its allies.

“We need to look at co-production of whether it’s munitions in Australia or shipbuilding in Korea,” said William Greenwalt, a non-resident senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute.

“We need to get numbers as fast as we can,” he said.

Dwarfed by China in Shipbuilding, U.S. Looks To Rebuild Its Defense Industrial Base

By Didi Tang

12/6/2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/12/06/dwarfed_by_china_in_shipbuilding_us_looks_to_rebuild_its_defense_industrial_base_1076877.html?mc_cid=589f682420

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. severely lags behind China in shipbuilding capacity, lawmakers and experts have warned, as the Biden administration tries to build up the country’s ability to develop and produce weapons and other defense supplies to fend off war.

Speaking at a congressional hearing Thursday, Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said the country lacks the capacity to “deter and win a fight” with China and called for action.

“Bold policy changes and significant resources are now needed to restore deterrence and prevent a fight” with China, Moolenaar said.

China’s navy is already the world’s largest, and its shipbuilding capacity, estimated to be 230 times larger, dwarfs that of the U.S.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, told Fox News last week that “for every one oceangoing vessel that we can produce, China can produce 359 in one single year.”

The U.S. government has come to see China as its “pacing challenge,” and officials have warned that Beijing is pursuing the largest peacetime military buildup in history, raising concerns about how the U.S. would respond and ensure victory in case of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, where tensions are high in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

Krishnamoorthi on Thursday warned that a weak military industrial base could invite aggression and argued that strengthening it is necessary to avoid war with China.

“History tells us we need a healthy defense industrial base now to deter aggression and make sure the world’s dictators think again before dragging the U.S. and the world into yet another disastrous conflict,” Krishnamoorthi said.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan called it a “generational project” to fix the problem after the American shipbuilding industry had its “bottom fell out” in the early 1980s.

“Part of it is we don’t have the backbone of a healthy commercial shipbuilding base to rest our naval shipbuilding on top of,” Sullivan said Wednesday at the Aspen Security Forum in Washington. “And that’s part of the fragility of what we’re contending with and why this is going to be such a generational project to fix.”

The challenge in shipbuilding has been “especially immense,” stemming from the hollowing-out of the U.S. manufacturing base where its workforce shrank and suppliers left, Sullivan said.

And it is part of the broader problem of a weakened U.S. military industrial base, as manifested in the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Sullivan said, when Kyiv in eight weeks “burned through a year’s worth of U.S. 155-millimeter artillery production.”

“Decades of underinvestments and consolidation had seriously eroded our defense industrial base, and there was no way around it,” Sullivan said.

The head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Paparo, warned last month that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East were eating away at critical U.S. weapons stockpiles and could hamper the military’s ability to respond to China should a conflict arise.

He said providing or selling billions of dollars worth of air defenses to both Ukraine and Israel were hampering U.S. ability to respond to threats in the Indo-Pacific.

“It’s now eating into stocks, and to say otherwise would be dishonest,” he told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Nov . 19.

Several researchers at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said China’s rapid military buildup could allow the country to prevail over the U.S., especially in case of a prolonged conflict.

“China’s massive shipbuilding industry would provide a strategic advantage in a war that stretches beyond a few weeks, allowing it to repair damaged vessels or construct replacements much faster than the United States,” the researchers wrote in June.

On Thursday, the congressional panel heard suggestions from experts who said it would take time to rebuild the defense industrial base, but for quicker fixes, the U.S. could innovate to make low-cost and autonomous systems and tap resources of its allies.

“We need to look at co-production of whether it’s munitions in Australia or shipbuilding in Korea,” said William Greenwalt, a non-resident senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute.

“We need to get numbers as fast as we can,” he said.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

17. Report to Congress on Marine Littoral Regiments

Download the report here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25446278-us-marine-corps-marine-littoral-regiment-mlr-dec-2-2024/

Report to Congress on Marine Littoral Regiments

U.S. Naval Institute Staff

December 5, 2024 11:22 AM

https://news.usni.org/2024/12/05/report-to-congress-on-marine-littoral-regiments-4?mc_cid=589f682420

The following is the Dec. 2, 2024, Congressional Research Service In Focus report, Marine Corps Marine Littoral Regiment.

From the report

On March 23, 2020, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) announced a major force design initiative planned to occur over 10 years originally referred to as “Force Design 2030,” which is now known as “Force Design.” As part of this initiative, the Marines are redesigning forces to place a stronger emphasis on naval expeditionary warfare to better align with the National Defense Strategy, in particular, the strategy’s focus on strategic competition with China and Russia. As part of the redesign, the Marines plan to establish at least three Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs) organized, trained, and equipped to accomplish a number of missions within contested maritime spaces.

MLR Missions

According to the Marines, the MLR is to be capable of the following missions:

• Conduct Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), a form of expeditionary warfare involving the employment of naval expeditionary forces with low electronic and physical signatures, which are relatively easy to maintain/sustain. Selected Marine and Navy forces are to be arrayed in a series of austere, temporary locations ashore within a contested or potentially contested maritime area to conduct sea denial, support, sea control, and fleet sustainment operations.
• Conduct strike operations with a variety of systems.
• Coordinate air and missile defense operations.
• Support maritime domain awareness.
• Support naval surface warfare operations.
• Support information operations.

The MLR’s Operational Environment

The Commandant of the Marine Corps’ May 2022 Force Design 2030 Annual Update stated

The security environment is characterized by proliferation of sophisticated sensors and precision weapons coupled with growing strategic competition. Potential adversaries employ systems and tactics to hold the fleet and joint force at arm’s length, allowing them to employ a strategy that uses contested areas as a shield behind which they can apply a range of coercive measures against our allies and partners.

Operating in this environment, MLRs are envisioned to serve as what the Marines call a “Stand-In Force (SIF),” intended to help the fleet and joint force win the reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance battle within a contested area at the leading edge of a maritime defense-in-depth.

MLR Employment

According to a May 25, 2022, Marine Corps Association article “Missions, MAGTFs, Force Design & Change,” by Colonel Michael R. Kennedy, USMC (Retired), MLRs are intended to

Deploy to islands, coastlines, and observation posts along chokepoints where their networked sensors and weapons can surveil the air and surface (and, potentially subsurface) waterways. The timing of their insertion is implied to be in the “competition” phase before hostilities start. The duration of their stay is less clear, and potentially challenging as resupply over long distances … will be challenging.… Host nation support (if it exists) will be critical as will prepositioned supplies and even “foraging. The MLR’s purpose will be to observe and prevent any “grey zone” activities that lead to fait accompli actions.

18. U.S. Navy Bolsters Carrier Presence in the West Pacific

U.S. Navy Bolsters Carrier Presence in the West Pacific - Naval News

navalnews.com · by Carter Johnston · December 4, 2024

China has conducted military exercises in response to previous high level interactions between the United States and Taiwan, and they have drawn condemnation from the United States in the past.

“They are provocative, irresponsible and raise the risk of miscalculation.”

White House statement on China’s military exercises held after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022

To deter and prepare for contingencies, the U.S. Navy has moved three Nimitz-class aircraft carriers to the West Pacific. All three carriers are operating with an Advanced Air Wing, the U.S. Navy’s concept of a 2030s air wing.

Also known as the Air Wing of the Future, each carrier is operating with 5th generation F-35C Lightning IIs, newly delivered CMV-22B Osprey carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft, upgraded E-2D Hawkeye early warning aircraft, and newly delivered AN/ALQ-249 Next Generation Jammer Mid Band (NGJ-MB) electronic warfare pods for EA-18G Growler jamming aircraft. Naval News previously covered the Advanced Air Wing’s composition on its first deployment to Exercise Rim of the Pacific 2024 (RIMPAC 2024).

Earlier this month, the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) departed CENTCOM and the 5th Fleet Area of Responsibility to continue its deployment in the West Pacific. This left 7th Fleet without a carrier for the first time since 2001. The Lincoln is four and a half months into its planned deployment, and is expected to remain in the West Pacific through late January at the least.

On November 27th, the Lincoln departed Port Klang, Malaysia after a scheduled port call. The Abraham Lincoln now operating in the South China Sea with three escorts and one replenishment oiler; Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Spruance (DDG 111), USS Michael Murphy (DDG 112), and USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121), alongside replenishment oiler USNS Rappahannock (T AO 204).

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) departs Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Abraham Lincoln, flagship of Carrier Strike Group Three, is underway conducting routine operations in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Daniel Kimmelman)

A second carrier, the USS Carl Vinson (CVN 71) departed San Diego on November 18 for an unannounced deployment to the 7th Fleet Area of Responsibility. Guided missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59) departed San Diego the same day to serve as the carrier’s escort.

USS Sterett (DDG 104) completed ammunition onload at Naval Weapons Station Seal beach on November 21st. USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110) completed ammunition onload at Naval Magazine Lualualei on November 22nd. Both Arleigh Burke-class destroyers will serve as escorts throughout the Vinson‘s deployment to 3rd and 7th Fleet, supplementing USS Princeton.

The Carl Vinson‘s embarked Carrier Air Wing 2 (CVW-2) is the Navy’s first confirmed operator of the AIM-174B ALC, the longest range air-to-air missile in U.S. inventory. The AIM-174B ALC is operationally deployed in the U.S. Navy according to a U.S. Navy spokesperson, who offered no further comment on the status of the AIM-174B on other deployed Pacific Fleet carriers. CVW-2 is the most technologically advanced air wing in the U.S. Navy today.

A Sailor assigned to Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) prepares to launch an F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the “Warhawks” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 97, aboard the flight deck. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Isaiah B. Goessl)

The third carrier, USS George Washington (CVN 73), recently completed a homeport change to Yokosuka, Japan following an extended six year refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) period in Newport News, Virginia. Guided missile destroyers USS Higgins (DDG 76) and USS McCampbell (DDG 85) joined the George Washington in a tour around South America, ending in a homeport change for all three ships to Yokosuka, Japan.

USS George Washington is the third and most recent Nimitz-class aircraft carrier to operate with an Advanced Air Wing, bringing the ‘Argonauts’ of Strike Fighter Squadron 147 (VFA-147) to Marine Combat Air Station Iwakuni, Japan. VFA-147 is now the U.S. Navy’s first forward deployed F-35C Lighting II squadron.

As part of its homeport change to Yokosuka, Japan, the USS George Washington replaced USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 75) as the U.S. Navy’s forward deployed carrier in 7th Fleet. The Ronald Reagan completed a homeport shift to Naval Base Kitsap, Bremerton, Washington, in August.

Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73), pulls into Commander, Fleet Activities Yokosuka, on November 22nd, 2024. (U.S. Navy photo by Ryo Isobe)

These three carriers operate the U.S. Navy’s three premier carrier air wings, deployed with 5th generation fighters and operating with the most advanced weapons and technology currently fielded by the U.S. Navy.

“I would say this is routine operation for the Air Wing of the Future.”

Captain Matthew C. Thomas, USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), in an interview with Naval News

An inert AIM-174B (NAIM-174B) on the wing of a VFA-2 ‘Bounty Hunters’ F/A-18F. VFA-2 is attached to Carrier Air Wing 2 (CAW-2) of the USS Carl Vinson. The Carl Vinson is currently en-route to the West Pacific and 7th Fleet Area of Responsibility. Photo by @the_808_airspace on Instagram.

The USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Carl Vinson, and USS George Washington are all conducting routine operations in the Pacific, in both the 7th Fleet and 3rd Fleet Areas of Responsibility.

navalnews.com · by Carter Johnston · December 4, 2024

19. Vladimir Putin’s Nuclear Bluff

Excerpts:

Mr. Matveev states that Mr. Putin “doesn’t understand what to do and how to respond, because he doesn’t want to drop a nuclear bomb. He doesn’t want to start a war with NATO, as he promised after [Ukraine’s] long-range strikes. So, he has to make such a showy action in the spirit of—‘look, I have a ballistic missile.’ ”

Time isn’t on Mr. Putin’s side. Thanks to Russia’s war against Ukraine, the ruble’s value has plummeted, inflation is rising, and declining economic growth is causing dissention among the country’s elite. The military is so desperate for manpower that it is using North Korean troops to regain territory in Kursk.

Ukrainians are war-weary, and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity is fading. But if Donald Trump manages to get Kyiv and Moscow to the bargaining table, he should bear in mind the serious problems Mr. Putin is facing, none of which can be solved by Russian nuclear escalation. As Mr. Katz observed, the Russian president is “trying to impress everyone with some kind of wonder weapon, while people do nothing but look at the dollar exchange rate.” For ordinary Russians, Mr. Putin’s nuclear swagger might not be enough to compensate for the exorbitant price of butter.

Vladimir Putin’s Nuclear Bluff

The Russian ruler wants to scare the West. But he has problems that escalation in Ukraine wouldn’t solve.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/vladimir-putins-nuclear-bluff-russian-ruler-wants-to-scare-the-west-but-escalating-in-ukraine-wont-solve-his-problems-626df213?mod=hp_opin_pos_3#cxrecs_s

By Amy Knight

Dec. 5, 2024 3:55 pm ET

Vladimir Putin delivers a televised address from Moscow, Nov. 21. Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Kremlin Poo/Zuma Press

When Vladimir Putin announced in a Nov. 21 video address that Russia had launched a new high-speed ballistic missile with nuclear capacity against Ukraine, he didn’t move his hands or fingers for nearly eight minutes. Observers concluded that the video had been doctored to hide that Mr. Putin suffers from hand tremors. Before the announcement, he had been absent from public view for 13 days. According to reliable Kremlin watchers, Mr. Putin’s appearances as shown on his website during that period were “canned goods,” or prerecorded.

Whatever the reason for the president’s prolonged absence, the Kremlin is going all out to show the world that its leader is indomitable, an important message as the conflict in Ukraine intensifies and Mr. Putin raises the specter of nuclear conflict.

During his Nov. 21 address Mr. Putin claimed that Ukraine’s attacks on targets in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions with U.S.-provided ATACMS—along with subsequent assaults by British Storm Shadow systems—had changed the regional conflict to a global one, thus justifying Russia’s attack on a Ukrainian weapons factory with a new medium-range ballistic-missile system known as the Oreshnik. Although the missile didn’t carry nuclear warheads, two days earlier Mr. Putin approved a new doctrine that lowers the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons. At a conference in Kazakhstan last week, he bragged that Russia had 10 times as many missile systems as all the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries combined and that production of three of his country’s most advanced hypersonic missile systems, which are nuclear capable, is being “ramped up.”

The Kremlin clearly aims to instill fear of nuclear escalation in Ukraine and NATO countries. According to political commentator Abbas Gallyamov, “in recent weeks, the number of mentions of nuclear weapons by the authorities has skyrocketed. . . . Even the Russian patriarch has joined in: he says that nuclear war is OK.” Western arms analysts have also raised the alarm, portraying Russia’s new system as a devastating threat to Europe. Tucker Carlson warned in a video from Moscow this week that “we are far closer to nuclear war than at any time in history.”

The key question is whether Mr. Putin would follow through on his threats. According to Articles 20 and 22 of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, the decision to use nuclear weapons belongs solely to the Russian president, who isn’t limited by rules or procedures. But Russian political analyst Maksim Katz observed recently: “Everything we know about Vladimir Putin tells us that such a decision is unlikely.” “For his entire quarter of a century in power,” Mr. Katz writes, “he has clearly demonstrated that he is not going to risk his life. The use of nuclear weapons in any form is a big step toward the grave.”

By all accounts, Mr. Putin is unusually fearful of death. Covid caused him to retreat into paranoid isolation in his residence outside Moscow. Visitors had to quarantine for as much as two weeks and pass through a disinfectant tunnel before meeting with him at the end of a 20-foot-long table. Mr. Putin often brings his own white thermos mug to conferences and dinners with foreign leaders and uses a special, heavily armored train for travel in Russia. To keep safe in the event of a nuclear attack, Mr. Putin reportedly has several lavish underground bunkers, including at least one in the Ural Mountains and another under his palace at Gelendzhik on the Black Sea.

According to Russian military expert Ian Matveev, Mr. Putin is making nuclear threats because he is desperate. Though the Russian army is gaining on the main battleground in Ukraine, its advance has been painstakingly slow. Ukrainian forces haven’t been driven out of Russia’s Kursk region after four months, with huge losses of Russian soldiers and equipment.

Mr. Matveev states that Mr. Putin “doesn’t understand what to do and how to respond, because he doesn’t want to drop a nuclear bomb. He doesn’t want to start a war with NATO, as he promised after [Ukraine’s] long-range strikes. So, he has to make such a showy action in the spirit of—‘look, I have a ballistic missile.’ ”

Time isn’t on Mr. Putin’s side. Thanks to Russia’s war against Ukraine, the ruble’s value has plummeted, inflation is rising, and declining economic growth is causing dissention among the country’s elite. The military is so desperate for manpower that it is using North Korean troops to regain territory in Kursk.

Ukrainians are war-weary, and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity is fading. But if Donald Trump manages to get Kyiv and Moscow to the bargaining table, he should bear in mind the serious problems Mr. Putin is facing, none of which can be solved by Russian nuclear escalation. As Mr. Katz observed, the Russian president is “trying to impress everyone with some kind of wonder weapon, while people do nothing but look at the dollar exchange rate.” For ordinary Russians, Mr. Putin’s nuclear swagger might not be enough to compensate for the exorbitant price of butter.

Ms. Knight is author, most recently, of “The Kremlin’s Noose: Putin’s Bitter Feud With the Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia.”

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Free Expression: By exaggerating our woes for partisan reasons, politicians on both sides of the aisle threaten to squander America's enduring global superiority. Photo: Shen Hong/Xinhua via ZUMA Press/AFP via Getty Images

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 6, 2024, print edition as 'Vladimir Putin’s Nuclear Bluff'.

20. Misunderstanding Escalation Dynamics with Russia

Conclusion:

America cannot be made to back down every time Putin intimates he will use nuclear weapons; if that became our policy, it would be completely impossible to deter Russia from anything. We are the primary world power and should not forget our own large nuclear arsenal. This is not to encourage belligerence generally, but that we should respond in kind to our foes so as to preclude further aggression on their part: escalating to de-escalate. But this strategy, one that worked to win us the Cold War, is incomprehensible to those who would cry ‘World War III’ at the earliest opportunity.

Misunderstanding Escalation Dynamics with Russia - Providence

providencemag.com · by James Diddams · December 4, 2024

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, significant existing fractures, especially on the right, have been exposed in American foreign policy. Democrats have largely aligned behind the policy of the Biden Administration, which has been one of strong rhetorical support though with often-lackluster material aid and an inordinate fear of “escalation.” That term has been the bugbear of the political right when it comes to this conflict, dividing traditionally hawkish Republicans from populist isolationists, who seek a much more limited American role abroad. Both groups criticize Biden’s Ukraine policy but for vastly divergent rationales: one because it is too weak and the other because it is too strong.

While the hawks complain that the White House has failed to deliver military aid in a timely and efficient manner, other Republicans are concerned that supporting Ukraine, in addition to dragging the U.S. into an unnecessary conflict, could potentially spark WWIII. This line of rhetoric, particularly with an impending second Trump Administration, may come to increasingly shape foreign policy.

Escalation is not a one-way street, yet these critics ignore the bigger half of the issue – constant Russian aggression – to focus narrowly and unfairly on Ukraine. This approach is detached from the reality of warfare in general, ignores the specific path of this conflict, lends undue credence to nuclear saber-rattling, and blames America for the belligerence of our enemies.

First, this inordinate fear of World War III and nuclear exchange is disconnected from how escalation dynamics actually work in modern conflict. For a conflict to de-escalate to a point where it is stable enough to reach a sustainable endgame, both sides must be deterred from further escalation. If one side sees it as in their interest to continue fighting, peace will not be reached. Counterintuitively, this often requires greater escalation (escalation dominance) to create a deterrent effect; each belligerent must understand that unacceptable costs will be imposed by continuing. But that escalation – or threat thereof – must be credible to the opposing faction to be successful. Warfare, particularly the existential kind in which Ukraine is currently embroiled, is not something that can be carefully micromanaged. Restrictions on warfighting are counterproductive, only serving to disadvantage the restricted side by reducing the credibility of its threats of escalation. And that prolongs wars and increases their potential to broaden, not the reverse.

Second, the Russo-Ukrainian War in particular has not been the story of Ukrainian escalation against Russia, but Russian aggression towards Ukraine. The current stage of the war began when Russia launched an unprovoked full-scale invasion in February 2022, intended to topple the government in Kyiv and turn the country into a pliant satrapy. Russia has attacked civilian targets, razed Ukrainian cities, massacred innocents, taken children captive, and interdicted food shipments. It has used ballistic missiles, naval bombardment, carpet bombing, and even North Korean auxiliary fighters. Ukraine, supplied by the West and at a major disadvantage in terms of total soldiers and firepower, has been restrained in response. It has barely attacked Russian positions in Russia, largely due to arbitrary constraints imposed by its sponsors, especially the United States. The reason Kyiv has been able to remain in this war is in spite of these restrictions: it has innovated tactically and technologically, as well as taking big chances on impressive attacks in the Black Sea, the Kursk salient, and against Russian military infrastructure. Some analysts claim this opportunistic and gutsy Ukrainian response to overwhelming Russian aggression is a “maximalist” strategy bringing doom to the world; the reality is precisely opposed, as a maximalist strategy of deterrent-creating escalation would have Ukraine in a far better position than it is today.

Third, the World War III predictors constantly buy into every rhetorical threat of nuclear escalation on the part of Vladimir Putin, allowing Russia to deter Ukraine and the West via belligerent speech. Moscow has set red line after red line, from the provision of main battle tanks, long-range fires, and fighter jets to Ukrainian incursions into pre-war Russian territory and the sinking of Russian naval vessels. They backed each of those hardline stances with ever-increasing nuclear saber-rattling. Yet none of those eventual actions, even if deterred for months, were responded to with any sort of serious force on the part of Moscow. These were empty threats from the beginning, but they worked, hence why they have continued apace.

The same pundits also accuse America, via NATO expansion, of having caused the war in the first place. They argue that the growth of a purely voluntary defensive alliance in the former Warsaw Pact violated a nonexistent ‘commitment’ made to Russia after the Cold War and created an untenable security threat on Moscow’s border. In reality, the voluntary accession to NATO by nations formerly under the boot of Soviet oppression is a logical response to the long-term historical danger of Russian expansionism – one that has repeatedly proven destructive over the past few centuries. Ukraine is the one being threatened by Russia, not vice versa. It is Russia that has subjugated, starved, and invaded Ukraine in recurring attempts to destroy it, not the reverse. It is an aggressive Moscow that poses a security risk to its peaceful European neighbors, not a defensive-minded NATO acting against Russia.

Not only are these doomsayers harming Ukrainian defense and self-deterring American action, but they are also endangering our national security across a wide variety of theaters. Showing our adversaries that we will cower in response to any nuclear threat is an incentive for more nuclear threats and greater proliferation. Russia, China, and North Korea all have nuclear weapons and a good reason to threaten us to achieve their geopolitical aims. Other enemy and rogue regimes, including Iran and its terrorist proxies, would only be incentivized to pursue weapons of mass destruction.

The Soviet Union similarly engaged in nuclear brinksmanship, constantly provoking American reaction and testing our red lines. This included the Cuban Missile Crisis, testing weapons of mass destruction regularly, and supplying and reinforcing our enemies. Nikita Khrushchev’s infamous 1956 “we will bury you” speech is probably the most well-known example of this phenomenon.

America cannot be made to back down every time Putin intimates he will use nuclear weapons; if that became our policy, it would be completely impossible to deter Russia from anything. We are the primary world power and should not forget our own large nuclear arsenal. This is not to encourage belligerence generally, but that we should respond in kind to our foes so as to preclude further aggression on their part: escalating to de-escalate. But this strategy, one that worked to win us the Cold War, is incomprehensible to those who would cry ‘World War III’ at the earliest opportunity.

providencemag.com · by James Diddams · December 4, 2024

21. West drawing near to 'third nuclear age,' says head of UK armed forces

West drawing near to 'third nuclear age,' says head of UK armed forces - Breaking Defense

UK Chief of the Defence Staff Adm. Tony Radakin, also said there is only a “remote” chance that Russia attacks the UK — a projection that is also true for NATO as a whole — while Moscow understands that a retaliatory response would be overwhelming, “whether conventional or nuclear.”

breakingdefense.com · by Tim Martin · December 5, 2024

The UK plans on replacing Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) with a new fleet of Dreadnought-class vessels (UK MoD)

BELFAST —The Western world is closing in on a new nuclear age, the third of its kind, because of malign activities carried out by Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, the head of the British Armed Forces has said.

“We are at the dawn of a third nuclear age … defined by multiple and concurrent dilemmas, proliferating nuclear and disruptive technologies and the almost total absence of the security architectures that went before,” said UK Chief of the Defence Staff Adm. Tony Radakin, during a Wednesday speech in London hosted by the British Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.

“From Russia, we have seen wild threats of tactical nuclear use, large scale nuclear exercises and simulated attacks against NATO countries, all designed to coerce us from taking the action required to maintain stability.”

He said that China’s nuclear build up offers a “two-peer challenge” to the US. Further afield, Radakin labelled Iran’s failure to engage with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a “concern.”

He also accused North Korea of “erratic behavior” and said such action, in conjunction with its ballistic missile program, “presents a regional and increasingly a global threat.”

Radakin strongly defended the UK’s nuclear deterrent amid criticism over high costs and claimed it alone “has more impact on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin than anything else.”

For that reason, “successive British governments are investing substantial sums of money to renew both our submarines and warhead and to recapitalize our nuclear enterprise after decades of underinvestment,” added Radakin, “and this is even though the real benefits won’t be realized for another decade, at least.”

A wise general once told me that the role of senior leaders at points of tension is to reassure the nation & stiffen our resolve

Global power is shifting & a third nuclear age is upon us. My RUSI Lecture explores how Britain stays safe in dangerous timeshttps://t.co/Ylgo2xVzAS

— Chief of the Defence Staff  (@AdmTonyRadakin_) December 5, 2024

The UK’s Continuous At Sea Deterrent (CASD) is overseen by Royal Navy Vanguard-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) fitted with Trident 2 D5 missiles. The aging vessels are set to be replaced by four BAE Systems Dreadnought-class types from the early 2030s onward, with each capable of carrying up to 12 Trident munitions and four Spearfish medium-range torpedoes.

Overall, the Dreadnought program has an estimated through life price tag of £31 billion ($40 billion), excluding a £10 billion contingency fund. Parliamentary figures [PDF] also indicate that by March 2023, £15 billion had been spent on the “concept, assessment, and early delivery phases” of the effort.

In a November report on UK nuclear modernization, the Federation of American Scientists said that Dreadnought delays “could threaten the [Royal] Navy’s ability to maintain their Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) as it would put additional stress on the Vanguard fleet that has already been pushed past its service life.”

It also noted that the UK holds an estimated stockpile of 225 nuclear warheads, which is forecast to increase long term, “based on shifting posture to counter Russia, modernization, and alliance efforts.”

Radakin also said there is only a “remote” chance that Russia attacks the UK — a projection that is also true for NATO as a whole — while Moscow understands that a retaliatory response would be overwhelming, “whether conventional or nuclear.”

Radakin also urged the MoD to consider a two tier equipment and acquisition approach, distinguished by opposing “fail safe” and “safe to fail” systems. Fail safe systems would see major projects delivered in much the same way as they are currently, but safe to fail systems would prioritize an “investor” style whereby, as an example, nine out of 10 projects might end up failing but the remaining one would offer a “step change” in capability.

22. After Trump's win, Russian disinformation aims to drive a wedge between the US and Ukraine

Should be a surprise to no one.

After Trump's win, Russian disinformation aims to drive a wedge between the US and Ukraine

By  DAVID KLEPPER

Updated 7:33 AM EST, December 5, 2024

AP · December 5, 2024

1 of 3 |Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a plenary session of the VTB Investment Forum ‘Russia Calling’ in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. (Yuri Kochetkov/Pool Photo via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Joe Biden uses his final days in office to boost Ukraine’s defenses, Russia is playing a different game: spreading disinformation aimed at eroding U.S. support for Ukraine before Donald Trump’s return to the White House next month.

Since the U.S. election on Nov. 5, the Kremlin has used state-run media and its networks of fake news sites and social media accounts to push divisive narratives about the war and America’s Republican president-elect. Analysts say the content, translated into English for American audiences, is intended to turn sentiment against Ukraine at a pivotal time, with the hope of reducing U.S. military assistance and ensuring a Russian victory.

Recent examples include fake videos supposedly showing Ukrainian soldiers burning effigies of Trump or his supporters. One clip depicts soldiers saying Trump must not be allowed to take office and should “never be president again.” Multiple researchers have debunked the video, noting telltale signs of digital manipulation.

A different video claims to show Ukrainian soldiers firing at a mannequin wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat and a Trump campaign shirt. That video was analyzed and determined to be fake by private analysts and Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, a government agency that tracks Kremlin propaganda.

Other versions — just as fake — depict Ukrainian soldiers burning Trump’s books or calling him a coward. In the weeks after the election, the clips spread far beyond Ukraine and Russia, circulating among Trump supporters and believers in QAnon, the conspiracy theory that claims Trump is fighting a war against a Satanic cabal of powerful world leaders.

It’s part of Russia’s continued push to divide Americans over the nearly 3-year war in Ukraine and paint Ukrainians as unreliable, dishonest allies, according to analysts who have tracked Russian disinformation and propaganda since the war began. By discouraging American support for Ukraine, the Kremlin is hoping to cut off the most vital source of military assistance that has kept Ukrainian hopes alive since Russia invaded in February 2022.

Early in the war, Russian propagandists portrayed Ukrainian leaders as corrupt and self-serving. Russian state media claimed Ukraine’s leaders held Nazi sympathies — even though President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish — or were involved in clandestine bioweapons research that Moscow sought to tie to the COVID-19 pandemic. Each false claim was used to justify Russia’s invasion.

“It’s planted by the Russians, this idea that ‘Ukraine is so corrupt it shouldn’t even be a state, and we are the right people to be running this place,’” said Rupert Smith, a retired British general and former NATO deputy supreme commander who now leads a Brussels-based consulting firm called Solvo Partners. “Now this is being used as an excuse for not supporting Ukraine.”

The fake video claiming to show Ukrainian soldiers firing on the Trump mannequin spread on platforms such as X, Telegram and YouTube, getting an early boost from pro-Kremlin news sites before migrating to ones popular with Americans, according to an analysis by researchers at NewsGuard, a firm that tracks disinformation.

Some versions of the video were created long before the election but were passed off as more recent. Within days, the video was receiving hundreds of thousands of views and had been translated into several languages besides Russian and English, including German, Chinese and Polish, NewsGuard found.

According to U.S. intelligence, Russia sought to support Trump in the presidential election, believing he would reduce American backing for Ukraine and perhaps the NATO alliance. The incoming president has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized U.S. military aid to Ukraine and NATO and promised to end the war in 24 hours, comments that appear to suggest he would press Ukraine to surrender territory now occupied by Russia.

In response to questions about Russia’s role in spreading disinformation about Ukraine, a spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in Washington referred to past statements rejecting any involvement.

In the time it has left, the Biden administration has urged Ukraine to quickly increase the size of its military by drafting more troops and has stepped upweapons shipments while forgiving billions in loans provided to Kyiv. So far, the White House has pushed more than $56 billion in security assistance to Ukraine and expects to send billions more before Biden leaves office on Jan. 20, 2025.

It’s easy to understand Russia’s motives in trying to cut off that supply of aid, said Joshua Tucker, a New York University professor and Russia expert who studies online disinformation. What’s harder to gauge, he said, is the effectiveness of Russian disinformation, especially on social media platforms already crowded with false, bizarre and debunked claims.

One reason that Russia may persist with disinformation targeting Americans is the relative ease and affordability of such operations compared with diplomatic or military alternatives.

Russia likely sees disinformation as part of a long-term effort to undermine America’s global leadership by dividing its people and undermining support for its institutions, Tucker said. Whether the topic is immigration, the government, the U.S. economy or the war in Ukraine, he said, the goal remains the same and goes beyond one election cycle or one candidate.

“I think what they were really hoping for is a contested result with lots of people out in the streets, arguing the election wasn’t legitimate,” Tucker said.

If they couldn’t have that, however, Russia’s disinformation agencies will keep pushing narratives that they believe will inflame Americans and boost their chances in Ukraine, Tucker said.

AP · December 5, 2024

23. How a director of national intelligence helps a president navigate global threats

Voices Dec. 5, 2024 / 9:28 AM

How a director of national intelligence helps a president navigate global threats

https://www.upi.com/Voices/2024/12/05/director-national-intelligence-president-threats/8131733407072/

By Gregory F. Treverton, USC Dornslife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

The director of national intelligence is the president's principal adviser on intelligence, responsible for both the President's Daily Brief and for the work of the National Intelligence Council. File Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI | License Photo

In all the arguments over whether President-elect Donald Trump's choice for director of national intelligence is fit for the job, it's easy to lose sight of why it matters.

It matters a lot. To speak of telling truth to power seems terribly old-fashioned these days, but as a veteran of White House intelligence operations, I know that is the essence of the job.

The director of national intelligence is the president's principal adviser on intelligence, though the CIA director has remained somewhat co-equal in that role. The director of national intelligence is responsible for both the President's Daily Brief, where the most crucial and sophisticated intelligence is presented, and for the work of the National Intelligence Council. Most of the President's Daily Brief items are still done by the CIA, but the director of national intelligence or their deputy briefs the president, daily in most administrations but one or two times a week in the first Trump administration.

The issues in those briefings lean toward the immediate and tactical: What is the situation on the ground in the Ukraine war? If action X is taken, how will Russian President Vladimir Putin respond? But intelligence strives to push presidents and their colleagues to think more strategically: What are the implications of hypersonic missiles? What is the trajectory of the relationship between Russia and China? What are China's geostrategic objectives, and what is the role of the Belt and Road Initiative in that vision?

Related

• The Trump iceberg's impending collision with the U.S. ship of state
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• Hateful texts to minorities after election were vile, but maybe not illegal

9/11 led to intelligence changes

The current director of national intelligence is Avril Haines, who is my friend and former colleague from when she was the deputy national security adviser in charge of the National Security Council policy committees and I was chair of the National Intelligence Council, providing the intelligence support to those committees.

As director of national intelligence, Haines sits atop the 17 agencies that make up what is called the U.S. intelligence community. She does not run those agencies. Nor does she have full control of their budgets.

Rather, the director of national intelligence coordinates them, which sometimes seems like the proverbial herding of cats. She assembles a combined budget for intelligence, but many of the big agencies, such as the National Security Agency, which makes and breaks codes and intercepts signals of interest, belong to the Pentagon.

The creation of the director of national intelligence position was a direct result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The report of the 9/11 Commission was vividly damning about the failures of communication between agencies in the run-up to 9/11. In meetings in New York that summer, CIA and FBI officers were literally unsure what they could tell each other: The former wondered whether the FBI people were really cleared to hear this, while the latter feared that talking might blow a case they were working on. That lack of coordination played a role in letting the plotters slip through intelligence, often in plain sight.

The result of the commission's work was the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the director of national intelligence position.

Before that, the director of central intelligence wore two hats, as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and loose coordinator of the broader intelligence community. Hardly surprisingly, directors of central intelligence spent most of their time running the CIA, for that was the source of their troops -- and their troubles when they arose. A score of blue-ribbon panels over 50 years had recommended breaking the director of central intelligence's conflict of interest -- coordinating agencies and their budgets while running one of them -- and creating a director of national intelligence position.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence for whom I worked as chair of the National Intelligence Council, constantly emphasized "integration." Across agencies, integration mostly means talking to each other and sharing information. This works against the natural tendency to scoop your colleagues.

Across disciplines, integration means better aligning what information intelligence agencies collect with what analysts need.

How integration works

If presidents want to know what the CIA thinks about a particular issue, they can simply ask. Usually, though, the question is what does the intelligence community think, and then the question goes to the National Intelligence Council, the director of national intelligence's interagency group for intelligence analysis.

The National Intelligence Council is organized like the State Department, with officers for regions and functions. Once a question has been presented, the relevant national intelligence officer will convene his or her council colleagues from the other agencies. They will argue about the answer to the question, a process sweetly called "coordination," then agree on the answer. If need be, the process can be done in a few hours. Major strategic analyses -- national intelligence estimates -- like one done in 2022 on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic out to 2026, may take months. In all cases, though, the analysis carefully records where there are differences of view in the intelligence community.

In my last year chairing the National Intelligence Council, of the 700 or so analyses we did, about 400 were responses to questions -- called "taskings" in governmentese -- from the national security adviser or one of the deputies.

National intelligence officers are national experts from inside or outside federal government, and their deputies -- the heart and soul of the NIC -- are all assigned from intelligence agencies. The largest number come from the CIA, but I worked with a cyber analyst from the Secret Service and a wonderful analyst from the New York Police Department.

Resolutely nonpolitical stance

What was striking then and has struck me both times I've had the privilege of running a U.S. intelligence agency is the dedication of the officers. They work for the nation, not for a political party or ideology. As chair of the NIC, I had no idea of the politics of my people, save for the several closest to me. For them, telling truth to power is not a slogan. It is what they do. They are always worried about "politicizing" -- producing an assessment to suit a policymaker's preference or, worse, being pressured to do so.

The president's daily briefers, for instance, give up a year of their lives to come to work at 4 a.m., learn their briefs and then fan out across Washington to brief senior officials. They like being "on the team" of the person they brief, but they become uncomfortable if the conversation turns political. The director of national intelligence sets the tone for that resolutely nonpolitical stance and polices it through principles articulated in the agency's analytic integrity and standards. As chair of the NIC, for instance, I'd receive regular assessments of both the quality of our analyses and whether we risked becoming "politicized."

For their part, do politicians and agency leaders like it when their pet projects are assessed by intelligence as unwise or infeasible? Of course not. I've been on that side of the intelligence-policy divide as well. But the United States is much the better for it.

Gregory F. Treverton is a professor of practice in international relations at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

24. Far from the front lines, a spy war rages over Russian weapons

Far from the front lines, a spy war rages over Russian weapons

Faltering Russian drones point to modest successes in Western efforts to block Moscow’s access to technology. Yet, aided by covert operatives, Russia’s weapons production is soaring.

https://wapo.st/4ilgtex

Yesterday at 5:00 a.m. EST

17 min

(Illustration by Chantal Jahchan for The Washington Post)

By Joby Warrick and Serhiy Morgunov

Early this year, Ukrainian air defense crews began noticing something odd about the one-way attack drones that Russia regularly launches against Ukrainian cities. The latest arrivals from Russia’s arms factories would swoop in, just as before. But then something would go wrong.

The newest Geran-2 drones were more likely to spin out of control whenever they went into a sharp turn. Some would crash harmlessly. Others would level off, becoming easy prey for air defense batteries. And yet the drones kept coming — sometimes as many as 100 in a single day.

The higher failure rate eventually was linked by Western and Ukrainian military analysts to inferior components, specifically a small steering motor not much bigger than a cigarette pack. Russia had recently switched to a Chinese motor after Western countries imposed sanctions to block Moscow’s access to Western technology.

The defective drones marked a small win for Western countries in an ongoing shadow conflict — waged in part by spy agencies — to deny Moscow access to the high-tech components needed for modern weapons of war. And yet, such measurable victories are notable in part because they are rare, Western officials acknowledge.

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The U.S. government is putting more sanctions on foreign governments, companies and people than ever. But these powerful tools of economic warfare can have unintended consequences, hurting civilian populations and undermining U.S. foreign policy interests. The Money War investigates the proliferation of U.S. financial sanctions and the dangers of overuse.

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Three years of pressure from an unprecedented sanctions campaign has weakened the Kremlin’s war machine, forcing it to skimp on quality and use older and outdated equipment, U.S. officials say, while putting its long-term viability in serious doubt. But Russia still manages to obtain many critical Western weapons parts with help from covert operatives and criminal gangs, and it buys others from China. For now, its forces are steadily gaining ground through sheer numerical advantages, so that the impact of the sanctions on the battlefield is muted, if not erased.

“There are so many of their drones that you can’t even lift your head,” retired Gen. Ihor Romanenko, former chief of the general staff of the Ukrainian army, said in an interview. “Despite the deterioration in the quality of Russian weapons, it doesn’t have a significant impact. They achieve results through sheer mass deployment.”

Sanctions blocking Russia’s purchase of Western drone technology are among thousands of economic restrictions and trade embargoes enacted since Russia’s 2022 invasion. The earliest and most widely publicized efforts sought to cripple Russia’s economy, inflicting hammer-like blows on the country’s oil and banking sectors, ultimately with mixed results. Hundreds of other sanctions were aimed at stanching the flow of Western-made components needed by Russia to make weapons. Some were designed with scalpel-like precision to block Moscow from obtaining advanced avionics, specialized computer chips, and sensors used in drones, missiles and tanks.

Ukrainian air defense intercepts a drone on May 30, 2023, during a Russian attack on Kyiv. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

In practice, the effort has evolved into an ever-shifting struggle by intelligence agencies and Treasury Department officials to find and dismantle the smuggling routes and supply chains that feed Russia’s arms factories with high-quality Western parts. Success is measured in tanks and missiles that fail to hit their targets, Western analysts say, and drones that cannot fly.

But the Kremlin is fighting back. Russia has deployed its own intelligence agencies, along with a cast of smugglers, corrupt bureaucrats and criminal gangs, to find creative ways to get around the sanctions, U.S. and European officials say. Moreover, Moscow is increasingly able to turn to China, Iran and India for imitation versions of the Western parts it can no longer get.

Even as more Geran-2s fail to reach their targets, Russia’s arms factories are managing to produce more of them, and at higher rates. Top Ukrainian officials in November acknowledged that endless waves of drones from late summer through autumn had strained the capabilities of Kyiv’s defenders. Adding to the worries is the possibility that the incoming Trump administration will begin to cut down on Ukraine’s supply of air defense munitions that prevent Russia’s drones and missiles from getting through.

A Russian drone flies over Kyiv on Oct. 17, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)

U.S. officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, say they believe sanctions are working, gradually undermining Russia’s arms production in ways that inexorably will hinder Moscow’s ability to achieve its battlefield objectives. Many independent experts agree that sanctions have degraded the quality of Russian equipment and made supply chains more brittle. Russia is losing more tanks and howitzers each month than its factories can make, and continued pressure could eventually force some assembly lines to shut down, U.S. officials and experts say.

“Even if they are able to get around the sanctions, there are added costs,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. But Bergmann cautioned that Russia is betting that sheer numbers will offset any defects in its weapons systems. Russia continues to pour troops and weapons into Ukraine despite heavy losses, and Moscow has recently reinforced its ranks with troops from North Korea.

“Quantity has its own quality,” Bergmann said.

A Ukrainian firefighter on Nov. 11 douses water on a house in Kramatorsk that went up in flames after getting hit in a Russian aerial attack. (Diego Fedele/Getty Images)

Police and emergency workers inspect pieces from a drone that struck a road in Kharkiv, Ukraine. (Oksana Parafeniuk for The Washington Post)

Other experts argue that, despite the impressive scale of the sanctions regime against Moscow, Western governments have failed to get Russia’s neighbors and trading partners to fully enforce the measures, opening the way for widespread cheating. In addition, NATO countries have been slow to identify and target some of the Russian defense industry’s vulnerabilities, including several obvious choke points.

For example, while Russia is easily able to buy drone engines and computer chips from China, it still struggles to find adequate supplies of such basic items as high-performance lubricants needed to keep tanks running in cold weather or computerized machine tools essential for building airframes for drones and missiles, said Kristofer Harrison, president of DKP, a Virginia-based nonprofit that tracks illicit networks linked to Russia and other authoritarian regimes. U.S. officials only recently imposed restrictions on machine tool imports to Russia.

“Russia lost almost all of its machine tool industry after the Cold War, and it can’t even make AK-47s without this technology,” Harrison said. “We don’t need to mollify Russia by sacrificing Ukrainians. We just need to deny them the technology to cut metal.”

A spy vs. spy contest

On Aug. 1, after Moscow agreed to a historic prisoner exchange with the United States and four European nations, a plane landed in the capital’s Vnukovo International Airport carrying 10 Russian nationals newly freed from detention in the West. The group included alleged spies and a convicted hit man, and one man whose alleged crimes seemed trivial compared with others: Vadim Konoshchenok was accused of helping smuggle electronic circuits and a few cases of rifle ammunition into his native Russia.

For this, the 50-year-old had been extradited from Estonia in 2023 and then jailed in a U.S. federal prison, where he remained until his release as part of the prisoner swap. After landing in Moscow, he was treated with a red-carpet homecoming that included a personal greeting — and literal pat on the back — from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. officials say Konoshchenok was no ordinary smuggler, but was in fact an operative working for the FSB. A federal indictment describes him as part of a network of intelligence agents and helpers dispatched by Moscow to run a critical mission for Russia’s spy agencies: obtaining Western-made military hardware and components needed for its war against Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a security meeting in February 2021, with FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov in attendance. (Alexei Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images)

Citing sensitive intelligence collection efforts, U.S. officials have rarely identified alleged FSB operatives working inside Moscow’s sanctions evasion network. But Justice Department documents allege that the St. Petersburg native told associates that he was an FSB colonel and even shared a photo of himself in an FSB officer’s uniform. U.S. and Estonian officials later concluded that he had exaggerated his role but said a search of his electronics confirmed his connections with Russian intelligence. He was later granted a full U.S. pardon as part of the prisoner swap.

A Russian citizen with a residency permit in Estonia, Konoshchenok was able to freely travel between the two countries, storing imported American goods in an Estonian warehouse and then carrying them across the border. When he was arrested by Estonian authorities in late 2022, investigators found 35 types of semiconductors and electronic circuits in his car, along with cases of American-made .338mm sniper bullets.

Vadim Konoshchenok, who had been jailed in the United States, was part of the August prisoner exchange deal with Russia. (U.S. Department of Justice)

Konoshchenok, reached by email and through his lawyer, said he never worked for Russian intelligence, directly or indirectly, and said Moscow did not request his return in the prisoner swap. He said the photo depicting him in an FSB uniform was made with photo-editing software as a joke for his friends, and the only FSB contacts on his phone were those of border control agencies that oversee import trade. “For years, I have had my own business, and I have no connection to the Russian military or the Russian defense agencies,” he said.

U.S. investigators said the case reflected the clever tactics used by Russia to conceal its activity. “It’s very typical of the kinds of things that we see,” said a senior law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal case, with other defendants awaiting trial. “We see people setting up complicated shell structures, using third country transshipment points. We see the opacity of the networks and the bank accounts that they’re using — all of it making them more difficult to trace.”

The FSB and its military intelligence counterpart, the GRU, are the unseen hand controlling the smuggling networks, U.S. intelligence officials say. The leaders of the two agencies rarely appear in public. Yet when Konoshchenok received his hero’s welcome at the Moscow airport, standing next to Putin in the receiving line was Alexander Bortnikov, the FSB’s powerful chief.

Since the invasion, both the FSB and GRU have assumed greater responsibility for overseeing the procurement of foreign components, U.S. officials say.

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“At the highest levels, their intelligence services are giving direction” to sanctions-busting operations, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in an interview. “This is not being done by the private sector in Russia. It’s being directed by the government to make sure they are acquiring the things they need to build the weapons they want.”

Sanctions documents and legal filings offer a glimpse into how the schemes operate.

Video shows Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting Vadim Konoshchenok on Aug. 1 in Moscow, following a prisoner swap with the United States. (Video: Russian Pool)

Charging documents in the Konoshchenok case describe a sprawling operation by a group known as the Serniya network, which sought to procure military parts and components using operatives and front companies across Europe and the United States. U.S. and European officials said Serniya Engineering, a Moscow-based company, was in fact an FSB contractor under orders to acquire equipment on behalf of three different departments. Among them is Military Unit 35533, one of the FSB’s main science and technology directorates, linked in court documents to multiple covert attempts to acquire U.S. microchips and other advanced electronics for weapons as far back as 2008.

Serniya and its affiliates were “under the direction of Russian intelligence services,” the Justice Department said in a July 2023 statement, and they acted under explicit orders to acquire advanced electronics and testing equipment used in the development of “nuclear and hypersonic weapons, quantum computing and other military applications.”

Putting sand in the gears

Arrayed against the smugglers are Western intelligence analysts, investigators, Treasury officials and diplomats who seek to uncover and disrupt these illicit networks.

With so many possible methods and routes for exporting banned goods — including in countries like China where cooperation with U.S. law enforcement is virtually nonexistent — it has proved impossible to block illicit trafficking completely, officials say. Increasingly, the goal is to force Russia to incur higher costs by inducing supply chain delays and shortages that erode Moscow’s ability to put quality weapons in the field.

“Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is to put some friction in their illicit procurement networks,” said Adeyemo, the deputy treasury secretary.

A worker coats a helicopter blade with gray paint at a manufacturing plant in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in 2019. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg News/Getty Images)

The effort began even before Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. As early as late 2021, U.S. intelligence analysts at the CIA and Pentagon were drawing up lists and spreadsheets, trying to identify key foreign suppliers of Russian military technology, as well as points of vulnerability that could cause Moscow’s defense industry to seize up. After the war began, U.S. and Ukrainian military analysts were tasked with figuring out, in granular detail, how Russia’s weapons were made. Investigators stripped down stolen and salvaged Russian aircraft, missiles and tanks, and sought to trace each circuit board and microchip to its country of origin.

The investigative effort is ongoing, U.S. officials say, yielding a continuous stream of sanctions as well as criminal indictments. In addition to the Serniya case, the Justice Department’s “KleptoCapture” task force has filed charges against more than 100 individuals and companies for sanctions evasion and money laundering in support of Russia’s war effort. Cases are moving through European courts as well.

In November, a German court imposed a nearly seven-year prison sentence against Waldemar Weirich, a dual German-Russian citizen accused of delivering 120,000 Western-made sensors, high-frequency amplifiers and voltage regulators to Russian defense factories that produce surveillance drones.

At the Treasury Department, a torrent of sanctions has imposed trade restrictions on thousands of firms and individuals. New ones are added almost every month as front companies pop up to replace those that have been deactivated or forced to close, officials said. Meanwhile, discreet warnings to banks and private companies in the United States and internationally have often been sufficient to scare them away from trade in “dual-use” goods — products that have both military and civilian applications.

Western components are getting through anyway, along with growing numbers of Chinese substitutes. In independent studies based on captured Russian weapons, experts have repeatedly shown that Moscow continues to use Western electronic components in its aircraft, tanks and missiles. Similar investigations have confirmed China’s growing role as a supplier to Russian weapons factories. Trade records made public by Trap Aggressor, a Kyiv-based nonprofit that tracks smuggling networks, showed that Chinese companies supplied $28 million worth of drones and drone components to Russia from early 2023 through this past summer.

A drone is displayed on Oct. 12 at an expo in Qingdao, China, for the advanced materials industry. (Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

Sanctions experts say there are other ways to squeeze Russia’s defense industry, beyond going after imports of tiny electronics that can be readily obtained by spies and smugglers. Moscow appears to face long-term challenges in manufacturing enough artillery ammunition, as well as in making durable, high-strength barrels for tanks and howitzers, analysts say.

Russia is compensating by scavenging parts from old Soviet-era tanks and howitzers. But satellite photos of Russian motor pools and scrapyards show that reserves of old tanks are being rapidly depleted, said George Barros, Russia team leader at the Institute for the Study of War.

“Given the current rate at which the Russians are burning these vehicles, come late 2025 the Russians are going to have a tank shortage,” Barros said, “and that’s going to have massive implications for war fighting at the front lines.”

Other products crucial for modern armies remain difficult to obtain outside the West. U.S. and European firms dominate the global industry for computerized machine tools that make engines and air frames. And, while Russia possesses one of the world’s largest reserves of petroleum, Moscow is surprisingly limited in its ability to make certain refined petroleum products, such as high-performing lubricants used in most engines, including in tanks, said Andrew Fink, a senior Russia analyst for Exovera, a data and research firm based in Northern Virginia. The global industry for chemical precursors for lubricants is dominated by just four companies, all of them American or British. Russia now gets them from a few providers in Asia and Belarus.

“Russia is a raw materials superpower, yet it has serious industrial weaknesses, and advanced machines tools and chemical precursors are two important ones,” Fink said. “With lubricant additives, I’m sure that some Russian PhDs with enough money can make these chemicals on their own in small quantities. But can they come up with thousands of tons a month? That requires a kind of capacity that Russia does not have.”

Faulty drones … but more of them?

True success in the sanctions war is notoriously hard to measure. It’s why U.S. officials are heartened by accounts of poorly performing Russian weapons, such as crashing Geran-2 drones.

Cheap and rugged with long-range capability, the Geran-2 is a Russian version of Iran’s Shahed-136, which Tehran began delivering to Russia in the war’s early months to fill a crucial gap in the Kremlin’s military capability. With its eight-foot wingspan, it can travel hundreds of miles to deliver a warhead weighing as much as 200 pounds. Ukrainian air defense teams have learned to shoot down the UAVs and disable others with electronic jamming. Lately, those that survive appear to have more trouble maintaining stability in flight.

The higher failure rate was documented by Ukrainian analysts and people at the U.K.-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, who also identified the probable cause: a small mechanical device known as a servomotor, which helps regulate the drone’s movements in flight. Late last year, the aircraft’s manufacturer began using a Chinese servomotor, a substitute for a South Korean product that Russia previously used but can no longer easily obtain.

In other cases, evidence of the sanctions’ impact may be visible on the weapons themselves. The newest variants of Russia’s most advanced battle tank — the T-90M — are rolling off the assembly line without a muzzle reference sensor, a laser-guided device mounted on the barrels that helps the crew fire accurately. Beginning late last year, the sensors mysteriously disappeared, said Michael Gjerstad, a Berlin-based military analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies who was among the first to discover the trend.

Smoke rises from a Russian tank destroyed in Ukraine's Luhansk region on Feb. 26, 2022. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images)

Why Russia stopped equipping its tanks with muzzle sensors is unclear, Gjerstad said. But without question, their absence is “to the detriment of the survivability of the crew,” he said.

Jack Watling, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, said such examples are typical of the “attritional effect” that sanctions fundamentally have. Slowly, and over time, sanctions will collectively degrade Russian production capacity, Watling said.

“But they haven’t had a decisive effect,” he said. “And they’re unlikely to have a decisive effect.”

Indeed, Ukrainian officials say the higher failure rate for Geran-2 drones has faded in significance amid a surge of Russian drone attacks since the summer. Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky complained that Moscow was ramping up its use of Geran-2 drones, launching more than 2,000 of them in October alone. Zelensky, in a post on the social media platform Telegram, said the drones still contain far too many Western components.

“Such a massive number of [Geran-2s] requires over 170,000 individual components that should have been blocked from reaching Russia,” he said. “They come from companies in China, Europe, and America — lots of small but constant contributions to Russia’s terror.”

Warrick reported from Washington, and Morgunov from Kyiv. Catherine Belton in London, and Souad Mekhennet and Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.

25. Solar Diplomacy: The Role of Renewable Energy in Great Power Competition - Irregular Warfare Initiative

Not something I expected to read today.

Excerpts:

Conclusion

Beyond its strategic trade corridors and geopolitical location, Central Asia boasts significant solar and wind potential. While the region’s renewable promise is dominated by hydropower, this area is relatively well-developed, with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan primarily relying on this source of energy. However, solar and wind deployment falls behind, sparking strong investment potential for developing a long-lasting, self-sufficient energy source.

Of course, the United States is not responsible for this development—there are already current government, inter-government, and private sector investors within Asia and beyond. However, overall funds are limited, and given the strategic advantage that Washington can leverage, it is in the country’s best economic and political interests to stake a claim in Central Asia before the rivals of Russia or China block room for potential influence.

This is a contest of great power competition—Moscow’s deep-rooted historical and cultural connections with Central Asia, paired with Beijing’s expanding financial presence, are leading Washington to lose an essential area for broader geopolitical sway and for countering its competitors’ goals. By promoting private sector investments and fostering intergovernmental partnerships in green development, the United States can venture into a relatively unexplored territory to establish a strong foothold in this strategic region.

Solar Diplomacy: The Role of Renewable Energy in Great Power Competition - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Seera Sohal · December 5, 2024

The United States, in its quest to counter Russia and China, neglects Central Asia’s key geopolitical advantage by focusing resources on Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Within Central Asia, the United States has the opportunity to actively encourage private sector investment in the region’s promising renewable energy industries to achieve critical national security goals.

At face value, it seems more advantageous to prioritize the regions housing Moscow and Beijing. However, Central Asia is a critical nexus of economic and cultural influence that the United States generally ignores. This region is the border between Beijing and Moscow, houses both critical trade routes and energy sources, and enjoys historical Russian and contemporary Chinese influence. By fostering economic development and energy independence in the region, Washington can counter Moscow’s traditional sway and Beijing’s rising presence while promoting global climate goals. Doing so would not only grant a political boost to the implementing administration but also cement a long-term American presence in a key geopolitical region.

Russian Influence in Central Asia

Imperial Russia, later the Soviet Union, historically enjoyed hegemony over Central Asia. In the modern era, Russia holds immense power within the post-Soviet Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Russian Empire waged conquests over this region and later incorporated it into the Soviet Union, enabling an imposition of Russian language and culture upon Central Asia.

However, unlike other Soviet republics, Central Asia remained generally favorable toward Moscow, with more than 95% voting to maintain the Soviet Union during a 1991 referendum. Although the republics dissolved, relations did not. Around four million Central Asian expatriates currently work in Russia due to its proximity, opportunities, and relative cultural familiarity. Beyond economics, Central Asia and Russia remain connected through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a post-Soviet military alliance.

However, the scope and durability of Central Asia-Russia ties have shifted with the invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s aggressive actions have led to worldwide sanctions. The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration estimated these sanctions could result in the loss of two million jobs, drive unemployment up from 4.4% to 7.8%, and reduce remittances. These changes would significantly impact the already vulnerable Central Asian economies. As expected, within a year of Russia’s invasion, more than 200,000 Central Asian migrants left Moscow. By the same timeframe, remittances plummeted from 50% to less than 20%.

Beyond the war’s economic impact, it has also caused Moscow to neglect its allies, as seen through its failure to honor the CSTO military alliance. In 2023, Russia provided little aid to its historical ally of Armenia in the face of an Azerbaijani offensive, resulting in the seizure and dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh. Additionally, during the 2022 border clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Russia once again failed to properly aid either of its partners. Such instances of inaction cast doubt on both Russia’s reliability as an ally and its commitment to Central Asian relations. Therefore, despite Moscow’s historical and cultural ties to the region, its former influential stronghold falters.

Chinese Influence in Central Asia

While Russia’s regional presence weakens, China’s strengthens. Central Asia-China ties are marked by two advantages: regional trade routes for Beijing and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for Central Asia. The BRI is a key economic plan for Chinese soft power and is tied to the modernization efforts of 147 developing countries, allowing Beijing to innovatively benefit from areas that Washington ignores. After all, through the BRI, it is China—rather than the traditional hegemon of the United States—that develops and funds vital infrastructure projects.

Since 2013, the BRI has promoted Central Asian trade and connectivity while advancing transport infrastructure. More recently, China’s bilateral trade with Central Asia reached a record $70 billion in 2022, and in May 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a Central Asian economic development plan for improving freight volumes, warehouses, and tourism-oriented trains. While Russia’s historical influence falters, China’s contemporary presence rises, yet there remains a relatively untouched domain for Washington: developing the region’s green capabilities.

Strategic Opening for the United States

With the invasion of Ukraine, Central Asia seeks to rely less on Moscow—especially in the realm of energy—fearing that Moscow’s militancy toward a former Soviet state may extend to their region. To remedy this dependency, Central Asian leaders call for advancing their economies. With China focusing on trade and relevant infrastructure, the United States can develop the region’s green industries to cement American influence while countering rival presences.

Central Asian leaders plan to initially diversify oil imports and promote domestic energy production, and later to decrease fossil fuel usage. The US national security goals are to “prioritize maintaining an enduring competitive edge over the PRC while constraining a still profoundly dangerous Russia” and “accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.” Regarding Central Asia, the administration intends “to advance climate adaptation” and “improve regional energy.”

Therefore, all parties reach a consensus: Central Asia intends to develop its domestic energy capabilities instead of relying on Russia, and Washington already desires to promote the region’s green transition while countering Moscow. In fact, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has already devised a $39 million regional energy development plan focusing on liberal market reforms, clean energy investment and integration strategies, and a regional market model and cross-border trade. This strategy demonstrates Washington’s awareness of Central Asia’s vitality and economic needs and its commitment to the matter, providing a basis for furthering this involvement into a long-lasting green development plan.

Private sector investments in this development can supplement insufficient public funding. Consider the model of Saudi Aramco. The Saudi Arabian Oil Group is one of the world’s most profitable companies and a leader in the oil industry. It was founded in 1944 when American companies partnered to develop the newfound Arabian oil industry. However, following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Saudi Aramco’s assets were slowly bought by Riyadh. Before then, Americans managed the company while providing jobs for local Saudis. Even today, the American private sector invests heavily in this lucrative company for great returns.

In a similar vein, Central Asian governments recognize that—in addition to international cooperation—private sector investments are vital for supporting budding industries. In 2019, Kyrgyzstan issued a financial roadmap for the state’s green economy transition plans in collaboration with the United Nations Partnership for Action on Green Economy, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Kyrgyz banks and ministries. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan currently provides green bonds, and Uzbekistan offers SDG bonds to fund its efforts to meet the UN’s sustainable development goals. These governments’ actions towards foreign investments signal their awareness and proactiveness towards such assets.

Central Asian Renewable Energy Potentials

While the advantages of developing Central Asia’s green industries are established, American corporations and investors must also recognize the region’s renewable potential. Regarding solar energy capacity, the most promising Central Asian countries are ranked as follows: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In megawatts, potential solar power across these nations ranges from 3.7 million to 30,000 MW. As for wind power, Kazakhstan leads with a capacity of 354,000 MW, followed by Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, with the latter at 1,500 MW. Such high capacity is promising, as 1 MW can annually power between 94-194 American households, with an average of 147 homes.

Using this median measure, Central Asia’s renewable sources could fuel between 33 and 595 million households, depending on the exact country. As this estimate far surpasses the states’ populations, the excess megawatts can be used to power renewable plants. Regarding solar farms, for instance, 1 MW requires 4,000 to 8,000 solar panels, which costs between $1 million and $2.5 million but generates an average revenue of $500,000, allowing investments to break even within 2 to 5 years. Accordingly, these sources offer appealing costs. Since 2010, solar and wind development prices have decreased by 80% and 35%, respectively, but presently account for just 6% of the region’s installed capacity. This price advantage and abundant room for investment spell promising business returns.

However, regional renewable deployment is challenged by insufficient regulatory and investment guidelines, out-of-date infrastructure, and a lack of expertise. To address regulation, the United States government can act by negotiating reforms and investment incentives with Central Asian governments. As for current technology, it is important to note that regional energy capabilities were developed during the times of the Soviet Union, rendering the technology outdated today. To increase efficiency and profit while reducing power losses and carbon emissions, the Asian Development Bank recommends investing in advanced networks and smart meters. Addressing a lack of specialists can be resolved through Central Asian countries encouraging relevant training and education alongside corporate American investment strategies. As demonstrated through the model of Saudi Aramco, investing companies can provide expert operation and management of renewable energy facilities and production, ensuring proper deployment and economic gains.

A concrete roadmap for developing Central Asian renewable industries should expand on prior efforts, such as furthering the efforts of USAID, while identifying specific investment areas. USAID’s 2020-2025 development plan assists Central Asian governments in devising technical, legal, regulatory, and institutional frameworks while identifying optimum locations for green projects. With this information, the private sector can guide its investments with the venture sites and structures provided through USAID and Central Asian governments.

As for the types of investments, a stakeholder looking for a small management role can choose from Central Asian stocks, loans, or bonds. In the realm of bonds, the Asian Development Bank offers green bonds for projects designed to lower carbon emissions and blue bonds for combating overfishing and ailing ocean health. Specific green bond projects, as of October 2024, include a North-South Railway in Turkmenistan, solar and wind ventures in multiple Uzbek cities, and a sustainable bus project in Kyrgyzstan, among others. However, for those seeking greater control of their investments, multinational corporations remain worthwhile. If an established American company builds an overseas facility in Central Asia, the company enjoys profits, exports, and a diversified market while providing the host country with jobs, tax revenue, developed infrastructure, and transferred technology, thereby contributing to the host country’s economy. With pinpointed investment opportunities and intergovernmental framework cooperation, the United States can prepare a strong Central Asian green development plan to cement its regional foothold and deter potential rivals.

Conclusion

Beyond its strategic trade corridors and geopolitical location, Central Asia boasts significant solar and wind potential. While the region’s renewable promise is dominated by hydropower, this area is relatively well-developed, with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan primarily relying on this source of energy. However, solar and wind deployment falls behind, sparking strong investment potential for developing a long-lasting, self-sufficient energy source.

Of course, the United States is not responsible for this development—there are already current government, inter-government, and private sector investors within Asia and beyond. However, overall funds are limited, and given the strategic advantage that Washington can leverage, it is in the country’s best economic and political interests to stake a claim in Central Asia before the rivals of Russia or China block room for potential influence.

This is a contest of great power competition—Moscow’s deep-rooted historical and cultural connections with Central Asia, paired with Beijing’s expanding financial presence, are leading Washington to lose an essential area for broader geopolitical sway and for countering its competitors’ goals. By promoting private sector investments and fostering intergovernmental partnerships in green development, the United States can venture into a relatively unexplored territory to establish a strong foothold in this strategic region.

Seera Sohal is a junior International Studies major at Texas A&M University. She has previously interned at and published with the School for Russian and Asian Studies and the Arab Center in Washington, DC.

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

Main Image: Solar panels capture sunshine for energy in some rural areas. Photo courtesy of UNDP in Uzbekistan.

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26. Women in Leadership Roles in Special Missions Unit

An article very much worth reflecting upon.

Women in Leadership Roles in Special Missions Unit

Trust, Adaptability, and Commitment in Elite Military Operations

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/Online-Exclusive/2024-OLE/Women-in-Leadership/

Noelle Lemke

Download the PDF 

A Special Missions Unit (SMU) soldier engages targets during a marksmanship competition on Fort Liberty, North Carolina, in summer 2024. (Photo courtesy of SMU Public Affairs)

The Special Missions Unit (SMU) based at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, represents the pinnacle of U.S. military capability for conducting focused, specialized activities and operations worldwide in accordance with Joint Publication 3-05, Joint Doctrine for Special Operations, as designated by the president and secretary of defense.1 The organization comprises less than 1 percent of the U.S. Army and is characterized by an especially rigorous selection process together with intensive training that culminates in unparalleled operational effectiveness.

This article illuminates the experiences of women within SMU whose roles have become essential for dealing with the most complex challenges faced by the national mission force. Their work exemplifies the culture of excellence that characterizes these units, demonstrating how these attributes are key to overcoming the most demanding obstacles in national security. Examining some examples of women’s experiences in leadership positions illustrates how they both share and embody the core values of trust, adaptability, and commitment that define SMU culture and how their contributions have been key to overall SMU success. Quotes in this article are unattributed to protect the soldiers’ identities.

Assessment and Selection

“We are not looking for the best person; we are looking for the right person.”

—An abiding guiding principle in the SMU selection process

The unyielding standards of Special Missions Unit selection—a commitment to excellence. Selection is based on rigorous and highly selective criteria. The SMU selection process focuses on evaluating candidates for risk, suitability, and compatibility to meet the high demands of the unit. Once selected, individuals undergo comprehensive training to immerse them in the unit’s culture, values, and mission.

Identifying and selecting candidates for SMU is resource-intensive, requiring significant time, effort, and funding to ensure that only the most qualified individuals are chosen. Selection is entirely unbiased, evaluating all candidates—regardless of gender—strictly on their performance, skills, and potential. Every candidate is “weighed and measured” equally during selection, upholding the unit’s unwavering commitment to meritocracy.

SMU employs a nuanced evaluation approach that distinguishes between operators and enablers. While operator assessment focuses primarily on attributes, enabler evaluation encompasses attributes and skills. This methodology challenges conventional selection paradigms by recognizing that superior qualifications alone do not guarantee organizational success. While performance is a primary discriminator, assessment boards take into consideration a more expansive set of criteria, including comprehensive evaluations of risk factors, organizational compatibility, and assessments of candidate suitability for integration into the SMU culture.

A Special Missions Unit (SMU) soldier takes reconnaissance photos during exfiltration training on Fort Liberty, North Carolina, in summer 2023. (Photo courtesy of SMU Public Affairs)

The selection process centers on identifying individuals with core attributes essential to organizational effectiveness. This “right person versus best person” philosophy culminates in a final board review in which candidates’ judgment, character, and moral compass undergo rigorous evaluation. This systematic approach ensures that selected personnel possess the capability and disposition to excel within the organization’s unique operational environment.

The assessment and selection process transcends the mere evaluation of technical competencies and cultural integration potential; it fundamentally instills a profound sense of humility in candidates. The process systematically examines essential attributes that define successful unit members through deliberate feedback mechanisms and structured introspection. This approach enables evaluators to assess operational capabilities and characteristics that contribute to long-term organizational success. A distinguishing feature of SMU is the philosophy that those responsible for selecting candidates are choosing their future replacements. This ensures that the focus is on identifying talent and nurturing and preparing the next generation of SMU operators and enablers. The process empowers individuals to grow autonomously, ensuring they are equipped to succeed in the most demanding situations.

Training Course

“Selection is an ongoing process.”

—An SMU guiding principle

Forging elite teams: the journey from selection to integration in SMU. The journey of an operator or enabler within SMU begins with a rigorous training process that instills a deep sense of humility and self-awareness. At the heart of SMU’s success is its training course, which lays the foundation for the relentless pursuit of excellence in physical, technical, mental, professional, and operational dimensions. It ensures that the men and women chosen for this elite unit are not just capable operators and enablers, but individuals of the highest caliber, ready to face the complexities of the world’s most challenging missions.

This critical phase highlights both individual strengths and areas for growth. A dedicated cadre staff of senior NCOs, one field grade officer, and civilian contractors guide service members through this transformative stage, ensuring their development into inculcated unit members. The program’s effectiveness hinges on organizational trust. This crucial element is achieved by placing the best and brightest NCOs in leadership positions where their experience helps create an environment of credibility and confidence. Their presence ensures the training’s legitimacy and maintains its pivotal role in personnel development. By default, the training course is the most sacred part within SMU.

“Training is everything; everything is training” is a mantra instilled in new students by instructors who are seasoned former SMU veterans who have often spent over a decade coaching and mentoring operators and enablers in the foundational skills necessary to succeed, particularly during intensive firearms training. This mantra embodies the relentless dedication required to earn and sustain a position within the unit and is echoed throughout all phases of the training course. The values and attributes instilled during the training course are paramount to developing well-rounded, adaptable service members.

A Special Missions Unit (SMU) soldier fires an M320 grenade launcher at a heavy weapons range during the SMU training course on Fort Liberty, North Carolina, in spring 2024. (Photo courtesy of SMU Public Affairs)

Moreover, apart from the demand for high proficiency in the technical ability of soldier skills, SMU demands individuals who are exceptionally inquisitive, resourceful, imaginative, and situationally sensitive to the nuances of whatever environment they find themselves in. To that end, candidates must show the patience to work within strict operational constraints one moment but the audacity to act freely and decisively to the changing circumstances in the next. A personality profile that combines the ability to lead confidently yet follow with humility as a situation demands is paramount. Striking this balance is key to preserving the original vision of SMU and ensuring its continued excellence and adaptability in an evolving world.

Graduation. Upon completion of the training course, students earn the privilege of “crossing the hall” to join the elite ranks of the SMU, where they are swiftly integrated into their teams. In the high-stakes environment in which the SMU operates, trainee graduates must adapt quickly to a culture of trust, flexibility, and loyal commitment to their mission and new teammates. This transition marks the culmination of the rigorous training process and the beginning of their operational journey, where they will be called upon to contribute to some of the Nation’s most critical missions.

This training results in SMU personnel who stand at the forefront of the Nation’s most critical crises, embodying integrity, sound judgment, precision, humility, and credibility. They are entrusted to navigate the chaos by making the right call when it matters most.

The fusion of advanced technical proficiency, distinctive organizational culture, and refined leadership capabilities developed during this selection process ensures SMU personnel maintain their position at the apex of the Army’s elite forces. This comprehensive preparation enables operators and enablers to address the intricate challenges presented by contemporary warfare with agility and precision.

The Tip of the Spear

SMU culture: trust, adaptability, and commitment. In SMU, trust, adaptability, and commitment are the cornerstones that enable the organization to address the Nation’s most sensitive and complex challenges. These attributes form the foundation upon which the SMU personnel operate, allowing them to navigate the intricacies of high-stakes missions. The synergy of trust, adaptability, and commitment empowers SMU to successfully execute some of the most challenging operations, relying on highly intelligent, humble, and resourceful team members to get the job done.

To advance the SMU mission, the contributions of women have become integral to the success of the most complex national mission force challenges. They do so by embodying the values that define the unit as a whole exemplifying the culture of excellence that defines SMU through trust, adaptability, and commitment to overcoming the most demanding obstacles in national security.

Women in leadership roles in SMU. The integration of women into leadership roles within SMU reflects the evolving nature of military service and the value of diverse leadership perspectives. Despite comprising a significantly small number of SMU personnel, women’s roles are assigned due to demonstrable skill, merit, and commitment to mission success, not gender.

Special Missions Unit (SMU) soldiers complete the Sergeant Majors Physical Training Challenge during the SMU training course on Fort Liberty, North Carolina, in spring 2024. (Photo courtesy of SMU Public Affairs)

SMU’s rigorous and unbiased selection process evaluates all candidates based on qualifications, potential, and ability to meet unit demands, regardless of gender. Selected women undergo identical training in leadership, strategy, and operational effectiveness, adhering to the same high standards expected of all candidates for selection.

As previously noted, SMU leadership demands more than tactical expertise; it requires adaptability, trust-building, and the ability to guide teams through complex, high-risk scenarios. Women in SMU accomplish their tasks by exhibiting the same standards of resilience, decisiveness, and strategic thinking as their male counterparts.

In leadership roles, women in SMU operate with precision and authority, prioritizing mission success and team welfare over being “the first” or “the only.” Their contributions are measured by mission impact and leadership effectiveness in high-profile situations, not gender.

These women leaders challenge long-standing military stereotypes, reinforcing SMU’s core values of integrity, trust, adaptability, and mission dedication. A collateral aspect of the demonstrated contributions they make to strengthen the unit, their success also inspires future generations of military women to aspire for the highest standards of excellence.

In SMU, effective leadership is about being the right person for the mission, and women are proving they meet this criterion.

Trust

“Flexibility equals speed; our unit responds quickly to requirements.”

—An SMU guiding principle

The path of one sergeant first class’s journey in the Army exemplifies a powerful blend of dedication, skill, and trust that culminates in selection for service with SMU. Beginning her career under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program as a Philippine native, she demonstrated resilience and ambition by pursuing opportunities such as Airborne School, which set her on a course toward SMU. Her selection as a disbursing noncommissioned officer and budget analyst within SMU highlights her remarkable ability to manage financial resources in high-stakes environments, where every detail can affect mission outcomes.

Her attention to detail—from handling minute discrepancies to larger strategic budgeting tasks—demonstrates her commitment to the Army’s core values of trust and reliability. The Army’s business strategy, centered on people and money, thrives on individuals like her, whose raw intelligence, critical thinking, and drive have safeguarded some of the Army’s most sensitive financial operations. Her efforts have earned her several awards, recognizing her as an indispensable asset to the organization.

Her story is a testament to the essential role finance plays in military operations, where resources must be meticulously managed to support the execution of lethal and complex missions. By embodying the principle of “money as a weapon system,” she has ensured that financial resources are used strategically and precisely, contributing directly to mission success and enhancing trust within her unit.

Adaptability

“Adversity shifted how I take care of people.”

Similarly, the example of one major’s journey within SMU underscores a unique leadership style and adaptability in one of the Army’s most challenging environments. Encouraged by a fellow female warrant officer, she joined SMU in 2018 after a rigorous selection process, taking on a pivotal role in human resources (HR). Her work within SMU has gone far beyond traditional HR functions, requiring a combination of empathy, resilience, agility, and great resourcefulness as she has managed high-visibility personnel issues in an extremely high-pressure, rapidly changing, mission-driven environment where rapid resolution of personnel issues is expected daily as a matter of course by senior leadership.

To deal with the role, her philosophy is that effective “HR requires empathy, resilience, and agility” as a matter of course but also requires a deep understanding of the minute complexities of the unit and its unique requirements for handling personnel matters with extreme confidentiality and secrecy. She has achieved high success in her calling due in great part to her empathetic leadership style that emphasizes the human element in her work, with complete dedication to ensuring soldiers and officers are well-cared-for while also responding with urgency to meeting the HR demands of the mission. This balance of compassion and efficiency has allowed her to solve some of the most difficult and sensitive HR personnel challenges that exist anywhere in the military.

To meet the challenge, one of her greatest strengths is her ability to adapt to different environments, languages, and roles as she seamlessly navigates complex situations, delegating tasks to her team while building networks and acknowledging mistakes when they arise. Her adaptability and problem-solving approach make her an invaluable asset to SMU, where personnel management requires extremely informed technical expertise, diplomacy, tactical agility, and heart. As a consequence, her leadership ensured the smooth functioning of human resource operations within SMU and fostered an institutional environment of trust and collaboration that provided the solid foundation of trust that SMU personnel were receiving the best possible HR support possible, thereby enhancing in an essential way the unit’s overall morale and effectiveness.

Commitment

“Growth over hard times births excellence.”

—An SMU guiding principle

In another example, one SMU lieutenant colonel exemplified the possibility of long association with SMU and the ability to rise through its ranks. Her experience showcases a trailblazing career defined by leadership, grace, and the ability to overcome complex challenges. In 2016, as a captain, she faced the physically and mentally demanding selection process alongside all male candidates at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, finally emerging as the sole candidate selected. This initially demonstrated an unparalleled display of strength and capability in a setting where few women have ventured. The wisdom of the SMU selection was validated when her leadership became instrumental during the coalition forces’ aggressive push against the Islamic State, where she played a critical role in the logistical planning and execution to support successful operations.

Now a lieutenant colonel serving as the support element commander, she leads a battalion of personnel consisting of logisticians, mechanics, riggers, culinary specialists, and engineers. Her approach to leadership is marked by a deep confidence in herself and her team, recognizing the unique and vital contributions each member brings to mission success. Moreover, her success also stems from a commitment to respectfully challenging senior leaders, including sergeant majors and officers, stimulating them to think critically about emerging issues and the creative solutions needed for the future.

In rooms filled with decision-makers, she often finds herself advocating for logistics solutions to the overlooked pitfalls and risks that warfighters might have missed in mission assessments. Her advocacy, however, is grounded in her commitment to leading with grace, empathy, and dedication to education. As a personal rule, she believes in nurturing others to “think big” to help ensure that her teams and fellow leaders have examined closely as many aspects of a challenge as possible to equip them to habitually think critically in solving the most complex problems of modern warfare.

Her leadership style, characterized by her emphasis on grace and educational mentorship, has made her a powerful force within SMU. Additionally, in performing her role as a courageous, informed, and articulate professional logistician, she has established a high standard as a role model for women in leadership positions, paving the way for others to follow her example.

Host Nation, the Men, and Me

“There are many high-risk things we do in the unit that keep me up at night. Your program is among the top three things we do in the unit with the highest risk. I never lose sleep over it because I know you are there.”

—Former SMU Command Sergeant Major

I was the first woman elected to serve in the Middle East’s Host Nation Sensitive Activities program. While I could write a satirical novel about the experience of being “the first” in outstations with no female presence, my story is less about gender and more about the organizational culture cultivated by a team of exceptional male NCOs and officers who adhered to high standards of professionalism.

My journey with SMU commenced in 2021 when I completed the Training Course and secured my position on the team. In an environment of uncertainty and chaos, I became the leader my organization required. Each deployment and mission tested my resilience, teaching me to navigate adversity while fostering relationships grounded in mutual trust and dedication.

As a master sergeant with fourteen years of service and over ten deployments in SMU, I have experienced unparalleled empowerment and encouragement. The men and women of the organization have entrusted me with high levels of responsibility and granted me the autonomy and resources needed to excel in addressing some of the Nation’s most challenging problems. Despite my position among senior NCO and officer operators, my soft-spoken contributions resonated profoundly within rooms filled with diplomats, ambassadors, and general officers.

Leading teams through some of the most complex and high-stakes situations in the Middle East has illuminated a fundamental truth about leadership: it centers on prioritizing the well-being of those you lead. This principle holds particular significance for women serving in elite units like SMU, where effective leadership fosters trust, support, and empowerment regardless of gender. My achievements have not been defined by being “the first,” but by a relentless commitment to my team and an organization that values trust, accountability, and grit. These experiences have deepened my understanding of SMU’s true essence as an institution where commitment, adaptability, and trust transform individuals into vital contributors to a larger mission.

Challenges and Responses to a Mixed Gender Environment

While SMU exemplifies excellence in military operations, it is not immune to the organizational challenges in mixed-gender work environments. However, what sets SMU apart is its ability to recognize, address, and overcome these challenges more effectively than many other organizations.

Recognized challenges.

• Physical standards debates. Discussions around physical fitness standards and their application across genders can create tension.
• Limited representation. The relatively low number of women in SMU can lead to isolation or added pressure on female members.
• Work-life balance. The demanding nature of SMU work can disproportionately affect women, especially those with family responsibilities.

SMU responses and adaptations.

• Open dialogue platforms. Regular forums are established in which members can openly discuss gender-related issues without fear of reprisal, promoting understanding and resolution.
• Performance-based evaluation. SMU emphasizes performance-based metrics that focus on mission capability rather than gender, reducing bias in evaluations and promotions.
• Flexible operational structures. SMU has developed more flexible operational structures that accommodate diverse needs without compromising mission readiness.
• Cultural shift. There is a concerted effort to shift the organizational culture from one of mere tolerance to active inclusion and appreciation of diverse perspectives.

The SMU approach to addressing these challenges is characterized by proactive recognition, open communication, and adaptive problem-solving. This approach mitigates potential issues and strengthens the unit’s overall cohesion and operational effectiveness. By acknowledging that challenges exist and addressing them head-on, SMU demonstrates that diversity can be a force multiplier when managed with intelligence and respect.

As one female SMU leader noted, “We’re not immune to problems, but our training teaches us to face challenges head-on, whether they’re on the battlefield or in our ranks. This mindset allows us to turn potential obstacles into opportunities for growth and improvement.” This ability to effectively manage and overcome gender-related challenges is a model for other military units and organizations striving for greater inclusivity and operational excellence.

Conclusion

The role of women in SMU exemplifies how leadership transcends gender and is defined by the ability to prioritize the well-being of subordinates. Women in SMU have proven that success is not measured by breaking barriers but by a steadfast commitment to their teams and the values of trust, accountability, and dedication upheld by the unit. Their contributions highlight the essence of SMU as an institution where commitment, adaptability, and trust forge individuals into indispensable assets for a greater mission. Through their leadership, women in SMU continue to pave the way in operational excellence, demonstrating that authentic leadership is inclusive and impactful, driving the unit’s mission forward with unparalleled strength and resilience.

Note 

1. Joint Publication 3-05, Joint Doctrine for Special Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office, September 2020 [CAC required]), I-6, https://jdeis.js.mil/jdeis/index.jsp?pindex=27&pubId=707.

Noelle Lemke is a pseudonym used to protect the identity of the author, an active-duty NCO serving as a logistician for the Special Missions Unit (SMU) in Fort Liberty, North Carolina. She holds a BS in organizational leadership. She has been in the Army for fourteen years and in special operations since 2015. She has been in SMU since 2021 and has participated in multiple deployments in the Middle East and North Africa since 2017.

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