Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

– George Orwell, 1984

"Long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure profits, and so it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans."

– Bertrand Russell, 1950

"Any man may easily do harm but not every man can do good to another."

– Plato

1. JD Vance’s Tweet Is No Crisis

2. Is There a Constitutional Crisis?

3. Beware the Internet Mob—on USAID and Everything Else

4. Elon Musk Admits He Was Wrong About Gaza Condoms When Confronted By Reporter: ‘Some Things I Say Will Be Incorrect’

5. The Prophet of Trump’s Second Term

6. What DEI Isn’t

7. EXCLUSIVE: Trump Is Starving the National Endowment for Democracy

8. The World’s Policeman Goes Rogue

9. A Warning to Hamas: ‘Let Hell Break Out’

10. USAID Failed Because Foreign Aid Doesn’t Work

11. Elon Musk’s China Threat

12. White House bars AP reporter from Oval Office because of AP style policy on 'Gulf of America'

13. Building Resilience: Closing the Climate Knowledge Gap in the U.S. Military

14. ALL HANDS: An Introduction to Trump’s National Security Approach & Team

15. Microsoft announces plan to slide $22 billion IVAS contract over to Anduril

16. Pete Hegseth’s intense military-style workout: A peek into the defense secretary’s fitness routine

17. Why The U.S. Army Wants Voice-Controlled Robot Tanks

18. Trump is Right to Prioritize Homeland Missile Defense

19. Trump’s Greenland Gambit Is a Masterclass in Statecraft

20. We Cannot Fix Force Design

21. America First Is Quickly Becoming America Alone

22. From Syria to Africa, Russia’s Strategy is Faltering—But Its Repercussions Will Endure

23. New Blood: Putin is Setting Up Russian Veterans to Take Center Stage in Moscow

24. The Whisperer in the Woods

1. JD Vance’s Tweet Is No Crisis

From a Harvard professor of Constitutional law.

Excerpts:

To date, all the Trump administration’s responses in court have embodied appeals to these principles. In response to a recent temporary restraining order that seemingly barred all political appointees at the Treasury Department from access to certain internal information, the administration argued in a filing that the work of executive agencies is overseen by the president, and “a federal court, consistent with the separation of powers, cannot insulate any portion of this work from the specter of political accountability.”

That was a straightforward legal appeal to the limits of judicial authority, made within a judicial proceeding as an argument under applicable law. Even where courts have jurisdiction to decide, it is always legally valid to argue that their decisions ought to respect the separation of powers.

No constitutional crisis is created when the executive branch appeals to such principles, whether in court or on social media. If there is a crisis of any kind, it is that some judges have overlooked or willfully ignored the time-honored legal doctrines and principles that limit their own role, have exercised discretion without prudence or restraint, and have themselves consequently violated the separation of powers.

JD Vance’s Tweet Is No Crisis

Judges also have an obligation to respect the separation of powers. Usually they do so.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/jd-vances-tweet-is-no-crisis-law-courts-politics-2d807c79?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s

By Adrian Vermeule

Feb. 11, 2025 1:35 pm ET

Vice President JD Vance speaks at the White House in Washington, Jan. 30. Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Did Vice President JD Vance set off a constitutional crisis with a recent tweet? Many journalists and law professors seem to think so. “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” Mr. Vance wrote. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

Mr. Vance’s more alarmist critics assumed that the executive branch was preparing or threatening to defy court orders. But the more straightforward reading is that he was referring to legal doctrines of justiciability, reviewability, standing and the so-called political-question doctrine, which are themselves legal principles that courts apply in determining when they have jurisdiction to review executive action. All these principles are ultimately rooted in the constitutional separation of powers or in statutes embodying and implementing separation-of-powers considerations.

To be sure, there is a long tradition of “departmentalism” in American law, under which presidents have sometimes interpreted the law for themselves and even refused to enforce court orders or threatened to do so—a possibility to which Alexander Hamilton referred in Federalist No. 78 as itself an aspect of checks and balances. But no such threat was apparent on the face of the vice president’s comments.

The important point here is that the separation of powers operates as an internal doctrinal principle that courts apply in our legal system. Judges often invoke the separation of powers to limit their own authority, to put certain classes of executive action off-limits from judicial review, or to shape and constrain the remedies they provide. That has been true for as long as we have had courts and judicial review.

To illustrate by reference to Mr. Vance’s example of prosecutorial discretion, in U.S. v. Texas (2023), the Supreme Court ruled against states challenging executive enforcement priorities in immigration, saying that “our constitutional system of separation of powers contemplates a more restricted role for Article III courts.” The principle that courts may not directly control battlefield command and the conduct of operations by the president abroad, or even by governors in cases of domestic riots or public emergency, is a venerable one in U.S. law, which the courts themselves apply out of respect for the separation of powers and the judicial role.

Because the separation of powers operates as a central legal principle in the courts, the question “who decides?” comes in two different forms. As a matter of separation of powers, the courts may themselves decide that courts ought not to be the ones to decide a given issue.

To date, all the Trump administration’s responses in court have embodied appeals to these principles. In response to a recent temporary restraining order that seemingly barred all political appointees at the Treasury Department from access to certain internal information, the administration argued in a filing that the work of executive agencies is overseen by the president, and “a federal court, consistent with the separation of powers, cannot insulate any portion of this work from the specter of political accountability.”

That was a straightforward legal appeal to the limits of judicial authority, made within a judicial proceeding as an argument under applicable law. Even where courts have jurisdiction to decide, it is always legally valid to argue that their decisions ought to respect the separation of powers.

No constitutional crisis is created when the executive branch appeals to such principles, whether in court or on social media. If there is a crisis of any kind, it is that some judges have overlooked or willfully ignored the time-honored legal doctrines and principles that limit their own role, have exercised discretion without prudence or restraint, and have themselves consequently violated the separation of powers.

Mr. Vermeule is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. This article is adapted from a post at the New Digest substack.

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Journal Editorial Report: The week's best and worst from Kim Strassel, Bill Mcgurn, and Kyle Peterson. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images/Bill Clark/Zuma Press/J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Appeared in the February 12, 2025, print edition as 'JD Vance’s Tweet Is No Crisis'.

2. Is There a Constitutional Crisis?

From the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.

Excerpts:

Mr. Trump may be wrong, but there is no constitutional crisis as the cases make their way through the courts. Liberals are flogging a recent tweet by JD Vance that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” But even liberal judges agree with this in principle as they interpret the proper separation of constitutional powers.

The real crisis would come if Mr. Trump defies a Supreme Court ruling. If that happens, and it could, the left may wish it hadn’t squandered its credibility by crying wolf so often about crises that didn’t exist. Readers can relax in the meantime.

Is There a Constitutional Crisis?

Trump’s actions are aggressive, but they aren’t an executive coup.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/is-there-a-constitutional-crisis-donald-trump-executive-actions-elon-musk-judges-courts-a5b774ba?mod=hp_opin_pos_0

By The Editorial Board

Feb. 11, 2025 5:44 pm ET

President Donald Trump Photo: kevin lamarque/Reuters

Well, that was fast. The same people who predicted Donald Trump would be a dictator now say a “constitutional crisis” has already arrived, barely three weeks into his Presidency. They’re overwrought as usual, and readers may appreciate a less apocalyptic breakdown about Mr. Trump’s actions and whether they do or don’t breach the normal checks and balances.

Mr. Trump’s domestic-policy decisions so far strike us as falling into three categories. Most rest on strong legal ground. Some are legally debatable and could go either way in court. In still others Mr. Trump appears to be breaking current law deliberately to tee up cases that will go to the Supreme Court to restore what he considers to be constitutional norms. None of these is a constitutional crisis.

***

The first category includes the Administration’s decision to pause discretionary spending to ensure it complies with the President’s priorities. Democratic state Attorneys General say this is illegal, and Judge John McConnell on Monday agreed. The Administration is appealing, and judges can’t force a President to spend money that Congress has left to his discretion.

Most of these spending programs don’t include concrete disbursement deadlines. If Mr. Trump is violating the law, so was the Biden Administration, which delayed disbursing grants under the 2021 infrastructure bill and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to review applications and attach conditions. What Mr. Trump is doing is no different.

Government unions are challenging Mr. Trump’s buyout offers for federal workers on grounds that Congress hasn’t funded them, but this doesn’t make them illegal per se. If Mr. Trump later doesn’t pay these workers, they could sue in federal claims court.

Unions are also challenging Mr. Trump’s Schedule F reform, which removes civil-service protections for some high-ranking career employees. Here, too, Mr. Trump is on strong legal ground. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 exempts positions “determined to be of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character.”

Mr. Trump has expanded these exempt positions to employees who supervise investigations, develop regulations and exercise power under an agency’s discretion. Congress has expanded the discretion of agencies such that federal workers now boast far more power than they did 50 years ago. A President should be able to hold them accountable for performance to ensure laws are faithfully executed.

A second category are decisions on more debatable legal ground, such as effectively dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and U.S. Agency for International Development. Congress established these agencies and it would have to act to eliminate them. Less clear is whether a President can order employees to cease doing their jobs.

Harvard law professor Hal Scott recently argued in these pages that the CFPB is operating illegally because Congress funded the agency with earnings from the Federal Reserve. Because the Fed has incurred losses since September 2022, Mr. Scott says the bureau should close unless Congress appropriates money for it. This argument is plausible.

As for USAID, a federal judge has temporarily blocked the Administration’s plans to wind down its operations to have more time to consider the merits. Many Administration actions raise novel legal questions. This bucket also includes whether employees with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency can obtain access to Treasury payment systems.

Mr. Trump is stretching laws to see what he can get away with, but so have other recent Presidents. Barack Obama touted his pen-and-a-phone strategy of ruling by decree. “So sue me,” he taunted House Republicans. The Supreme Court blocked his Clean Power Plan and DAPA, which protected millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Joe Biden exceeded his power by canceling student loans, mandating vaccines and banning evictions, among other overreaches. After the Supreme Court blocked his first loan write-off, he declared “that didn’t stop me” and used other illegal means. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals last year rebuked his Administration for turning a lower-court injunction on his SAVE plan into a “nullity.”

The third category of Trump actions are clear violations of current law with a goal of inviting legal challenges to get to the Supreme Court. This includes his order barring birthright citizenship, and another dismissing a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Mr. Trump believes he’ll win on both issues because he thinks previous Supreme Court rulings were wrongly decided.

***

Mr. Trump may be wrong, but there is no constitutional crisis as the cases make their way through the courts. Liberals are flogging a recent tweet by JD Vance that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” But even liberal judges agree with this in principle as they interpret the proper separation of constitutional powers.

The real crisis would come if Mr. Trump defies a Supreme Court ruling. If that happens, and it could, the left may wish it hadn’t squandered its credibility by crying wolf so often about crises that didn’t exist. Readers can relax in the meantime.

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Free Expression: Judging by Democrats' reaction at USAID, the Treasury and the Department of Education, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency looks less DOGE and more DOGA, a Department of Government Accountability. Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP/Jemal Countess/Getty Images

Appeared in the February 12, 2025, print edition as 'Is There a Constitutional Crisis?'.

3. Beware the Internet Mob—on USAID and Everything Else

Mr. Musk and his DOGE wiz kids are providing a great service in using their vaunted algorithms to bring great transparency to our bureaucracy. I hope the process. methods, techniques, and systems can be harnessed for the future. They are proving to be important tools for transparency. They are giving our federal bureaucracy the "Great Reset." (I am sure the Mr. Musk will provide the services through government contacts in the future to do so). But the author recommends a course correction per the important conclusions highlighted below.

Excerpts:

The real scandal is that it got so much traction from powerful accounts on X and so much amplification from our politicians. To see this company admonished by some of the most enthusiastic capitalists in America simply because some of its customers work in the government is disorienting. For the criticism to emanate from Musk, who receives billions of dollars in actual government grants and contracts, is bizarre.

(Though this whole controversy also led to some delicious insight into how silly the outrage really was. When Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) posted that Musk was “exposing [Politico’s] grift,” the post was amended with a Community Note: Boebert’s own office had several Politico Pro subscriptions.)

I spent much of last week screaming into the internet void, trying—with limited results—to correct this obvious misinformation. I got so impassioned that one follower asked me earnestly why this issue mattered so much to me.

My answer: It epitomizes everything that’s wrong with our current media environment. Unreliable or phony information, and the internet mobs they feed, spreads fast. But it feels impossible to keep up or correct the record—even when the black-letter facts are on your side.

If you correct the record that the millions spent came from all federal agencies, not one, the goalposts immediately move to the government “funneling” money to a news organization for favorable coverage. If you can explain that the money was used to pay for valuable subscriptions to a valuable tool, not to influence coverage at a news organization, you might be able to have a reasonable debate about whether this is the way the government should spend their money. And then, just as you’re getting somewhere, a new absurd lie like USAID sending money to the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein will pop up. And the whole process begins anew.

In this particular case—and there will be many more by the end of this week—even prominent conservatives like Christopher Rufo wound up falsely accused of taking money from USAID.

...

The best reason for Musk and those who support what he’s trying to accomplish to course-correct is their own self-interest. Truth, and a reputation for telling it, are the strongest weapons in their fight against waste. Amplifying phony claims like Benny Johnson’s destroys that credibility.

Beware the Internet Mob—on USAID and Everything Else

I think our federal government is wasteful. And I am rooting for DOGE. But there was no government-funding ‘scandal’ at Politico—except for the fake one dominating X.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-internet-mob-comes-for-politico

By Isaac Saul

02.10.25 —

U.S. Politics

(Image via Getty, illustration by The Free Press)

392

193

Last week, I dipped back into X just to see what I’d been missing on paternity leave. A post from Benny Johnson, a conservative activist with 3.4 million followers, caught my eye. Apparently, he had discovered “the biggest scandal in news media history.”

According to Johnson there was a “crisis” at Politico, the Washington-based news site: It was unable to meet payroll because it had been “massively funded” by USAID, but DOGE had just “deleted” the cash. “Now Politico will go out of business,” Johnson wrote. “The corruption is endless. Good riddance.”

The post went viral, boosted by influential X accounts, including Elon Musk’s. Radio personality and financial maven Peter Schiff posted: “The Biden Administration paid Politico millions of dollars under the table to spread propaganda, which Politico then fraudulently represented to the public as being legitimate news. And they call Trump a fascist!” President Trump himself weighed in, repeating the “biggest scandal” line. For days, this dominated my newsfeed.

The only problem: Johnson’s story was something between a nothingburger and a hoax.

The totally innocuous truth is that a few hundred out of two million government employees were buying subscriptions to a premium trade publication called Politico Pro. Given that Politico Pro offers tools and analysis to better understand niche industries (like agriculture, cannabis, energy, or cybersecurity), and given that we want our civil servants to understand these topics as well as possible, this feels to me like money well spent.

(As for the idea that Politico is “going out of business” or struggling to make payroll: Politico was making a reported $200 million in annual revenue as of a few years ago and Axel Springer bought it in 2021 for $1 billion; Politico Pro is part of their valuable suite of offerings.)

Johnson’s main evidence for his more lurid version of reality was a screenshot from the website USAspending.gov, which seemed to show a company called Politico, LLC being “awarded” $8.2 million, ostensibly illustrated by a sharply ascending line graph.

It took me only a few minutes on USAspending.gov to understand how misleading this was. (By the way, USAspending.gov is not a new website brought to you by DOGE, as many online seem to believe. Congress created it in 2006 via the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act.)

What I found—and what you could find if you look—is that Politico did not get $8.2 million from USAID over the last year; it got $8.2 million from various agencies across the entire government. No grants were “awarded”—“under the table” or otherwise. Employees purchased a service called Politico Pro and expensed it to the government.

They did so for legitimate reasons. Politico Pro is not an online media outlet publishing op-eds bashing the Trump administration or, say, the now-infamous Politico article regurgitating intelligence officials’ claims that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.

Politico Pro is to Politico what a Bloomberg Terminal is to Bloomberg news—a specialized product for sophisticated users. As such, it’s expensive. Individual subscriptions can run north of $10,000, and team subscriptions can run into the six figures. Politico can charge this much for the same reason Bloomberg can charge $25,000 for its famous Terminal—customers find it incredibly useful. And, by the way, single federal agencies have spent millions on those terminals, too.

We can debate whether this kind of thing is wasteful or smart spending. Personally, I am fine seeing my tax dollars being used for government agencies to make informed decisions, even in USAID’s climate division, which spent $44,000 on Politico Pro’s energy and environment publication. But it’s not a scandal.

The real scandal is that it got so much traction from powerful accounts on X and so much amplification from our politicians. To see this company admonished by some of the most enthusiastic capitalists in America simply because some of its customers work in the government is disorienting. For the criticism to emanate from Musk, who receives billions of dollars in actual government grants and contracts, is bizarre.

(Though this whole controversy also led to some delicious insight into how silly the outrage really was. When Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) posted that Musk was “exposing [Politico’s] grift,” the post was amended with a Community Note: Boebert’s own office had several Politico Pro subscriptions.)

I spent much of last week screaming into the internet void, trying—with limited results—to correct this obvious misinformation. I got so impassioned that one follower asked me earnestly why this issue mattered so much to me.

My answer: It epitomizes everything that’s wrong with our current media environment. Unreliable or phony information, and the internet mobs they feed, spreads fast. But it feels impossible to keep up or correct the record—even when the black-letter facts are on your side.

If you correct the record that the millions spent came from all federal agencies, not one, the goalposts immediately move to the government “funneling” money to a news organization for favorable coverage. If you can explain that the money was used to pay for valuable subscriptions to a valuable tool, not to influence coverage at a news organization, you might be able to have a reasonable debate about whether this is the way the government should spend their money. And then, just as you’re getting somewhere, a new absurd lie like USAID sending money to the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein will pop up. And the whole process begins anew.

In this particular case—and there will be many more by the end of this week—even prominent conservatives like Christopher Rufo wound up falsely accused of taking money from USAID.

This is our new information reality. For news consumers, the lesson is clear: Proceed with extreme caution. The best thing you can do is bring skepticism to viral claims that you see on platforms like X, and spend a couple minutes reading through the reactions to the claims (where people are often correcting them in real time). You can wait for more thorough reporting on such allegations, consult nonpartisan fact-checkers you trust, or consult platform tools like X’s Community Notes. Most importantly, think critically about these allegations even—and perhaps especially—when they come from people who share your political views. Most of all: Beware of the sycophantic mob.

The best reason for Musk and those who support what he’s trying to accomplish to course-correct is their own self-interest. Truth, and a reputation for telling it, are the strongest weapons in their fight against waste. Amplifying phony claims like Benny Johnson’s destroys that credibility.

Isaac Saul is a reporter and founder of Tangle, a politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from the right, left, and center on the big debates of the day. You can try it for free.

4. Elon Musk Admits He Was Wrong About Gaza Condoms When Confronted By Reporter: ‘Some Things I Say Will Be Incorrect’

At least he was man enough to admit he was wrong. Hopefully he will stop making incorrect statements.

Elon Musk Admits He Was Wrong About Gaza Condoms When Confronted By Reporter: ‘Some Things I Say Will Be Incorrect’

mediaite.com · by Alex Griffing · February 11, 2025

Elon Musk acknowledged on Tuesday that he was incorrect to claim that the U.S. had planned to spend $50 million on condoms for Gaza when asked by a reporter.

“Mr. Musk, you said on X. That’s an example of the fraud that you have cited. Was $50 million of condoms were sent to Gaza. But after fact-checks on this. Apparently, Gaza in Mozambique, and the program was to protect them against HIV. So can you correct that statement?” a reporter asked Musk, who recently changed his name on X to “Harry Bolz,” as he took questions in the Oval Office.

“It wasn’t sent to Hamas. Actually, it was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms were sent there. And how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you say?” added the reporter.

“Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody’s going to bat a 1,000. I mean, any, you know we will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes,” Musk replied, adding:

So, you know, if the– I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere, frankly, I’m not sure that’s something Americans would be really excited about. But it’s really an enormous number of condoms. If you think about it. But, you know, if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I’m like, okay, that’s not as bad. But still, you know, why are we doing that?

While fact-checkers did uncover that the U.S. government sent condoms to Mozambique, many experts still highly doubt the figure Musk cited. USA Today ran a fact check of his claims and noted, “The U.S. Agency for International Development, the government agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance, said in a report last April that it had spent $61 million in 2023 to provide condoms and other contraceptives to other countries.”

“But just $8 million of that went for the purchase of condoms, the report said. And not a cent was used to send condoms to Gaza. From 2016 to 2022, the agency spent $118 million on condoms for 60 countries – an average of about $17 million a year, according to a separate report released in 2023,” explained USA Today, suggesting it’s highly unlikely $50 million was spent on condoms anywhere on the planet.

Watch above via C-SPAN.

mediaite.com · by Alex Griffing · February 11, 2025

5. The Prophet of Trump’s Second Term

A fascinating read about a political philosopher many of us are unfamiliar with.

This does provide some important insights into the current political environment.

Excerpts:

No one who met Codevilla ever forgot him. Tall and lanky, with a broad forehead, deep-set eyes, and raspy voice, he loved company and conversation. And he delighted in provocation. His direct manner and strong opinions made him enemies. His vast learning and wry smile won him just as many friends.

I speak from experience. I contributed to the Claremont Review of Books from 2010 to 2019 and spent a week as a Claremont Institute Lincoln fellow in the summer of 2011. Codevilla began one of our classes by asking, “Who here has read Robert Kagan’s Dangerous Nation?”

I raised my hand.

Codevilla stared at me, eyes blazing.

“That book,” he thundered, “is a piece of trash!”

That was Angelo Codevilla: passionate, sweeping, patriotic, and utterly convinced. He would have savored this moment. The ruling class faces its reckoning. And the prophet’s time has arrived.

The Prophet of Trump’s Second Term

Today’s political vocabulary—ruling class, Deep State, uniparty—comes from Angelo Codevilla’s pen. His students are now enacting his vision in Washington.

By Matthew Continetti

02.11.25 — The Big Read

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-prophet-of-trumps-second-term

Photo by Kevin Lamarque/AFP via Getty Images; Illustration by The Free Press.

In 2000, columnist Patrick J. Buchanan defeated Donald Trump for the Reform Party nomination. But it was the property developer and television star who, more than a decade later, brought Buchanan’s populist views on trade, immigration, and nonintervention into the White House. “The ideas made it, but I didn’t,” Buchanan told journalist Tim Alberta in 2017. Such are the wages of political prophecy.

If Buchanan prefigured President Trump’s first-term nationalism, another thinker anticipated Trump’s second-term war against the administrative state and sweeping revision of American foreign policy: international relations professor Angelo Codevilla.

Codevilla died in 2021, but his ideas endure. His core insight, developed in a 2010 essay and in subsequent books and publications, was that a progressive ruling class based on a sense of social superiority had captured government and academia and large parts of the business sector and waged war against ordinary Americans to maintain and expand its power. The result, Codevilla said, was an increasingly oppressive centralized bureaucracy immune to supervision, and an American empire that failed to keep Americans safe.

Today’s political vocabulary—“ruling class,” “administrative state,” “Deep State,” “cold civil war,” “uniparty”—comes from Codevilla’s pen. One sees Codevilla’s influence everywhere, from Trump’s reversal of DEI and affirmative action to DOGE’s unspooling of USAID to reductions in the federal workforce to the foreign-policy pivot toward our own hemisphere. Friends and participants in his seminars, such as Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, State Department director of policy planning Michael Anton, and State Department counselor Michael Needham, serve in the administration. They are busy enacting his critique of America, with unpredictable consequences.

Codevilla was 12 years old when he arrived from Italy in 1955. He served in the Navy and Foreign Service and studied politics at Claremont Graduate University with philosophers Leo Strauss and Harry V. Jaffa. Strauss, a German Jew who’d fled Nazism, was the author of dense, classic studies of political thought, such as Natural Right and History, where he argued that the modern world had taken a wrong turn long ago when it abandoned a belief in objective standards of value for relativistic empiricism. Strauss’s most famous student, Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago, applied these theories to American universities in his 1987 bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. For his part, Jaffa used Strauss’s method of close reading to analyze Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and other American statesmen, most famously in Crisis of the House Divided, published in 1959.

After receiving his doctorate, Codevilla came to Washington, D.C. He taught at Georgetown, joined the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and worked on Ronald Reagan’s presidential transition. Academic posts followed at Boston University and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Yet it was the Claremont Institute that made Codevilla famous. Founded by Jaffa’s students in 1979, for much of its history the institute was a small think tank devoted to the American Founding and to Abraham Lincoln. The attacks of September 11, 2001, transformed it. Through fellowships for students and young professionals, and in the pages of its flagship Claremont Review of Books, Codevilla and other Claremont scholars became the conservative movement’s internal critics.

They skewered George W. Bush’s and John Boehner’s Republican Party for trading the Founders’ wisdom for establishment credentials. Bush, in this view, had created new entitlements, increased spending, and launched America on a foolish quest to bring democracy to the Middle East. And House Speaker Boehner was the classic go-along-to-get-along Republican, shying away from clashing with Barack Obama over taxes and debt.

Angelo Codevilla speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2013. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

The global financial crisis of 2008 bolstered the Claremont analysis. The bank rescue plan exposed the gulf between elites in Washington and conservatives outside the Beltway. For Claremont’s constitutionalists, the antiestablishment Tea Party was a possible tonic for Obama’s overdose of big-government progressivism.

What made the Tea Party significant was its opposition to both parties. Republicans who voted for bailouts, and to fund the Affordable Care Act, were complicit in Obama’s assault on the American experiment. The Tea Party, Codevilla wrote, offered a full-spectrum populism devoted to restoring a lost sense of limited government to both the GOP and Washington, D.C.

An electric and lengthy Codevilla essay from 2010 remains the best expression of populist attitudes toward parties and government in contemporary America. “Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country,” he wrote in The American Spectator. “They think, look, and act as a class.”

Not just any class. Once they entered politics, Codevilla went on, Republicans and Democrats joined America’s “ruling class” through shared educational attainment, lingo, professional associations, and financial relationships. Above all, the ruling class is “oriented to government.” It lives off bureaucracy. It’s invested in the status quo.

Codevilla’s vision of an apocalyptic conflict between the noble, working-class majority and cosseted, highly educated elites captured the spirit of the moment. Rush Limbaugh read the piece on his radio program. A paperback edition soon followed. Suddenly Codevilla was a conservative celebrity.

And he had more to say. American foreign policy, Codevilla long argued, had gone astray with Woodrow Wilson. American elites looked abroad not to secure American interests but to impose world order. Their quest, Codevilla argued, hadn’t produced order, peace, or victory. It had given us one intervention after another and needless casualties. Codevilla supported another tradition, exemplified by George Washington and John Quincy Adams. Avoid meddling in other countries. If war comes, do what it takes to win.

Here too, Codevilla was in the vanguard. Tea Party senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz represented a new generation of Republicans during the Obama years who opposed non-retaliatory military intervention and nation building and criticized drone and surveillance policies. In 2013, when Paul led a 13-hour talking filibuster against the potential threat of domestic drone strikes against terrorists on U.S. soil, most Republicans treated him as a fringe figure. Now his ideas are at the heart of the effort to tame the bipartisan foreign policy “Blob” that advocates American global leadership.

Conservative views of intelligence and security agencies changed, too. The right used to treat the CIA and FBI as means to secure victory over communism and terrorism. Now, under Obama, they looked more like tools of domestic repression. Conservatives had once reliably defended such institutions. But with the revelation that FISA courts had authorized surveillance of Trump’s campaign, these same conservatives increasingly saw the state itself as a partisan actor devoted to quashing the right.

By 2016, Codevilla had concluded the situation may be beyond repair. Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” jibe perfectly expressed ruling-class disdain. America had entered a revolutionary period whose outcome was unknown. The Founders’ republic was gone. It had been replaced by an American empire whose future was hazy. Codevilla wasn’t sure Trump would succeed. “Speculating about Trump’s mind is futile,” he wrote. But he did think Trump’s candidacy was a vehicle for opponents of the ruling class.

Reaction to Trump’s first term was visceral. The ruling class and traditional America were locked, Codevilla wrote, in a “cold civil war.” His prescription—decentralization, federalism, and global retrenchment—went unheeded. And the revolution spiraled out of control. “Unattainable, and gone forever, is the whole American Republic that had existed for some 200 years after 1776,” Codevilla announced in 2018. True federalism remained the answer. To counteract the Deep State, the FISA court would have to be abolished, the FBI remade, and the CIA torn apart.

Codevilla’s basic framework—ruling class versus the anti-establishment country class—stayed in place throughout the Covid pandemic, George Floyd riots, and 2020 election. Joe Biden’s presidency, Codevilla argued, demanded singular leadership to rescue America. Yet he remained uncertain about Trump. No one seemed to him able to stop the progressive revolution behind America’s decline.

“Perhaps the only useful result of the Afghan enterprise’s clamorous collapse, at a time when so much else that our ruling class is doing also collapses of its own weight, is the widespread recognition that we are not seeing the results of discrete choices about foreign policy,” Codevilla wrote in one of his last articles, published after America’s deadly retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021. “We are experiencing the inexorable working out of the logic by which a whole class lives, moves, and has its being.”

Codevilla died in a car accident the following month. He was 78 years old. He didn’t live to see his vindication—but vindicated he has been. Trump officials are cracking down on illegal immigration. They are downsizing the government. They are shaking up intel. They are scaling back foreign commitments. And they are promoting missile defense.

No one who met Codevilla ever forgot him. Tall and lanky, with a broad forehead, deep-set eyes, and raspy voice, he loved company and conversation. And he delighted in provocation. His direct manner and strong opinions made him enemies. His vast learning and wry smile won him just as many friends.

I speak from experience. I contributed to the Claremont Review of Books from 2010 to 2019 and spent a week as a Claremont Institute Lincoln fellow in the summer of 2011. Codevilla began one of our classes by asking, “Who here has read Robert Kagan’s Dangerous Nation?”

I raised my hand.

Codevilla stared at me, eyes blazing.

“That book,” he thundered, “is a piece of trash!”

That was Angelo Codevilla: passionate, sweeping, patriotic, and utterly convinced. He would have savored this moment. The ruling class faces its reckoning. And the prophet’s time has arrived.

Matthew Continetti is the director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Right.

To read more on the fascinating Angelo Codevilla, click here.

6. What DEI Isn’t

A thoughtful essay that unfortunately will not be read (or heeded) by those who use DEI as a scapegoat for everything they think is wrong in this great American experiment.

It seems society always needs someone or something to blame.

Unfortunately we are seeing how pendulums swing to both extremes. Where is the middle ground?

There are better ways.

Excerpts:

Plenty of minorities—myself included—disliked the Biden regime’s lecturing, divisive, anti-democratic emphasis on DEI. But most of us aren’t masochistic enough to deny our people are being unfairly abused by the people dismantling it. We’re getting dangerously close to the point where any nonheterosexual, non-white, non-male person with a job is automatically assumed to be unqualified for it.

This isn’t how you build an anti-DEI coalition. It isn’t even how you “own the libs,” who have long claimed that the anti-DEI crusade is just a cynical ploy to attack minorities. The Trump administration, and its supporters, is in danger of unwittingly proving them right. You could even say the libs are owning them.

02.11.25 — Politics, Race, Culture, and The Trump Transition

What DEI Isn’t

Any minority with a job.

By River Page

https://www.thefp.com/p/what-dei-isnt-trump-jd-vance-republicans

Last week, a self-shot video of unknown origin appeared on my X feed. It features a bespectacled young army cadet with curly, ginger hair, talking about how his drill sergeant told him to get a “fucking haircut.” The video then cuts to him duck-facing at the camera, with a high and tight, while he says, “I look like I’m about to go to fucking war!” The guy is clearly a homosexual, possessing what we in the gay community affectionately call a “fagcent.”

Young, in shape, and willing to get a haircut that’s completely unsuited to his face shape—this is the type of person the military needs, right? Especially since the Army has missed its recruitment goals every single year since 2010, in part because 77 percent of young Americans are too fat, drug-addicted, or mentally ill to serve. But not everyone agrees. About a week ago, Eddie Lima, a conservative coffee proprietor with a popular X account, posted the video with a one-word caption: “Sigh.” It set off a whole wave of nastiness.

“That speech pattern needs to be a disqualifier at MEPS,” wrote one commenter, referring to military entrance processing stations.

“Yikes. Hope [Secretary of Defense] Pete Hegseth sees this,” wrote Libs of Tiktok, the popular anti-woke account, which now has 4.2 million followers. The new secretary of defense is supposed to exclude guys from the military for . . . what, exactly? Talking too gay?

In case you didn’t notice, the new administration is waging a war on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Soon after being sworn in, President Donald Trump signed three executive orders rolling back DEI and affirmative action policies, some nearly 60 years old. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently said the Department of Justice will investigate private companies that have DEI initiatives. And in an interview with The Free Press, Hegseth promised to end DEI in the military—promising to put a stop to the endless meetings about diversity, and to ban celebrations of gay pride and Black History Month.

On its face, this development seems fine enough. Gay pride is meant to be celebrated at the club, not Fort Cavazos. And obviously people shouldn’t get jobs just because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation—like when Kamala Harris was hired as Joe Biden’s running mate after activists within the Democratic Party staged a coordinated campaign to pressure him to pick a black woman. They seemingly didn’t even care which one.

But the Trump administration, and many of its highest-profile supporters, are fueling the idea that any minority with a job might not actually deserve it. These people see DEI everywhere.

For instance, in the disaster that occurred two weeks ago in the Washington, D.C., area, when an Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines passenger plane arriving from Wichita, Kansas, killing everyone aboard both flights, immediately, President Trump and Vice President Vance implied that DEI was to blame.

Though there is a real story here about concerns over flawed hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration, it wasn’t the time. Trump’s and Vance’s comments set off an avalanche of insanity, focused on a few individuals who’d done nothing wrong. Right-wing netizens falsely accused a random, uninvolved trans pilot in the Virginia Army National Guard of being behind the crash—forcing her to post a proof-of-life video. After that, the actual names of the helicopter pilots were revealed. Two were white men, and one was a white woman: Capt. Rebecca Lobach.

This didn’t end the argument.

Without any evidence, numerous right-wing commentators online assumed that Lobach must have been the pilot primarily responsible for the crash, painting her as a lesbian DEI hire who was unqualified for her job. In reality, she was an experienced pilot—and if you’re interested, I’ve found no firm evidence to support the idea that she was a lesbian.

Tragically, it later transpired that her family had fought to stop her name being released because they’d been afraid that, given Trump’s comments, there would be an outpouring of bigoted abuse aimed at the servicewoman’s corpse—which is exactly what happened.

The chaotic, paranoid response to this horrific disaster is an example of how damaging it can be when DEI is assumed to be lurking behind every corner. But it’s not the only example.

Last March, after a cargo ship caused the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, multiple Republican politicians attributed the disaster to DEI—even though there was clear video evidence showing the Singaporean-flagged Dali crashing into the bridge. Bad HR policy is not a heuristic to explain every bad thing that happens in the world.

At the same time, several popular right-wing X accounts pounced on the fact that the city’s mayor, Brandon Scott, is black. One post, which got 12,000 likes, features a video of Scott making perfectly appropriate comments about the disaster with the caption, “This is Baltimore’s DEI mayor.” A black mayor elected in a majority black city—that’s not DEI, that’s just demographics.

Is this anti-DEI praxis? Calling a dead woman an incompetent dyke? Claiming that a democratically elected black person is a diversity hire? Excluding a demographic renowned for spending time in the gym because they might be a bit camp? What happened to the stated goal of restoring fairness and merit?

Plenty of minorities—myself included—disliked the Biden regime’s lecturing, divisive, anti-democratic emphasis on DEI. But most of us aren’t masochistic enough to deny our people are being unfairly abused by the people dismantling it. We’re getting dangerously close to the point where any nonheterosexual, non-white, non-male person with a job is automatically assumed to be unqualified for it.

This isn’t how you build an anti-DEI coalition. It isn’t even how you “own the libs,” who have long claimed that the anti-DEI crusade is just a cynical ploy to attack minorities. The Trump administration, and its supporters, is in danger of unwittingly proving them right. You could even say the libs are owning them.

River Page is a reporter at The Free Press. Previously, he worked as a staff writer at Pirate Wires, covering technology, politics, and culture. His work has also appeared in Compact, American Affairs, and the Washington Examiner, among other publications.

7. EXCLUSIVE: Trump Is Starving the National Endowment for Democracy

NED has so much potential. It has done very important work. Anyone who studies resistance, countering authoritarian governments, or helping people to free themselves should recognize the potential contributions NED has made and can make to US national security interestings.

I want to keep it around. But I want to focus on its core mission.

I have long been disappointed because it has never provided grants two to organizations which I support, The US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the North Korean Young Leaders Assembly, both of which align with NED's core missions.

instead of dismantling NED, the DOGE work and transparency could make NED great again.

Excerpts:

Tighter controls and audits of NED, to assure it remains strictly dedicated to supporting democracy activists, would be welcome, Wilson said: “We know there are opportunities to make American support more efficient and focused.”

The chaos DOGE caused by the order at the Treasury Department is no way to accomplish this reasonable goal, which suggests that what DOGE really wants is to end NED, not mend it.

This would be shortsighted, as “We support the foreign aid review,” Daniel Twining, the president of IRI, told The Free Press. “Foreign assistance absolutely should support U.S. national interests,” he added. “What we don’t want is for America’s ground game around the world to be taken off the field for long, because America’s adversaries are not pausing. They will fill any vacuums we leave behind, to the detriment of what makes our country strong, prosperous, and secure.”

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Is Starving the National Endowment for Democracy

DOGE has frozen funds to the organization that was instrumental in helping win the Cold War. ‘It’s been a bloodbath.’

By Eli Lake

02.11.25 — U.S. Politics

https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-starves-the-national-endowment-for-democracy-elon-musk-doge

Ronald Reagan is flanked by Nicaraguan rebel leaders. From left: Arturo Cruz, Reagan, Adolfo Calero, and Alfonso Robelo during a meeting in Washington, D.C., March 3, 1986. (Bettmann via Getty Images)

It’s hard to keep track of the upheaval in Washington since President Trump’s inauguration, and even harder, amid the media freakout, to distinguish important changes from trivial ones.

But what’s happening at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a very big deal, and has not been previously reported.

NED, a key U.S. instrument for supporting grassroots freedom movements around the world, is under siege from Elon Musk’s DOGE. An order from DOGE to the U.S. Treasury that blocked disbursement of NED funds has crippled the organization—which received $315 million for fiscal year 2025—and its affiliates, The Free Press has learned.

“It’s been a bloodbath,” one NED staffer said. “We have not been able to meet payroll and pay basic overhead expenses.”

NED’s dismantling would be far more than a cost-cutting measure. It would symbolize a major change in U.S. foreign policy, undercutting the notion that democratic ideals foster U.S. global strength and influence. Instead, the Trump administration would be signaling that it no longer believes that promoting democracy around the globe is in the national interest.

Created in 1983 with bipartisan support and the backing of President Ronald Reagan, NED was intended to attack the Soviet “empire of evil” at its weakest point: its lack of democratic legitimacy.

It made bespoke grants to activists and labor unions behind the Iron Curtain. “We provided radios and copy machines for Solidarity,” former NED president Carl Gershman told The Free Press, referring to Lech Wałęsa’s independent worker movement in Communist Poland.

After the Cold War, NED expanded its mission beyond the disbanded Soviet bloc, making grants to pro-democracy NGOs in Iran, China, Venezuela, and Cuba—again using a strategy of supporting local citizens opposed to the authoritarian systems that ruled them. NED and its sister organizations, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute—one for each party—enjoyed bipartisan support.

“Thanks to NED grantees, the world learned about the horrible death of Masih Amini at the hands of the brutal Iranian regime,” the endowment’s current president, Damon Wilson, told The Free Press, referring to a young Iranian woman who died in custody after being arrested for failing to wear a head covering.

Other grantees “documented how the Cuban regime has become a kleptocratic mafia state. NED partners exposed the Uyghur genocide as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s network of overseas police stations bringing their tools and techniques of coercion and repression into free societies, including here in the United States,” Wilson said.

The first Trump administration carried on NED’s work. Several key Trump allies were on its board, such as Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee to serve as ambassador to the United Nations. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas sits on the International Republican Institute’s board.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio served on IRI’s board when he was still a senator from Florida. In fact, he was the keynote speaker at its annual dinner last May.

“Nations around the world and peoples need to see that freedom and democracy are not just something to aspire to as an ideal, but as a practical matter, it works and it works better than totalitarianism,” Rubio said in his speech. “It takes longer, it’s harder, it requires you to listen to people you don’t agree with. It requires you to work with people you think are half-crazy. But the alternative is a small group of people who get to decide what happens and we have no voice or role in it.”

Many Republican NED stalwarts—including Trump’s former national security adviser, Robert O’Brien—have fought behind the scenes to protect NED from the DOGE knife.

But theirs is no longer the consensus view within the GOP coalition. On February 2, Musk posted on X: “NED is a SCAM.” The Center for Renewing America, a think tank founded by Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, released a policy paper on February 7 that blamed NED for supposedly helping incite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“A steady stream of NED grants to myriad Ukrainian political entities and movements advanced both the ‘Orange Revolution’ and ‘Maidan Revolution’ that paved the way for the current Ukraine-Russia war,” the paper said.

For the right to turn against civil society groups that stand up to pro-Moscow authoritarians, formerly a proud conservative cause, is stunning. The implication that NED was a puppet master of the Orange and Maidan revolutions is wrong, and it ignores that Ukrainians were responding to threats to their own elections and sovereignty in both those events.

NED does not direct recipients of its grants to organize demonstrations; it trains citizens in such democratic basics as how to prepare for elections.

“We had nothing to do with organizing those protests,” said Gershman, who led NED at the time of the Ukrainian protests. “We supported groups that wanted freedom and democracy. But we didn’t tell them to do this.”

NED has occasionally strayed from its core mission. Case in point: its 2020 grant to a British NGO, the Global Disinformation Index. Two years later, GDI listed ten conservative-leaning American publications, including Reason, the New York Post, and The American Conservative as vectors of disinformation in the U.S. news media. This was an indirect effort to get advertisers to shun them, a form of censorship and an inappropriate, even dangerous, use of U.S. funds.

Wilson said that, as soon as he learned about GDI’s alleged study of the U.S. news media—which was funded by another private donor—NED “severed the relationship.” Management promptly briefed the NED board and Congress, audited its grant portfolio, and tightened procedures to prevent a recurrence.

Tighter controls and audits of NED, to assure it remains strictly dedicated to supporting democracy activists, would be welcome, Wilson said: “We know there are opportunities to make American support more efficient and focused.”

The chaos DOGE caused by the order at the Treasury Department is no way to accomplish this reasonable goal, which suggests that what DOGE really wants is to end NED, not mend it.

This would be shortsighted, as “We support the foreign aid review,” Daniel Twining, the president of IRI, told The Free Press. “Foreign assistance absolutely should support U.S. national interests,” he added. “What we don’t want is for America’s ground game around the world to be taken off the field for long, because America’s adversaries are not pausing. They will fill any vacuums we leave behind, to the detriment of what makes our country strong, prosperous, and secure.”

Last month, catastrophic fires upended California’s progressive political consensus. This week on Breaking History, Eli Lake traces the failures of far-left governance back to 1970s San Francisco—where the Golden State’s ruling coalition was born. Listen to the episode below or wherever you get your podcasts.

8. The World’s Policeman Goes Rogue

Excerpts:

History tells us that trade wars have only losers. Consumers pay more, inefficient domestic companies are protected from competition, and the result is less economic growth, lower productivity and less prosperity for everyone. But if Mr. Trump brings a tariff war to our door, we must fight back aggressively. Europe’s response should be dollar-for-dollar retaliation, targeted at the U.S. industries and businesses where it will hurt the most. Mr. Trump respects only strength.

I hope that the new U.S. administration doesn’t end an international order that has created more security and more prosperity for more people than any other in history. But hope is no strategy. Europe must be prepared or suffer the consequences.

The World’s Policeman Goes Rogue

If America is going to threaten its allies, Europe will have to step up and defend itself.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-worlds-policeman-goes-rogue-national-sovereignty-security-us-europe-foreign-policy-9a583963?mod=hp_opin_pos_3#cxrecs_s

By Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Feb. 11, 2025 5:04 pm ET

Photo: Kristian Tuxen Ladegaard Berg/Zuma Press

The first weeks of the Trump administration have been difficult, even painful. I have dedicated much of my life to a rules-based international order led by the U.S., and I worry that it is ending.

The world needs a policeman—and since World War II the U.S. has filled that role. But what if the policeman no longer exercises his authority over geopolitical gangsters—or becomes abusive toward the world’s most steadfast rule followers?

I never imagined I would hear a U.S. president declare his intentions to “expand our territory,” as Donald Trump did in his inaugural address. He continues to suggest that Canada should become the 51st state, and he has refused to rule out military force to secure America’s control of the Panama Canal and the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are watching. If the U.S. can take Greenland for America’s security, Mr. Xi will claim he can invade Taiwan for Chinese security. Mr. Putin’s absurd arguments about conquering Ukraine for Russia’s security would be validated by Mr. Trump.

As a child I admired John F. Kennedy, who said that America would “pay any price, bear any burden . . . to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” As a young politician, I cheered Ronald Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union address, in which he said America’s “mission is to nourish and defend freedom and democracy.” As Danish prime minister, I worked with President George W. Bush because I believed Denmark’s security was best guaranteed by a close alliance with the U.S.

After Mr. Trump’s threats against some of America’s closest allies—including Denmark—I have had to revise my views. Today, we Europeans must be prepared to protect ourselves from those who lie in wait just outside our borders. Europe must develop a stronger and more effective defense to deter Russia and any other nation. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is still the cornerstone of European defense. But given that Mr. Trump has raised doubts about America’s willingness to fulfill its NATO obligations and has threatened two allies, Canada and Denmark, I see no option other than to ensure we can stand on our own in any situation.

We must build a coalition of willing European countries that are prepared to provide a robust European defense. We should strengthen the European Union’s security dimension, move to majority voting to prevent pro-Russia members from vetoing important security measures, and sign a security agreement between the EU and the U.K. as soon as possible to protect ourselves and our shared critical infrastructure.

History tells us that trade wars have only losers. Consumers pay more, inefficient domestic companies are protected from competition, and the result is less economic growth, lower productivity and less prosperity for everyone. But if Mr. Trump brings a tariff war to our door, we must fight back aggressively. Europe’s response should be dollar-for-dollar retaliation, targeted at the U.S. industries and businesses where it will hurt the most. Mr. Trump respects only strength.

I hope that the new U.S. administration doesn’t end an international order that has created more security and more prosperity for more people than any other in history. But hope is no strategy. Europe must be prepared or suffer the consequences.

Mr. Rasmussen served as secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (2009-14) and prime minister of Denmark (2001-09).

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Global View: The power that a rising and expanding America would inevitably acquire will be seen in Beijing and Moscow—and not only there—as a threat. Photo: Ju Peng/Alexander Kazakov/Associated Press/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Appeared in the February 12, 2025, print edition as 'The World’s Policeman Goes Rogue'.

9. A Warning to Hamas: ‘Let Hell Break Out’

But what are the actions that backup the words that will ensure credibility?

Excerpts:

Maybe Hamas thinks it can now call the President’s bluff. “Trump must remember that there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties and this is the only way to return the prisoners,” a Hamas official said. “The language of threats has no value and further complicates matters.”

Terrorists obviously don’t like being threatened by an American President, but credibility is crucial to deterrence. And what a change from the last White House. President Biden had endless time for Hamas to play games. Mr. Trump has none. It matters to have a President who says clearly that the onus is on Hamas to free the innocents it has held in appalling conditions since abducting them 494 days ago.

By warning Hamas that the U.S. will support all hell breaking loose, Mr. Trump is offering Israel freedom of action, which could translate into negotiating leverage. The hard decisions about what to do next are up to Israelis and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His defense minister told the military to “prepare at the highest level of alert for any possible scenario in Gaza.” If Hamas doesn’t heed Mr. Trump’s warning, Israel and the U.S. will have little choice but to make Hamas believe it.

A Warning to Hamas: ‘Let Hell Break Out’

Trump rightly puts the onus on the terrorists to free innocent hostages.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-hamas-hostages-israel-gaza-benjamin-netanyahu-1c772da0?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s

By The Editorial Board

Feb. 11, 2025 5:40 pm ET

Hamas fighters secure an area before handing over three Israeli hostages to a Red Cross team in Deir el-Balah, Gaza, Feb. 8. Photo: eyad baba/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

What a difference an inauguration day makes. Hamas on Monday called off until further notice its next release of hostages, scheduled for this weekend, under its ceasefire deal with Israel. “As far as I’m concerned,” President Trump said in response, “if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock—I think it’s an appropriate time—I would say, cancel it, and all bets are off, and let hell break out.”

Mr. Trump clarified that he was speaking for himself, and Israel can make its own call. He underlined that, in his view, all of the hostages should be freed, “not in dribs and drabs, not two and one and three and four.” A day earlier, Mr. Trump spoke straightforwardly about the emaciated condition of the last hostages let out. “They look like Holocaust survivors,” he said. “You know, at some point we’re going to lose our patience.”

These threats from Mr. Trump came with no details, and he has said similar things before. “If the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025,” he wrote in December, “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY.” The cease-fire that was later struck calls for the release of only 33 hostages in its initial phase, while some 60 or so others remain.

Maybe Hamas thinks it can now call the President’s bluff. “Trump must remember that there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties and this is the only way to return the prisoners,” a Hamas official said. “The language of threats has no value and further complicates matters.”

Terrorists obviously don’t like being threatened by an American President, but credibility is crucial to deterrence. And what a change from the last White House. President Biden had endless time for Hamas to play games. Mr. Trump has none. It matters to have a President who says clearly that the onus is on Hamas to free the innocents it has held in appalling conditions since abducting them 494 days ago.

By warning Hamas that the U.S. will support all hell breaking loose, Mr. Trump is offering Israel freedom of action, which could translate into negotiating leverage. The hard decisions about what to do next are up to Israelis and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His defense minister told the military to “prepare at the highest level of alert for any possible scenario in Gaza.” If Hamas doesn’t heed Mr. Trump’s warning, Israel and the U.S. will have little choice but to make Hamas believe it.

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Journal Editorial Report: Paul Gigot interviews Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Photo: Leah Millis/Reuters

10. USAID Failed Because Foreign Aid Doesn’t Work

Excerpts:

Does foreign aid promote economic development in countries that have good policies and institutions, such as open markets and reasonably sound rule of law? The record is discouraging here, too. The 2005 study for the International Monetary Fund found “no evidence that aid works better in better policy or geographical environments, or that certain forms of aid work better than others.”

So if aid is ineffective, what determines whether a country experiences economic progress in the medium or long term? Centuries of economic history and mountains of scholarship provide the answer: domestic policies and institutions, not external factors such as foreign aid.

There is a strong relationship, for example, between economic freedom and prosperity. Countries that establish or move in the direction of free markets, property rights protection and limits on government power foster economic growth, wealth and improvements in the whole range of indicators of human well-being.

The move to shut down USAID is welcome because it recognizes the failure of foreign aid to promote development – and because it will force advocates of development to focus on the real causes of human progress instead.

But Congress established USAID as an executive branch agency and thus must be the body to close it. Just last year, an appropriations act explicitly required that Congress be consulted and notified before any reorganization, consolidation or downsizing of USAID.

There are solid reasons to shut down USAID, but let’s do it lawfully. That would also ensure that any changes will not be easily undone in the future.

USAID Failed Because Foreign Aid Doesn’t Work

It’s a good idea to close down the agency, but it must be done lawfully.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/usaid-failed-because-foreign-aid-doesnt-work

February 10, 2025 • Commentary

By Ian Vásquez

This article appeared on US News and World Report on February 10, 2025.

Elon Musk, head of the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” didn’t mince words when he announced last week that the Trump administration was closing the U.S. Agency for International Development. He said his team was “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” and that it was “time for it to die.”

The crudeness might not have been necessary, but the proposal itself was warranted. Foreign aid has too many (often conflicting) goals, including promoting democracy, stability and geopolitical ties. It is long past time for the U.S. government to scrutinize the entire foreign assistance program and recognize that one of the central goals – promoting economic growth – has been a failure.

That’s why it’s a good idea to close down USAID, drop economic development as a goal of U.S. foreign policy and assign the State Department to manage vital emergency and humanitarian aid. It does, however, need to be done lawfully and in accordance with the Constitution. Unfortunately the Trump administration has not been following the law in its push to shut down the agency, which needs to be rectified. But its approach shouldn’t obscure the fact that the policy change is a worthy one.

Reductions in wasteful aid may not put much of a dent in overall government spending. USAID spent about $32 billion out of a federal budget of $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, or less than 1% of total spending. But the fact that foreign assistance is not accomplishing its goals fully justifies the cuts.

How does USAID spend its budget? Health and humanitarian aid make up the biggest portion of spending, with outlays of $17.4 billion, followed by economic development aid at $7.8 billion.

What has hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign assistance to promote economic development over the decades accomplished? First, the evidence shows that there is no correlation between aid and economic growth. Some countries that receive foreign aid grow, whereas others grow slowly or not at all, according to a 2005 paper for the International Monetary Fund’s research department.

Second, aid that goes to countries that have poor policies and weak institutions can actually harm growth. That is particularly true of government-to-government aid that strengthens regimes whose policies hurt growth. In those cases, aid finances the causes of poor people’s misery in the first place, often spurring corruption and greater debt.

A 2007 World Bank study that looked at 108 countries that received aid between1960 and 1999 concluded that “foreign aid has a negative impact” on political institutions and democratization. Aid windfalls – which often make up a large part of recipient governments’ budgets – weakened checks and balances and other democratic practices as countries became dependent on foreign aid.

It’s a good idea to close down the agency, but it must be done lawfully.

Nobel laureate and Princeton University economist Angus Deaton wrote in his 2013 book “The Great Escape” that “large inflows of foreign aid change local politics for the worse and undercut the institutions needed to foster long-run growth.” That’s because they uphold political structures that inhibit growth and create special interest groups dependent on aid. Deaton argued that “aid also undermines democracy and civic participation,” because it makes the government more reliant on outside donors and less responsive to the needs or desires of the local population.

One attempt to deal with the problem of aid going to countries with poor political or policy environments has been to condition aid on recipient countries implementing market reforms that spur growth. However, such conditionality has been ineffective because government aid agencies have institutional incentives to lend money even when recipient countries fail to live up to their promises.

After all, aid agencies justify their existence and judge their success by how much money they give out. Former World Bank economist Paul Collier observed that whether or not governments undertake reform has little to do with the foreign aid they receive. “Obviously, the donors did not wish to admit that their conditionality was a charade,” he wrote.

Does foreign aid promote economic development in countries that have good policies and institutions, such as open markets and reasonably sound rule of law? The record is discouraging here, too. The 2005 study for the International Monetary Fund found “no evidence that aid works better in better policy or geographical environments, or that certain forms of aid work better than others.”

So if aid is ineffective, what determines whether a country experiences economic progress in the medium or long term? Centuries of economic history and mountains of scholarship provide the answer: domestic policies and institutions, not external factors such as foreign aid.

There is a strong relationship, for example, between economic freedom and prosperity. Countries that establish or move in the direction of free markets, property rights protection and limits on government power foster economic growth, wealth and improvements in the whole range of indicators of human well-being.

The move to shut down USAID is welcome because it recognizes the failure of foreign aid to promote development – and because it will force advocates of development to focus on the real causes of human progress instead.

But Congress established USAID as an executive branch agency and thus must be the body to close it. Just last year, an appropriations act explicitly required that Congress be consulted and notified before any reorganization, consolidation or downsizing of USAID.

There are solid reasons to shut down USAID, but let’s do it lawfully. That would also ensure that any changes will not be easily undone in the future.

About the Author

Ian Vásquez

Vice President for International Studies, Cato Institute

11. Elon Musk’s China Threat

Is there a real threat or is this just a personal attack?

Part of the unspoken debate is about whether we need "so many federal rules around ethics, foreign associations, and security." Some lament that these are what stands in the way of change and efficiency.

DOGE is making some real contributions to transparency that can (and hopefully will) result in a the "Great Reset" of the federal bureaucracy. But how do we square the circle of radical transparency and change with ethics and security?

Excerpts:

During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised harsh tariffs on China as high as 60 percent or even more. After the election, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese officials were hoping that Musk would “ward off” these policies. After taking office, Trump attacked Mexico and Canada instead with 25 percent tariffs (though these have been paused for the moment), while China got just 10 percent. He has also frozen all foreign aid, including to Taiwan. Coincidence? I think not.

It should also be mentioned that Chinese law states that any company operating in China must hand over any data the government wants without question.

Finally, aside from Musk’s titanic conflicts of interest and close ties to hostile foreign powers—which would unquestionably disqualify any ordinary person from even the lowest security clearance—there is the vulnerability he and his adolescent goon squad are creating by making so many wild, abrupt changes.

A big reason that changes to U.S. government computer systems have always been done slowly and carefully is the need to avoid opening up holes in their security systems. Even a small change can let in hackers, from foreign governments to simple criminals. Indeed, the Treasury Department announced in December that it had been hacked by Chinese spies. Letting some fascist tech bro who is convinced everyone but himself is an idiot thrash around in the code of key government systems is so insane that even China itself might think twice about doing so—they’d want to steal data and money, not risk breaking a fifth of the American economy. “This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known,” one federal IT expert told The Atlantic.

America is getting a painful, bludgeoning lesson in why there are so many federal rules around ethics, foreign associations, and security. The government is supposed to be accountable to the people, not the personal plaything of one ultra-billionaire and whatever dictators might be able to twist his arm.

Elon Musk’s China Threat

The shadow president has deep ties to the Chinese dictatorship, and it shows. The risk to national security is unimaginable.

https://prospect.org/world/2025-02-10-elon-musks-china-threat/?utm

by Ryan Cooper February 10, 2025

Expand

Wang Ye/Xinhua via AP

Elon Musk meets with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing, April 28, 2024.

Thus far in President Trump’s second term, shadow president Elon Musk’s rampage through America’s basic constitutional structure has gotten extensive coverage in the press. It is becoming clear that Musk and his goon squad of tech bros in their early twenties are attempting to seize direct control of the system by which the federal government disburses more than $5 trillion in payments annually, apparently so they can pick and choose who and what gets funded. And they have rifled through personnel files, scientific data involving health care and the environment, and bunches of other government information, for purposes of either propaganda or opposition research.

But there is another aspect to Musk’s rule in Washington that is partly flying under the radar: the national-security threat, particularly regarding China. Musk has huge and extensive connections to the Chinese dictatorship, both personally and through his businesses, and he has a long history of bending over backwards to appease its desires.

Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of ‘How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics.’ He was previously a national correspondent for The Week.

12. White House bars AP reporter from Oval Office because of AP style policy on 'Gulf of America'

Should the press have to bend to the edicts from the White House? And should the press be treated this way when they disagree with the President? The press is supposed to be adversarial to hold the government accountable. Do we not support that principle (e.g., support and defend the Constitution?)

White House bars AP reporter from Oval Office because of AP style policy on 'Gulf of America'

AP · February 11, 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — The White House blocked an Associated Press reporter from an event in the Oval Office on Tuesday after demanding the news agency alter its style on the Gulf of Mexico, which President Donald Trump has ordered renamed the Gulf of America.

The reporter, whom the AP would not identify, tried to enter the White House event as usual Tuesday afternoon and was turned away. Later, a second AP reporter was barred from a late-evening event in the White House Diplomatic Room.

The highly unusual ban, which Trump administration officials had threatened earlier Tuesday unless the AP changed the style on the Gulf, could have constitutional free-speech implications.

Julie Pace, AP’s senior vice president and executive editor, called the administration’s move unacceptable.

“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism,” Pace said in a statement. “Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.”

The Trump administration made no immediate announcements about the moves, and there was no indication any other journalists were affected. Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the media. On Friday, the administration ejected a second group of news organizations from Pentagon office space.

Before his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump announced plans to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name to the “Gulf of America” — and signed an executive order to do so as soon as he was in office. Mexico’s president responded sarcastically and others noted that the name change would probably not affect global usage.

Besides the United States, the body of water — named the Gulf of Mexico for more than 400 years — also borders Mexico.

The AP said last month, three days after Trump’s inauguration, that it would continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico while noting Trump’s decision to rename it as well. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP says it must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.

AP style is not only used by the agency. The AP Stylebook is relied on by thousands of journalists and other writers globally.

Barring the AP reporter was an affront to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bars the government from impeding the freedom of the press, said Tim Richardson, program director of journalism and misinformation for PEN America.

The White House Correspondents Association called the White House move unacceptable and called on the administration to change course.

“The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decision,” said Eugene Daniels, WHCA’s president.

This week, Google Maps began using “Gulf of America,” saying it had a “longstanding practice” of following the U.S. government’s lead on such matters. The other leading online map provider, Apple Maps, was still using “Gulf of Mexico” earlier Tuesday but by early evening had changed to “Gulf of America” on some browsers, though at least one search produced results for both.

Trump also decreed that the mountain in Alaska known as Mount McKinley and then by its Indigenous name, Denali, be shifted back to commemorating the 25th president. President Barack Obama had ordered it renamed Denali in 2015. AP said last month it will use the official name change to Mount McKinley because the area lies solely in the United States and Trump has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country.

___

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

AP · February 11, 2025

13. Building Resilience: Closing the Climate Knowledge Gap in the U.S. Military

Conclusion:

In conclusion, by embedding climate-focused education into existing curricula and tailoring programs to meet the requirements of various military departments, the DoD can ensure that its personnel are ready to tackle the multifaceted challenges of climate change without compromising core mission objectives. As military operations increasingly intersect with climate realities, fostering a culture of climate literacy will empower future leaders to anticipate disruptions, devise innovative solutions, and maintain operational readiness in the face of unforeseen events. The U.S. military can enhance its resilience and capacity to safeguard national interests and contribute to global stability in a rapidly changing world. By committing to comprehensive climate education, the DoD can transform potential vulnerabilities into strategic advantages, ensuring its forces remain capable and effective in an unpredictable future.

Building Resilience: Closing the Climate Knowledge Gap in the U.S. Military

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/12/building-resilience-closing-the-climate-knowledge-gap-in-the-u-s-military/

by Dr. Emily Pesicka

02.12.2025 at 06:00am

Abstract

Climate change is a “threat multiplier” that intensifies existing vulnerabilities, disrupts operations, and introduces new security risks. While the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has made progress in addressing climate risks through energy modernization, infrastructure resilience, and strategic planning, a critical gap remains: comprehensive climate education for warfighters. This gap limits the military’s ability to adapt to the evolving security challenges of climate change.

This article highlights the DoD’s role in fostering climate literacy to enhance operational readiness and resilience in an evolving global landscape. First, the article begins by examining the distinction between weather and climate, emphasizing the implications of this understanding for military preparedness. The article then explores how the DoD is addressing climate change through infrastructure upgrades, energy modernization, and strategic planning, but further efforts are needed, including enhanced warfighter education, while partner nations are also prioritizing climate literacy and resilience to strengthen global security. Next, the article outlines the critical need for climate change education across all ranks, advocating for comprehensive curricula within military education institutions to build a climate-literate force. Finally, the article discusses the importance of tailoring climate change programs to the specific missions of various departments, ensuring these initiatives strengthen operational capabilities without compromising existing mission requirements.

By incorporating climate-focused scenarios into training, wargaming, and strategic planning, the DoD can empower its workforce to navigate climate disruptions without compromising mission priorities. Climate literacy involves understanding the science and impacts of climate change and developing strategies for resilience, adaptation, and mitigation. Tailored programs aligned with departmental missions can equip warfighters with the skills to anticipate and mitigate risks, integrate climate considerations into operational planning, and enhance overall mission readiness. This article outlines actionable strategies to build a climate-literate force, transforming vulnerabilities into strategic advantages and ensuring the military remains effective in a rapidly changing global environment.

Article

Climate change is transforming global security landscapes with significant implications for national defense. Rising sea levels endanger coastal military bases, and extreme weather events disrupt operations, making climate change a powerful “threat multiplier” that intensifies existing challenges and creates new ones. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has recognized this pressing reality, integrating climate considerations into strategic operations, infrastructure resilience, energy modernization, and long-term defense planning. The DoD defines climate change as “Variations in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer that encompass increases and decreases in temperature, shifts in precipitation, and changing risk of certain types of severe weather events (DODD 4715.21)”. Yet, as climate-driven disruptions become more severe, assessing whether the DoD’s current approach is robust enough to confront these escalating threats is critical. Balancing immediate operational needs with sustainable, climate-resilient strategies is a significant challenge amidst monetary constraints. Although the DoD has focused on strategic operations, infrastructure, and long-term planning, there is a clear need to enhance climate education for warfighters.

This article asserts that while necessary, the current emphasis on protecting installations and energy security falls short. The DoD must also proactively address the gaps in warfighter education to safeguard national interests, preserve global stability, and ensure lethality into the future. Climate literacy requires understanding the climate system, human impacts on it, and the skills needed to make climate-informed decisions to either mitigate or adapt. A climate-literate workforce understands the science of climate change and its impacts on military operations and possesses the skills to implement strategies for resilience, adaptation, mitigation, and sustainability. Climate literacy and education are crucial for enhancing mission readiness, reducing security risks, and ensuring long-term operational effectiveness in a changing environment. This emphasizes three areas in which the DoD can proactively support climate literacy efforts in climate education, including integrating comprehensive climate change curricula into military education institutions, tailoring climate-focused training to the specific missions of various departments, and ensuring that climate education bolsters rather than compromises existing mission requirements, ultimately enhancing operational readiness and resilience in a rapidly changing global environment.

Comprehensive training and education on the realities of climate change are essential to prepare warfighters for the multifaceted challenges they will face in the field, from shifting weather patterns to resource scarcity and disrupted supply chains. By equipping them with a deep understanding of how climate impacts affect operational environments and military strategies, we ensure they are ready to adapt, respond, and effectively manage emerging threats as they unfold in real time.

Understanding the Difference Between Weather and Climate: Implications for Military Readiness

Distinguishing between weather and climate is essential for effective planning, decision-making, and strategy in an era when environmental conditions increasingly impact global security. Although often used interchangeably, these terms describe different phenomena that require unique approaches, especially for the U.S. military, whose operations are heavily influenced by environmental factors.

Weather refers to short-term atmospheric conditions, such as temperature, humidity, precipitation, and wind, typically measured over hours or days. These conditions can fluctuate rapidly and affect military activities, such as training, operations, and logistics. For instance, a severe thunderstorm or sudden heatwave may disrupt immediate plans. Recent examples of unpredicted weather events include concurrent hurricanes, increasingly destructive wildfires, and severe deep freezes.

Climate, on the other hand, encompasses long-term patterns and averages of weather over decades. It provides critical insights into expected regional conditions, such as droughts, monsoons, or extreme cold, which are essential for long-term planning, infrastructure development, and resource allocation.

Managing weather involves real-time responses and tactical adjustments. Service members rely on forecasting to delay operations, adjust troop deployments, or reschedule activities in response to immediate risks like hurricanes or extreme heat. In contrast, managing climate requires a forward-looking, strategic approach. Long-term shifts, such as rising sea levels, melting Arctic ice, and more frequent extreme weather events, demand resilience planning. Coastal installations may require fortifications against flooding, and Arctic operations must adapt to changing navigability and geopolitical implications of ice melt. These measures ensure long-term operational effectiveness. However, climate impacts the frequency and severity of seasonal and nonseasonal weather, making predictions increasingly difficult and unreliable. Future military operations will differ from historical experience as climate conditions continually alter seasonal weather and temperature patterns, introducing new challenges that will not align with previous operational expectations.

Overlooking, either weather or climate, can jeopardize mission success and national security. Together, they influence everything from logistics to strategic planning. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events and disasters—such as hurricanes intensified by warmer oceans or droughts followed by wildfires—demonstrates how weather and climate interact to create cascading challenges. Without a clear understanding of these dynamics, service members risk misjudging priorities, compromising both immediate and long-term objectives. Educating the entire force ensures that service members are prepared to anticipate and adapt to the complex challenges of climate change. Climate literacy is a strategic advantage that bolsters readiness, resilience, and mission success.

Advancing Climate Security Strategies: DoD and Partner Nations

The DoD has taken initial steps to address climate considerations strategically by integrating them into its operations and planning. Still, additional efforts are needed to holistically meet the challenges posed by climate change. Investments have been made to upgrade infrastructure to withstand extreme weather and rising sea levels, such as flood mitigation efforts at Naval Station Norfolk and enhancements to building codes and construction practices. Energy modernization efforts are also underway, with investments in renewable energy sources and advancements in energy efficiency across many military installations. Long-term defense planning documents, including the National Defense Strategy and the Climate Adaptation Plan, reflect the DoD’s commitment to addressing climate risks and ensuring future readiness. While these efforts represent a solid foundation of what must be done, they must be expanded to address crucial aspects of achieving a climate-ready force through warfighter education.

Addressing climate change has become a top priority for NATO, as evidenced by its comprehensive efforts to integrate climate considerations into core tasks, enhance resilience, and promote sustainable military practices. At the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid, member nations pledged to incorporate climate change considerations into all of NATO’s core tasks. This commitment was reaffirmed at the 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius, where Allies further agreed to modernize their infrastructure, military capabilities, and technologies to ensure resilience in evolving operational environments. They also celebrated the launch of the NATO Centre of Excellence for Climate Change and Security in Montreal, Canada. During the Vilnius Summit, NATO unveiled three key reports. The 2023 Climate Change and Security Impact Assessment highlighted the operational challenges posed by extreme weather and its impact on the lifespan of military equipment. The Compendium of Best Practices showcased examples of how member states are adapting to climate change. Finally, the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Mapping and Analytical Methodology offered guidance and tools for measuring emissions from NATO facilities.

Many partner nations and allies also recognize the critical importance of climate literacy within their military forces. For example, several NATO member states have incorporated climate change considerations into their defense strategies, acknowledging the growing security risks posed by environmental shifts. In particular, countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have integrated climate change into their military training and operations, emphasizing the need for adaptation to changing weather patterns and the operational challenges they create. Additionally, some nations, such as Sweden and Germany, have developed specialized military units focused on climate resilience and sustainable defense practices. These initiatives strengthen their military capabilities and enhance collective security, promoting shared understanding and cooperation on climate-related threats. As global climate patterns continue to shift, the need for internationally coordinated efforts in climate literacy will become even more urgent, ensuring that all military forces are equipped to operate in increasingly unpredictable environments.

The Critical Need for Climate Change Education Across All Ranks

While meteorological and oceanographic officers and technicians play an essential role in anticipating and briefing installation and command leaders about immediate weather challenges, educating the entire military force about climate change is crucial. Climate change education addresses broader, long-term challenges that extend beyond the scope of specialized meteorological and oceanographic officers, as well as technicians who are trained to forecast short-term atmospheric conditions in order to provide actionable insights for mission planning. However, climate change introduces long-term shifts and systemic impacts that go beyond immediate forecasts, including shifting baselines for what is considered “normal” weather in a region, increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and systemic impacts on infrastructure, resources, and mission sustainability. For example, a commander or operations planner must consider how rising sea levels will affect a coastal base over decades—a challenge that exceeds the scope of short-term weather forecasting. Climate change also creates complex challenges that reshape the strategic and operational environment. Geopolitical tensions arising from climate-driven resource scarcity, migration, and regional instability demand informed decision-making. Additionally, planners and logisticians must understand vulnerabilities in military assets and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Officers, in particular, are likely to benefit significantly from climate literacy, as it could enhance their ability to integrate long-term environmental considerations into strategic planning and policy development, which is not commonly taken into account now. With a solid understanding of climate trends and changing weather patterns, officers can anticipate how shifting conditions impact force readiness, regional stability, and resource competition. This knowledge ensures that their decisions promote mission sustainability and resilience, whether they are managing infrastructure, advising policymakers, or coordinating multi-domain operations. By incorporating climate literacy into their strategic toolkit, officers are better prepared to address the evolving challenges of a climate-impacted world.

Strategic planners also need to consider the long-term implications of climate change on global security, including rising sea levels threatening naval bases, the competition for Arctic resources, and the ways in which climate-induced migration might drive instability in already volatile regions.

Enlisted personnel on the ground often face the immediate consequences of climate-influenced conditions. Their ability to adapt effectively hinges on understanding how climate trends exacerbate operational challenges, such as extreme heat impairing equipment functionality and endangering personnel safety, increased flooding disrupting navigation and field operations, and the spread of disease vectors creating new operational risks due to shifting climatic conditions, among others. Maintenance teams, for example, must consider how higher temperatures impact vehicle or aircraft performance or how extreme cold affects munitions storage or battery life. By integrating climate literacy into their training, enlisted members can make informed decisions that directly enhance mission readiness and operational success. Addressing climate change requires cultural and organizational shifts that depend on a well-informed force. A climate-literate workforce can proactively identify vulnerabilities and propose solutions within their areas of responsibility. Distributed knowledge enables adaptive and cohesive responses.

Ultimately, climate change is a national security threat that cannot be addressed by specialized groups alone. The U.S. military requires a whole-of-force approach in the same way cybersecurity and counterterrorism training has been institutionalized across all ranks. Officers and enlisted personnel alike must be educated to ensure cohesive and effective responses to these challenges. While meteorological and oceanographic officers and technicians remain essential for short-term forecasting, climate change affects the military at every level, shaping strategy, operations, and tactics.

Tailoring Military Climate Change Programs

In 2022, a National Defense Strategy Climate Literacy Sub-Working Group compiled information on “existing curricula addressing both climate change and national/international security, grand strategy, foreign policy, joint warfighting, and other defense- and security-related topics.” This effort’s results specified that “climate security-related education is underway in professional military education (PME) and Joint PME institutions, but with significant variability.” For example, at the U.S. Naval War College, the Climate Change and National Security master’s course introduces students to the basics of climate science, mainly focusing on the many climate security implications impacting the U.S. military. Additionally, at the Naval Postgraduate School, the Critical Infrastructure Analysis and Defense course and the Environmental Security course support warfighter education that is specific to their degree program while bolstering knowledge in climate science, security, and resilience. This variability among programs reflects differing institutional priorities and approaches to integrating climate literacy into education goals and outcomes. However, this variability translates into real-world decisions, and streamlined education relating to climate literacy is necessary to enhance the resilience of our military force when confronted with uncertainty.

In response to this inconsistency of climate security-related education, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense drafted a Memorandum directing all intermediate- and senior-level PME programs to integrate Climate Security Learning Outcomes into Professional Military Education. This Memorandum recommended climate security learning outcomes to achieve a climate-literate workforce. However, this memorandum falls short of supporting non-PME programs and institutions and fails to provide guidance on achieving these learning outcomes. In the absence of clear, actionable guidance on the interpretation of climate security within the framework of climate literacy, there is a significant risk that learning outcomes may be misconstrued or fail to align with the strategic objectives of the DoD. Such inconsistencies across programs and military education institutions undermine the broader imperative of fostering climate security integration throughout the force.

A proactive approach to achieving a climate-literate workforce requires a structured climate education that combines climate sciences and social sciences at all military institutions. Warfighters should gain in-depth knowledge of climate models, environmental changes, their implications for military operations, and their impacts on assets. Equally important is understanding the socio-economic effects of climate change, including resource conflicts, migration patterns, and political instability, particularly in already vulnerable areas. By embedding these critical climate literacy courses into warfighter training, the DoD will enhance operational readiness and adaptive capacity, preparing personnel to effectively navigate the evolving climate conditions while managing looming global threats.

Military warfighters and leaders are already receiving some education on climate-related topics through various courses and programs within military education institutions. For example, courses in operational planning often incorporate scenarios involving extreme weather conditions, requiring students to think through the implications that floods, hurricanes, or droughts have on logistics, mission execution, and force protection. Additionally, programs like the Army’s Environmental Compliance Officer course or the Navy’s Environmental Readiness training provide instruction on the environmental regulations and risks that leaders must navigate in their operational areas. Additionally, the Naval University Collaboration on Energy & Environment (NUCEE) was established in 2021, unifying three primary military institutions – the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Naval War College (NWC), and U.S. Naval Academy (USNA), “to collaborate on climate security issues, share research and education, and host cooperative events to support climate literacy.” These types of training help leaders understand how environmental changes impact mission readiness, force protection, and the welfare of troops on the ground.

While valuable, there are three reasons why this approach is not enough to address the complex problems created by climate change. First, climate education must be fully integrated into all military education curricula to ensure a comprehensive understanding of its impacts on strategic, operational, and tactical levels. Ad hoc approaches, minimal exposure, or superficial “greenwashing” of educational content are inadequate for preparing military leaders to navigate the complexities of climate change. For example, military operations in the Arctic are increasingly influenced by melting ice, which opens new sea routes and poses significant logistical and security challenges. A cohesive and robust integration of climate literacy will provide warfighters with the critical thinking and problem-solving skills necessary to address these multifaceted security risks, including the destabilizing effects of resource competition, humanitarian crises from extreme weather events, disruptions to global supply chains, and emerging challenges not yet realized.

Warfighters must learn how to build partnerships and coordinate efforts with other agencies and international allies, as climate change is a global security issue.

By embedding climate education into wargaming exercises, strategic planning courses, and logistics management, military education institutions can prepare future leaders to assess the impacts of climate change on force readiness, base infrastructure, and global missions. For instance, rising sea levels threaten coastal bases, while frequent wildfires and floods affect training and operational environments. Warfighters equipped with climate literacy can incorporate environmental risk assessments into mission planning, enabling them to anticipate and mitigate climate-driven challenges across global operations. This integration fosters a culture of resilience, sustainability, and preparedness, ensuring military leaders can adapt to a rapidly changing strategic landscape and continue to protect national security interests effectively.

Second, military education institutions must tailor climate programs to the specific needs of each department, aligning education with the unique missions they support. Climate change impacts various aspects of military operations differently, and a one-size-fits-all approach will not equip leaders for the complexities they will face. For instance, logistics officers need in-depth knowledge of how extreme weather events—such as hurricanes, floods, or wildfires—disrupt supply chains, delay troop movements, and damage critical infrastructure like ports, airfields, and roads. They must also understand the implications of new shipping lanes opening in the Arctic due to melting ice, which will alter global supply routes and force realignments in military strategy.

Meanwhile, intelligence professionals should focus on how climate change intensifies geopolitical tensions, particularly in regions like the Middle East and North Africa, where water scarcity and agricultural failure contribute to conflict and mass displacement. Understanding these dynamics will allow intelligence officers to predict unrest better and guide military and humanitarian responses.

Furthermore, strategic planners also need to consider the long-term implications of climate change on global security, including rising sea levels threatening naval bases, the competition for Arctic resources, and the ways in which climate-induced migration might drive instability in already volatile regions. For example, the U.S. Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia, is already facing recurrent flooding due to sea-level rise, threatening its operational readiness. By identifying the specific climate knowledge relevant to each department’s mission, military education institutions can ensure that personnel at every level are equipped to mitigate risks, anticipate challenges, and adapt to the evolving security landscape posed by a changing climate. Tailoring these programs will create a more resilient and proactive force capable of addressing the broad spectrum of climate-related threats.

Additionally, warfighters must learn how to build partnerships and coordinate efforts with other agencies and international allies, as climate change is a global security issue. For instance, officers attending Joint PME courses are already trained to work in multinational environments. Still, climate education would equip them to understand the broader implications of environmental shifts on global security dynamics. Developing skills in interagency coordination, diplomacy, and regional climate impacts will allow the military to strengthen defense relationships and enhance global resilience. This comprehensive climate education will enable warfighters to support, and be supported by, a diverse array of partners as they face increasingly complex security environments.

Third, integrating climate-focused education into military education institutions curricula should not come at the expense of existing degree requirements or mission priorities; instead, it should enhance and support the overall objectives of each department in a robust, meaningful, and applicable way. Climate education is not a separate or competing priority but a critical component that strengthens military readiness, operational effectiveness, and strategic planning. For example, rather than reducing the time spent on intelligence coursework, climate-focused modules could be integrated to teach intelligence analysts how to assess the security implications of climate-related phenomena, such as resource scarcity, population displacement, or geopolitical tensions over contested Arctic routes. This understanding equips intelligence officers with the tools to identify emerging threats and provide actionable insights that enhance strategic decision-making and mission preparedness.

Climate scenarios could be woven into existing frameworks in wargaming exercises and strategic planning courses. Commanders could be tasked with planning operations for extreme weather events, sea-level rise, or drought conditions that may affect deployment timelines or humanitarian missions. For example, future naval leaders could be asked to plan an amphibious operation in a region experiencing unprecedented storm activity due to climate change, forcing them to consider how environmental factors affect troop movements and resource allocation. This exercise bolsters their understanding of operational planning and prepares them for real-world challenges they are likely to face.

Additionally, integrating climate risks into intelligence and geopolitical studies could deepen warfighters’ ability to analyze and respond to conflicts driven by climate-induced migration, resource scarcity, or instability in fragile regions. For instance, intelligence officers could explore how water scarcity in areas like the Sahel or Central Asia exacerbates local tensions and contributes to insurgencies, giving them a clearer understanding of the root causes of conflict. Rather than adding unnecessary complexity, climate-focused education aligns directly with the goals of existing programs, making warfighters more capable and adaptable without sacrificing core educational or operational priorities. By embedding climate considerations into all military education institutions, institutions ensure that future military leaders are equipped to meet mission objectives in an increasingly unpredictable global environment while enhancing their ability to confront various security challenges.

Conclusion

In conclusion, by embedding climate-focused education into existing curricula and tailoring programs to meet the requirements of various military departments, the DoD can ensure that its personnel are ready to tackle the multifaceted challenges of climate change without compromising core mission objectives. As military operations increasingly intersect with climate realities, fostering a culture of climate literacy will empower future leaders to anticipate disruptions, devise innovative solutions, and maintain operational readiness in the face of unforeseen events. The U.S. military can enhance its resilience and capacity to safeguard national interests and contribute to global stability in a rapidly changing world. By committing to comprehensive climate education, the DoD can transform potential vulnerabilities into strategic advantages, ensuring its forces remain capable and effective in an unpredictable future.

Tags: climate change, Military Education, Military strategy, Operational Planning

About The Author

Dr. Emily Pesicka
Dr. Emily Pesicka currently serves as an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) postdoctoral research fellow at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) with an appointment in the Energy Academic Group. Dr. Pesicka is the co-lead of the NPS Climate Security Network. Before her current role, Dr. Pesicka held a teaching position in the Political Science Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa from 2015 to 2021. Dr. Pesicka's research advances resilience and surprise theories relating to the U.S. military, critical infrastructure systems, and military and civilian communities. Dr. Pesicka's research within the EAG focuses on climate security, energy security, national security, and climate security education.

14. ALL HANDS: An Introduction to Trump’s National Security Approach & Team

ALL HANDS: An Introduction to Trump’s National Security Approach & Team

Personalities, Opinions, Facts, and Infighting Will Shape National Security as They Always Have, But This Time, There is a Radical Departure from Established American Foreign Policy.

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/all-hands-an-introduction-to-trump-s-national-security-approach-team?utm

STRATEGY CENTRAL

For & By Practitioners

By Monte Erfourth – February 11, 2025

Introduction

The second Trump administration has brought about a significant change in U.S. foreign policy and national security priorities. Unlike previous administrations that favored multilateralism and institutional diplomacy, Trump's national security team operates based on a framework of economic nationalism, strategic deterrence, and transactional alliances. This article examines the fundamental principles of Trump's foreign policy theory and explores how it differs from traditional U.S. approaches. It will also introduce and assess the roles and priorities of key national security officials, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Although brief, an analysis of the internal tensions within Trump’s team are outlined. Ideological differences could affect the administration’s ability to implement a cohesive strategy. If his first Administration is any indication, Trump will likely pit his national security leads against each other to see who holds the strongest argument aligning with his views. How well foreign policy functions in this scenario remains difficult to determine.

Trump’s Foreign Policy Theory and Its Departure from Traditional U.S. Strategy

Donald Trump’s foreign policy significantly departs from the post-World War II framework, emphasizing alliances, free trade, and collective security. Instead, his approach prioritizes economic nationalism, military deterrence, and unilateralism over multilateral institutions, fundamentally altering how the United States competes globally.

Core Tenets of Trump’s Foreign Policy

America First Nationalism

Views global institutions such as NATO, the United Nations, and the WTO as constraints on U.S. sovereignty.
Prefers bilateral deals over multilateral agreements, arguing that international organizations dilute U.S. influence.

Unilateral Economic Leverage

Employs tariffs, sanctions, and economic pressure to secure better trade terms.
Marks a departure from post-Cold War economic liberalism, which promoted global trade interdependence.

Deterrence Over Intervention

Avoids nation-building efforts (e.g., Bush’s Iraq intervention, Obama’s democracy promotion).
Favors targeted military strikes over long-term counterinsurgency operations.

Transactional Alliances

Skeptical of traditional alliances unless they yield direct benefits.
Pressures NATO members to increase defense spending and engages in personal diplomacy with leaders such as Putin and Kim Jong Un.

How Trump’s Approach Differs from Traditional U.S. Foreign Policy

For decades, U.S. foreign policy has been shaped by liberal internationalism, which relies on:

Alliances like NATO and the UN to maintain global stability.
Free trade and economic interdependence to prevent conflict.
A commitment to democracy promotion and human rights.

Trump challenges these principles, arguing that:

Alliances should be strictly transactional.
Economic nationalism is preferable to free trade.
Democracy promotion should not dictate U.S. foreign policy.
Hard power is valued, and soft power is not.

This shift toward unilateralism, economic nationalism, and the rejection of soft power sharply contrasts with the U.S. strategy of incorporating allies into a rules-based international order that emerged after 1945. Trump’s viewpoint aligns ideologically with China’s foreign policy and echoes 19th-century mercantilism and imperialism. Some of his key national security leaders advocate maintaining much of the traditional American approach, but they will face challenges in persuading Trump to stick with it.

Internal Tensions: Trump vs. His National Security Officials

Despite broad vocal alignment with Trump’s vision, his national security team exhibits ideological differences that could shape policy outcomes. Key figures include:

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz – A More Pro-Alliance Approach

Supports Trump’s focus on China but considers alliances like AUKUS and the Quad essential.
More willing than Trump to work with NATO and European allies in select situations.
Has purged the National Security Council (NSC) of career staff to ensure ideological alignment.
Remains committed to traditional alliances and partner networks but will likely bend to Trump’s viewpoint.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio – A Hardline China Hawk

Aligns with Trump on confronting China but prefers a coalition-based strategy.
Strong advocate for democracy promotion in Latin America, diverging from Trump’s transactional diplomacy.
Supports designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – Anti-Interventionist, Pro-Reform

A vocal intelligence community critic, she aims to “depoliticize” intelligence and increase transparency.
Opposes regime-change wars but supports targeted counterterrorism operations.
Aims to restructure the intelligence community to eliminate inefficiencies, yet may overlook efforts to enhance its effectiveness.
Supports robust border defense.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth – A Militaristic “America First” Doctrine

Emphasizes revitalizing the U.S. military’s warrior ethos.
Prioritizes great power competition with China over counterinsurgency.
Seeks to reduce Pentagon bureaucracy and shift resources toward military readiness.
Promotes “peace through strength” but rejects interventionist policy. Hegseth has not clarified how to reconcile these oppositional concepts.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Trump’s National Security Team

Trump’s national security appointments reflect his "America First" agenda, emphasizing economic nationalism, military strength, and transactional diplomacy. However, the team’s internal diversity of perspectives and Trump’s mercurial behavior may lead to strategic inconsistencies.

Strengths

Emphasis on military deterrence strengthens U.S. credibility with adversaries.
Focus on China as the primary threat aligns with bipartisan concerns.
Push for defense industrial expansion supports long-term military readiness.

Weaknesses

Strained alliances may weaken U.S. influence in multilateral coalitions.
Inconsistencies among advisors (e.g., Rubio’s interventionist stance vs. Gabbard’s and Hegseth’s non-interventionism) could create policy confusion.
Heavy reliance on economic coercion risks retaliatory actions from allies and adversaries alike.
China may take advantage of Trump’s rejection of democracy promotion and foreign assistance by providing aid to expand its influence and advantage.

Conclusion

As Trump’s second term unfolds, the success of his foreign policy will hinge on whether his national security team can implement his vision cohesively—or whether ideological rifts and capricious Presidential directives will result in contradictory policies that undermine the administration’s effectiveness. It is reasonable to speculate that Trump's impulsive decision-making, the inexperience and sycophancy of his new national security team, and his tendency to disregard facts in favor of personal opinion could pose significant obstacles to the formulation and execution of a coherent foreign policy.

A president’s approach to national security is most effective when informed by seasoned advisors empowered to challenge assumptions, present nuanced perspectives, and provide evidence-based recommendations. Trump’s governance style prioritizes instinct and personal loyalty over strategic planning and institutional expertise. It is possible that Trump's administration will not publish a National Security, Defense, or Intelligence Strategy further complicating large agency's ability to pursue policy aims. These documents have been far from perfect since the end of the Cold War. Still, they have provided enough guidance to DIME agencies to focus on Presidential priorities and coordinate efforts that could be characterized as marginally effective and, at times, very effective. How effective the National Security team can apply comprehensive national power without a strategy or fact-based policy remains to be seen.

This dynamic can pose several challenges. First, a national security team made up of inexperienced individuals prioritizing loyalty over expertise could reinforce Trump’s existing biases instead of providing the necessary counterbalance for effective policymaking. The lack of critical voices may create strategic blind spots, especially when engaging with adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran, who have long-term goals and exploit American inconsistencies. Furthermore, if Trump continues to overlook intelligence assessments and expert analyses in favor of his personal worldview, the United States risks adopting reactionary or contradictory policies that could undermine long-term strategic interests. Both allies and adversaries may find it difficult to interpret U.S. intentions, resulting in diplomatic miscalculations or a loss of credibility in international negotiations.

Moreover, national security requires institutional stability and predictability, which Trump's leadership style has disrupted. If the past is prologue, the frequent turnover among top officials, abrupt policy reversals, and public disputes within the administration could create an environment of uncertainty that would weaken U.S. deterrence capabilities and embolden adversaries. If we suppose Trump’s approach remains unstructured and dismissive of institutional expertise, there is a real possibility that the U.S. national security posture will become increasingly fragile, leaving the nation less prepared to respond effectively to emerging threats. Ultimately, while Trump’s instincts may inspire bold moves, the lack of a disciplined decision-making process could result in strategic missteps that undermine, rather than bolster, U.S. global standing and security.

Works Cited

Walt, Stephen M. “What IR Theory Predicts About Trump 2.0.” Foreign Policy, 3 Feb. 2025.
Clary, Christopher. “Do Waltz’s Big Ideas Clash with Trump’s Vision?” Good Authority, 14 Jan. 2025.
“160 National Security Staffers Are Sent Home as White House Aligns Team to Trump’s Agenda.” AP News, 22 Jan. 2025.
“Trump Tapping Several Who Served in First Administration for National Security Council Roles.” CBS News, 22 Dec. 2024.
“U.S. National Security Advisors Talk Top Foreign Policy Challenges.” United States Institute of Peace, 16 Jan. 2025.
“How Michael Waltz Might Guide White House Foreign Policy.” Good Authority, 14 Jan. 2025.
“Incoming Trump Team Is Asking White House National Security Council Civil Servants About Their Loyalty.” PBS News, 13 Jan. 2025.
“Incoming US NSA Mike Waltz Indicates Continuation of Several Elements of Biden’s China Policy.” Economic Times, 16 Jan. 2025.
“Organization of the National Security Council and Subcommittees.” The White House, 20 Jan. 2025.

15. Microsoft announces plan to slide $22 billion IVAS contract over to Anduril

Microsoft announces plan to slide $22 billion IVAS contract over to Anduril - Breaking Defense

While the government still needs to bless the deal, if approved, the tech startup would oversee the entire mixed-reality program including the development and production of the current hardware and software.

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · February 11, 2025

The Army received the new IVAS 1.2 prototype for a series of tests. (US Army)

WASHINGTON — Microsoft is seeking to transfer its entire IVAS contract over to Anduril, in a stunning twist to the long-running saga to deliver mixed-reality goggles to troops.

The move — which would see Anduril assume oversight of the entire program, including development of the current hardware and software, hiring decisions on staff and takeover of production — comes as the Army is considering launching a follow-on IVAS competition given the years-long delays on getting the system operational.

The service has not blessed that newly unfurled “contact novation” and did not respond to questions from Breaking Defense about the program or the proposed shift. However, executives from both companies expressed confidence the Army will back the move.

“We’ve been working together for quite some time now… [and] we are signing a strategic partnership that will take IVAS into the future,” Robin Seiler, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for mixed reality, told reporters ahead of today’s official announcement.

Seiler added that Microsoft Azure would be the preferred hyperscale cloud for IVAS.

The bid to slide current contact work on the 10-year, $22 billion contact comes at a critical juncture for the program. Despite years of program challenges and a heads-up display redesign that is still being tested, Army leaders have not officially said if they will cancel IVAS work under the original contract or do a limited production run. However, they are gearing up for a new competition and even meeting with companies today to answer questions about an IVAS Next competition and possible requirements.

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, who made his tech breakthrough with the commercial Oculus VR headset, has been teasing development of a new mixed-reality device with military applications. In September 2024, the tech startup announced its steps toward assuming the IVAS contract with a Microsoft partnership for the integration of new sensors and the Lattice platform into the device.

So, with IVAS Next in the wings and their positioning as a likely competitor, why would Anduril want to take over the troubled program now?

By taking over management of the current contract just ahead of findings of a make-or-break operational assessment, Luckey’s team could be asked to produce a limited number of the latest IVAS devices designed by Microsoft, or left with a canceled deal. At the same time, though, his team would have additional time working with Army leaders on the program, and access to a mix of production and research and development funding, Luckey confirmed.

One industry source who has been anticipating today’s announcement previously said it’s that access to government funding that will give Aundril an advantage over other IVAS Next competitors.

“They should invest their own capital to architect and develop IVAS technology which the Army can acquire and field affordably,” the industry source said. “If they use the contract as a vehicle to capture Army subsidies, they will be re-running the problematic defense prime playbook we have seen for decades.”

When asked about the perception of such an unfair advantage, Luckey said that is just the reality of being the incumbent and there was always going to be a company in that position.

“The people who are already doing it will definitely have an advantage over people who are coming in and starting from scratch,” he added. “Anduril is no stranger to fighting incumbency. I think that if people have better things, they’re gonna be able to come in.”

Long Road To ‘Next’

The first Trump administration started the IVAS effort based around Microsoft’s commercially available HoloLens 2 heads-up display, with the goal of providing soldiers with a single device they could use both in combat (including under the cover of darkness) and for virtual training.

That work eventually led to a 10-year production contract valued up to $22 billion. However, shortly after the 2021 award, a host of problems publicly emerged including soldiers complaining of discomfort, dizziness, nausea, and system reliability.

Although Army leaders publicly stood behind the program at first, they began tempering expectations and even split the program up into three initial versions — the 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 iterations of the goggles. (The service has acquired 5,000 1.0 units, with plans to possibly acquire an additional 5,000 1.1 units for limited use.)

Version 1.2 was billed as the key make-or-break upgrade — an iteration to correct past problems, in part, by transitioning the device from a helmet-like display with a 70-degree field-of-view, to a hinged, flat design with a 60-degree field-of-view that soldiers can flip up.

The service hasn’t released details of initial testing with that new redesign, and a recent Director of Test and Evaluation report on fiscal 2024 activities said the service is now expected to detail findings of an operational assessment of IVAS 1.2 in the April through June timeframe. That testing is designed to help Army leaders decide if they want to skip production, do a limited run or dive into a larger bulk purchase.

Based on that decision, Luckey said Anduril would be ready to move out, and any large-scale buy of IVAS 1.2 or Next could eventually be produced at the company’s future Arsenal-1 facility in Columbus, Ohio.

But while the Army continues preparations for that key test, it conducted other assessments that will factor into the path ahead. For instance, members from the 75th Ranger Regiment were tasked with running IVAS 1.2 through the ringer alongside dedicated night vision systems like the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular (ENVG-B) and another system dubbed PVS-14, one service official told Breaking Defense last year.

While companies wait for additional information on Army IVAS Next plans, Luckey said he anticipates the service buying a variety of heads-up displays, from different vendors that are tied together via a common architecture and common application layer. That hardware design, he surmised, will vary depending on the soldier’s job.

“I think you’re going to see things ranging from glasses that look a lot like the Oakley’s you wear everyday, all the way up to things that look like an Iron Man helmet,” he told reporters. “Anduril is going to make some [slice] of those things but… pretty much everybody that’s working on IVAS Next [are companies] that I’m interested in working with.”

Not all companies preparing to compete in IVAS Next have publicly announced plans. However, Massachusetts-based Kopin has also said it’s interested in competing, while companies like Palantir have been attending industry days.

16. Pete Hegseth’s intense military-style workout: A peek into the defense secretary’s fitness routine

One of the strong points of having a young SECDEF, he can still do PT with the troops. I bet he had a great time with 10th SFG.

This is an article from the Times of India's Lifestyle Desk.

Pete Hegseth’s intense military-style workout: A peek into the defense secretary’s fitness routine - The Times of India

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Pete Hegseth, now the 29th secretary of defense, attributes his success to his mission-first mindset. Recently, he shared his fitness routine on social media, training with the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group. Despite allegations of misconduct, Hegseth continues to serve under President Donald Trump's second administration.

An army veteran, a former television host, and now the 29th United States secretary of defense in the second administration of the US President Donald Trump. Despite several controversies and bumps in the road, Pete Hegseth has managed to build an impressive resume over the years. And, as per him, the current secretary of defense owes the credit for that to his ‘mission-first mindset’ rather than bureaucracy.

The American politician recently took to social media to share his fitness routine where he was seen training alongside members of the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (SFG).

Pete Hegseth’s fitness training:

The 29th secretary of defense recently shared a few snippets of his life on the social media platform X (formerly, Twitter). Hegseth posted a video clipping of himself shaking hands with the Army lads post-training. The secretary of defense was seen having chitchats with them while sharing some laughs as well.

He also posted a few photos from his training session with the Army boys, and wrote, “Strength equals readiness. Kicked off the day with PT alongside the warriors of 1/10 SFG. No bureacracy—just sharp minds, strong bodies, and a mission-first mindset.” From going for a run to weight training - the Army veteran didn’t skip the hard work at all. At the end of the physical training session, Hegseth posed with the Special Forces Group for a photo as well.

1/10 SFG represents the 1st Battalion within the 10th Special Forces Group. The 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) (10th SFG (A), or 10th Group) is an active duty United States Army Special Forces (SF) Group. 10th Group is designed to deploy and execute nine doctrinal missions: unconventional warfare (UW), foreign internal defense (FID), direct action (DA), counterinsurgency, special reconnaissance, counterterrorism, information operations, counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and security force assistance. 10th Group is responsible for operations within the EUCOM area of responsibility, as part of Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR).

Who is Pete Hegseth?

Peter Brian Hegseth is an American television presenter, author, and former Army National Guard officer who is now serving as the 29th United States secretary of defense since January 25, 2025, in the second administration of President Donald Trump.

A political commentator for Fox News since 2014 and weekend co-host of Fox & Friends from 2017 to 2024, he was previously the executive director of Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.

Hegseth has been active in conservative and Republican politics since his undergraduate days at Princeton University. As a national guardsman he served at Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2016, he emerged as a supporter of Donald Trump's presidential candidacy, and he served as an occasional advisor to Trump throughout the latter's first term as president. Following Hegseth's encouragement, in 2019 Trump pardoned three soldiers accused or convicted of war crimes. Hegseth was considered to lead the United States Department of Veterans Affairs in the first Trump administration, but David Shulkin was tapped instead.

On November 12, 2024, President-elect Trump announced his intention to nominate Hegseth to serve as U.S. defense secretary. On January 25, 2025, Hegseth was confirmed by the US Senate.

Controversies:

Before being confirmed as the secretary of defense by the US Senate, Hegseth’s nomination for the post and his political career were in question due to the allegations of sexual assault, alcohol abuse, and aggressive behavior. While a 2017 sexual assault allegation resurfaced during the confirmation process, leading to widespread scrutiny, reports of Hegseth’s excessive drinking and claims of misconduct during his tenure at two nonprofit organizations also emerged. He has also faced criticism for past comments opposing women in combat roles.

A sneak peek into Ankit Mohan's intense workout

About the Author

TOI Lifestyle Desk

The TOI Lifestyle Desk is a dynamic team of dedicated journalists who, with unwavering passion and commitment, sift through the pulse of the nation to curate a vibrant tapestry of lifestyle news for The Times of India readers. At the TOI Lifestyle Desk, we go beyond the obvious, delving into the extraordinary. Consider us your lifestyle companion, providing a daily dose of inspiration and information. Whether you're seeking the latest fashion trends, travel escapades, culinary delights, or wellness tips, the TOI Lifestyle Desk is your one-stop destination for an enriching lifestyle experience.

End of Article

The TOI Lifestyle Desk is a dynamic team of dedicated journa ..

Why The U.S. Army Wants Voice-Controlled Robot Tanks

19fortyfive.com · by Michael Peck · February 11, 2025

Robot combat vehicles are becoming common features on the modern battlefield. From serving as mechanical mules and bomb disposal devices, unmanned ground vehicles have evolved into automated scouts, and gun and missile platforms that resemble miniature tanks.

But how will human operators control these vehicles? Typing commands into a laptop may be fine in a laboratory, but not in the middle of a firefight.

Hence, the U.S. Army wants to develop a system that allows crews of manned armor, such as tanks and troop carriers, to use plain-language voice commands to control robot vehicles.

“The system should interpret commands such as ‘move 300 meters east’ or ‘retreat to rally point’ and translate them into actionable, autonomous maneuvers,” according to an Army Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) solicitation.

Despite predictions that drones will make traditional tanks obsolete, the Army isn’t giving up on old-fashioned manned armored vehicles. But it does envision expensive main battle tanks – and their precious crews – being escorted by hordes of cheap and expendable unmanned combat vehicles.

Yet a tank crew in combat may not have time to issue elaborate commands to their robot consorts. “As vehicle crews are required to manage multiple tasks simultaneously—such as navigating complex environments, assessing real-time intelligence from multiple sensors and data feeds, engaging targets, and communicating with friendly forces—the cognitive burden can overwhelm any vehicle crew,” the Army said.

Thus, the Army is soliciting ideas for a voice-command system that enables humans to issue simple voice commands to robots that then autonomously execute them with a minimum of human intervention. “These commands-to-autonomous maneuver may include, but are not limited to, movement to known or unknown waypoints, tactical repositioning (e.g., fire-and-displace or ‘shoot-and-scoot’;), turret commands (e.g., traverse, elevate, slew-to-cue), and coordination with other vehicles during multi-vehicle operations,” the Army explained.

The SBIR lists six specific capabilities that a voice-command system should have:

Natural Language. The robots must respond to commands in natural language (the plain language that people use in everyday speech).

Autonomous Movement to Waypoints. “The system must be able to navigate to both pre-defined and dynamically specified locations on the battlefield with minimal crew input,” thus allowing manned vehicles to focus on their tasks while the robots maneuver autonomously.

Tactical Repositioning. The robot should be able to autonomously perform tactical maneuvers “such as fire-and-displace (shoot-and-scoot), where the vehicle automatically retreats to a safe position after engaging a target.”

Turret Commands. This includes “basic turret movements such as traverse, elevate, and slew-to-cue.”

Multi-Vehicle Coordination. The Army seems to be envisioning something similar to aerial drone swarms, where robot vehicles “operate in coordination with other units, maintaining formation and movement techniques (e.g., traveling overwatch, bounding overwatch).”

Autonomous navigation. “The Army wants a system that enables “reliable autonomous waypoint navigation in complex off-road terrain at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour,” including avoiding rocks, trees and ditches.

Interestingly, the SBIR only mentions requirements for movement and targeting. There is no mention of voice commands to fire weapons.

If this project is successful, the Army believes it could have multiple applications for the civilian market. These include voice command systems for smart homes and factories, as well as autonomous farming and mining.

In many ways, this resembles the voice command systems for self-driving cars. Or, even the voice recognition technology now found in regular cars, which allow drivers to operate controls hands-free.

A M1A2 SEPV3 Abrams Tank fires at multiple range targets during a range warfighter exercise, April 11, 2021, Fort Hood, Texas. The visit with foreign allies allows the U.S. Army to boost interoperability of staff members and warfighting capabilities with the M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams Tank. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Melissa N. Lessard)

The goal in all these cases is to allow humans to interact with machines as if those machines were human. Just look at the cockpit of an Apollo spacecraft or a Boeing 707 airliner, and the challenges of operating complex devices using manual controls becomes evident.

This suggests that the next frontier in unmanned armored vehicles won’t be the chassis or weapons. It’s making combat robots user-friendly.

About the Author: Michael Peck

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

19fortyfive.com · by Michael Peck · February 11, 2025

18. Trump is Right to Prioritize Homeland Missile Defense

Excerpts:

In his first term as president, Donald Trump approved a National Security Strategy that stated his first responsibility was “to protect the American people, the homeland, and the American way of life.” After taking office again eight years later, the new executive order suggests the Trump team takes that commitment seriously.

The executive order directs the secretary of defense to submit within 60 days “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan” to defend against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.” The order directs the secretary to “develop and deploy capabilities at the necessary speed,” work with the Office of Management and Budget to submit a plan to fund the effort, and coordinate with U.S. Strategic Command and Northern Command to provide the president an update on the missile threat to the homeland and a prioritized list of locations to defend.

More specifically, the order lays out key components for any future national missile defense system, including the accelerated deployments of hypersonic and ballistic tracking sensors, space-based interceptors, and terminal-phase intercept capabilities. Additionally, the order calls on the Pentagon to develop and deploy new missile defense capabilities, such as non-kinetic capabilities to complement kinetic interceptors and the ability to “defeat missile attacks prior to launch and in the boost phase.”

In addition to homeland defense, the executive order also calls for an allied and theater defense review to identify ways in which the Department of Defense (DoD) can better coordinate and cooperate with allies to defend forward-stationed American forces and allies. The benefits of such investments were best displayed during the U.S. and Israeli militaries’ impressive coordination in successfully defending against Iran’s missile and drone attacks last April and October.

Trump is Right to Prioritize Homeland Missile Defense

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/trump-is-right-to-prioritize-homeland-missile-defense?mc_cid=026bd572e9

Posted: February 10th, 2025

By Bradley Bowman

Bradley Bowman serves as senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on U.S. defense strategy and policy. He has served as a national security advisor to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, as well as an active duty U.S. Army officer, Black Hawk pilot, and assistant professor at West Point.

By Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is a senior director at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He directs CSC 2.0, which works to implement the recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. Montgomery is a principal member of the Cyber Initiatives Group.

OPINION — President Trump issued an executive order, “The Iron Dome for America,” on January 27, jumpstarting a major effort to deploy and maintain a “next generation” missile shield to better defend the U.S. homeland. The Missile Defense Agency has already issued a request for information from industry, with submissions due by February 28. While the “Iron Dome” name is unfortunate, creating unrealistic expectations and easy opportunities for critics, Trump’s order represents a necessary and long overdue shift in thinking and policy to begin to better address the dangerous and growing vulnerability of our homeland to ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missile attacks.

While American attention was elsewhere, the missile threat against the U.S. homeland has grown in the past four decades, as adversaries have increased the size and sophistication of their missile arsenals. These destabilizing actions have eroded the margin of safety for Americans and increased the risk that adversaries will undertake aggression abroad based on a belief that the ability to strike the U.S. homeland would make Washington think twice before intervening to protect its interests in the Pacific, Europe, or elsewhere.

What have our adversaries been up to?

According to the Pentagon’s annual report on Chinese military power, Beijing continues to expand its ICBM arsenal as well as its conventional ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missile capabilities. Meanwhile, Russia is specifically pursuing nuclear delivery systems designed to bypass current U.S. defenses while modernizing and expanding their strategic and nonstrategic missile capabilities, according to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2024 Worldwide Threat Assessment.

Russia and China are both sprinting to build long-range cruise and hypersonic missiles that can strike anywhere in the U.S. mainland with conventional warheads, and the United States is ill-prepared to respond.

The junior members of the “Axis of Aggressors” have not been idle either. From ICBMs to hypersonic weapons, North Korea is prioritizing the improvement of its missile capabilities. Iran, for its part, has continued to advance its space launch vehicle program, which could help the regime field an ICBM that could strike the United States.

The intersection of technology, defense, space and intelligence is critical to future U.S. national security. Join The Cipher Brief on June 5th and 6th in Austin, Texas for the NatSecEDGE conference. Find out how to get an invitation to this invite-only event at natsecedge.com

The gaps in homeland defense

Many in Washington talk about the growing threats from China and Russia, but the United States has consistently failed to invest sufficiently in strengthening modest existing homeland ballistic missile defenses focused on the rogue nation threat, much less build a homeland missile defense architecture to detect, track, and engage inbound cruise or hypersonic missile threats.

Today, the entire country is vulnerable to adversary hypersonic missiles, and only the airspace around the Nation Capital Region is defended from cruise missile threats.

For our homeland, the American reliance on deterrence by punishment is increasingly insufficient. Deterrence by denial must be bolstered, and the Trump administration’s effort can help.

The elements of an ‘Iron Dome’ defense

In his first term as president, Donald Trump approved a National Security Strategy that stated his first responsibility was “to protect the American people, the homeland, and the American way of life.” After taking office again eight years later, the new executive order suggests the Trump team takes that commitment seriously.

The executive order directs the secretary of defense to submit within 60 days “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan” to defend against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.” The order directs the secretary to “develop and deploy capabilities at the necessary speed,” work with the Office of Management and Budget to submit a plan to fund the effort, and coordinate with U.S. Strategic Command and Northern Command to provide the president an update on the missile threat to the homeland and a prioritized list of locations to defend.

More specifically, the order lays out key components for any future national missile defense system, including the accelerated deployments of hypersonic and ballistic tracking sensors, space-based interceptors, and terminal-phase intercept capabilities. Additionally, the order calls on the Pentagon to develop and deploy new missile defense capabilities, such as non-kinetic capabilities to complement kinetic interceptors and the ability to “defeat missile attacks prior to launch and in the boost phase.”

In addition to homeland defense, the executive order also calls for an allied and theater defense review to identify ways in which the Department of Defense (DoD) can better coordinate and cooperate with allies to defend forward-stationed American forces and allies. The benefits of such investments were best displayed during the U.S. and Israeli militaries’ impressive coordination in successfully defending against Iran’s missile and drone attacks last April and October.

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For a robust missile defense of the homeland, the DoD will need to design a global sensing network that mixes satellites, airborne sensors (including balloons), and long-range ground-based radars to detect and track threats. The task of designing this architecture — against all threats — should be led by the Missile Defense Agency, the only agency equipped with the engineering know-how and experience to take on a task this comprehensive. The Pentagon then needs to integrate this network of sensors with a range of ground-based, ship-based, and space-based engagement systems to shoot down incoming missiles. The cost of this homeland missile defense mission will be significant, but it can be mitigated with innovative solutions such as developing unmanned sensors that operate at high altitudes.

Additionally, especially when it comes to countering cruise missiles, the effort should leverage the use of dirigibles, to include airships and aerostats, to conduct extended-range detection, characterization, tracking, and engagement of current and emerging threats, at significant savings and readiness over manned aircraft. Innovative dirigibles and associated sensor developments by U.S. military services, partners such as Israel, and U.S. industry over the past three decades can give this new effort a running start.

Americans confront a daunting variety of security challenges, but few are more serious than the missile threats to the homeland. To deal with these threats, we will have to make investments in missile defense that America has postponed for far too long. The Trump administration’s effort will be expensive, difficult, and time-consuming, but it is necessary to better protect our citizens at home and to deter adversary aggression abroad.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

19. Trump’s Greenland Gambit Is a Masterclass in Statecraft

Conclusion:

Trump’s approach underscores the necessity of bold thinking and unconventional tactics as tools of the trade. As the Arctic continues to reemerge as a focal point of geopolitical competition, the Greenland episode will stand as an example of how strategic provocation and perception management can shape outcomes on the international stage. Whether by design or by happenstance, Trump’s rhetoric catalyzed a renewed focus on and commitment to Arctic defense and security and is a testament to the enduring power of statecraft in advancing national interests.

Trump’s Greenland Gambit Is a Masterclass in Statecraft

By Ryan. P. Burke

February 12, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/02/12/trumps_greenland_gambit_is_a_masterclass_in_statecraft_1090828.html?mc_cid=026bd572e9

Donald Trump is serious about boxing China out of the Arctic. A month before assuming the U.S. presidency for the second time, Trump notched another geopolitical win in the Arctic competition space and set the tone for the next four years. On December 29^th, Trump revived his 2019 proposal to purchase Greenland from Denmark, saying U.S. ownership of the largest island in the world “is an absolute necessity.” A week before the inauguration, Trump’s son Don. Jr. traveled to Nuuk, Greenland to discuss Trump’s interest, leading to further speculation about the incoming President’s intent. In 2019, few supported Trump by publicly describing Greenland’s strategic importance – and reminding that the U.S. twice attempted to purchase Greenland from Denmark. Others warned about China’s expanding presence and influence in Arctic affairs, highlighting Beijing’s desire to build airports in Greenland. Still, during Trump’s first term, most claimed his interest in acquiring Greenland was “absurd.”

Not much has changed today with pundits casting Trump as impulsive – as they did in 2019 – and lacking knowledge of geopolitics. This time even the Danish Prime Minister chimed in saying “Greenland is not for sale” tacitly hinting at Trump’s perceived neocolonial provocation. Weeks later, Denmark reversed the message and indicated interest in discussing Greenland’s future with Trump. While Greenland’s future is yet to be determined, the mainstream narrative is naïve – Trump’s masterclass in statecraft is now in session – and Beijing is taking note.

Where the media focuses on Trump’s claim to use the military to acquire the island, they miss the effect of the rhetoric. The reality is this was a deliberate strategic provocation few will see or acknowledge. In poking Denmark about his intent to purchase, or even forcefully acquire the island, Trump gave a masterclass in geostrategic chess, saving the U.S. billions, furthering deterring China from staking a claim on Greenland, and improving U.S. national security in the process. As the dialogue progresses, the stakes could evolve further.

Critics mocking Trump’s fixation on Greenland fail to account for the underlying significance to U.S. and NATO defense. European countries have long underinvested in their own defense. NATO enjoys the warmth of the U.S.-provided security blanket absent the corresponding commitments. The Danish government dismissed Trump’s idea and critics mocked his supposed naivety. Yet, Trump’s renewed Greenland pitch might have been more calculated than it appeared. Denmark’s subsequent announcement of a $1.5 billion defense investment in Greenland reveals a sophisticated dynamic: the rhetoric may have been a strategic gambit to prompt Denmark into strengthening Greenland’s security infrastructure, effectively achieving U.S. strategic goals without direct expenditure.

Greenland’s Strategic Importance in the Arctic

The Arctic region is critically important for U.S. homeland defense. Greenland occupies a pivotal position at the crossroads of key Arctic waterways and serves as a gateway to the North Atlantic. The Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap is considered one of the most consequential strategic corridors for Russian submarine approaches to the eastern U.S. and Canadian coastlines. The U.S. presence at Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Force Base) in northwest Greenland is the only U.S. military installation north of the Arctic Circle. It is small; lacks offensive power projection capabilities; and is an inadequate posture to deter geopolitical rivals in China and Russia. From “enormous unexplored stores of natural resources” and the Chinese Communist Party’s public interest in presence in Greenland, the autonomous island under Danish control is one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the planet. Some in Washington see Greenland as a strategic vulnerability requiring more attention, lest it create an opportunity for adversaries. Declining relations with China and Russia elevate Greenland’s geostrategic utility value for Washington, making its defense and security among the pressing security challenges or the incoming Trump administration. Thus, recognizing Greenland’s significance, Trump’s revived rhetoric about purchasing the island is more than a proposed property deal by a real estate tycoon. It is a geopolitical statement underscoring America’s recognition of Greenland’s critical role in Arctic security. Yet, proposing such a move — whether sincerely or as a negotiating tactic — placed pressure on Copenhagen to either step up its own commitments to Greenland or risk appearing negligent.

Cost-Free Arctic Security

Trump’s approach is fiscally savvy. Operating in the Arctic is expensive. Everything takes longer, costs more, and breaks faster. Burden sharing is sound strategy and a necessary element of NATO’s security architecture. NATO has long grappled with calls for equitable contributions among member states – with Trump 1.0 repeatedly threatening consequence for NATO counties failing to meet the required 2% GDP mandate. In this way, Trump’s latest jab was an effective catalyst toward tangible defense commitments by a NATO ally that was long overdue.

Trump’s approach to Greenland illustrates a key principle of effective statecraft: leveraging rhetoric to influence allies and adversaries alike. By framing Greenland as a strategic asset of unparalleled importance, Trump compelled Denmark to prioritize investments aligned with U.S. interests. Moreover, this episode highlights the utility of unconventional proposals in diplomacy. Ideas that initially seem outlandish can serve as valuable tools to reshape conversations and drive action. In this sense, Trump’s Greenland rhetoric transcends traditional transactionalism, embodying a broader vision for Arctic security.

While the idea of buying Greenland may never have been realistic, the strategic impact of Trump’s rhetoric prevails. By provoking Denmark into investing in Greenland’s defense, Trump achieved a key U.S. objective: enhancing Arctic security without direct financial outlay.

Trump’s approach underscores the necessity of bold thinking and unconventional tactics as tools of the trade. As the Arctic continues to reemerge as a focal point of geopolitical competition, the Greenland episode will stand as an example of how strategic provocation and perception management can shape outcomes on the international stage. Whether by design or by happenstance, Trump’s rhetoric catalyzed a renewed focus on and commitment to Arctic defense and security and is a testament to the enduring power of statecraft in advancing national interests.

Ryan P. Burke, Ph.D., is a professor of military and strategic studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The views expressed here are his and do not reflect the official position of the United States Air Force Academy, Department of the Air Force, Department of Defense, or of any other organization with whom the author is affiliated with.

20. We Cannot Fix Force Design

I bet DOGE has an algorithm to assess and fix Force Design. It could provide an objective look at the issue.

We Cannot Fix Force Design

By Gary Anderson

February 11, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/02/11/we_cannot_fix_force_design_1090651.html?mc_cid=026bd572e9

Defense Analyst Steven Yeadon recently wrote an insightful essay suggesting modifications to the Marine Corps Force Design (FD) concept In a Marine Corps University Press article titled "Recommendations for Improving the U.S. Marine Corps’ Force Design.”

His recommendations are thoughtful. However, even if adopted, they won't save a fatally flawed concept. Trying to fix Force Design is like trying to put lipstick on a pig—it will never be pretty or learn to dance, so it needs to be put out of its misery before it reaches maturity. I suspect Yeadon realizes that, but thought he would give salvaging FD the old college try.

Mr. Yeadon points out some of the major challenges faced by FD. The vulnerability of small, missile-armed Marine Corps Stand-in-Forces (SIF) armed with anti-ship missiles along the First Island Chain of the South China Sea against the impressive Chinese Reconnaissance-Strike complex is accurately described except for the fact that none of the host nations in the region has signed up for the project.

The second vulnerability discussed is the logistics infeasibility of the concept. Sustainment would be dependent upon small US Navy supply transports called Landing Ship Medium (LSM) covertly delivering supplies and shifting SIFs from islet-to-islet in the SCS. The theory is that these lightly armed and armored craft would be able to blend in with the high volume of merchant and fishing traffic in the region. But the whole logistics concept badly underestimates Chinese intelligence.

Mr. Yeadon also notes that the problem with the LSM program is that it is non-existent. The initial bids came in so over-budget that the Navy went back to square one of the acquisition processes. At best, the first LSM will likely not be launched for five years and at full operational capability for ten. That is optimistic as the LSM is far down in Navy priorities. Yeadon's solution is to further modify the specifications to make the LSM more affordable and hurry up production. This ignores the Navy's abysmal shipbuilding capabilities. FD was originally designed to be operational by 2030—achieving it by 2030 is now in the realm of science fiction.

Third, and most critical, is the question of actual usefulness of FD to the nation in a conflict with China. Independent war games done by CSIS would indicate that its impact would be minimal as opposed to the risk faced by the Marine Corps SIFs.

Mr. Yeadon's suggestion to the vulnerability of the SIFs is to hurry up the delivery of Tomahawk anti-ship missiles to the Corps. He is correct that the Tomahawks would allow the Marines to operate from bases outside of the nations in the immediate First Island Chain. Okinawa and Gaum predominate here. But the question then arises, why the Marines? Other services already have Tomahawks in the region making the Corps' contribution redundant.

Basing SIFs on Okinawa and Guam would seem to make the LSM unnecessary but Mr. Yeadon has some innovative additional ideas for their use such as becoming "lily pads" for VSTOL F-35 Joint Strike Fighters armed with anti-ship missiles. That is innovative but virtually any ship with enough deck space (including merchants pressed into service in a pinch) would make the LSM redundant as well.

As to the overall value-added of FD to the Indo-Pacific Command in a war with China, the CSIS games conclusions remain valid. Perhaps that is why PACOM's head, Admiral Samuel Papas, ignored FD in his recent article on Indo-Pacific strategy. If it comes on line at all, FD will not help him on his watch nor likely that of his successor.

Yeadon also has some interesting thoughts on Amphibious shipping, but these are clouded with his agreement with former Marine Corps commandant, General David Berger, that large-scale amphibious operations are obsolete.

Early Ukrainian success in using land based anti-ship missiles against Russian ships appeared to validate Berger's conclusion, but later events in Ukraine and in Yemen demonstrated that rapid technological innovation may have rendered Berger's view obsolete as well. Large, over-the-horizon amphibious operations are still feasible. Anti-ship missiles, even hypersonic ones, and drones can be countered. Berger's false assumption allowed him to reduce the long-standing Navy-Marine Corps agreement of 38 large amphibious ships down to 31 in order to afford the LSM.

Due to Navy maintenance issues, the Navy can no longer keep three amphibious ready groups on station in the world's most likely crisis regions 24/7. Yeadon hopes his fixes will keep 31 ships reasonably ready, but that assumes the Corps will only do small scale raids. Without 38, the Marines are becoming a bizarre mix of the Royal Marine Commandos and US Army Coastal artillery.

Yet again, a redundant dead end.

Mr. Yeadon does have some other good ideas but the problem is too bad to fix. The Pentagon and DOGE, or some combination thereof, should put Force Design out of it misery. There are several other viable options to return the Marine Corps its status as the nation's force-in-readiness. The Corps needs to be directed to explore them—for its own good.

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps Colonel who was Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense

21. America First Is Quickly Becoming America Alone

But I am sure there are some Americans, to include some within the Administration who view this as a good outcome.

America First Is Quickly Becoming America Alone

As the US under Donald Trump turns from a benevolent to a menacing power, it will make more countries form networks and pacts against it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-02-12/cross-border-payments-are-a-problem-the-us-must-fix?sref=hhjZtX76

February 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM EST

By Andreas Kluth

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

Power that threatens.Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

America First, as practiced by President Donald Trump in his second term, will instead — and probably sooner rather than later — amount to America Isolated or even America Hated. How such an outcome will Make America Great Again is beyond me, and should give Trumpies pause for reflection before it’s too late.

With respect to foreign policy, Trump campaigned on the promise that he would, through sheer “strength,” be a peacemaker, settling wars such as Russia’s against Ukraine within 24 hours and preventing new ones from breaking out. But since his re-election, and especially since his inauguration, Trump has adopted a new tone. It’s one he’s been accustomed to using in domestic affairs: that of bully.

Trump has already threatened: Denmark, because he wants Greenland; Panama, because he wants its isthmian canal; Canada, because he wants to incorporate it as the 51st state; Colombia, because it briefly balked at receiving a few planeloads of its migrants; and South Africa, because he’s become convinced that its government is racist, meaning anti-White.

He’s also indirectly threatened two other American partners, Egypt and Jordan, because he wants to “take ownership” of the Gaza Strip, which would require coercively resettling its 2 million people in other countries in the region. And he’s brandished trade tariffs at America’s trading partners, including Canada, Mexico and the European Union. (Curiously, he has not, so far, talked nearly as tough to America’s adversaries, notably Russia and China.)

How are those countries — and others, because the whole world is watching — likely to respond? In the 1980s, Stephen Walt, a scholar in the realist school of international relations, developed a theory to answer that question.

Walt updated the traditional realist notion that countries or empires generally strive for a “balance of power” by forming alliances against whichever among them is mightiest. That can’t be right, Walt argued, because a lot of nations should then have ganged up against the US after World War II, when America turned into the stronger of two superpowers. After the Cold War, when the world briefly became unipolar and the US was unchallenged, even more nations should have coalesced against it. But the opposite happened. The US kept attracting more friends over time, today numbering about 70 allies and many more trading partners.

The reason: America stood for a benevolent rather than a hostile hegemony. It voluntarily restrained and deployed its might to safeguard an open trading system and the norms of international law, in what became known as the Pax Americana or the “rules-based” international order. Other countries, especially small ones, felt safer under American leadership and wanted to belong to these US-led networks.

Nations only form new alliances against a country such as the US, Walt hypothesized, when that power becomes both mighty and menacing (as Wilhelmine Germany did during the late 19th century, say). The best label to explain international relations, he suggested, is not balance-of-power but balance-of-threat.

America in this new Trump era does appear to have turned from benevolent to threatening power. Trump disdains the Pax Americana (he considers it a rip-off) and seems fine with imperialism as long as he gets to be a player, even if that means letting the world revert to anarchy.

And as Walt’s theory predicts, countries do seem to be accelerating their efforts to find alternative arrangements in trade and security that exclude the US. The European Union is talking to countries in Latin America and Asia; more nations are joining BRICS, a club that sees itself as an alternative to the US-led Group of Seven; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is linking up with the Gulf Cooperation Council in the Middle East; and so forth.

The change is especially mind-boggling if you know where to look. Last weekend, the incumbent chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, debated his challenger, Friedrich Merz, ahead of this month’s federal election. Since World War II, West Germany and then the reunited nation viewed the US as a sort of “father figure” — as conqueror-turned-savior and also mentor in democracy. Merz even used to chair the Atlantik-Brücke (“Atlantic Bridge”), an organization to promote German-American friendship.

And yet these two, while tearing into each other on just about every other topic, seemed matter-of-fact in agreeing that America has gone from friend to threat. Merz even related the private concerns that Denmark’s prime minister has shared with him. Both agreed that in trade and everything else, Europe, including Britain (which left the EU), must stick together, not with but against the US.

Trump as a person and MAGA as a movement are making a catastrophic mistake in conflating whimsical and immature displays of strength — the strength to hurt weaker friends — with the more lasting glory that comes from using power to make the world safer and better, by drawing friends closer and keeping foes at bay. America under Trump has become a threat. Let nobody be surprised when the world once again looks for balance, and America ends up alone.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

22. From Syria to Africa, Russia’s Strategy is Faltering—But Its Repercussions Will Endure

Conclusion:

To contain Russian influence, the United States must shore up reasonably good governments in Africa and demonstrate that Washington offers a better pathway to security and development than the Kremlin. Additionally, the US Treasury should continue sanctioning individuals involved in corrupt business transactions that fuel conflict and undermine international peace and security. If Washington fails to act decisively, it won’t just cede ground to Moscow—it will enable autocrats and warlords to continue fueling conflict and state failure, in Africa and beyond.

From Syria to Africa, Russia’s Strategy is Faltering—But Its Repercussions Will Endure - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Federico Manfredi Firmian · February 12, 2025

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Over the past decade, Russia managed to entrench itself in the defense and foreign policy establishments of multiple states across the Middle East and Africa. From Syria to Libya, and from Sudan to the Sahel, the Kremlin has pursued an opportunistic state-capture strategy—offering military and political support to embattled strongmen in exchange for influence over their security policies and corrupt business deals involving natural resources and state assets.

The Wagner Group was once at the heart of this effort, but the Kremlin has always been the driving force. And since Wagner’s 2023 mutiny and its subsequent restructuring as the Africa Corps under the Russian Ministry of Defense, Moscow has tightened its grip on day-to-day operations.

Russia’s gambit has yielded some short-term strategic gains, enabling the Kremlin to expand its geopolitical reach while facilitating sanction-evasion schemes and lucrative transactions. However, a country-by-country review reveals that Russia’s interventions have consistently exacerbated state fragility and state failure, ultimately limiting the extent of the Kremlin’s own influence.

Syria and the Limits of Russian Power

Syria offers a stark illustration of the limits of Russian power. For years, Russia’s military intervention in the country’s civil war appeared to have secured Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Between 2015 and 2020, in particular, Russia’s brutal air bombardments, combined with the deployment of military advisors and trainers, enabled Assad to reclaim control over two-thirds of Syria. This fueled a narrative of Russia as a reliable counterinsurgency partner—one capable of shielding its allies from both armed rebels and Western pressure.

As a result, a number of embattled strongmen and would-be autocrats across Africa began courting the Kremlin for support—among them Khalifa Haftar in Libya, Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, and Faustin-Archange Touadéra in the Central African Republic. Then, between 2020 and 2023, Russia capitalized on a wave of coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, forging close ties with the new ruling juntas and encouraging them to expel US and French military forces.

But Moscow’s promise to deliver security in the Sahel is proving hollow. The war in Ukraine continues to drain Russian resources, and Wagner’s restructuring into the Africa Corps remains a work in progress beset with challenges. Meanwhile, the collapse of Assad’s regime has shattered Moscow’s image as a dependable counterinsurgency partner, sending a clear and troubling signal to African leaders who rely on Russia for security: Moscow’s commitments are far from assured.

Trouble in the Sahel

Security in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger has deteriorated dramatically since the ruling juntas severed their security partnerships with France and the United States to pursue ties with Russia. The Sahel is now the global epicenter of terrorist violence, according to the United Nations. Within Mali’s military, frustration with Wagner is mounting—particularly after the July 24 Tinzaouaten debacle, in which Tuareg separatists ambushed a military convoy, killing over forty Malian soldiers and eighty Wagner fighters. Less than two months later, in September, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) launched a major assault on Bamako, killing more than seventy and injuring hundreds. These incidents exposed Moscow’s failure to fill the security vacuum left by the withdrawal of Western forces and UN peacekeepers.

To demonstrate its commitment to Mali, the Kremlin has since delivered around one hundred armored vehicles to Bamako, in a show of force likely aimed at bolstering Russia’s image and countering perceptions that its forces are on the back foot. However, the delivery of tanks and other heavy vehicles, which in the context of Mali may be better suited for dominating urban environments than for desert warfare against lightly armed rebels, suggests a shift in focus from offensive counterinsurgency operations to securing the regime in Bamako.

In Burkina Faso and Niger, Russia’s Africa Corps has so far deployed only small advisory teams, numbering a few hundred personnel at most, despite mounting security challenges. In Burkina Faso, over 60 percent the country is now outside government control, with JNIM and the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) encircling the capital, Ouagadougou. JNIM jihadists may have killed as many as six hundred people in a single attack in August. JNIM’s strong presence in Burkina Faso’s eastern borderlands has also enabled further expansion into Benin and Togo, severely threatening the stability of the two coastal states.

In Niger, JNIM recently launched an attack on the outskirts of the capital Niamey, while the ISSP has significantly increased the frequency and severity of its assaults around the district capital of Tera. The Nigerien junta has resorted to media censorship to suppress reports on mounting security challenges and military casualties. In December, the BCC was suspended for three months for reporting that insurgents had killed more than ninety Nigerien soldiers and more than forty civilians in two villages near the border with Burkina Faso.

The rapid worsening of security in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger showcases how the war in Ukraine may be limiting Russia’s ability to effectively support counterinsurgency operations in Africa. Indeed, Russia’s role in the Sahel coup belt appears to be little more than that of a temporary guarantor of military rule. As Christopher Faulkner, Marcel Plichta, and Rafael Parens noted in a recent article, Russia may have reached the peak of its influence in the region and could now be seeking to scale down its involvement. But the security vacuum in the Sahel does not bode well for the broader region, where several states are at risk of conflict spillover.

How Russian Influence Drives State Failure

The devastating repercussions of Russia’s foreign influence operations in fragile states are also evident in Sudan. The Kremlin had once backed the dictator Omar al-Bashir, in exchange for corrupt business deals involving Sudanese gold and the promise of a naval base on the Red Sea. After al-Bashir’s downfall in 2019, Moscow encouraged both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to resist a democratic transition, paving the way for the 2021 coup. Following the coup, the RSF exploited gold smuggling and Wagner-linked business deals to augment its arsenal and recruit more fighters, leading to a destructive power struggle between the RSF and the SAF over the control of Sudan’s resources.

When full-scale conflict erupted in April 2023, the Wagner Group continued supplying the RSF with surface-to-air missiles and other weapons via Libya, while ramping up illicit gold exports. To make matters worse, Moscow is supplying arms to both the RSF and the SAF in an effort to hedge its bets, exacerbating a conflict that has become the world’s most severe humanitarian crisis.

Sudan’s deepening fragmentation, however, poses challenges to Russia’s broader geopolitical objectives in the region. The war has stalled long-discussed plans for the construction of a Russian naval base on the Red Sea and disrupted overland routes linking Russia’s military and economic interests in the region, thus reducing the country’s strategic value to the Kremlin.

Libya may appear more stable than Sudan, but Russian influence has contributed to bringing about a deeply dysfunctional and corrupt status quo. Moscow’s military foothold in Libya depends largely on its relationship with the eighty-one-year-old Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control eastern Libya. Following Assad’s loss of power in Syria, Haftar-controlled Libya has become even more critical to the Kremlin: Russian cargo planes have shuttled between Syria and Libya’s al-Khadim airfield, reportedly transporting S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, military vehicles, and ammunition in violation of the UN arms embargo on Libya. Russia has even reactivated a base along the border between Chad and Sudan, and has continued to use Libya to ship arms to Mali.

However, Haftar has yet to agree to a much-discussed Russian naval base in Tobruk or Benghazi. While remaining close to the Kremlin, Haftar has cultivated ties with multiple foreign actors, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Italy, and has quietly engaged with the United States. Some of his sons have increasingly positioned themselves as pragmatic power brokers, leveraging ties with Turkey and European actors to diversify Libya’s alliances. Russia’s influence in Libya remains significant—but vulnerable, and the corruption Russia has fostered all but ensures that the country will remain mired in divisions and power struggles.

The Central African Republic remains one of Russia’s strongest footholds in Africa. President Touadéra continues to rely on Wagner forces for personal security, while Russian-linked business networks maintain a grip on the country’s gold, diamonds, logging sites, and even beer and liquor industries.

But cracks are beginning to show. Rwanda has steadily expanded its influence, leveraging its UN peacekeeping presence to deepen ties with the Central African Republic’s leadership and the business sector. Meanwhile, a US private security firm, Bancroft Global Development, has arrived at Touadéra’s request, signaling a push to diversify partnerships. The country’s military even recently conducted a military exchange with US forces. Moscow remains dominant there, but its sway may be weakening.

The Way Forward

The Kremlin remains eager to project strength and success in Africa, relying on disinformation and media manipulation. But on the ground, its strategy is faltering—strained by the war in Ukraine, relentless insurgencies across multiple countries, and Wagner’s restructuring into the Africa Corps, which has weakened both its effectiveness and profitability.

For US policymakers, it may be tempting to let Russia overextend and exhaust itself. That would be a mistake. Moscow’s interventions are not just failing—they are further destabilizing fragile conflict-torn states, creating the conditions for protracted insurgencies and other long-term security threats. Russia’s support for Assad, for example, not only failed to defeat rebel groups but also strengthened Iran and its regional proxies, contributing to the spillover of the war in Gaza into Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, and ultimately setting the stage for jihadi rebels to seize Damascus. In Libya, Russia’s military presence continues to threaten NATO’s southern flank and to sustain the Kremlin’s destabilizing influence from Sudan to Mali. The Sahel is now a powder keg of Salafi jihadi insurgent activity, and the violence is spilling over into coastal West Africa.

While Russia’s African gambit is increasingly unlikely to pay off in the long term, its ability to foment instability and challenge US interests remains a critical concern. If left unchecked, the chaos Russia is sowing in Africa will likely outlast its presence.

To contain Russian influence, the United States must shore up reasonably good governments in Africa and demonstrate that Washington offers a better pathway to security and development than the Kremlin. Additionally, the US Treasury should continue sanctioning individuals involved in corrupt business transactions that fuel conflict and undermine international peace and security. If Washington fails to act decisively, it won’t just cede ground to Moscow—it will enable autocrats and warlords to continue fueling conflict and state failure, in Africa and beyond.

Federico Manfredi Firmian is a lecturer in political science at Sciences Po Paris, an associate research fellow at the Institute for International Political Studies, and a nonresident research fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point. His latest book is War in Syria and the Middle East: A Political and Economic History (University of Texas Press, 2025).

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: mil.ru, via Wikimedia Commons

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Federico Manfredi Firmian · February 12, 2025

23. New Blood: Putin is Setting Up Russian Veterans to Take Center Stage in Moscow

Excerpts:

These variables provide for several different scenarios. In the most positive case for the Kremlin, loyal veterans will provide regime stability and improve efficiency. But this requires Putin and his aides to overcome endemic corruption in hiring processes, economic headwinds that threaten postwar Russia, and the resistance of the current bureaucratic class. In the most pessimistic case, where the economy takes a serious downturn and programs designed to bring capable veterans into the bureaucracy are successfully resisted or corrupted, veterans may become a grievance class with destabilizing impacts. Between these poles are many middling conditions, where partial successes maintain the status quo or provide limited benefits. Some veterans may find themselves elevated to leadership roles based on merit while others climb the ladder by greasing palms, and loyalty is mixed with grumbling about broken promises.

All of that being said, the conclusion of a large military conflict is inevitably accompanied by social and political realignments. In Russia, these realignments have sometimes supported the state and sometimes hobbled it. With the war still raging and the troops at the front, it is unclear which of these will be true this time around. However, for perhaps the first time ever, the Russian state is taking affirmative steps to secure veterans as an asset.

New Blood: Putin is Setting Up Russian Veterans to Take Center Stage in Moscow - War on the Rocks

Harry Francisco Stevens and Thomas Lattanzio

warontherocks.com · by Harry Francisco Stevens · February 12, 2025

As the battlefields of Ukraine are covered in the blood of young men, the halls of the Kremlin may soon play host to an infusion of young blood, hardened and shaped by their time on the front lines. Meanwhile, Russian towns and villages from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka could find themselves flush with cash as returning soldiers adapt to newfound wealth and play games of “keeping up with the Ivanovs.” The social fabric of Russia may never be the same.

The Russian government, through measures intentional and otherwise, has enacted policies that will likely create a new middle class from veterans of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine through the elevation of veterans to prominent roles in government, huge cash payments, and numerous structural benefits. The scale of these initiatives is unprecedented for the Russian Federation. Taken together, these policies could provide the Russian regime with an ongoing base of support, bring in a new class of loyal bureaucrats, and enable President Vladimir Putin to clear the government of those he is dissatisfied with.

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Whether this plan will be realized is a different question.

In Russia, veterans have alternatively been a strengthening or destabilizing force to the state and society. In the aftermath of World War II, known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia, millions of veterans were granted preferences in education and employment, though these often proved temporary. These benefits were significantly expanded in the 1960s, enabled by the rapidly growing Soviet economy and motivated by a desire to keep this vital constituency loyal to the state, to develop the Great Patriotic War as a stabilizing national myth, and out of a genuine sense of societal debt. And for the most part, it worked. While not the only factor, the tangible benefits and societal regard conferred on veterans largely kept them onside.

Conversely, the experiences of the Afgantsy — the veterans of the Soviet War in Afghanistan — demonstrate how a lack of recognition and benefits can create an aggrieved class. Despite involving 600,000 troops, who bore the burden of an estimated 15,000 deaths, Afgantsy initially received scant benefits unless they had been severely wounded. It was only in 1983, four years after the war had started, that they were awarded the status of combat veterans and the benefits that came with this. But this initial failure, coupled with the declining ability of the Soviet state to actually provide benefits to Afgantsy, resulted in the Afghan war veteran becoming both a symbolic and physical source of destabilization.

Unable to handle the psychological trauma they endured or to acquire jobs in the declining Soviet economy of the 1980s, many Afgantsy organized, either as criminal groups or as political movements. The danger of the first group is apparent, but political groups also weakened the state by lending their credibility as veterans to reformist causes and attacking the legitimacy and morality of Soviet policy. In doing so, they contributed to the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Kremlin is doubtlessly aware of both cases and is eager to avoid a repeat of the aftermath of the Afghan War. Putin has famously lamented the Soviet Union’s collapse as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” while Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov was a young officer during the Afghan War. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also has more than a passing resemblance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was assumed that both would be brief, decisive victories, but both instead became lingering conflicts. The Russian state has wasted no time extending a litany of benefits to veterans of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Many of these benefits are intended to increase recruitment, but will certainly have an impact on whether veterans become a liability or an asset to the Russian regime in the long term. Benefits include free land, cash payments, preferential tax status, favorable loans, and priority in access to medical care. The favorable loans have taken on a new importance as similar programs for the general population have been wound down.

Just these benefits alone are likely to reshape the landscape of the Russian economy, as hundreds of thousands of men return to their homes with advantages that their peers simply cannot match. Veterans will have advantages that make them more likely to own homes than their counterparts and grant them a leg up in business. All this is to say nothing of the large quantities of cash that many veterans and their families are likely to come away with as a result of wages or bonuses paid during military service.

While Russian military pay was relatively competitive with civilian sector wages before the invasion of Ukraine, at least for contract soldiers, it has ballooned as the government attempts to induce volunteers to fight in its shockingly bloody war. Current reporting estimates that 160,000 to 220,000 Russian troops have died in combat, making recruiters’ jobs that much harder. Base pay for a contract soldier has risen to 200,000 rubles a month, nearly triple the median national wage. The differential is much greater for soldiers from rural or economically depressed areas. Soldiers are entitled to a signing bonus of 400,000 rubles from the federal government, alongside payments from their provincial government that can be even larger. If these ratios were carried over to the United States, a private would be paid around $120,000 a year, alongside a minimum signing bonus of $20,000 in cash.

For veterans who survive and are prudent with their savings (an uncertain prospect given the spending habits of many young men and the boom in consumer spending), this kind of money can easily be life-changing. This is even more true in the poor areas that the military disproportionately draws on for manpower. These regions have been major beneficiaries of war-induced economic boom, and banking information indicates that soldiers have been sending significant sums back home. Those who can leverage their pay and benefits, whether in acquiring higher education or starting a business, may begin to constitute a new middle class, or even an economic elite in the case of Russia’s provincial hinterlands.

For those veterans who convert their advantages into still greater wealth and cement themselves as economic leaders, they will owe their success to the state. These men are more likely to be loyal to that state, at the very least because they now have something to lose. Their businesses may acquire government contracts that they are anxious to keep, or they may fear losing their tax exemptions because they, their family members, or their employees attend protests, criticize the state online, or donate money to one of over 200 “undesirable organizations.” That is to say that these men, who will likely make up much of the bedrock of the Russian economy’s middle class in the decades to come, will most probably be loyal to the state, providing the Kremlin with assurances of stability for the next generation.

This is not dissimilar to what the United States experienced following World War II. The GI Bill would go on to provide education and opportunity for millions of servicemembers and their families, intrinsically tying their military service to the state. Men who would have been trapped in far-flung farms or urban slums ascended the social ladder in droves. The access to discounted loans and heavily subsidized college education proved integral in the expansion of the middle class, which in turn formed a cornerstone of Cold War America’s economic prosperity. Russia’s programs are fulfilling a similar function, but in a different fashion. While Russian veterans’ benefits do include educational and housing benefits, lavish pay may play the most important role in securing the loyalty and political reliability of veterans.

But veterans are useful outside of their potential for economic stabilization. Recent initiatives, first at the federal level and now across the nation, suggest that the Kremlin is preparing to bring large numbers of veterans into the government bureaucracy. In March 2024, Putin announced the so-called “Time of Heroes” project, which would see college-educated veterans of Russia’s war in Ukraine given the opportunity to be catapulted into high governmental positions. Putin praised such veterans as the “true, real elite” and 14,000 people reportedly applied to the program in the first 24 hours.

Early results seem to have been satisfactory. Of the initial class, which numbered 83, several have already been given major positions, including presidential envoy to the Ural Federal District and acting governor of the Tambov Region. In December, Putin announced that such programs would be expanded in size and scale across Russia, beginning in early 2025.

This program likely appeals to Putin for two distinct reasons: his predilection for siloviki and his frustration with his current crop of officials. Programs like “Time of Heroes” offer the possibility of catering to this predilection while satisfying dual demands for competence and loyalty.

Siloviki, literally “people of force,” are those who work in or uphold the culture of law enforcement, military, paramilitary, or intelligence organizations. Their approach to governance is generally characterized by loyalty to superiors, an inclination towards a strong state, and a willingness to use violent and sometimes ruthless methods to achieve their goals. As a former KGB officer, Putin likely feels kinship for the siloviki, and has filled his cabinet with such men.

Despite this, the failure of the Russian state to decisively win in Ukraine, or to satisfactorily respond to the economic and political pressures at home has almost certainly frustrated Putin. Sergei Shoigu was removed as minister of defense in April 2024, while Pavel Popov, a former deputy defense minister, was arrested in late August. In total, 10 significant military figures have been removed from office, with most also being arrested. Lower-level investigations against corruption have been launched in many different government sectors. For as much as Putin has favored siloviki for their loyalty and willingness to act decisively, the group currently in office is probably seen as unfit for the job.

In peacetime, Putin has used and tolerated corruption as a means of distributing patronage and gaining leverage over subordinates. However, as the war has placed increasing pressure on state resources and demanded more of the Russian people, anti-corruption efforts have increased. This serves to assure Russians that the regime is responsive and is also a convenient way to remove officials who have fallen out of favor.

By drawing on the large pool of veterans who already possess the practical leadership experience to prepare them for government roles, alongside the military pedigree that Putin values, the Kremlin will have access to a large pool of personnel with practical leadership experience who will owe their position exclusively to the state in general and to Putin in particular. For an autocrat, this is invaluable.

If this program is expanded, it could provide a pathway for thousands or tens of thousands of veterans to fill the bureaucracy. Such a large number of potential candidates could allow Putin to replace huge numbers of government officials to radically transform the bureaucracy, or at least credibly threaten to do so to induce concessions from current officials. If selection is genuinely meritocratic, this would almost definitely improve the basic functioning of the state, which in turn is likely to help assuage public dissatisfaction while also generally increasing efficiency. Even if it is not meritocratic, officials who owe fidelity to the top are likely to support their benefactor at the expense of other interest groups. Coupled with a prominent role for veterans in the post-war economy, veterans of the war in Ukraine may prove decisive in securing Russian authoritarianism for many decades to come, as well as generally improving state functions. Given Putin’s focus on the military, it would be unsurprising if newly minted battlefield commanders find themselves elevated to national positions.

Of course, this is not certain to happen. A severe recession or hyperinflation, caused by an overheated economy or Russia losing its war, could destroy veteran’s savings or force the government to cut benefits, eliminating their economic advantage and sparking resentment among them. Where the Soviet Union had Afgantsy, Putin’s Russia may find itself stuck with Ukrainsy.

A repeat of the 1990s is not impossible, though it is unlikely — inflation is already high and interest rates are at a record high 21 percent. Less dramatically, the Kremlin could pause plans to bring veterans of the invasion of Ukraine into the government in large numbers, minimizing their impact in the political realm. It’s also possible that, in the grand Russian tradition, candidates could simply purchase their admission, creating a new class of loyal bureaucrats with uncertain ability.

These variables provide for several different scenarios. In the most positive case for the Kremlin, loyal veterans will provide regime stability and improve efficiency. But this requires Putin and his aides to overcome endemic corruption in hiring processes, economic headwinds that threaten postwar Russia, and the resistance of the current bureaucratic class. In the most pessimistic case, where the economy takes a serious downturn and programs designed to bring capable veterans into the bureaucracy are successfully resisted or corrupted, veterans may become a grievance class with destabilizing impacts. Between these poles are many middling conditions, where partial successes maintain the status quo or provide limited benefits. Some veterans may find themselves elevated to leadership roles based on merit while others climb the ladder by greasing palms, and loyalty is mixed with grumbling about broken promises.

All of that being said, the conclusion of a large military conflict is inevitably accompanied by social and political realignments. In Russia, these realignments have sometimes supported the state and sometimes hobbled it. With the war still raging and the troops at the front, it is unclear which of these will be true this time around. However, for perhaps the first time ever, the Russian state is taking affirmative steps to secure veterans as an asset.

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Harry Francisco Stevens conducts research with the Center for the National Interest, where he specializes in Russian affairs and defense economics. He currently works in artificial intelligence and is a graduate of the University of Chicago.

Thomas Lattanzio is a public service fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with a concentration in security, strategy, and statecraft. He has served in the U.S. Navy as an enlisted sailor and as a civilian within the federal government.

Image: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation via Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Harry Francisco Stevens · February 12, 2025

24. The Whisperer in the Woods

There are four new fiction pieces at Small Wars Journal. I will try to include one each day over the next couple of days.

Fiction| Horizon 2040| Member Content| The Latest

The Whisperer in the Woods

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/12/the-whisperer-in-the-woods/

by Ashley Franz Holzmann

02.12.2025 at 06:00am

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00:00

The Whisper in the Woods

Sir, I know it’s our turn but higher didn’t say anything about additional attachments.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t told, either, Paul,” Lieutenant Taylor Lawrence said.

“He’s a weirdo.”

“Comes well recommended.”

“Frist sergeant didn’t say any—”

“No, the commander did.”

Sergeant first class Paul Stilton took a slow breath in and exhaled. “Sir, this isn’t a lab, this is combat.”

“I hear you, and a part of me agrees with you. But the commander outranks both of us, and this is coming from above him. No idea how high.”

“This could get us killed.”

“Thanks, Paul.” And that was it. Stilton knew he could push the lieutenant pretty far, and he felt comfortable having heated discussions, but the line was the line.

The mission tomorrow would be the same as all the others. Recon to gain and then maintain contact with the enemy lines. They’d spend a week tracking the enemy and gauging where their part of the front lines were so they could report it to higher.

They’d do more if ordered to.

***

The beginning of the war had been hard on a lot of them.

Foreign-owned social media weaponized Americans against each other, funding trends of sabotage.

Military spouses lost access to their bank accounts through cyber attacks. The military had to pull all personnel onto the military bases to keep them safe—including the spouses and kids.

Those were dark days.

But now they were here, doing something about it. Making an impact.

Stilton was a veteran of the last conflict. Lieutenant Lawrence was a good kid, and Stilton wanted to ensure they were a successful team.

“Alright,” Stilton began. “What’s your deal?” The weirdo was a psychological operations specialist. That’s as much as Stilton was told, but he’d heard of the type before and most of it was classified so the stories were either ridiculous or made up.

“I’m Danny, sergeant. Danny Thornbrook.”

“And?”

“And I like to read. Into fitness. Running isn’t really my—”

“Why are you here?”

“I guess to fight for my country and all that. You ever see that really old meme about doing our part and—”

“Why are you attached to us, weirdo?”

“Oh, sorry, sergeant. I’m your PSYOPer.”

“You going to drop a bunch of leaflets while we’re doing the recon mission tomorrow? That it?”

“No. Probably not.”

“You gotta give me some more, Thornbook. You’re not wearing a uniform with rank. What’s in that massive backpack you don’t put down? What are you planning? What’s higher think you can do? Why. Are. You. Here?”

***

Lieutenant Lawrence let Stilton take on the conversation with the PSYOP kid solo. Let the NCO do the NCO thing.

The whole platoon could hear Stilton getting heated with the PSYOP kid, but that was probably a good thing.

Lawrence watched the conversation end between them.

It was not clear if it went well.

A few minutes later the PSYOP kid walked up to Lawrence.

“The cicadas sure do sound beautiful,” the weirdo said.

“What’s your name?” Lawrence asked.

“Danny Thornbrook, sir. You mind if I record the cicadas for awhile?”

Lawrence cracked a smile. “Sure, Danny. Knock yourself out.”

Danny manifested what looked like a microphone and some sort of recording device from his massive backpack, then walked to the edge of the woods out of earshot of the others.

He stayed very still for quite a long time.

Danny sure was a weirdo; but he was their weirdo.

“Sir,” whispered Stacy, one of the nearby privates. “You’re telling me he’s a creative genius and higher thinks he’ll help in some way?”

“Yeah. We’ll give him one chance. If it doesn’t work, then he’s another rifleman and we could use the extra weapon system on the line.”

***

They moved at night.

The forest was dense, thick and crawling.

The platoon had experience entering it, but each time held an energy. The enemy was out there.

The plan was simple:

Link up with the current recon element to relieve them.
Let the weirdo be weird.
See what happens.
Report up to higher.

They were told the mission may impact the entire conflict. If the weirdo was right, and it all worked, then the allies may begin to make serious headway.

It took them a couple of days to reach the front.

Thornbrook was quiet most of the time. His equipment was all non-standard. He had a laptop connected to his chest that seemed waterproof and also appeared to be connected to some sort of satellite internet system. He wore a wild helmet that appeared to have a camera system connected to a set of goggles. His helmet had a microphone and a wire that ran to his backpack.

Thornbrook spent a lot of time near Lieutenant Lawrence, showing Lawrence concepts for operations. Lawrence would give thumbs up and it seemed Thornbrook was then sending the concepts up for approval.

When the other soldiers asked Thornbrook about all of the gizmos and gadgets the kid really lit up.

He talked about his drones and how his gear used the same tech that newscasters use to remote into live television, except his was encrypted.

It was a lot of information and no one asked Thornbrook questions after that.

“I’m excited to see the fireworks whenever they happen,” Lieutenant Lawrence said to Stilton.

“We’ll see,” Stilton replied.

They had walked through the night, listening to the cicadas. Watching Thornbrook record the sounds. Thornbrook even walked next to Stilton for a couple of hours, recording the sound of Stilton’s footsteps, which received a few quiet giggles from everyone except Stilton.

Stilton rolled his eyes, but he didn’t want an hour-long conversation about the nature of human populations and mass movements and all of the other weirdness Thornbrook liked to talk about, so Stilton let Thornbrook do his thing.

***

The link-up with the platoon they were replacing went well. Passage of lines is never easy, and Lawrence was able to breath better once they made it safely to the patrol base.

The lieutenant they replaced was a good friend from college, so they already had rapport established.

The enemy had a similar unit tasked with maintaining contact with them. The previous platoon had done a solid job of mapping out the light machine gun emplacements.

“Have you ever approached from their rear. Over there, to the north?” Thornton asked.

“Why is he here, Taylor?” The other lieutenant asked.

“He’s our secret weapon. He’s a good kid. Have you approached from the north?” Lieutenant Lawrence asked.

The other lieutenant made eye contact with his own platoon sergeant, then with Stilton, who nodded in approval.

“Um. No, but we think it would be possible. There’s an old animal trail over there from what we can tell. It’s how they receive their logistics.”

“Alright, I have something for that,” Thornton said.

***

The weirdness began right away the next night.

Thornton had removed the top flap on his backpack to reveal a powerful loudspeaker that could point in front of him.

He asked everyone to wear hearing protection and it played the ambient sounds of the cicadas that he had been recording, just louder.

“What the hell?” Stacy asked Lawrence.

“Can you hear your footsteps right now?” Lawrence responded.

Stacy briefly removed her hearing protection.

No. She couldn’t hear their footsteps.

She looked up at Lawrence, then to Stilton, surprised. Stilton shrugged as if to say, “Man, I’m just as surprised as you are.”

“Exactly,” Lawrence said, smiling. “If we can’t hear our footsteps, the enemy won’t hear us approach, either. Let the kid be weird.”

***

The tricks kept coming once they got to the edge of the enemy’s location.

When the map reader gave a signal to Lawrence the command was given to allow Thornbrook to drop his backpack.

The cicadas kept humming from the loudspeaker, but a compartment under the speaker held a drone with a device under it.

Thornton held the drone above his head and it launched itself. Then he clicked a button on the side of his helmet and his eyes disappeared as his goggles glossed over.

“That’s another speaker beneath the drone,” whispered Lawrence to the other soldiers. “Guess what sound it’s going to play?”

“More cicadas?”

“No, our footsteps. Except it won’t start playing until it reaches the enemy rear.”

“Really?”

“Thornbrook said it can play two audiofiles at the same time. And it’s going to sound like we’re opening fire from the north. Once that happens, we’re going to let the enemy engage the drone and orient themselves in the wrong direction. We will be south, and we’re going to attack and assault through.”

“Holy shit.”

***

Everyone was nervous to see if the drone would work.

Ruck sacks were quietly placed on the ground.

Everyone ensured their magazines were set.

Fingers edged to the toggles on their weapons to go from ‘safe’ to ‘semi’.

All heads were on a swivel, but eyes kept glancing over to Thornton.

It was dark, but Thornton seemed to smile and he raised up a single finger.

Lieutenant Lawrence gave Stilton a signal and Stilton took half of the platoon slightly left.

Lawrence took his half of the platoon and lined them up so they could assault through the enemy.

Everyone’s night vision was on.

They were ready.

The drone loudspeaker could be heard in the distance—getting louder and louder. It was just footsteps at first, but then it was more. It sounded like it was an entire platoon opening fire from the north.

Everyone held their breath.

Then it happened.

The enemy made contact and began returning fire.

Lawrence and Stilton had everyone keep their heads down and they waited a few minutes. They wanted to make sure the enemy was engaged.

Stilton and Lawrence looked at each other, then nodded.

Lawrence moved first with his half of the platoon.

They went through the motions. Just like training.

***

“Wow, it worked!” Thornton said once the all-clear had been given. He had just caught his drone as it returned to him from the north.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Stilton responded, half laughing, half serious.

“I mean. I knew it would, but also. You know, sergeant,” Thornton said as he quickly packed his drone back into his bag.

“Jesus, kid.” Stilton said.

“Alright,” Lawrence piped in. We have three prisoners, and three minutes left before we need to start moving off this objective and transition to overwatch.

“Sir, I have a second plan. You know the one,” Thornton quickly said.

“Well, that’s up to sergeant first class Stilton,” Lawrence said “Has the weirdo earned your trust, Stilton?”

“He has,” Stilton said, smiling at Thornton. “What you got, kid?”

Tags: future, Future of War, Useful Fiction

About The Author

Ashley Franz Holzmann
A boy named Sue, named Ashley. Born of veterans in foreign lands and raised around the world, he now lives in Arizona with his wife, three children, a Great Dane named Rhino and a German Shepherd named Princess.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

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The Whisperer in the Woods​

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/02/12/the-whisperer-in-the-woods/

The Whisper in the Woods

About The Author

The Whisperer in the Woods