Quotes of the Day:

Franklin D. Roosevelt: “We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. This became a famous poster, with a monumental book behind miniature storm troopers throwing books into the fire, and the tagline ‘Books are weapons in the war of ideas’. Roosevelt was an accomplished rhetorician, and like most great orators, he used words carefully. When he and other political leaders identified books and authors, poets and publishers as key resources in the business of war, we must take them seriously. This book shows how this came to be.”

– The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading by Andrew Pettegree

“Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.”

– Rosa Luxemburg

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

– Winston Churchill

1. U.S. Elite Troops Hardened by War on Terror Retrain for Arctic Combat

2. Special Operations News – Feb 23, 2026

3. The Special Forces Identity Crisis and Rethinking All of Special Operations

4. Opinion | The Cuban Regime’s Slow Collapse

5. Venezuela’s Leaders Killed the Economy. They Are Still In Charge.

6. What Would War With Iran Look Like?

7. Operationalizing Hemispheric Defense: What the 2026 National Defense Strategy Means for Latin America

8. Staff Processes in LSCO Part III: Division Planning

9. Danish defense minister says there is 'no need' for U.S. hospital boat

10. US sailor medically evacuated from nuclear submarine near Greenland: Official

11. On Taiwan and Japan, Chinese Belligerence Backfires

12. Exclusive: New US military-led group aided Mexico's hunt for 'El Mencho' cartel boss

13. They Fought for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan. In America, They’re Living in Fear.

14.  On Strategists and Strategies by Sir Lawrence Freedman

15. How Trump’s Beijing bargaining could derail Taiwan’s multibillion-dollar defence budget

16. Economic Statecraft and the Federal Institutional Architecture

17.Army using AI to update doctrine

18. The VA Excellence Campaign: A Strategic Plan for Transformational Veterans Care

19. The Diego Garcia showdown

1. U.S. Elite Troops Hardened by War on Terror Retrain for Arctic Combat

Summary:

U.S. Army Green Berets, veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, are retraining for Arctic warfare in northern Sweden because the U.S. is “playing catch-up” in a strategically important region. Training near the Arctic Circle in roughly -30°F exposed severe risks: one soldier was dismissed with a large boil after a night outside, and a European trainee was hospitalized with suspected frost injury after failing to change sweaty socks. NATO allies sent nearly 100 soldiers to a three-week course at Sweden’s Subarctic Warfare Center; participation has grown sevenfold in a decade, with Americans now half. NATO has launched Arctic Sentry and will join a 20,000-plus troop exercise in March.

Comment: The first fight in the High North is not against Russia. It is against cold, sweat, and small mistakes, and those mistakes can break a team before contact. Arctic deterrence rests on habits and logistics as much as on weapons, because the article shows that “grit” culture can become a liability when the environment punishes silence and delay. Alliance cohesion is part of the operating concept; training with Scandinavians is framed as a way to offset political friction tied to POTUS and Greenland while NATO builds Arctic coordination through Arctic Sentry.

U.S. Elite Troops Hardened by War on Terror Retrain for Arctic Combat

WSJ

A Journal reporter trained for 10 days with a team of Green Berets during a grueling winter warfare training

By Sune Engel Rasmussen

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Feb. 23, 2026 5:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/u-s-elite-troops-hardened-by-war-on-terror-retrain-for-arctic-combat-8b05c2b4?mod=hp_lead_pos8

KALIX, Sweden—A dozen highly trained U.S. Army Green Berets lumbered through a northern Swedish pine forest, struggling not to fall on their brand new skis as they dragged sleds over hills and frozen creeks.

Veterans of the global war on terror, the special forces were retraining for Arctic warfare. And the extreme cold was proving as hostile as any human enemy.

Near the Arctic Circle, temperatures constantly hovered around -30 degrees Fahrenheit (-34 Celsius). Days into the training, one team member—who had spent years in the jungles and deserts of the Middle East and Asia—was dismissed from the course with a boil on his finger the size of a cherry after spending the night outside in the cold. A European soldier from another team was hospitalized and risked losing parts of two toes. Instructors suspected he had failed to change out of his sweaty socks.

A Wall Street Journal reporter embedded and trained for 10 days with the 12-man team of U.S. Green Berets. Known as an A-Team, they were among nearly 100 soldiers sent by North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to participate in this three-week grueling winter warfare training.

The U.S. Special Forces learned to operate outside for a week in the extreme cold. Eve Hartley/WSJ

Most of them had at least a decade of experience, including combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Journal agreed not to disclose the soldiers’ identities due to the sensitive nature of their work.

The strategic importance of the High North is growing, but as the A-Team discovered, the climate is so hostile that even battle-hardened soldiers struggle to survive—let alone fight a war here.

“Just like we agreed not to fight with chemical weapons, let’s just agree to not fight up here,” the team sergeant said. During a pause, the soldiers flexed their wrists and pumped their stretched arms, a penguin-like exercise that locals here do to keep their fingers warm. “Maybe all the countries come together and we just decide that above this line, we’re not fighting here. We’re not doing that,” added the team medic.

‘Let’s just agree to not fight up here,’ the U.S. Special Forces team medic said after enduring the harsh climate of the High North. Eve Hartley/WSJ

The U.S. is playing catch-up in the Arctic. As global warming opens shipping lanes and trade routes, China and Russia are both pushing to master the polar regions. Russia has expanded its military footprint in the Arctic for decades, as Western militaries were either disarming after the Cold War or focused on fighting terrorists.

“We have been the experts on counterinsurgency, on conventional and unconventional warfare, for the past 25 years. That is not the case in the Arctic,” said Ryan P. Burke, professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and author of a book on great power competition in the polar regions.

“We simply don’t have the institutional knowledge that our Nordic and Scandinavian partners do, and that’s a hard reality to confront,” he said. “People don’t understand how absolutely absurd it is to operate up there.”

NATO military planners worry that Europe’s tensions with President Trump over Greenland, Ukraine and trade have increased the risk of a Russian incursion, or outright invasion, of a member state.

The High North would likely play a central role in a potential conflict between NATO and Russia, the only Arctic state outside the alliance, whether as a result of spillover of a conflict elsewhere or in a direct confrontation.

Most of Russia’s fleet of nuclear submarines and icebreakers is located on the Arctic Kola Peninsula. The shortest route for Russian surface-launched ballistic missiles to North America is over the Arctic. For Northern Europe, the concern is a land invasion, as Russia shares nearly 1,000 miles of border with Finland and Norway. In the event of an invasion, NATO allies, including the U.S., would move north to help defend the icy expanses.

The submarine Krasnoyarsk at a Russian Navy base in Severomorsk. Russia has expanded its military footprint in the Arctic for decades. Lev Fedoseyev/TASS/Zuma Press

“The Arctic is becoming increasingly important for our collective security, and with seven of the eight Arctic states being NATO Allies, our shared interest in stability and cooperation in the region is clear,” said Lt. Gen. Richard E. Angle, commander of the Allied Special Operations Forces Command, which coordinates special forces operations across Europe. Two decades of counterterrorism and the war in Ukraine hold lessons that must now be applied in the Arctic, he said.

In Northern Europe, winter isn’t a hindrance for war, but in fact makes it more likely. Northern Sweden, where the training took place, is a web of rivers, lakes and marshland. Once the region freezes over, troops and equipment can move more freely.

The U.S. military has learned winter skills from its northern European counterparts before. The 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit out of Fort Drum, N.Y., specialized in rapid deployments, was modeled after the elite Finnish ski troops who effectively used mobility, camouflage and survival skills to hold off invading Soviet forces in the 1939 Winter War.

The number of students at the training courses in northern Sweden, run by the Subarctic Warfare Center, has grown sevenfold over the past decade, said Frederik Flink, commander of the center’s international wing. Half of the participants are now Americans.

U.S. forces joined other NATO allies in the training, run by Sweden's Subarctic Warfare Center. Eve Hartley/WSJ

Operating in this environment is extremely laborious. Step off your skis in the woods and you sink to your knees in snow. Drop an item, like a knife, into the powdered snow and it is lost. The team sergeant instinctively put his freezing metal compass between his lips, and nearly got a frost injury. On a recent exercise, a student touched his freezing-cold gun’s magazine with his bare hands for a few minutes. Two days later, all his fingers were covered in blisters so bad he needed medical attention.

Every hour or so during cross-country ski exercises, when the team took five minute-breaks, they layered-up with puffer jackets to trap the body heat generated from skiing. Once they started moving, they removed layers again. In -30 degrees F, sweating is dangerous.

Snow and ice obscure features normally used to navigate through an unfamiliar landscape. Camouflage is tricky as even black boots and beanies stand out in the monochrome surroundings. The barren nature here provides little assistance.

“In the jungle, everything is trying to kill you, but you can also eat most things,” the team sergeant said, as the special forces sat down amid pine trees to boil snow to cook lunch. In the Arctic wilderness, there is nothing to eat.

Swedish instructors here say the hardest thing to teach students is to admit when they are hungry, cold or in pain. Enduring hardship can make it worse, and put an entire mission at risk because the cold is so unforgiving. Soldiers burn on average over 7,000 calories in this cold when doing only moderate exercise, far surpassing even the most energy-intensive ration packs.

“That’s a learning curve for a lot of guys on the team. It takes a certain type of person to get to [the team], and a lot of that is grit and determination and pushing through lots of pain,” said one of the Special Forces’ communications specialists.

“ ‘Suck it up and move on’ is how we do,” the team sergeant said. “But ‘suck it up’ doesn’t cut it here.”

Special forces are trained to push through pain and discomfort, but in the Arctic those habits are dangerous, said one of the A-Team's communications sergeants. Eve Hartley/WSJ

Some experts say the risk of direct conflict in the Arctic remains low. Even then, the U.S. needs to bolster its presence in the region to ensure it stays that way, said Rebecca Pincus, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based think tank.

“If NATO continues to neglect the Arctic, and not build up those skills, I think we’d see more probing from Russia,” she said.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Is the U.S. taking the right steps to prepare for conflict in the Arctic? Join the conversation below.

NATO recently launched Arctic Sentry, an effort to coordinate and enhance planning and activities among members across the polar regions. As part of this new initiative, American soldiers in March will join more than 20,000 troops from other NATO allied countries for a Norwegian-run exercise called Cold Response. Training with Scandinavian allies at a time when Trump threatens to take control of Greenland, a territory of Denmark, can help the U.S. military overcome political friction and strengthen its partnerships with European counterparts, Pincus said.

“It shows the ongoing importance of that partnership, and it can help offset tension in other parts of the NATO alliance,” she said.

WSJ

2. Special Operations News – Feb 23, 2026

Special Operations News – Feb 23, 2026

February 23, 2026 SOF News Update 0

https://sof.news/update/20260223/

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) has been in the Arabian Sea since late January 2026. (photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Aleksandr Freutel while sailing in the Pacific Ocean in June 2022)

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it 2 or 3 days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

Spanish SOF and STEADFAST DART. The Spanish Special Operations Component Command (SOCC) took part in Exercise STEADFAST DART 26 in northern Germany in February 2026. The Spanish ARF SOCC played a key role in the exercise in the air, sea, and land domains. NATO, February 20, 2026.

Marine Raiders. The Marines with the Critical Skills Operator military occupational specialty (MOS) serve in the Raider units of the Marine Corps Force Special Operations Command. Read about them in “MARSOC Marine Raiders: Always Faithful, Always Forward”, by Michael Ellmer, Grey Dynamics, February 20, 2026.

SOF, Intelligence, and Tech. To remain competitive on the battlefield U.S. special operations forces must leverage emerging technologies and further develop strategic intelligence capabilities. The U.S. needs to study the impacts of artificial intelligence, machine-learning, big data analytics, and more to advance its capabilities in SOF mission planning and execution. Read more in “Special Operations Forces Enterprise: Strategic Intelligence and Emerging Technology”, by Sgt. Maj. Erich Franck, Joint Special Operations University Press, February 2, 2026.

IW and DoD Instruction 3000.07. Chad Machiela and Seth Gray provide their insight on irregular warfare in “Regular or Unleaded? Differentiating Irregular Warfare”, Small Wars Journal, February 19, 2026.

NSW Art on Display. This summer the Navy Seal Museum located in Fort Pierce, Florida will be host to a show that highlights the art of Naval Special Operators. The 2026 exhibit – The Art of the Operator – will showcase a variety of mediums – including metalwork, charcoal, ink, oil, pastel, poetry, photography, and more.

IW and the “Institutional Battlefield”. Ian Murphy writes that current discourse on irregular warfare often focuses on its operational and tactical dimensions. However, many times ignored, is the role of institutions in long-term irregular conflicts. These institutions – governance, education, economic, and infrastructure can serve as tools used by occupying powers. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine is used by Murphy as a case in point. The Russians are shaping institutions in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. “The Institutional Battlefield: Why Irregular Warfare Must Contemplate Path Dependence”, Inter Populum, February 9, 2026.

SF and SOF Identity Crisis. Here is yet another publication on the Special Forces identity crisis. This one by retired Lt. Col. Greg Banner. “The Special Forces Identity Crisis and Rethinking of Special Operations”, Joint Special Operation University Press, February 9, 2026. https://jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/301

19th SFG(A) and African Lion. The 19th Special Forces Group will be providing personnel to participate in the annual AFRICOM exercise African Lion 26. This year it takes place in Morocco in the April-May 2026 timeframe. Read more in “Inside how SETAF-AF will turn innovation into capability during African Lion 26”, U.S. Army, February 19, 2026.

SOF History

OSS and the origins of the CIA and SF. Alex Dekker describes “How the OSS Shaped the CIA and U.S. Army Special Forces”, February 19, 2026.

On February 27, 1944, a five-man team from the OSS parachuted into Malo Ticevo, Yugoslavia to establish a weather station. Operation Bunghole consisted of members of the OSS and USAAF specialists. Yugoslavia was occupied by the Germans at that time.

https://codenames.info/operation/bunghole-ii/

On February 26, 1945, the 503rd Parachute Regimental Combat Team (PRCT) secured the island fortress of Corregidor after two weeks of fighting. The 503rd had parachuted onto the island on February 16th. It was assisted by the 34th Infantry Regiment, a unit of the 24th Infantry Division that made a seaborne assault, as well as other smaller units.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Corregidor_(1945)

On February 23, 1991, SFODA 525 was inserted by helicopter at night and moved to a hide site to conduct a recon mission deep behind enemy lines in Iraq. On the next morning, the 24th, this 5th SFG(A) team would find itself fighting for survival against an overwhelming enemy force.

https://sof.news/history/sfoda-525/

On February 24, 2006, the Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) was officially activated at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

National Security and Commentary

SecDef Culling Senior Officers. The Department of Defense spokesperson, Colonel Dave Butler, was recently fired by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Butler, a former infantry officer, is a longtime leader in Army public affairs and highly-respected officer. However, he apparently did not meet the ‘litmus test’ that Hegseth has established for senior Army officers; likely because Butler had worked under former CJCS General Mark Milley. “Hegseth’s Firing Campaign Reaches Down Into the Ranks”, The Atlantic, February 17, 2026.

US Sub Crew Member in Greenland for Medical Care. News was released by Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command on February 21, 2026, that a crew member of a US submarine, the USS Delaware (SSN-791), was evacuated due to an onboard urgent medical emergency by a Royal Danish Navy MH-60R Seahawk helicopter to a Nuuk, Greenland hospital for a medical emergency. The helicopter was dispatched from a Danish Naval vessel operating in the area. There are five regional hospitals in Greenland – the biggest in Nuuk. In related news, President Trump announced on Truth Social (and reposted by The White House Twitter account) that a U.S. Navy hospital ship is going to Greenland to take care of “the many people who are sick.” (click here to view a larger image)

The Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, issued this statement about the medical system in Denmark and Greenland:

“I am grateful to live in a country where there is free and equal access to healthcare for everyone. Where it is not insurance coverage or personal wealth that determines whether you receive proper treatment. The same approach applies in Greenland.”

The Prime Minister (Premier) of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, posted on Facebook:

“It will be a no thank you from here. President Trump’s idea of sending an American hospital ship to Greenland has been noted. However, we have a public healthcare system where treatment is free for citizens. That is a deliberate choice – and a fundamental part of our society.”

VA Backtracks on Threat to Strip Benefits from Veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs quickly reversed course on a new rule that would require veteran’s disability ratings to be calculated by how well they function on medication and not on the underlying condition or injury itself. Political leaders on both sides of the aisle as well as many of the veteran service organizations quickly criticized the new rule. The VA Secretary Doug Collins announced that the new rule was now “on hold”.

SFABs Going Away. Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Meyers, a US Army foreign area officer who currently serves with the Army’s Military Advisor Training Academy, writes on the history of advising and how the reduction of the Security Force Assistance Brigades will create an advisor capability gap. “Gone but not Forgotten: Retaining Advising Capabilities Even as the Army Cuts its Advising Units”, Modern War Institute at West Point, February 18, 2026.

Intel, HUMINT, AI, IW

New DIA Director. Lieutenant General James H. Adams (USMC) has become the 25th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is a Marine Corps aviator (AH-1W Super Cobra) with over three decades of service. He now leads a 16,500-member workforce. He is a graduate of the Naval Academy, Joint Advanced Warfighting School, and Harvard Business School.

Mapping Human Terrain. This essay discusses the critical intelligence function in the context of the modern era of irregular warfare and strategic competition. “Mapping the Human Terrain: The Endurring Role of Human Intelligence in the U.S. Army”, by Tyler Fleming, Small Wars Journal, February 18, 2026.

AI, Anthropic, and DoD. An artificial intelligence firm may soon be designated as a “supply chain risk” by the Department of Defense. Anthropic, the maker of Claude – an AI application – may be forced to cut ties with the Pentagon and lose a lucrative contract. Anthropic is insisting that any use by DoD of its AI should not include mass surveillance of Americans and not be used in fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives and got a huge $200M defense contract in July 2025. The Claude AI is also incorporated into the Palantir package heavily used by SOF, conventional military, and intelligence agencies. Anthropic does have some competition – Musk’s xAI, Google’s AI, and OpenAI. Read more on the legal aspects of this case in “Congress – Not the Pentagon or Anthropic – Should Set Military AI Rules”, Lawfare, February 20, 2026.

A Little about HUMINT. What does it take to ‘run agents’? Learn about it in “So, You Want to Be A HUMINT Operator?”, Grey Dynamics, February 19, 2026.

Strategic Competition

Paper – Russia in the High North. Russian strategy and escalation risks in the Arctic region is examined in this publication. RAND Corporation, 2026, PDF, 69 pages.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3446-1.html

‘FICINT’ and the Baltic-Nordic Front. James J. Torrence provides a fictional story on how the Russians can test NATO’s command and control systems. ‘FICINT’ stands for ‘fictional intelligence’ – (Editor’s Note: This is a new acronym for the editor). Read “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front”, Modern War Institute at West Point, February 19, 2026. Torrence also provides an epilogue to the story where he extracts five real-world lessons for U.S. and allied military forces. “When the Fiction Ends: Lessons from ‘Maneuver Under a Lying Sky”, Modern War Institute at West Point, February 20, 2026.

JIATF-CC and Mexican Cartels. The Department of Defense established (NORTHCOM, Jan 15, 2026) Joint Interagency Task Force – Counter Cartel under U.S. Northern Command. This is part of an effort to identify, disrupt, and dismantle cartel operations posing a threat to the United States along the U.S.-Mexico border. In related news, a leading cartel leader, Ruben “El Mencho“, was killed in Mexico on Sunday, February 22, 2026. Mexican special forces were responsible for the elimination of the crime boss. Some major clashes are reported to have taken place between government troops and members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). The Embassy of Mexico in the U.S. announced that U.S. authorities provided complimentary intelligence to assist in the operation.

NATO’s FLF MNSE in Finland. NATO’s Forward Land Forces (FLF) headquarters will be located in the Finnish Lapland’s capital of Rovaniemi. (map NSI) The FLF Multinational Staff Element (MNSE) will have a permanent presence in Northern Finland. This will strengthen NATO’s deterrence and defense in the High North and Arctic region. Arctic Today, February 20, 2026.

Ukraine Conflict

Russian Daily Casualties. Recent reporting from the Ukraine-Russia conflict is that Russia is currently losing over 1,000 casualties a day during the grinding offense along the front lines. Most estimates of Russian military personnel killed are over 400,000 since the start of the war 4 years ago in February 2022. Some estimates by observers say less than 100 meters is gained per day on average by Russia.

CIA and MI6 Got it Right in Pre-Invasion Period. The Central Intelligence Agency and the British intelligence service accurately predicted that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. The President of Ukraine, Zelensky, and other European leaders dismissed the warnings. Read a detailed article on how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them. “A War Foretold”, The Guardian, February 20, 2026.

Ukrainian Railways Under Attack. Over this current winter the Russians have hit Ukrainian civilian infrastructure hard. This is especially true of the power grid and energy facilities that provide heat and electricity to the city dwellers across the country. In addition, this winter, the passenger rail system is being attacked as well. Transport by air is impossible in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2022 – now movement is by car, bus, or train. Russia has now mastered the technique of attacking moving trains with Shahed drones that are equipped with a thermal camera and an internet modem that transmits a live video feed to a drone pilot many miles away. “They’re attacking the railways”, Counteroffensive.News, February 21, 2026.

Ukraine Gains. Over 201 square kilometers in southeastern Zaporizhzhia were recaptured from Russian forces in mid-February. This breakthrough exploited a critical Starlink outage on the Russian side which hindered Russian C2 efforts. This is one of the most significant gains for Ukraine in the past two years.

Case Study – Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) in Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has altered the strategic landscape of Europe and redefined NATO’s approach to Civil-Military Cooperation. CIMIC has now become a vital element for deterrence, crisis management, and national defense. Read more in “Case Study Ukraine: A CIMIC Analysis”, NATO, February 2026, PDF, 114 pages.

https://www.cimic-coe.org/publications/ukraine-comprehensive-case-study/

Around the World

Attacking Iran . . . Again? The world is holding its breath – wondering if President Trump will give the go-ahead for another attack on Iran. The U.S. last attacked Iran in Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, hitting a number of sites associated with Iran’s nuclear development program. As a second aircraft carrier nears the region and hundreds of military aircraft settle in on forward staging areas in the Middle East area the time for an attack could be nearing soon. However, Trump believes he can reach a deal with Iran on its nuclear program. Over the past two weeks online OSINT accounts have followed and reported the mass movement of U.S. military aircraft using sites like ADS-B Exchange and FlightRadar24.

The force buildup for a possible Iran operation is the largest since the 2003 Iraq invasion. The size of the buildup has prompted speculation about the intent of the White House. Is it to limit Iran’s nuclear program, is it to effect regime change (in conjunction with the riots and demonstrations taking place within Iran), or is it a combination of several different outcomes? US bases in the Middle East are found in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

Leaving Syria. The U.S. is moving some, and perhaps all, of its military personnel out of Syria. Where this leaves the Syrian Democratic Front (SDF) – Kurds that live in the northeast part of the country is a big question. Without the support of the U.S. the Kurds will have to come to an agreement with the current Syrian government and fight the remnants of ISIS in Syria. For the past few years the U.S. had at least 1,000 military personnel located in several small bases in eastern Syria.

Paper on North Africa and the Sahel. Dario Cristiani provides a long essay examining the dynamics of the three regions of North Africa. (map NSI) He argues that these three regions should not be looked at as independent areas but as a distinct region where economic, political, migration, terrorism, and security factors connect the three regions. “The Mediterranean, North Africa, the Sahel: A Single, Strategic System?”, Stimson Center, January 27, 2026.

Paper – Russia’s Transition from the Wagner Group to Africa Corps . . . and US SOF. Nadina Ronc provides a detailed look at how Russia uses paramilitary forces to undermine regional stability and challenge western influence. “From Guns for Hire to Military Doctrine: Russia’s Institutionalization of Influence in Africa – Implications and Recommendations for U.S. Special Operations Forces“, Joint Special Operations University Press, January 29, 2026. https://jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/297

Russia – Failure in Africa? Russia has taken advantage of a decline of western presence and influence in the Sahel region of Africa. For the past few years Russia has increased its presence via diplomacy, economic ventures, and with military and paramilitary forces. Some African nations have turned to Russia for advice and assistance in defeating jihadist insurgent groups; however, the jihadists have expanded their activities and areas of control. Over the long term, this could cost some reversals for Russia and provide openings for western nations. “The Waiting Game: Signposts of Russia’s Coming Failure in Africa”, Irregular Warfare Initiative, February 19, 2026.

The Forgotten War. Less than 1 percent of the U.S. population serves in the Armed Forces. That means 99 percent of the population forms their opinion of wars through reading the news, talking to relatives or friends that served, or by watching movies or documentaries. Each war has a few well-known movies that form the basis of understanding the conflict. For instance, World War II had Sands of Iwo Jima and Saving Private Ryan. The Vietnam War had Platoon and Apocalyspe Now. What was the movie that provided the background of the second Gulf War? Dr. Majorie Galelli, a professor of history, presents her thoughts in “Operation Iraqi Freedom: The New Forgotten War?”, Military Review, Nov-Dec 2025.

Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

CTC Sentinel. The latest issue – February 2026 – has been posted by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. This monthly publication leverages the Center’s network of scholars and practitioners to understand and deliver content about contemporary terrorism threats. This month’s issue contains topics on Al-Sharaa (Syria), digital fandom, and more.

SOF News Book Shop

View our selection of books about special operations forces at the SOF News Book Shop.

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May 28-31, 2026

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June 7-11, 2026

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3. The Special Forces Identity Crisis and Rethinking All of Special Operations

Summary:

Retired Lt. Col. Greg Banner argues the Army Special Forces “identity crisis” is driven less by SF culture than by how JSOC emerged and then monopolized missions, access, and prestige across U.S. special operations. He portrays this as a political, not operational, choice that pushed SF and other SOF to a de facto lower tier, harmed morale, and produced a more siloed, less organized enterprise. He describes JSOC secrecy, default mission assignment, and disproportionate promotion influence from direct action leaders as self-reinforcing. He recommends reorganizing JSOC as a USSOCOM subordinate command, pooling operational elements across USSOCOM, clarifying roles, and treating units as coequal for mission selection.

Comment: JSOC’s “Tier 1” label is not just branding (and was actually initially only used to describe levels of funding and was not meant to describe a varsity and junior varsity. But that is what the tier description became.  In Banner’s telling, it shapes incentives, access, promotions, and who gets missions, so the identity problem is structural and will persist unless the structure changes. The enterprise risk is opportunity cost. When mission assignment defaults to one silo, the force loses the adaptive value Banner attributes to SF A-detachments as “universal” problem-solvers, and it also underuses regional expertise in the SF groups. Banner is making a political warfare argument about bureaucratic power. He implies organizational narratives, secrecy, and liaison monopolies function like internal influence campaigns that secure mission capture and perpetuate the dominant subcommunity’s interests.

My thoughts from 4 years ago.

It’s time for a third special operations revolution

https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2020/08/01/its-time-for-a-third-special-operations-revolution/

The Special Forces Identity Crisis and Rethinking All of Special Operations

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The Special Forces Identity Crisis and Rethinking All of Special Operations

By Retired Lt. Col. Greg Banner, U.S. Army Special Forces

JSOU Report 26-4

February 9, 2026

https://sway.cloud.microsoft/QuYz7RyZj0ascTfP

Joint Special Operations University provides relevant joint special operations-peculiar education programs that educate joint SOF leaders, enable academic activities, enhance the SOF education system, and strengthen the SOF enterprise’s impact on the joint force and the Nation. To learn more, visit https://www.jsou.edu. To learn more about the press, visit https://www.jsou.edu/Press.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this work are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of the U.S. Government, Department of War, United States Special Operations Command, or the Joint Special Operations University.

This work was cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Green Berets assigned to 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), moves a simulated casualty at Joint Base Lewis- McChord. This photo was altered for security purposes in accordance with USSOCOM Manual 360-1. Photo by Sgt. John Bae

Introduction

Several articles and rebuttals—written by retired Col. Edward Croot, retired Sgt. Maj. David Shell, and others—talk about an Army Special Forces (SF) “identity crisis,” or confusion and morale problems among that force. While a lot of valid comments have been made, there have only been some passing comments about the “elephant in the room” and what is really the main problem. That issue comes from the emergence of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and its component units which have monopolized many parts of U.S. special operations missions to the detriment of the remaining Special Operations Forces (SOF), primarily SF. This is, however, not just an SF issue as it impacts other forces and in fact has resulted in a less organized and less capable SOF as a whole. In addressing the topic, there is the hope that changes could benefit the entire force and our national capabilities.

This is, however, not just an SF issue as it impacts other forces and in fact has resulted in a less organized and less capable SOF as a whole.

The History

In the Vietnam era, SF was the major force doing special operations, along with a very small Naval Special Warfare force, and some U.S. Air Force (USAF) and U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) infantry forces doing special missions. However, SF was extremely unpopular with the conventional Army and many of its leaders, and this undertone carried over into the 1980s and beyond. When a proposal was made to take away some of the SF missions from them and create a new force—open to non-SF soldiers—the idea had a lot of support and was eventually approved.

This was really a political decision, not an operational one. Ties to the conventional Ranger community, and therefore the conventional Army, ensured that this new force endured and grew. The development of the new force was followed by the creation of JSOC as the planning and deployable headquarters (HQs) for this organization and others. All this could have been done by leaving the mission with SF, but that boat sailed long ago. The impact, though, and possibly the deliberate intent, was to cut out the main body of SF from JSOC missions. What also came with JSOC—and its subordinate units—was language indicating they were our national “Tier 1” forces—meaning the highest trained, best equipped, and the first to get called. But what is left when everyone is thinking about, using the language, and then operationalizing a “Tier 1” force? This leaves everyone else, in practice, as a lesser tier and less important, sometimes including conventional forces which might have unique capabilities.

The Impact

So, what has been seen operationally during the last few decades? Primarily, JSOC operations have been siloed; its forces usually don't lower themselves to work directly with other special operations HQs or forces. JSOC often operates in the same physical space as others—complicating the command and control picture—but under an artificial veil of secrecy to further highlight its unique status. Additionally, as the Tier 1 force, JSOC has become the go-to for many missions. It has also monopolized links and liaisons with other civilian and military organizations to ensure the premier position to get missions, regardless of mission profiles or needs. There have clearly been a lot of missions that SF or others could conduct equally well or better, but the chain of command and organizational structure prioritizes JSOC as a default without really considering other forces.

Once a mission goes to JSOC, it uses its own forces without having direct access to or really considering others in the special operations community (like Army SF and/or the regional special operations commands). A follow-on impact of this situation is that officers who come from the direct action (DA) side of special operations, mainly still wearing infantry branch brass, get a disproportionate share of the promotions and positions that oversee all of SOF. This obviously serves to perpetuate the interests of their part of the force, often with real limited knowledge of other organizations and SF in particular.

There have clearly been a lot of missions which SF or others could conduct equally well or better, but the chain of command and organizational structure prioritizes JSOC as a default without really considering other forces.

In the roles and missions for the various forces, there is some overlap. In general terms, JSOC forces focus on DA with some appropriate intelligence and reconnaissance support. The Ranger Regiment brings in larger forces, when needed, for the same general types of missions or related infantry missions. SF remains grounded in all special operations missions, especially the ability to take small tactical units and conduct unconventional warfare (UW) and foreign internal defense (FID) missions (acknowledging that its basic operational unit, the A-detachment, is small compared to all others). Organizationally, with the regional focus of the SF groups, their forces gain experience and maintain regional expertise unmatched by anyone else.

Just to be clear, all these forces use Soldiers—and Sailors, Airmen, and Marines—from the same “gene pool,” so quality cannot be rationally argued as a concern. The real strength and difference of SF from the others, though, is its training program and the enlisted skill sets of all SF-qualified Soldiers. Nobody else in the force structure has the same kind of versatility to think quickly, react to new situations, solve problems, and figure out any mission—hallmarks of “special operators”—as the SF A-detachment. This makes them truly “universal” special operations generalists. Given all that, the overall organization for special operations activities has lost a lot by pushing them away and not letting them into the “JSOC club.”

Recommendations

All of this, of course, is a principal reason for morale problems in SF, as well as an operational dysfunction among the entire U.S. special operations community. The solution lies in a better way to organize the community. JSOC should be a USSOCOM subordinate command—a standing, deployable organization that can do rapidly evolving missions of any kind, prioritizing, of course, those missions that require immediate response, like hostage rescues. Additionally, USSOCOM could create ad hoc joint special operations task forces from other command elements, as they have done in the past, and the option to use the best HQs for the given mission should be based on the situation and needs. All operational elements of USSOCOM (currently under JSOC and elsewhere) should be in the same pool to be used as needed, depending on the mission, environment, and location. In that sense, all USSOCOM units from all the services would be coequal and co-available, essentially making all the units “Tier 1” under USSOCOM. In this scenario, all of the forces would continue to do their own mission training and planning, with focus areas in particular skill sets in assigned roles and missions, but could be tapped as appropriate for any USSOCOM missions.

The solution lies in a better way to organize the community.

Additionally, it would be useful in any such reorganization to better clarify these roles and missions for all the forces. It makes perfect sense to have a force that focuses on hostage rescue missions and maintain its skills for very specialized DA missions, mostly with a focus on urban operations. The family of water/seaborne tactical operations is equally complex, with missions such as ship assaults and DA missions in the water. Those missions should have a force appropriately trained and focused without trying to spread themselves thin doing other missions better suited for other forces with land- based mission expertise. The Ranger Regiment is still the force needed when complex special missions require a large force to move quickly. USMC special operations units appear to be the closest to the Ranger Regiment in terms of size and general capabilities. In comparison, they have a better fundamental grounding in land operations than Naval Special Warfare units, and they have a great warrior ethos. Even if somewhat redundant, their worldwide deployments and sea-based availability make them useful to the whole. Likewise, the USAF, along with the long-standing Air Force special tactics missions, seems to be expanding some of its capabilities and should be examined and wrapped into the whole. Army SF teams focus their skill sets mostly on the UW/FID missions, but with the need to be highly proficient in basic combat skills. SF teams, because of pre- assigned contingency missions and varied environments of their areas of operation, often focus on unique skill sets such as mountaineering, environmental expertise (e.g., arctic, jungle, desert), and sometimes the use of unique mobility or weapons systems. In the past, Army SF had the long-range reconnaissance mission appropriate to small units which could deploy deep into enemy territory and function for long periods of time. It seems now that roles and missions are not very clear, and the organizational structure to employ and maximize the use of all our SOF is not the best it can be. In looking broadly, there are sometimes missions of the highest national priority that could and should go to any of the SOF, which is a concept that our mindset and organizational structure should support. JSOC, as it is currently organized, should not get first pick of all missions or get to decide to use their forces for missions that others could do better.

Conclusion

So, this is not just about an SF “identity crisis;” it is about how U.S. SOF has become confused and disorganized as it has continued to grow over the years into the massive force it is now. Anyone inside or outside any of the parts, or looking objectively at various missions over the last few decades can see some of the problems that exist and have occurred. Frankly, the force is likely too big. While some redundancy is useful, it is possible that some parts of the force are not focused appropriately and could be reduced. A review of the whole force is long overdue and, hopefully, if people can look at the big picture and set aside vested interests, a better, more defined and integrated structure can be built. By properly assigning roles and missions, utilizing the best forces for all missions, and respecting each force for what it is, the whole system benefits.

About the Author

Greg Banner is a U.S. Military Academy graduate who, as an infantry officer, had tours in the 82nd Airborne Division, but spent most of his career in Special Forces. He commanded two different A- detachments for two years each. Assignments included duty in the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), and 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), as well as in the U.S. Military Group (USMILGROUP), El Salvador and U.S. Special Operations Command Europe. He deployed multiple times to live operational missions around the globe and worked with most everyone else in the U.S. special operations community, along with a number of foreign partners. Among his decorations and for his multiple live deployments in joint/combined environments, Banner received the Joint Meritorious Unit Award seven times.

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4. Opinion | The Cuban Regime’s Slow Collapse

Summary:

Mary Anastasia O’Grady argues Cuba’s economic collapse creates a rare opening for U.S. national security and democratic change, yet she sees no clear plan from POTUS. She warns Cuba is being used by China for intelligence collection and cites a 2024 CSIS paper identifying four likely Chinese collection sites that have been upgraded as Cuba’s economy deteriorated. She says Havana’s shortages and humanitarian breakdown stem from long corruption and regime extraction, including GAESA capturing revenue meant for public services. She cautions that any U.S. deal short of unconditional regime surrender risks buying time for new enforcers, while an orderly transition requires rank and file cooperation.

Comment: What comes next? Are we prepared for that?  Mary Anastasia O’Grady frames Cuba as a live counterintelligence problem, not only a human rights tragedy, so “collapse” becomes a strategic window that adversaries can also exploit. Her warning about “opening” and “reform” suggests the regime’s negotiating pattern is itself a political warfare tool meant to divide outsiders, stall pressure, and preserve GAESA’s power.

If an orderly transition requires cooperation from Cuba’s rank and file, what leverage can the U.S. apply that pressures GAESA and the ruling clique without triggering the public security vacuum the author fears?

Opinion | The Cuban Regime’s Slow Collapse

WSJ · The Cuban Regime’s Slow Collapse

Will Trump seize the opportunity to free the island or be tempted into a deal?

By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

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Feb. 22, 2026 3:15 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-cuban-regimes-slow-collapse-fa88b52a

Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

President Trump caused an international uproar when he declared that the U.S. intends to take ownership of Greenland—one way or another. With an Arctic thaw making the large island in the northern Western Hemisphere ever more strategically important, Mr. Trump justified the use of force, if necessary, on national-security grounds.

Another island closer to home poses a more immediate risk than Greenland, owned by U.S. ally Denmark. Cuba, by all indications, is being used for intelligence gathering by China, presenting a clear and present danger. A 2024 paper by scholars at the Center for Strategic and International Studies listed “four sites within Cuba that are most likely to be supporting China’s efforts to collect intelligence on the United States and its neighbors.” The authors note: “These sites have undergone observable upgrades in recent years, even as Cuba has faced increasingly dire economic prospects that have drawn it closer to China.”

It would be strange if the Trump administration didn’t recognize the current collapse of the Cuban economy as a unique opportunity to shore up national security by restoring democracy on the island. Yet Mr. Trump doesn’t appear to have a plan to support such a transition. He said the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3 leaves Cuba “ready to fall.” But he also said a U.S. action similar to what occurred in Caracas is probably unnecessary and that Cuba should make “a deal” with Washington.

Coming from a real-estate magnate known for his transactional approach to governance, this disturbs no small number of freedom-loving Cubans on the island and in exile. A free Cuba calls for an unconditional surrender by the ruling clique in Havana. Anything less plays into the hands of the next generation of regime thugs, who are looking to buy time.

The regime is running low on everything it needs to operate its system of repression. Acute shortages of electricity and gasoline have been exacerbated by the U.S. blockade of oil shipments. But the humanitarian crisis was well underway before the U.S. oil “quarantine.” Cuban privation is the product of years of Havanese greed and corruption.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called regime leadership “incompetent.” That’s wrong. It’s quite good at what it does, working to accumulate power and money. As I reported in this space in January 2025, a leak to the Miami Herald of internal government records showed that “hundreds of millions of dollars earned by companies on the island that should go to public services end up in the accounts of GAESA”—a state-owned conglomerate—“or its subsidiaries.”

In 1959 Cubans gave up their freedom, some willingly, in exchange for promises that the state would provide for them. Now they have neither liberty nor bread. Society is ready to explode.

Militarily, it would be easy for the U.S. to tip the regime over. But some 8.5 million people are suffering the breakdown of food distribution, widespread unemployment, the collapse of hospitals, the failure of public sanitation and potable-water supplies, a housing deficit, and epidemics of contagious diseases. Even if international aid could alleviate this suffering in the near-term, the risks of “de-Baathification”—the collapse of public security with no replacement, as happened in Iraq—haunt the U.S. An orderly transition would require assistance from the rank and file.

Mr. Trump’s demurral at the use of U.S. force in Cuba hasn’t helped. As usual, Cuba says it’s ready to talk, and the words “opening” and “reform” float around. President Obama fell for that.

No doubt those clinging to power like what they see in Venezuela where the regime is still intact. The media says Mr. Rubio is engaging with the Castro family. But reporters rely on unnamed sources. First the son of 94-year-old Raúl Castro, Alejandro Castro Espín, was rumored to be in Mexico “talking” to the Americans. When that appeared to be untrue, the story line shifted. The new Havana counterpart, now whispered to be doing the talking for Cuba, is Raúl Rodríguez Castro, grandson of the old man.

Mr. Rodríguez Castro, known as “El Cangrejo”—the crab—because of a birth defect, never finished school. But he is said to be much-loved by his ruthless grandfather and is buddies with the crooks running GAESA. He could be acting as a go-between. Cuba denied this on Friday, calling it speculation. It’s possible that unnamed Trump officials, by advancing the story, are trying to sow division inside the Cuban government and give head of state Miguel Díaz-Canel reason to worry he is being sidelined.

The regime has been cutting deals with Washington, on and off, for nearly seven decades. Now is the time for all of them to leave.

Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.

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Appeared in the February 23, 2026, print edition as 'The Cuban Regime’s Slow Collapse'.

Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes "The Americas," a weekly column on politics, economics and business in Latin America and Canada that appears every Monday in the Journal. Ms. O'Grady joined the paper in August 1995 and became a senior editorial page writer in December 1999. She was appointed an editorial board member in November 2005. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Indianapolis­-based Liberty Fund.

In 2012 Ms. O’Grady won the Walter Judd Freedom Award from The Fund for American Studies. In 2009 Ms. O'Grady received the Thomas Jefferson Award from The Association of Private Enterprise Education. In 2005 Ms. O'Grady won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism awarded by the International Policy Network for her articles on the World Bank, the underground economy in Brazil and the bad economic advice the U.S. often gives to Latin American countries. In 1997 Ms. O'Grady won the Inter American Press Association's Daily Gleaner Award for editorial commentary.

Ms. O'Grady received a bachelor's degree in English from Assumption College and an M.B.A. in financial management from Pace University.

WSJ · The Cuban Regime’s Slow Collapse

5. Venezuela’s Leaders Killed the Economy. They Are Still In Charge.

Summary:

Venezuela’s economy was wrecked by decades of seizures, corruption, and lawlessness, and the same regime network remains in control even with Nicolás Maduro and his wife in U.S. custody awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges. Delcy Rodríguez is interim president, while Diosdado Cabello and other insiders retain influence amid allegations of bribery, narco-state activity, and illicit military side businesses. The IMF is cited estimating a near 70% contraction from 2013 to 2025, with mass migration. A case study, Grupo Lamar, shows agents seized assets without a court order, exports fell, and investors remain wary. POTUS seeks large private oil investment, but rule of law and property rights remain weak.

Comment: The regime’s political warfare method is coercive economics. It uses accusations, informants, and spectacle seizures like “Operation No Christmas” to deter rivals and remind investors that courts do not constrain power. POTUS is trying to buy stability with oil deals while relying on insiders who profited from disorder. That creates a credibility gap, because as the article shows “investible” depends on due process that the same actors repeatedly violated.

If investors need enforceable property rights and due process, what concrete mechanisms can the U.S. demand or verify while interim leaders tied to past seizures still control security forces and cash streams?

Venezuela’s Leaders Killed the Economy. They Are Still In Charge.

WSJ

With Nicolás Maduro in custody, the U.S. expects regime leaders to attract investors by fixing all they broke—from property rights to the rule of law

By Paul Kiernan

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Feb. 22, 2026 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-oil-trump-565b9afd?mod=hp_lead_pos9

Dozens of armed government agents swarmed the offices of shrimp producer Grupo Lamar, a family owned business that had emerged as one of Venezuela’s largest exporters after the collapse of the oil industry.

The owners are terrorists, agents told petrified workers. You now work for the Venezuelan state, the agents said, according to people familiar with what happened.

In a news conference about the seizure, Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s interior minister, said Grupo Lamar’s owners had been plotting to overthrow the government, sabotage the electrical grid—and even ruin the holiday season.

“It’s the same playbook as always—trying to cancel Christmas in Venezuela,” said Cabello, who is responsible for quashing dissent against the regime.

Venezuelan officials fired top managers at Grupo Lamar and took control of operations. Before long, shrimp exports were falling even faster than oil output had dropped years earlier. No one was surprised: The regime has been seizing companies and running them into the ground for more than two decades, turning what was once Latin America’s most affluent country into one of its poorest.

President Trump is now betting those same officials can resurrect Venezuela’s economy and make the country safe for the $100 billion in private investment that he is trying to coax from American oil companies. It is a tall order given the regime’s 27-year record of corruption, lawlessness and the hyperinflation that has led to food shortages.

Fishermen pulling nets not far from an abandoned oil derrick on Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

Fishermen pulling nets not far from an abandoned oil derrick on Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

After American commandos whisked former President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, out of the country last month, Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president, was left in charge as interim president. She, along with Maduro, Cabello and other insiders, had ruled an economy the International Monetary Fund estimates contracted nearly 70% from 2013 to 2025. More than eight million Venezuelans have fled abroad since 2014, exceeding the number who escaped wars in Syria and Ukraine.

Maduro’s family and allies, meanwhile, allegedly reaped illicit profits that U.S. prosecutors say amount to billions of dollars. U.S. officials allege Maduro turned Venezuela into a narco-state.

“We are dealing with people over there that have spent most of their lives living in a gangster paradise,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Jan. 28 Senate hearing.

Relatives of Flores, Maduro’s wife, controlled financing at Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the state oil company known as PdVSA, and black-market oil sales, and engaged in money laundering, according to U.S. prosecutors and Venezuela experts. Maduro and Flores are in U.S. custody awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges. They have denied wrongdoing.

To ensure their loyalty, the regime gave members of the Venezuelan military and security forces a green light to operate such side businesses as illegal gold mining in Venezuela’s jungles, extortion rackets and shakedowns, according to U.S. prosecutors. Alejandro Andrade, national treasurer from 2007 to 2010, admitted to pocketing more than $1 billion in bribes to allow businessmen to conduct illicit foreign-currency transactions.

Cabello has been accused by Venezuela’s former top prosecutor of taking $100 million in bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht in exchange for state contracts. The U.S. has offered a $25 million bounty for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

Through a spokeswoman, Cabello denied the allegations involving Odebrecht and disputes the claim that he directs armed militias.

The U.S. is banking on Rodriguez to keep the peace. But Venezuelan experts say her power will be tested should armed groups controlled by her allies lose access to cash streams from oil, gold-smuggling and drug-trafficking. Cabello and Gen. Vladimir Padrino, Venezuela’s defense minister, allegedly oversee a network of generals and senior officials loosely known as the “Cartel of the Suns,” which has profited by allowing the passage of thousands of tons of cocaine through Venezuela, according to U.S. and Colombian officials.

Despite Rodriguez’s longstanding role in the regime, U.S. officials have been pleased with her interim presidency so far. “I’m loving Venezuela,” Trump told reporters last month. “They’ve been working with us so well. It’s been so nice.”

Analysts say it isn’t clear how the U.S. will coax foreign investors back to Venezuela, given the regime’s history of seizing businesses and arresting executives.

“I believe that we can solve those problems and challenges and move on to the tremendous opportunities in front of us,” Energy Secretary Christopher Wright said in a Feb. 11 news conference alongside Rodriguez in Caracas.

Boom and bust

In 2006, then-president Hugo Chávez, left, speaking with Nicolás Maduro, foreign minister at the time. JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images

Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves, was the world’s top petroleum exporter for decades after ramping up production in the 1920s. By the early 1960s, its per capita economic output was higher than Japan’s.

The roots of Venezuela’s current system go back to the 14-year rule of former President Hugo Chávez, a former paratrooper elected in 1998 after almost two decades of deepening wealth inequality and stagnant living standards.

Chavez nationalized hundreds of private businesses, dismantled democratic institutions, and upended the state oil company by replacing technical experts with political appointees. The charismatic strongman developed a loyal following among Venezuela’s impoverished citizens, aided by a historic boom in oil prices during the 2000s that masked sagging production.

Maduro, Chavez’s vice president, won his first election after the leader’s death in 2013. But the former bus driver had neither his mentor’s charisma nor political hold. To make matters worse, oil prices fell by half in the first two years of Maduro’s presidency, cratering public finances.

“As the economy crashed, the illicit economy spiked,” said Patrick Duddy, the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 2007 to 2010.

A flame burning natural gas at a heavy-crude treatment plant operated by Venezuela's state oil company PdVSA. Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

A flame burning natural gas at a heavy-crude treatment plant operated by Venezuela’s state oil company PdVSA. Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Falling oil prices sent Venezuela’s economy into a spiral that yielded a hunger crisis. Per capita meat consumption fell from 185 pounds in 2013 to less than 40 pounds in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of the population lost weight, and a 2020 report found that 13% of children under the age of 5 were stunted.

Maduro’s weakness forced him to share power, instilling loyalty through patronage. Under Maduro, Venezuela’s ruling group operated like an alliance of Mafia families, said prosecutors and political analysts. The regime is “a coalition of fiefs of corruption,” said Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan expert on the country’s oil sector at Rice University.

Early in Rodriguez’s tenure as Maduro’s vice president, she oversaw Venezuela’s national intelligence service, which detained and tortured thousands of political prisoners. She and her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, were sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2018 for helping Maduro “maintain his grip on power, as his regime systematically plunders what remains of Venezuela’s wealth.”

After seven years in which Venezuela’s gross domestic product contracted 80%, the Maduro regime was forced to abandon its state-led model after the Covid-19 pandemic in favor of a form of crony capitalism reminiscent of post-Soviet Russia.

Rodriguez, as minister of economy at the time, spearheaded the effort. Price controls were lifted on basic goods, tariffs were eliminated on imports and tax enforcement on businesses and individuals virtually halted. A National Casinos Commission overseen by army generals sold dozens of licenses—at $350,000 each—to open casinos around Venezuela with such names as Baywatch, Bellagio and Hotel Dubai.

Rodriguez and her brother, top lawmaker Jorge Rodriguez, gained considerable power after the 2023 arrest of former Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami for alleged corruption. Rodriguez and her allies took control of PdVSA’s black-market oil sales and partnerships, according to Venezuelan analysts.

A market in Caracas, Venezuela. federico parra/AFP/Getty Images

Gamblers wagering in the casino of the Baywatch hotel last year in Tucacas, Venezuela. Juan Carlos Hernandez/Zuma Press

Though it remained a fraction of its former size, Venezuela’s economy doubled from 2020 to 2024. Shortages eased, at least for Venezuelans who had access to dollars. Years of hyperinflation—estimated by the IMF at 65,370% in 2018—has left the country’s bolivar currency virtually worthless.

The reforms were chaotic and did little to strengthen property rights or the rule of law, said Juan Barreto, a former mayor of Caracas who supported Chavez but broke with Maduro. He now earns the equivalent of $12 a month teaching at the Central University of Venezuela.

”Economic development doesn’t come first, and then this and that, and then democracy at the very end, like a cosmetic,” Barreto said. “It has to happen at the same time, to show that the whole country is speaking with its own voice.”

Venezuela’s economy stalled after 2024. International observers determined Maduro had stolen a U.S.-brokered presidential election that year, prompting the U.S. to tighten sanctions—and the Venezuelan regime to reassert its dominance over all sectors of society.

Authorities suppressed protests with mass arrests and seized assets of individuals and companies the government suspected of supporting opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who later won the Nobel Prize. Some Venezuelans were detained because of anonymous accusations on social media.

Grupo Lamar, the shrimp producer, became one of the regime’s highest-profile targets.

No Christmas

The company, which was founded in 1988, had expanded rapidly in the years before the 2024 election, taking advantage of the ideal water temperatures and salinity for farming shrimp in Lake Maracaibo, a giant coastal estuary, according to Fernando Villamizar, president of the Venezuelan shrimp producers’ association.

In an economy where access to dollars was tightly controlled, Venezuela allowed shrimp producers to keep most of the greenbacks they received from exports, enabling companies to fund expansion. Exports quadrupled from 2016 to 2023, according to Trade Data Monitor. Much of that was driven by Grupo Lamar, industry officials said.

“We were all investing, but the one that was doing it the most aggressively was Grupo Lamar,” said Fernando Villamizar, president of the Venezuelan shrimp producers’ association. “They never stopped betting on the country.”

Workers sorting shrimp in Maracaibo, Venezuela. henry chirinos/Shutterstock

Workers sorting shrimp in Maracaibo, Venezuela. henry chirinos/Shutterstock

But after the 2024 election, Cabello, the interior minister, said he received a tip from an informant that Grupo Lamar’s owner had financed Machado and bribed judges.

“One begins to see the power that they have amassed managing riches, money,” Cabello said in a TV news conference after his agents had swarmed the company’s headquarters.

Without providing proof, Cabello accused the firm’s owners of planning to attack the electrical grid and prevent Maduro from taking office in an alleged plot named “Operation No Christmas.” Authorities covered a table with assault rifles, hand grenades and a drone that Cabello said were found in Grupo Lamar’s facilities.

More than $500 million of Grupo Lamar’s assets were seized without a court order, and the company’s owners fled Venezuela. There are no court records citing formal accusations against Grupo Lamar’s owners.

Venezuela’s Fishing and Aquaculture Ministry operated the shrimp farms before transferring them to Turkish industrial conglomerate Miller Holding last year. The country’s shrimp exports fell about 50% from 2024 to 2025, according to Trade Data Monitor. Grupo Lamar’s workforce shrank to 4,000 workers from nearly 12,000, people familiar with the firm said.

A spokeswoman for Miller Holding said only that the company operated Grupo Lamar but didn’t buy it.

By the time Grupo Lamar was seized, there were few businesses left to nationalize. During the reigns of Chavez and Maduro, the state had taken over assets of more than 1,000 private firms, both foreign and domestic, including Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Coca-Cola bottlers, supermarkets, steelmakers, farms, TV stations and hotels.

The rigged 2024 election and subsequent crackdown reminded investors that the Venezuelan economy operates at the whim of regime leaders rather than the rule of law.

Growth stagnated last year, according to the International Monetary Fund, which forecasts a 3% contraction in 2026 and annual inflation approaching 700%. The United Nations World Food Program estimated that 5 million of Venezuela’s 29 million people need urgent assistance.

The Trump administration has sold over $1 billion of Venezuelan oil and has agreements to bring in another $5 billion in coming months, Energy Secretary Christopher Wright said in an interview on NBC News recorded on Feb. 11. He said all the money from oil sales is returning to Venezuela.

Meat prices have fallen nearly 60%, and ordinary Venezuelans are hoping for a better day-to-day life. Yet the country will see only limited economic improvement as long as oil output remains depressed.

Wright predicted Venezuela’s crude production would rise 50% to 100% by the time Trump leaves office in January 2029. U.S. oil companies have signaled they remain gun-shy about spending billions of dollars to rebuild infrastructure in a country that has already seized their assets—twice in Exxon’s case.

Delcy Rodríguez, right, interim president of Venezuela, meeting Feb. 11 with Energy Secretary Chris Wright in Caracas, Venezuela. Miguel Gutiérrez/EPA/Shutterstock

Delcy Rodríguez, right, interim president of Venezuela, meeting Feb. 11 with Energy Secretary Chris Wright in Caracas, Venezuela. Miguel Gutiérrez/EPA/Shutterstock

Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, called Venezuela uninvestable during a White House meeting hosted by Trump last month. His counterpart at Chevron, CEO Mike Wirth, has said it was too early to determine Venezuela’s long-term outlook.

Wright, the energy secretary, said this month that Venezuela was “on the road to becoming investible.”

But that road requires more than the removal of Maduro and temporary stability under U.S. oversight. To make long-term investments, businesses want rule of law, property rights and due process—conditions all but impossible to guarantee in Venezuela.

For the U.S., the clock is ticking. Trump has three years left in the Oval Office, while the Venezuelan regime has survived for nearly three decades, including past attempts by the U.S. to restore democracy.

“More than anything, these people know how to bide their time and resist,” said Zair Mundaray, a former Venezuelan prosecutor who fled the country in 2017.

WSJ

6. What Would War With Iran Look Like?

Summary:

Nancy Youssef reports the United States is again close to war with Iran, with the Pentagon’s large-scale war plans now shaping options for POTUS rather than serving as a deterrent. The U.S. is rapidly building forces in the Middle East, including more than 100 aircraft, strengthened air defenses, and carrier strike power led by USS Gerald R. Ford, plus destroyers and likely submarines, with USS Abraham Lincoln also nearby. Officials have not stated a clear objective and have floated four different aims, each implying different military approaches. Any strike plan is shaped by the expectation of Iranian retaliation against U.S. troops, ships, and allies.

Comment: The visible buildup is meant to signal leverage, but the article suggests visibility also creates momentum and pressure to employ forces even without a settled political end state.

If four different aims are being discussed and each requires a different approach, what single, testable objective would justify the risks of Iranian retaliation and still be achievable without a ground campaign?

What Would War With Iran Look Like?

The Atlantic · Nancy A. Youssef · February 21, 2026

How the U.S. conducts any attack will depend on what goal Trump is trying to achieve.

By Nancy A. Youssef

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/02/iran-war-trump-military-attack/686096/

During President Trump’s first term, Pentagon officials took a highly unusual step to diminish the likelihood of war: They shared their plans for a large-scale conflict with Iran with top White House officials. They reasoned that if advisers saw the risks that the plan entailed, they would choose another path, people familiar with the matter told me.

The gambit was successful. At least twice, the president weighed ordering an attack on Iran, only to be dissuaded by aides from moving forward. But America now appears to be on the brink of war with Iran again. And this time, instead of acting as a deterrent, the Pentagon’s war plans are being used to draw up options for the president to consider.

The United States is rapidly building up its military assets in the Middle East. More than 100 aircraft—including F-18 and F-35 fighter jets, drones, and surveillance planes—are in or near the region. The U.S. also has bolstered its air defenses to protect U.S. troops on nearby bases. The world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, left the Caribbean (where it had anchored a pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro) and is expected to be within striking range as early as Sunday. Three destroyers and, most likely, two accompanying submarines with guided missiles on board will join it. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group also is nearby.

Asked yesterday whether he now favors a limited military strike, Trump told reporters, “I guess I can say I am considering that.” But the administration has given no specific timeline for making a decision. And despite the impressive concentration of power, administration officials have yet to articulate a clear goal for what they want these forces to achieve, should Trump conclude that Tehran’s time has run out. Instead, they have floated four separate aims, each requiring a different military approach.

I asked current and former defense officials to help me project what a war intended to achieve these four desired outcomes might look like. Their answers were informed by previous similar campaigns, but also by the prospect of Iranian retaliation against the thousands of troops stationed in the region. “Every military option is not about just what we can do, but about protecting ourselves and our interests during the inevitable Iranian response,” a former commander told me.

It’s possible that the simple threat of action—a Rooseveltian big stick—will make conflict unnecessary, encouraging Iran to reach a new deal designed to permanently clip its nuclear ambitions. Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads U.S. Central Command, sat in on talks between the U.S. and Iran in Oman earlier this month. The negotiations focused on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and its ballistic-missile program. Cooper’s presence marked a flex of military muscle and a reminder of the potential consequences should diplomacy fail. “The president is a negotiator looking for a deal; it would be wise for Iran to see that deal,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, not usually the administration’s go-to voice for tempered responses, told The Daily Signal on Thursday.

The military buildup itself appears designed to send an overt message to Iran. Flight trackers captured dozens of U.S. military aircraft traveling toward the region this week. The military can be more furtive about its movements ahead of an operation, taking steps to hide aircraft from detection. When B-2 bombers flew into Iranian airspace last summer, for example, “no one was tracking them,” another military commander, who has worked in the Middle East, told me. This time, visibility may have been the point, the officials said.

If the armada is there as a form of leverage, and the U.S. and Iran reach a deal that Trump accepts, the troops would leave. But this appears to be an unlikely scenario. The buildup is one of the largest in the region in decades, and with every plane, ship, and asset that arrives, the president will face increased pressure to use them, much as a loaded gun that appears on stage in the first act of a play must be fired by the end. And just sitting on the ocean carries its own cost: The USS Ford, which has been deployed since last June, is on track to complete one of the longest deployments ever for a carrier. “We can’t keep the force out that long,” one former defense official told me.

Read: Why the U.S. hasn’t yet struck Iran

Despite the flurry of talks over the past three weeks between the U.S. and Iran, in which Oman acts as the go-between, the two sides remain divided over what a fair deal would look like. “I think there is a real intent to use this force if they cannot get an agreement that is acceptable to the United States,” Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and an officer in the Marine Corps and the Central Intelligence Agency, told me.

Based on past U.S. and Israeli strike campaigns inside Iran and elsewhere, the U.S. Navy would be at the forefront of any operation. Stealth fighter jets, such as the F-35, would take off first alongside EA-18G Growlers, which conduct electronic warfare, including jamming radar systems. Both aircraft would target Iranian air defenses protecting a country slightly larger than Venezuela and Afghanistan combined.

Submarines, which carry scores of Tomahawk missiles and sometimes accompany the carriers (the U.S. military does not generally share its submarines’ locations), could also launch missiles toward fixed targets inside Iran. Fighter jets and bombers could launch strikes from the air on Iran’s defenses.

How long such a U.S. campaign would take depends on the extent of the targeting. And the longer a campaign runs, the greater the risk of civilian casualties. During the June strikes, which hit some of Iran’s defenses as well as damaged its nuclear sites, U.S. aircraft were inside Iran for roughly 30 minutes, according to defense officials. Should Iran launch any missiles in retaliation, destroyers dispersed across the region would defend U.S. ships, troops, and allies by shooting down any incoming ballistic missiles.

What happens next hinges on what the U.S. hopes to achieve.

Trump has long hinted that military action could target Iran’s leadership. As far back as June 2025, he described Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, as an easy target. “I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life,” he wrote on Truth Social. Targeted strikes on Iran’s leaders are among the options on the table today, defense officials told me.

That option would require boots on the ground—and could put civilians at risk. Maduro was seized in his bedroom by U.S. Special Forces. But so far, the U.S. does not appear to be considering similar action in Tehran. Once Iran’s air defenses are immobilized, U.S. forces would likely use precision weapons, such as a laser-guided bomb, to hit specific individuals, though that would inevitably risk hitting civilians as well. Depending on how many leaders the U.S. planned to target, such a move could lead to a relatively quick operation, defense officials told me. Targeting leaders would be in keeping with Trump’s stated interest in helping Iran’s legions of protesters, who faced a brutal clampdown in recent weeks that led to the death of thousands of people. Taking out Iran’s leadership could potentially embolden protesters and foment the kind of political change in Iran that Washington has long sought.

But if the U.S. takes out Iran’s top leadership, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, a powerful branch of Iran’s armed forces, could take control and steer the country toward an even more hostile posture toward the United States. And targeting leaders could lead to the most aggressive possible Iranian military response, given the regime would have little to lose. Earlier this month, Iran conducted a military exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, signaling that its navy had enough resources to create a choke point in a channel that carries one-fifth of the world’s oil.

In December, Trump said he would strike if Iran continued building ballistic missiles. Eliminating those weapons, as well as other elements of Iran’s defense, could be another possible goal of any upcoming campaign.

Strikes could take aim at Iran’s ballistic-missile-production network, including storage locations, transportation networks, and other supporting infrastructure. Both Israel and the U.S. have targeted the program in the past, but since the June strikes, Iran has prioritized rebuilding its capabilities, likely in anticipation of another U.S. strike, the officials said.

Iran has invested more in rebuilding its missile program than in rebuilding its damaged nuclear program, according to high-resolution images shared with me by Vantor, a Colorado-based company. The U.S. likely would launch ordnance from fighter jets, such as F-15s, to hit these targets.

Read: The ‘existential anxiety’ of the Islamic Republic

“It looks to me, based on the forces in the region, the U.S. is considering going after softer targets, like IRGC bases and production facilities, over a protracted period of time,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a retired Navy officer, told me. “Those facilities support both Iran and its proxies. Going after those targets would allow the U.S. to achieve part of what they were seeking through the talks.”

Such strikes could last days and limit Iran’s ballistic-missile capability to only the missiles already positioned on their mobile launchers. But even a limited number of available missiles could still pose a threat. And the Iranians could rebuild those facilities in a matter of months, depending on the extent of the damage.

Iran also would retain the ability to retaliate, even without its full arsenal of missiles. An Iranian Shahed-139 military drone was operating in the Arabian Sea earlier this month when it approached the USS Abraham Lincoln; the U.S. military shot it down as it neared the ship, which was not harmed. But the drone’s flight path could be read as a message from Iran about the perils of war.

Of all the targets in Iran that Trump has mentioned, he has talked of Iran’s nuclear program the most. In a January Truth Social post, he blared, “NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS” and warned, “The next attack will be far worse!” The president could again order U.S. forces to strike Iran’s nuclear program, as they did in June when bombers hit three Iranian nuclear sites and damaged facilities. That operation would likely pose the least imminent risk to U.S. troops and the region. (After the June strikes, Iran fired some missiles at a U.S. base, but they did not do much damage.)

Attacking nuclear facilities, which are mostly deep underground, would likely require B-2s carrying GBU-57s, so-called “bunker buster” bombs designed for hardened targets. The duration of the operation would depend on how much damage the U.S. seeks to inflict on the program.

Iran already appears to be preparing for this option by fortifying its defenses around its nuclear assets, satellite images from Vantor indicate. But the fact that the U.S. would be conducting its second action against the program in less than a year raises questions about the long-term impact of such attacks, and could contradict Trump’s own assertions last year that the program had been “obliterated.” And strikes alone cannot kill Iran’s expert personnel or dim its ambitions to one day build a nuclear weapon.

“I think we should come off the idea that we are going to ever obliterate the nuclear program. It’s not something only the military can do,” Mulroy, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense, told me, because such programs ultimately end through negotiations or political change. “We can degrade something. We can destroy something. But that doesn’t mean they can’t rebuild it.”

For all the military options and assets in the region, there is a lot the U.S. cannot do. The buildup is not the equivalent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Then, the U.S. sent five carrier strike groups, many more aircraft, and roughly 170,000 ground troops. Indeed, a large formation of ground troops appears to be outside the realm of Trump’s considerations now. But without them, there are limits to what U.S. strikes can achieve.

*Illustration Sources: Majid Saeedi / Getty; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty; Omar Zaghloul / Anadolu / Getty; GraphicaArtis / Getty.

The Atlantic · Nancy A. Youssef · February 21, 2026

7. Operationalizing Hemispheric Defense: What the 2026 National Defense Strategy Means for Latin America

Summary:

Henry Ziemer argues the 2026 National Defense Strategy revives hemispheric defense by making homeland defense and Western Hemisphere security the top military priority, often framed as a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. He warns implementation requires painful prioritization and that recent Caribbean operations, including Operation Absolute Resolve, imposed tradeoffs elsewhere. He says current high-end naval deployments are costly, ill-suited for drug interdiction, and can degrade readiness in other theaters, while basing and sustainment in Latin America remain thin and uneven, especially south of the equator. He recommends merging NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM, shifting procurement toward affordable drones and ISR, and expanding allied basing access.

Operationalizing Hemispheric Defense: What the 2026 National Defense Strategy Means for Latin America

by Henry Ziemer

02.23.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/23/operationalizing-hemispheric-defense-what-the-2026-national-defense-strategy-means-for-latin-america/

On January 23 the United States released its much-anticipated National Defense Strategy (NDS). This document echoed last year’s National Security Strategy (NSS) in professing a renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere. In particular, the NDS states that: “the U.S. military’s foremost priority is to defend the U.S. Homeland. The Department will therefore prioritize doing just that, including by defending America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere.” This restored hemispheric defense focus, combining a host of activities ranging from border security and counter-drone technology to expanded kinetic strikes against narco-traffickers and efforts to secure strategic lines of communication, has been grouped under the so-called “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.

For the past three decades, U.S. defense priorities have been turned away from home. With the exception of security assistance to countries like Colombia and Mexico, the United States was distracted by problems that lay oceans away. As a result, some analysts have argued that the Trump Corollary reflects a return to basics, rooted in the belief that all power projection abroad is rooted in stability and security at home. While it is true that U.S. neglect for the Western Hemisphere has allowed rivals such as China to gain a foothold over critical infrastructure, and contributed to the metastasizing criminal threat in that region, the United States now faces a series of hard questions over how to implement the principles espoused in both the NDS and NSS.

The United States now must focus on how to align capabilities with its stated objectives in the Americas. In particular, the Department of Defense should seriously consider merging U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Northern Command into a single combatant command that can better oversee the pivot to the Americas. Additionally, policymakers should prioritize the acquisition of cheap drones, counter-drone systems, and other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms with an eye to their suitability for operations in Latin America. Finally, the United States must work with allies to secure expanded basing access for U.S. forces, especially south of the equator.

Pivot to the Americas? Not So Fast

Operation Absolute Resolve, which led to the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, proved that the United States’ hemispheric focus was more than empty bluster. But the operation, and prior military buildup, also entailed tradeoffs for other geographies. The concentration of naval assets in the Caribbean for instance may have constrained U.S. options when dealing with escalating protests in Iran. It took weeks for the USS Abraham Lincoln and its escorts to arrive in the Persian Gulf, stymieing calls for quicker, more decisive action.

The 2025 NSS decried previous grab-bag strategic documents as “laundry lists of wishes or desired end states” that refused to engage in the difficult work of prioritization. The reality is that prioritization is a difficult, often painful process when confronting a world rife with potential national security threats. Such is the case in the Americas, where despite receiving increased attention under the second Trump administration, decades of neglect cannot be reversed overnight.

Another challenge is that U.S. capabilities in Latin America and the Caribbean are not currently fit for purpose. The massive concentration of naval assets in the Caribbean saw, at its peak, eight destroyers, two guided missile cruisers, two nuclear-powered submarines, and the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, alongside numerous other escorts and support vessels. While these assets possess powerful sensors, communications networks, and of course firepower, they are not fit for purpose when it comes to drug interdiction. Instead, these are high-end assets designed for operation in contested environments. They are also expensive to keep in-theater, and the continued naval presence in the Caribbean reportedly costs about $31 million per day to maintain at current levels. While such a concentration may be justified in the lead-up to a major operation like the seizure of Maduro, they are somewhat overkill for narcotics interdiction and even tanker seizures and reduce U.S. readiness in other theaters.

A larger military presence in the Americas will also confront increased logistical challenges. Decades of neglect have left the United States without the same network of overseas bases for maintenance and sustainment that it enjoys in the Middle East or Indo-Pacific. Indeed, the United States has just three overseas military bases in Latin America and the Caribbean, along with three other cooperative security locations where U.S. forces enjoy negotiated access. This includes Comalapa International Airport in El Salvador which has seen significantly increased activity by U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones and AC-130J Ghost Rider gunships operating in the eastern Pacific. However, none of these facilities lie below the equator, and only one of them, Naval Station Guantánamo, has the capacity to host warships the size of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer or larger.

While U.S. logistical requirements in the Caribbean are somewhat aided thanks to access to overseas territories like Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, basing infrastructure there has also been allowed to wither. In Puerto Rico, the former Naval Station Roosevelt Roads had to be rapidly brought back into service to support F-35s after being shuttered for two decades. Meanwhile most of the naval forces deployed during the Caribbean buildup relied on the civilian port of Ponce as their home base. Worse yet, dependency on civilian port infrastructure for naval resupply may have opened up new opportunities for China to collect intelligence on U.S. forces. In the past year, at least three U.S. warships, the destroyers Sampson and Gravely, and the cruiser Lake Erie have conducted port calls at facilities in the Western Hemisphere where Hong Kong-based company CK Hutchison has operations. Hutchison itself has been the target of much attention by the Trump administration due to its holdings on either side of the Panama Canal, and while the Panamanian Supreme Court recently ruled these concessions unconstitutional, they company continues to operate terminals in Mexico and the Bahamas. Many other civilian ports in the Americas boast cranes, scanners, and security cameras provided by China, meaning that as U.S. military activity increases, so too does the risk to operation security from relying on civilian infrastructure. If the NDS envisions a more permanent large-scale military presence in Latin America, it must solve these basing and logistics questions, and quickly.

From Rhetoric to Reality

Prioritization should translate into policy. Following the publication of the NDS, the United States should focus on the following three lines of effort; combining United States Southern Command and Northern Command, right-sizing procurement for the Latin American theater, and investing in relationships with allies to secure new basing access.

Towards a Western Hemisphere Command

Both the NDS and NSS make clear that the U.S. focus is a hemispheric one, rooted in the importance of the Americas for homeland defense, not merely restricted to Latin America and the Caribbean. The first step the Department of Defense can take towards actualizing this vision would be to combining United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) into a single combatant command representing the Americas.

This idea has been gaining traction of late as focus on hemispheric security has grown. Within the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has also expressed a desire to reduce the number of geographic combatant commands as well. In this regard, an important step forward was taken in December 2025 when U.S. Army Forces Command, U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South merged into a single operational headquarters now dubbed U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Command.

Such a move undoubtedly be administratively taxing, but it is essential to meet the moment. As it currently stands, NORTHCOM bears responsibility for Canada, the continental United States, Mexico, and the Bahamas, while also serving as headquarters for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). This is a portfolio which sees NORTHCOM shouldering responsibility for homeland air and missile defense, as well as border security and counter-cartel assistance to Mexico. SOUTHCOM meanwhile serves as the United States’ primary security cooperation arm for the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, assisting with counternarcotics, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, as well as providing a bulwark against Russian and Chinese incursions. The challenges both combatant commands face, however, often bleed into one another’s areas of responsibility. The Mexico-based Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel have both formed close ties with rival Ecuadorian gangs battling for control of that country’s cocaine trade. The Venezuelan migration crisis spread throughout South America before turning north to the United States’ southwest land border. Meanwhile extra-hemispheric adversaries like China and Russia care not for where one command ends and another begins, and indeed will actively seek to exploit these gaps, when they seek to challenge U.S. interests. A unified combatant command for the Western Hemisphere can help tackle these threats with greater clarity of purpose.

Another advantage of bringing NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM together under one roof is giving greater negotiating leverage when it comes to funding priorities. In 2025 the two commands had a combined $95 million in unfunded priorities according to Breaking Defense. This included some $35 million for SOUTHCOM’s “Ship Special Mission” request, aimed at improving maritime counternarcotics interdiction, and $21.5 million for NORTHCOM’s request on “Accelerating Southern Border Tech Solutions.” In a hypothetical future Western Hemisphere command could better adjudicate internally between competing priorities and have more authority to press for the necessary resources, both internally and to Congress.

Getting Procurement Priorities Right

In order to make a renewed focus on Latin America sustainable, the United States should transition away from reliance on expensive, high-end systems, towards cheaper, more distributed, and more autonomous platforms. Modern transnational criminal organizations are highly decentralized and adaptable, constantly probing at the edges of state capacity in search of weak points. Already there are reports that key drug trafficking routes have shifted in response to U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Traffickers are moving their products by air, adulterating them into legitimate cargoes, and even experimenting with remotely piloted semisubmersibles.

Cutting off these routes requires a wide range of flexible response options, from long-endurance drones that can observe traffickers as they move along their routes, to high-flying intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, to Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachments. Drones and autonomous systems will be especially important to provide sufficient breadth of coverage while remaining affordable. Aerial and naval ISR, platforms that can autonomously identify and monitor potential illicit activity, as well as counter-drone platforms are all in high demand to counter the types of threats organized crime poses in the Americas.

Just as Ukraine has proven a testing ground for these new systems, the Western Hemisphere can and should be the region where these systems can be integrated with U.S. forces. This is in keeping with another one of the NDS’ priorities, to scale defense manufacturing, especially of emerging technologies and uncrewed systems. There are a host of emerging defense manufacturers working on these problems, from well-entrenched firms like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, to upstart disruptors like Anduril, Shield AI, and Albacore Inc. The newly announced Counternarcotics Joint Task Force under command of the II Marine Expeditionary Force in the Caribbean could provide a hub for engaging these companies to be a first-user of some of these new technologies. In addition, the United States could explore facilitating sales to partner countries like Colombia, which recently announced a $1.7 billion counter-drone program.

Uncrewed systems can only do so much, however, and the United States will also need to rethink the role of conventional naval surface combatants in the Americas. From this point of view, the recent decision by the Department of Defense to cancel the embattled Constellation-class frigate and adopt a new design based on the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter may be well-suited to a hemispheric defense mission. Critics of the move have focused on the new design’s limited capacity to contribute to air and missile defenses. However, fast, lightly armed, and modular surface combatant could be exactly what the United States needs in Latin America and the Caribbean. To be sure, U.S. shipbuilding remains in a perilous state, but by returning to a proven design, the Department of Defense is giving itself a better chance of getting more hulls in the water and faster, helping to relieve some of the demand for destroyers and cruisers in the Western Hemisphere.

Of course, there is still a role for more exquisite systems, but these should act as strategic nodes and enablers. Platforms like the Iwo Jima Landing Helicopter Dock, which reportedly played an important role in Operation Absolute Resolve, can serve as home bases for drones and rotor wing assets, as well as a command-and-control hub for nearby U.S. forces.

Enlist and Expand for Basing

At present, U.S. strategy in the Americas can best be described as a Caribbean-and-up strategy. While warships prowl the Caribbean basin, south of Caracas, the vision of hemispheric defense has yet to come into focus. This is in no small part because of a lack of basing below the equator, which complicates efforts to sustain long-term deployments there. While U.S. attentions for the past six months has centered on Venezuela, there are no shortage of challenges that might require additional presence further south. Powerful criminal groups have spread throughout countries like Ecuador and Brazil, and are winding their tendrils into neighboring countries, Chinese deep sea fishing fleets plunder the seas around South America, while Antarctic gateways like Ushuaia and Punta Arenas are garnering increased attention from Washington and Beijing alike.

The United States is making important headway when it comes to basing in the Americas. On January 15, 2026, the State Department approved $1.5 billion in foreign military sales to help with Peru’s efforts to upgrade and relocate its Callao naval base. While the agreement does not grant U.S. forces access to the base, it helps reaffirm Washington and Lima’s partnership in the security and defense space at a time when the latter country is embarking on a crucial military modernization program. Furthermore, bolstering Peruvian naval capabilities aligns with the 2025 NSS’ “Enlist and Expand” agenda which calls upon the United States to bring willing partners along with the hemispheric security cooperation agenda.

In Ecuador, a November 2025 referendum saw a proposed measure that would have permitted foreign military bases in the country fail. In the months since, President Daniel Noboa has sought to nevertheless pursue basing cooperation, allowing a contingent of U.S. personnel temporary access to the Manta Naval Air Station. While U.S.-Ecuador ties remain strong, the failed referendum underscores the opposition within many Latin American electorates to foreign basing, a key consideration that U.S. defense planners must keep in mind when seeing to expand base access with the region.

Finally, the Dominican Republic recently inked a deal with the United States granting access to San Isidro Air Base and the Las Américas International Airport to be used for maintenance and resupply through April 2026. The Dominican Republic’s strategic position in the Caribbean makes it an invaluable partner in ongoing counternarcotics operations, while access to facilities there relieves some of the pressure on Puerto Rico to bear the brunt of the expanded U.S. military presence.

In all cases, basing cannot be the goal in and of itself. Rather, base access agreements provide an opening bid for closer partnerships with the United States and its allies. Cooperation on basing does, however, provide important opportunities for U.S. forces to interact with their regional counterparts, and should be leveraged to forge stronger connections.

Tags: Hemispheric Defense, Monroe Doctrine, NDS, SOUTHCOM, Trump Corollary

About The Author

• 
  
• Henry Ziemer
• Henry Ziemer is an Associate Fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. His research interests include transnational organized crime and human rights and security in Central America. His writing and commentary have appeared in War on the Rocks, The Diplomat, The Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.

8. Staff Processes in LSCO Part III: Division Planning

Summary:

This article argues division staffs must treat MDMP as continuous during large-scale combat operations, not a one-time event that ends with publishing a base OPORD. Using the 9th Infantry Division’s rapid 1944 Normandy sequence as an illustration, it says modern divisions often struggle to man and employ Plans and Future Operations (FUOPS) integrating cells and to manage planning transitions. It explains how battle rhythm events should enable iterative MDMP across three horizons: current fight (CUOPS), next fight (FUOPS), and beyond-next (Plans). The authors recommend resourcing FUOPS with a formal working group, improving face-to-face transitions, wargaming properly, refining SYNCMAT to EXMAT, and replicating LSCO processes in garrison.

Comment: Extensive graphics at the link:

Staff Processes in LSCO Part III: Division Planning

by John R. Harrell, by James Villanueva, by Joe Hammond

02.23.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/23/staff-process-in-lsco/

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the US Army’s Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL).

This article was published as CALL publication No. 26-1096, Staff Processes in Large-Scale Combat Operations Part 3: Division Planning. This version of Division Planning differs slightly from the version published by CALL. This version includes an expanded section on managing transition which isn’t found in the CALL version.

This article is republished at Small Wars Journal with permission from CALL.

You can find this and all of CALL’s other publications on their website.

On June 10, 1944, the U.S. Army’s 9th Infantry Division (ID), veterans of earlier campaigns in North Africa and Sicily, arrived on Utah Beach in Normandy, France. After the division assembled several miles inland, the 9th ID conducted a forward passage of lines through the 90th Infantry Division on June 14. Moving through difficult hedgerow terrain, the 9th, along with the 82nd Airborne Division to its south, attacked across the Douve River and seized crucial bridgeheads on June 16. The 9th ID continued to advance west and reached Barneville on the western coast of the Cotentin Peninsula by June 18, effectively cutting off German forces in the peninsula. Quickly moving north, the 9th ID began an attack to seize the port city of Cherbourg on June 19 in concert with other units of the VII Corps. VII Corps seized Cherbourg on June 27 after a series of deliberate attacks with extensive air and artillery support. The 9th ID turned over control of its sector of Cherbourg to the 4th ID to allow it to continue clearing German forces to the west of the city.

Within a ten-day span, the 9th ID conducted what we now call Reception, Staging, and Onward movement, and Integration (RSOI); a Forward Passage of Lines (FPOL), a Wet Gap Crossing (WGX), and a deliberate attack on an urban objective. After a short rest period and movement to another sector of the frontline in early July, the Division would find itself conducting a defense against a German armored attack. This rapid pace of operations was not atypical for U.S. Army units undertaking large scale combat during World War II. While the 9th ID benefitted from extensive combat experience at all echelons, its ability to execute and synchronize such operations was also a product of effective planning for subsequent operations while executing current operations, including a ninety-degree turn of its frontline from west to north (Figure 1). Although division staff organizations and processes have evolved since World War II, staffs must be prepared to continue planning using current doctrinal processes to enable successful large scale combat operations (LSCO) in the future. Nevertheless, current observations demonstrate that U.S. Army division staffs struggle with manning their Plans and Future Operations (FUOPS) integrating cells and understanding each cell’s roles and responsibilities, especially with regard to planning and the Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP).

Figure 1. Operations on the Cotentin Peninsula

We must understand that the MDMP is the primary planning process for division staffs to keep up with the complexity, tempo, and detail required to fight and win against an adversary with a smaller, more agile staff and decision-making process. It is best applied in a phased operational framework. While the staff may task organize itself differently for MDMP in different situations, the process, products, and people remain the same.

This article will discuss:

1. MDMP before and during execution
2. Battle rhythm and Rhythm of the Battle
3. Role of the Plans Cell (Use iterative MDMP to plan throughout execution)
4. Role of the FUOPS Cell (Use standardized steps of MDMP or the rapid decision-making and synchronization process [RDSP] to refine by day)
5. Managing Transitions
6. Recommendations

MDMP Before and During Execution

One question asked by planners on division staffs during Warfighter Academics and the Warfighter Exercise (WFX) is “what does the Plans Cell do after they publish the base order?” We tend to observe a difference in how divisions task-organize to conduct MDMP prior to execution versus during execution, but it is MDMP nonetheless. The Mission Command Training Program (MCTP) has observed divisions consolidating their staffs under the Plans Cell prior to execution to conduct a staff-wide planning effort that produces an OPORD that generally covers the entire conflict or at least several foreseeable phases of it. Then, when the division begins maneuvering and fighting, the MDMP transforms into an iterative process executed by smaller planning teams that focus on phases or events withing the scope of the operation. In other words, the MDMP is not over-with after a base OPORD is published. It should continue but transform from the consolidated technique to a multi-cell, iterative technique. It is conducted by more than one integrating cell and is focused on more than one planning horizon throughout the duration of the conflict.

“Since planning is continuous, a plan or order is an interim product based on information and understanding at a moment that is subject to revision. The measure of a good plan is not whether execution transpires as planned, but whether the plan facilitates effective action in the face of unforeseen events.”

The Battle Rhythm

The division battle rhythm is not a replacement for the MDMP, but rather a structured mechanism for continuously executing it. Many battle rhythm events functionally mirror steps within the MDMP, streamlining planning and adaptation. For example, the daily Battle Update Brief (BUB) serves as a focused re-assessment of the mission variables, akin to a daily Mission Analysis. The Plans Working Group facilitates Course of Action (COA) Development, while the Plans Update Brief supports COA approval. Daily Fragmentary Orders (FRAGORDs) translate approved plans into executable orders. The Operations Synchronization Meeting (OPSYNC) is a venue for bottom-up refinement and final adjustments. Crucially, the assessment process (BUB, Commanders’ Update Assessment, COIC drills, Assessment Working Group) provides a vital feedback loop, enabling commanders and staff to visualize the battlefield’s evolving conditions, adjust plans accordingly, and inform both the Plans and FUOPS Cells. This continuous cycle is especially critical during LSCO, where the dynamic environment demands constant adaptation and reinforces the need for a robust, ongoing MDMP facilitated by the daily battle rhythm.

Figure 2 illustrates what MCTP observers typically see as a division staff execute as a daily battle rhythm in a WFX. Notice that the names of the battle rhythm events correlate to steps of MDMP. Course of Action Development (COA DEV) is done in the Plans Cell, usually in an event called Plans Working Group. It is usually conducted by G-5 planners but may not be afforded the appropriate amount of scrutiny and time from the entirety of the staff. Furthermore, the sequence of staff processes in Figure 2 does not include a formal working group event in the FUOPS Cell. Therefore, the observation is that the Plans Cell produces a conceptual plan that goes from COA DEV to targeting without conducting Course of Action Analysis (COA Analysis) or refinement in the mid-range horizon (FUOPS).

Figure 2. Typical Division Battle Rhythm aligned with MDMP

MCTP OC/Ts recommend adjusting Figure 2 to what is depicted in Figure 3. The difference is that the Plans Cell is responsible for every step of MDMP, not just through COA DEV, and more importantly, the FUOPS Cell is resourced with its own formal working group that facilitates further COA DEV, COA Analysis, or any other staff process as needed. The rhythm of the battle informs what the FUOPS Cell focuses on from day to day and what processes they must use to adjust course from the Plans Cell’s outputs to the evolving situation in CUOPS. Lastly, these processes are all steps of MDMP, not the targeting process.

Figure 3. Recommended Division Battle Rhythm aligned with MDMP

The Role of the Plans Cell in Execution

Now that the initial order has been published and the division is fighting off of a combination of OPORDS and FRAGORDs, we need to determine the roles of Plans and FUOPS. Think of it like this: CUOPS controls the current fight; the FUOPS Cell focuses on the next fight; the Plans Cell focuses on what is beyond the next fight (Figure 4). Whether the conflict takes 10 months or 10 days is irrelevant. Once the fighting begins there is a distinct need for somebody to control and assess the current fight, plan the next fight and the fight beyond that. This must be done continuously and simultaneously. Furthermore, these “fights” should be viewed as phases within an operation. The division operation may be the entire conflict, or it may be a smaller portion of the conflict. The problem with framing the entire conflict as one long operation is that if there is only one operation, then units tend to identify only one decisive point in the operation. In that operation, there are multiple major fights that require mass and combined arms maneuver and therefore should be treated as operations in and of themselves, complete with their own decisive points, operational frameworks, end states, and orders.

Figure 1 illustrates a historic scenario in which the 9th Infantry Division executed an operation that could be framed as a series of operations: RSOI, FPOL, WGX, attack OBJs, consolidation, and defense. If the 9th ID were organized by current doctrinal integrating cells, while its CUOPS cell was executing the FPOL, its FUOPS Cell would have been finalizing and publishing orders for the wet gap crossing and its Plans Cell would have been planning the attacks on St. Colombe and Barneville to the west. As the operation transitioned from the FPOL to the wet gap crossing, the integrating cells would have each transitioned their focus to the next operation.

FM 5-0 notes that practically all key aspects of an operation must be outlined by phase, from task organization to main and supporting efforts to unit boundaries and signal support.

Figure 4 depicts a division conducting a series of phases in the initial portion of a larger framework (operation). The division is currently executing second day of Phase II, on Air Tasking Order (ATO) DG of an FPOL operation that the staff assessed would take three days to complete. This notional staff knows that the next phases after the FPOL will be a deliberate wet gap crossing and the FUOPS Cell is finalizing the gap crossing plan and will publish a fragmentary order (FRAGORD) for it in accordance with the 1/3 – 2/3 rule. This FRAGORD should have been preceded by a warning order (WARNORD) for the same phase from the Plans Cell. While the FUOPS Cell is finalizing the plan and orders for the next fight, the Plans Cell is planning whatever phase is beyond that. In this case, it is a deliberate defense. Without a mid-range planning horizon (FUOPS) the Plans Cell would only be planning one fight ahead of execution and would likely not be able to plan far enough into the future to give the division time to shape and set conditions leading up to that fight.

Figure 4. Notional Division Focus by Integrating Cells

If MDMP is the division’s primary planning process in LSCO, then who does it and how does it translate to a LSCO rhythm? Figure 3 depicts the doctrinal steps of MDMP aligned under the typical daily battle rhythm events from a division staff exercise or WFX as observed by MCTP. Think of the Plans Cell as an integrating cell that uses the MDMP to produce a complete plan by phase, wargames down to the by-day level of fidelity, and publishes warning orders (WARNORDs) that facilitate parallel planning in the BCTs as well as requests for effects by ATO day from each warfighting function (WfF).

People

The Plans Cell is authorized ten personnel by Modified Table of Organization and Equipment (MTOE). By design, this cell consists of a plans chief, planners from the maneuver, intelligence, fires, and sustainment WfF, a senior NCO, an operations research and systems analysis (ORSA) officer, an operations officer, a strategic plans officer, and an information operations planner. These planners reside in the cell full-time, but they do collaborate with their respective WfFs to integrate WfF expertise into Plans Cell inputs, processes, and outputs. This is effective and should be sustained. However, there are two key personnel missing from the MTOE authorization: protection and C2. These can be mitigated by incorporating personnel from the G-6 Plans staff section in the DMAIN and coordinating for representation from the protection cell in the MCP.

Processes

Divisions typically execute battle rhythms in LSCO as daily cycles (Figure 3). The battle rhythm meetings can be correlated to steps of MDMP, but because a division is focusing on three different fights in different time horizons at all times, each battle rhythm event may focus on only the current fight, like the BUB, while others may focus more on FUOPS and plans horizons, like the AWG and the PUB.

The problem MCTP observes in most WFXs is that the division battle rhythm typically only has one daily working group (WG) for the Plans Cell, but the Plans Cell needs to conduct multiple steps of MDMP on a given day which would require more time than one working group supports. Furthermore, divisions tend to try to combine steps of MDMP into one working group, usually COA DEV and COA Analysis. This simply does not work because COA Analysis requires the outputs of COA DEV, and the two processes are completely different. The one must precede and feed the other.

We recommend the Plans Cell maintain a daily working group so that when they need to pull in staff members from outside of the Plans Cell, they have a dedicated time and place for that collaboration. Other than that, the Plans Cell, if manned properly, should be able to execute each step of MDMP over the course of about two days and do it on their own schedule. The rhythm of the battle will inform the Chief of Staff and Plans Chief as to what the planning timeline should look like for a given operation or phase. Sometimes the Plans Cell may have two days to conduct the entire MDMP and sometimes they may have more or less time. Either way, it is crucial to understand that completing the entire process every day is not realistic, especially for multiple courses of action.

The Plans Cell may execute RDSP if the long range plan requires a reframe or major adjustment, but their primary planning process should be MDMP. This paper will address the RDSP in more detail in the FUOPS section.

Outside of the individual steps of MDMP, the Plans Cell has a major role in the following battle rhythm events:

• Plans Update Brief (PUB) – Think of this as the Plans Cell’s combined MA brief (for the appropriate horizon), COA approval brief, and CG planning guidance touchpoint that also overlaps with FUOPS. Both integrating cell chiefs should participate.
• Plans Working Group (PWG) – “Plans WG” is a typical title of a battle rhythm event, but as discussed above, one meeting is not sufficient for the amount of planning required from this cell and the PWG must be defined as some standardized process (a step of MDMP) with standard inputs and outputs to be We recommend the PWG be used as the primary integrating WG for plans to bring in staff members from outside of the Plans Cell (like the protection cell or a planner from the CAB) to collaborate on the planning priority for the day, but that priority may be different from day to day so there must be planning guidance that informs this.
• Plans to FUOPS Transition – MCTP observes that plans transitions are typically nothing more that digital products dropped in a folder, or at best, the two cells try to make the PUB double as the transition. The latter can be effective if done with standardized products. There is no replacement for a face-to-face briefing to ensure that nothing is lost in transition between the two integrating cells. We recommend that plans build a map board with overlays and analogue as well as digital products, use the PUB to brief the plan to the CG and the FUOPS Cell, allow for dialogue, and then move on to the next planning effort. This can be done in fifteen minutes. Furthermore, MCTP observes that many units try to avoid transitions by using the “action officer” technique in which one planner follows a plan from G-5 to G-35 to G-33 and then cycles back to G-5 to take on the next plan. This technique typically results in one planner being removed from his/her integrating cell at all times and undermines planning efforts but it does nothing to improve transitions. There is a benefit to transitioning from one integrating cell to an entirely different cell: the team that receives the transition will look at it with a fresh perspective, ask questions, and identify necessary refinements when the original planning team fails to see after days of admiring the same problem. If the Plans Cell builds the standard products to the required level of detail, there is no better transition technique than a face-to-face map table/ digital brief to FUOPS with a senior leader chairing the brief. At a minimum, the plans and FUOPS chiefs should drive this.
• Assessment Working Group (AWG) – This is the vehicle for CUOPS to feed changes in the current fight back to FUOPS and plans. This provides adjustment decisions to FUOPS (branches or refinements) and another source of planning guidance to plans (sequels). This must be framed by phase in order to use end state conditions to measure progress against. This is important because the forecasted end conditions for one phase dictate the starting conditions for planning future phases. Annex M should be formatted to show the concept of each phase with measurable end state conditions to assess. (Note: At the division level, the AWG should only be necessary when there is a significant change in the situation that may require and major change in plans, while at the corps level the AWG may be more beneficial if conducted daily). The division should be able to assess continuously in execution via COIC 2-minute drills, BUB, CUA, OPSYNC, and commanders’ dialogues.

Products

The Plans Cell should produce a complete plan that they transition to FUOPS. This plan should cover a phase that will likely span multiple days. The Plans Cell should wargame to the level of detail on the Synchronization Matrix (SYNCMAT) that at least aligns effects needed by day, in support of which brigade on which objective. Publish a WARNORD (just one per phase that is a combination of doctrinal WARNORDs 2 and 3) that will feed targeteers enough detail and time to requests effects 72-96 hours prior to execution and for subordinate units and enablers to parallel plan.

In execution, warning orders for these operations should typically be verbal for WARNORD 1, and then WARNORDs 2 and 3 should be combined due to the time constraints in a typically LSCO fighting pace.

The FRAGORD should include the minimum basic, standardized products that brigades, enablers, and staff need to execute the operation using published orders in the absence of meetings (rhythm of the battle). Figure 5 offers a menu for products that make a good starting point for the G-5 and G-35 to transition to the next integrating cell and an associated transition brief agenda.

Figure 5. OPORD Products and Planning Transitions

The Role of the FUOPS Cell

The FUOPS Cell has multiple responsibilities:

• Refine the OPORD received from the Plans Cell to fighting level of detail
• Turn assumptions into facts or non-facts using information from reports and information collection operations
• Constantly adjust the plan for the next phase based on feedback from the CUOPS cell and progress in the current phase
• Integrate the targeting process into the planning process to support the maneuver plan

The FUOPS Cell receives a complete plan for an upcoming operation from the Plans Cell that has been wargamed down to the day-by-day level on the SYNCMAT. Unlike plans, however, the FUOPS Cell does not necessarily execute MDMP as its daily process. It may use select steps of MDMP or RDSP to refine the plans they receive from the Plans Cell to the level of detail needed for CUOPS and units to fight. In other words, the Plans Cell produces a by-day SYNCMAT and then FUOPs refines that into an hour-by-hour execution matrix (EXMAT) using whatever doctrinal planning process makes sense for the situation. The MCTP recommends FUOPS primarily use its working group to conduct a table-top wargame for the fight that will be the next division fight. The sweet spot for a division EXMAT seems to be 2 or 4-hour blocks. This detailed division plan should feed the Targeting Working Group (TWG).

The SYNCMAT is a staff tool, but not something that the CUOPS cell or brigades will usually use for execution. The brigades and CUOPS cell usually find more utility in an EXMAT or EXCHECK, which is easily derived from the SYNCMAT, but the SYNCMAT must come first.

People

The FUOPS Cell is authorized five personnel by MTOE. It is designed to rely on representatives from each WfF to attend WGs in support of FUOPS, but based on MCTP WFX observations, this does not work. We recommend manning both the plans and FUOPS Cells with full-time planners whose primary job is in the integrating cell and whose secondary responsibility is to their WfF team. If this is not possible, then the chief of staff and each WfF chief must at least prioritize a capable planner to support FUOPS processes effectively; this is not the place to assume risk. Furthermore, we recommend organizing this way year-round, not just when it is time for a WFX. And lastly, we recommend aligning the rating chain so that the WfF planners assigned to the Plans Cell and FUOPS Cell are rated by their respective integrating cell chiefs instead of by their organic WfF chiefs in order to force them to prioritize support to the integrating cell. The MTOE codes a number of personnel in each WfF as “planners” who are intended to support the integrating cells, but the trend is that those planners spend their time in their own WfFs and either do not support the integrating cells or do not do it effectively.

Furthermore, lack of personnel is not a valid excuse for not manning both Plans and FUOPS with full-time dedicated planners when some divisions are authorized as many as 518 personnel; it is worth noting that U.S. Army Division staffs like that of the 9th ID in Normandy were never authorized more than 180 soldiers.

Processes

“The RDSP is a planning methodology that commanders and staffs may use during execution. The RDSP is not a replacement planning methodology for the MDMP, but a decision making and planning technique based on an existing order.” While the Plans Cell owns the long range planning horizon, the FUOPS Cell owns the mid-range horizon. Like the Plans Cell, the FUOPS Cell should primarily use MDMP, but may also use RDSP and is more likely to execute RDSP in support of major adjustments or reframes of the current plan than the Plans Cell. This is simply because the closer the plan gets to execution, the more the current situation evolves and therefore the more the plan requires course corrections. These are usually minor, but still require a separate mid-range horizon in which to make final refinements prior to publication of orders and execution. Just like the Plans Cell, the FUOPS Cell requires a dedicated time on the battle rhythm in which to pull in staff members from outside the cell that participate in whatever process is taking place on any particular day.

This FUOPS working group could be used to conduct any step of MDMP or RDSP, but the MCTP recommends it focus on COA Analysis by default. If the FUOPS Cell receives a complete plan by phase from the Plans Cell that has been planned to the by-day level of fidelity, then, assuming there is no reframe or major change, the FUOPS Cell should be able to revisit COA Analysis and refine the Plans Cell’s by-day SYNCMAT into a by-hour EXMAT that is detailed enough to use to control a fight in execution. This is also the time to revisit planning assumptions that the Plans Cell used and apply updated running estimates informed by ongoing reconnaissance, intel collection, reporting, and shaping operations and turn assumptions into facts or non-facts and adjust the plan accordingly.

The trend we observe in most WFXs is that divisions do not conduct COA analysis, resulting in a conceptual plan going from the Plans Cell to publication and units are then fighting with products that do not provide the detail required to synchronize operations, enable initiative, or seize opportunities. If there is a need for a major adjustment to a plan and no branch plan exists, then FUOPS may need to conduct COA DEV to build that branch, but as long as things are going in the right direction, COA Analysis is the step of MDMP that correlates to the RDSP step “Refine and Validate the COA” (Figure 3). The MCTP recommends a tabletop wargame as the preferred method of analysis and it should take the concepts and by-day SYNCMAT from the Plans Cell and refine it into a detailed plan with an EXMAT in two-hour blocks.

The FUOPS Cell should primarily participate in the following battle rhythm events:

• FUOPS WG – A dedicated team that performs necessary staff processes at expert level as often as needed, daily or not, will be efficient and effective. Make this a battle rhythm event and put leadership emphasis on it. Use doctrinal steps of MDMP with standardized inputs, processes, and outputs. This process will most likely be COA Analysis and/or COA Comparison. The most important outputs are the adjusted CONOP and detailed EXMAT. Those feed the TWG and become necessary products for execution.
• Targeting Working Group (TWG) – This is run by the DIVARTY team, but supported by the FUOPS Cell and each WfF, unit LNOs, and enablers. This is similar to another wargame but should build on the wargame that FUOPS has already conducted, not replace it. The TWG synchronizes IC and Fires with the maneuver plan, but it does not produce a wholistic division plan. The combined arms Division plan must come first and then the targeting process supports it. Therefore, COA Analysis should produce complete and detailed plans that feed the TWG and the TWG then synchronizes the effects needed to shape future operations in time and space, by echelon, by day or hour.
• Targeting Coordination Board (TCB) – This meeting is similar to the MDMP step “COA Approval” or RDSP step “Refine and Validate COA,” but for the fires plan, not the overall division plan.
• PUB – This correlates to the MDMP step “COA Approval” or the RDSP step “Issue and Implement the ” The FUOPS team should brief the draft FRAGORD for the next phase to the CG and walk through each of the products in it. The CG may offer some minor adjustment guidance, but shortly after this meeting the FRAGORD should be approved and ready for publication. After the FUOPS team briefs the plan to the CG for approval, the plans team briefs the CG on the concept for the following phase and the CG provides more detailed planning guidance. Units often attempt to make this meeting double as the plans-to-FUOPS transition. That can work, but the transition must be done thoroughly and deliberately using a transition checklist and SOP enforcement.
• Orders Production – The trend is for units to drop digital products into a folder and a FUOPS planner compiles them, fills in some blanks, and publishes. This does not work. There is no replacement for a formal touchpoint with a key leader who reviews the OPORD prior to publication and forces staff members who owe inputs to provide them on time and to standard. This is much easier if the planners who provide the inputs to the OPORD are assigned to FUOPS full time as opposed to scattered through the MCP and RCP. The G-3’s name is on each FRAGORD, so he/she should be the reviewer and enforcer in addition to the CG who reviews it in the PUB.
• OPORD Brief – If we treat each phase as its own operation with its own FRAGORD, then we must conduct an orders brief to the units followed by a back brief and rehearsals. This will not be as lengthy as the initial OPORD and rehearsals process, and it will be done digitally. MDMP is iterative and therefore so are orders briefs. This should take place once per phase, not necessarily daily.
• Operations Synchronization (OPSYNC) – This can be owned by the CUOPS or the FUOPS Cell, but the leader who drives this is not the CHOPS battle major. It is the G-3 OIC. MCTP recommend the DCG-M and G-3 works shifts on the COIC floor as the key C2 leaders of the division and they overlap their shifts at the OPSYNC.
• AWG – This is where the CoS or DCG-M can make adjustment decisions in a working group with whole-of-staff collaboration. Use the CONOP, SYNCMAT, DSM with updated CCIR, and Annex M to talk off of for the current phase (CUOPS), next phase (FUOPS) and then the phase beyond that (plans). Running estimates feed the cross-staff dialogue but this is not a BUB or a staff sync. It is a measurement of progress toward the end state of a phase with recommendations for adjustments. The discussion should focus on:

“Where are we at? Where are we supposed to be? What needs to change?” Those recommendations for change allow the CoS or DCG-M to make adjustment decisions and give guidance to FUOPS and plans. This meeting should produce some changes to products immediately after the meeting and it should feed the CG’s first touchpoint in the day, usually a BUB.

Products

The FUOPS Cell should publish FRAGORDs for operational phases that include the same products they receive from the Plans Cell but completed to the fighting level of detail. Additionally, they should publish FRAGORDs as needed that serve to feed the targeteers, facilitate planning in subordinate units, and codify any other details as needed. The key product that FUOPS produces that is different than what they receive from the Plans Cell is the EXMAT, but again, this is a derivative of the Plans Cell’s SYNCMAT.

Managing Transitions

Division staffs tend to struggle with transitioning plans from G-5 to G-35 and from G-35 to G-33 and the brigades. MCTP has observed multiple techniques, but most are ineffective. Divisions typically try to avoid transitions because of the lack of continuity that is inherent to any planning transition. This paper so far has discussed the Plans and FUOPS cells as owning the long-range and mid-range planning horizons, respectively. There is another way to manage those horizons that was the prevalent technique on division and corps staffs prior to the Global War on Terrorism era. That technique is the leapfrog technique.

Man both the G-5 and G-35 cells identically, with resident reps from each WfF, a chief, and an ORSA. Use the two identical planning cells in a Team 1 and Team 2 concept instead of a Plans and FUOPS concept. The two teams each own a phase for planning up to the point where the orders are published and effectively transitioned to G-33 and the brigades for execution. The two teams leapfrog instead of transitioning to each other. In other words, Team 1 may own Phase 1, while Team 2 owns Phase 2, and when the division begins execution of Phase 1, then Team 1 begins planning Phase III, and then Team 2 begins planning Phase 4, and so on.

The obvious benefit of this technique is that it eliminates the Plans-to-FUOPS transitions and facilitates better running estimates and assessments in parallel with the planning effort.

The two main problems with this technique are manning and generalization. The Chief of Staff will have to pull a few majors from somewhere in the division staff to man two identical teams of eight people, but really, this is only about 3 or 4 people, so it is very possible. By generalization, we mean lack of specialization in any one process, for example, a dedicated mid-range planning cell (FUOPS) should specialize in wargaming and integration with targeting, but operating two identical teams that have to perform a slightly broader range of processes may increase training requirements and reduce performance in some areas. However, all field grade officers are taught these processes (steps of MDMP) prior to reporting for duty on a division staff and if we operate via doctrinal processes and steps within them, then the unit training requirement should be minimal.

The downsides to the two-team leapfrog technique are very easy to overcome and the benefit of eliminating a transition and improving running assessments more than makes up for them.

Conclusion

Manning issues, confusion with processes, orders and transitions can be addressed without making changes to the MTOE, doctrine, or equipment. We must plan and train to excel at the basics (create opportunities) as well as adjust (exploit opportunities) better than our adversaries. To do this units should replicate LSCO processes in garrison to the extent that it makes sense. This can be accomplished by tailoring rating schemes, products and processes and maximizing repetitions through home station, CTC, and other opportunities.

More importantly, we must change how we view LSCO planning and fighting. Each fight must be framed as its own phase or operation with CG planning guidance and intent, a decisive point, measurable end state conditions, and orders. Plans Cells must produce complete plans. FUOPS Cells must own mid-range planning horizons.

Recommendations and Training the Staff

Chief of Staff

1. Conduct a battle rhythm assessment as a starting point to a staff training plan and continuously re-assess. Sit in each meeting on the battle rhythm in the first staff exercise (or even starting in garrison) and use each meeting’s 7-minute drill quad chart to assess whether the right leader or decision maker is chairing the meeting, the right talent is attending, the right inputs are feeding it, the right process is being conducted, the process is being conducted effectively, and the right outputs are being produced to feed the next event in the critical path.
2. Decide how to organize the staff based on the talent you have. If you have both a strong plans chief and FUOPS chief, then you may want to try to man both cells identically and use the leapfrog technique to manage planning transitions. If you only have one strong chief/cell, you may want to lean more heavily on that cell for the more difficult planning work and assume risk in the other. MCTP observes that a lightly-manned plans cell can function just fine but the FUOPS cell needs a strong chief and a lot of resident horsepower to be valuable.
3. Exchange at least one planner each between the RCP and MCP (a sustainment planner moves from the RCP to the MCP and a maneuver planner moves from the MCP to the RCP). The purpose of this planner in the RCP is to integrate the Plans Cell into the RCP and enable the DCG-S’ decision cycle. For example: The sustainment decision board is a battle rhythm event that usually takes place daily, at the RCP, and is chaired by the DCG- The sustainment plan should support the maneuver plan, therefore there should be a maneuver planner in this meeting to brief the division maneuver plan and facilitate staff integration and DCG-S decision-making. On the other hand, the plans and FUOPS Cells require a sustainment planner in the MCP to support MDMP and RDSP.
4. Determine with the division knowledge management officer the best way to enable shared understanding across the integrating and functional cells by making section and WfF running estimates visible to everyone and usable for supporting formal and informal planning efforts. Drive the discussion on which staff sections are the subject matter expert for specific capabilities and how to portray information and knowledge across the staff to meet information requirements for different planning Staff running estimates must be updated and shared at all times.
5. Establish the standard to confirm daily with the plans and FUOPS chiefs what will be covered in the next day’s plans and FUOPS WG with the entirety of the staff so each section can determine the right personnel and products to prepare for each meeting. This is where we plan to Immediately after the AWG is a good touchpoint for this.

G-3 Operations

1. Place the FUOPS Cell as close as possible to the COIC
2. Codify plans and FUOPS Cell people, processes, inputs, and products in unit SOPs in detail, to include Plans-to-FUOPS and FUOPS-to-CUOPS transitions.
3. Provide C2 for the division from the COIC floor and work in shifts with the DCG-M. Use the OPSYNC as a shift hand-off.
4. Review phase FRAGORDs prior to publication using SOP and checklists to enforce standards. Use orders briefs and OPSYNCs to review orders with subordinate

G-5 Plans

1. Build the team in garrison the same way it will operate in a LSCO One common difference is the intelligence WfF planner. There is usually no need for a dedicated intel WfF planner to work in the G-5 cell in garrison, but it is certainly a requirement in LSCO. Can examples like this be fixed so that at least there is an assigned planner for each WfF that knows that he/she will be dedicated to the G-5 cell in the field rather than trying to work around talent gaps?
2. Develop a “plan the plan” meeting in the battle rhythm after the CG’s primary planning guidance touchpoint (usually the PUB). This meeting is short and serves to go over planning efforts, priorities, transitions, changes, etc., for the Plans Cell and FUOPS Cell. Each integrated cell will most likely not conduct the exact same meetings or focus on the exact same products every day, so each day requires some thought.
3. Own the assessment process for the division. Every touchpoint with the CG should address the three following questions: Where are we at? Where are we supposed to be at? What needs to change? This requires a visual that overlays red and blue concepts as a stage setter for every touchpoint. Apply the answers to each planning horizon in order to feed refinement guidance to FUOPS Cell and to keep the Plans Cell connected with reality.

G-35 FUOPS Chief

1. The FUOPS Cell requires a battle rhythm event of its own just like the Plans
2. That working group must be based on a doctrinal process with standardized people, leadership, inputs, process, and outputs. As a starting point, focus on a daily wargame, but other MDMP steps may be used depending on the situation.
3. The TWG is not a replacement for a mid-range planning horizon process. Focus on mastery of table-top wargaming that refines the SYNCMAT to an EXMAT and DSM, adjusts the future plan based on the evolving current situation, and feeds the TWG with a wholistic division plan.

Tags: Army Planning, CALL Publication, Division Staff, FUOPS, large-scale combat operations, LSCO, MCTP, MDMP, Plans Cell

About The Authors

• 
  
• John R. Harrell
• Major John Harrell is a U.S. Army infantry officer assigned as a division command and control observer-coach/trainer with the Mission Command Training Program. Previously, he served as a division FUOPS planner in the 10th Mountain Division and a battalion S3/XO in 2d Battalion, 22d Infantry Regiment. He has developed academic curriculum for over 13 academic and warfighter exercises and has published articles on various related topics.
• View all posts
• 
  
• James Villanueva
• Major James Villanueva is a U.S. Army infantry officer assigned as a division command and control observer-coach/trainer with the Mission Command Training Program. Prior to his current assignment, he served as the G-35 for the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). He holds a PhD in history from Ohio State. James was also an assistant professor in the U.S. Military Academy Department of History and is the author of Awaiting MacArthur’s Return: World War II Guerrilla Resistance against the Japanese in
• the Philippines. He has an upcoming book assessing U.S. Army Regimental Combat Teams in the Pacific during World War II.
• View all posts
• 
  
• Joe Hammond
• Joe Hammond is a Division Command and Control Analyst supporting Operations Group Bravo, Mission Command Training Program. He is former U.S. Army officer with three years of experience as an Observer-Coach/Trainer in MCTP and 4.5 years of time as a division staff officer with the 3rd Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions.

9. Danish defense minister says there is 'no need' for U.S. hospital boat

Summary:

Greenland and Denmark rejected POTUS’s stated plan to send a U.S. hospital ship to Greenland. POTUS said the ship would care for people “sick and not being taken care of.” Greenland’s prime minister said there is no need because Greenland has free healthcare, welcomed dialogue with the United States, and urged POTUS to stop making random social media statements and to respect Greenland’s decisions. Denmark’s defense minister said Copenhagen had not been briefed and that there was no need for special healthcare efforts. Greenland’s health minister noted a backlog and patient travel burdens, but argued structural problems are not solved by symbolic outside initiatives. Tensions persist over U.S. rhetoric about control of Greenland.

Comment:

Danish defense minister says there is 'no need' for U.S. hospital boat - UPI.com

upi.com

By Jessica Inman & Darryl Coote

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/02/22/denmark-rejects-trump-hospital-ship-greenland/6481771797370/

Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Greenland and Denmark on Sunday both rejected a hospital boat that U.S. President Donald Trump said he was sending to the Danish territory.

The president posted about his plan Saturday on his Truth Social media platform, saying that the vessel would be sent to "take care of the many people who are sick and not being taken care of there."

A painting of USNS Mercy, one of the U.S. two medical ships, accompanied the post. In the image, red crosses adorned the vessel's side and it was flying a large American flag as it sailed, seemingly toward Greenland.

In response, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said that while they are "very grateful" there is no need to send the medical boat as they have free healthcare.

"We have learned that President Trump wants to send an American hospital ship to Greenland. But here in our country, we already have a healthcare system that everyone can use for free," he said in a statement on Facebook.

"That wasn't decided for no reason. It is extremely important to society. In the U.S., it isn't like that, because going to the doctor is extremely expensive."

Nielsen added that Greenland is open to dialogue and cooperation with the United States, while chided Trump for making bombastic statements online.

"So please, if you want to talk with us, stop writing random things on social media," he said.

"If there are to be talks and cooperation, then the decision we make here in our country must be fully respected."

Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen also said in an interview with public broadcaster DR that Copenhagen had not been briefed on the matter, and added that there was "no need for special healthcare efforts."

"It is so important to say that the Greenlandic population of course receives the necessary health treatment," Poulsen said, per The Wall Street Journal.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also added in a statement: "I'm happy to live in a country where everyone has free and equal access to healthcare -- where it isn't insurance and wealth that decide whether you receive proper treatment. Greenland has the same approach."

Trump's statement comes amid heightened tensions over Greenland due to renewed rhetoric from the American president about U.S. control over the Danish territory, which has alarmed officials in Greenland, Denmark and some European allies.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has threatened the sovereignty of Denmark with talk of taking control of Greenland and has refused to explicitly rule out doing so via military action.

He argues that Greenland must become part of the United States for national security purposes.

Greenland is a Danish territory. Denmark is a member of the NATO alliance and a U.S. ally. It is home to a U.S. military base -- Pituffik Space Base -- and Danish and Greenland officials have said they are open to discussion on further military cooperation.

Trump's insistence on the U.S. acquiring Greenland has frayed relations between Washington and its European and NATO allies.

Anna Wangenheim, Greenland's minister for Health and Persons with Disabilities, said she has not been in touch with the United States regarding the hospital ship.

In the Facebook statement, she acknowledged that Greenland requires additional resources to deal with "a significant backlog" in its healthcare system, but it has entered into an agreement with the Danish state to improve conditions.

"When President Donald Trump announces the idea of sending a hospital ship to Greenland, it touches a sensitive nerve. Many citizens have experienced that serious illness means long and difficult journeys away from family and home," she said.

"But structural challenges are not solved by isolated, symbolic initiatives from the outside."

On Saturday, Denmark's Joint Arctic Command said in a statement that it evacuated a crew member who needed urgent medical treatment from a U.S. submarine.

A Seahawk helicopter of Denmark's Ministry of Defense executed the transfer of the crew member from the submarine, located in waters about 7 miles outside of Nuuk, to health services in Greenland's capital.

Wangenheim said Trump is "welcome" to observe the effectiveness of its healthcare system in cooperation with Denmark.

"It demonstrates that, despite vast distances, we can deliver a strong emergency response when it truly matters," she said.

Trump's post followed a meeting with Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana and Trump-appointed envoy to Greenland.

Landry late Sunday lambasted Nielsen for not accepting the ship, claiming that many Greenlanders have told him healthcare is among the main issues they face.

"A healthy Greenland is vital for America's national security," he said on X.

"America is committed to defending Greenland, and that begins by ensuring its people are defended against basic illnesses and ailments."

The Navy's two hospital ships are currently in an Alabama shipyard.

upi.com

10. US sailor medically evacuated from nuclear submarine near Greenland: Official

Summary:

A U.S. Navy sailor was medically evacuated Saturday afternoon from an American nuclear-powered submarine near Greenland, according to U.S. and Danish officials. The submarine broke from its mission and surfaced roughly eight miles from Nuuk, an unusual move for a platform meant to stay hidden. A Danish Defense Seahawk helicopter, operating from the Danish patrol ship Vædderen, airlifted the sailor to a hospital in Nuuk. Officials did not disclose the nature of the emergency but said it was not combat-related. The incident drew attention because submarine movements are normally kept secret, and it occurred amid rising strategic focus on Arctic waters as ice melt increases access and competition.

Comment: Irony at the expense of the health of a sailor.

US sailor medically evacuated from nuclear submarine near Greenland: Official

abcnews.com · ABC News

The nature of the medical emergency was not clear.

BySteven Beynon

February 22, 2026, 12:45 PM

https://abcnews.com/International/us-sailor-medically-evacuated-nuclear-submarine-greenland-official/story?id=130377835

A U.S. Navy sailor was medically evacuated Saturday afternoon from an American nuclear-powered submarine by Danish military forces, according to a U.S. and Danish official.

The submarine broke from its mission and surfaced about eight miles from Nuuk, Greenland, an extraordinary step for a vessel designed to remain hidden beneath the sea in secrecy.

The sailor was airlifted by a Danish Defense Seahawk helicopter, deployed from the Vædderen, a Danish military patrol ship.

It's unclear what the nature of the medical emergency was, but it was not combat-related, according to the U.S. official.

The sailor is being treated at a hospital in Nuuk, Greenland's capital.

Houses are seen near the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026.

Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Trump considering initial limited strike against Iran, source says

The incident unfolded against the backdrop of the Navy’s typically strict secrecy surrounding the movements and missions of its submarine fleet. Even acknowledging a sub's general location is highly unusual, underscoring the gravity of a situation that required assistance.

The waters surrounding Greenland have been among the most strategically consequential terrain for military planners.

It includes passageways and choke points between Russia, Europe, and North America, particularly as ice continues to melt and the area becomes easier to navigate. China is also aiming to expand its footprint in the Arctic.

abcnews.com · ABC News

abcnews.com · ABC News

A U.S. Navy sailor was medically evacuated Saturday afternoon from an American nuclear-powered submarine by Danish military forces, according to a U.S. and Danish official.

The submarine broke from its mission and surfaced about eight miles from Nuuk, Greenland, an extraordinary step for a vessel designed to remain hidden beneath the sea in secrecy.

The sailor was airlifted by a Danish Defense Seahawk helicopter, deployed from the Vædderen, a Danish military patrol ship.

It's unclear what the nature of the medical emergency was, but it was not combat-related, according to the U.S. official.

The sailor is being treated at a hospital in Nuuk, Greenland's capital.

Houses are seen near the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026.

Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Trump considering initial limited strike against Iran, source says

The incident unfolded against the backdrop of the Navy’s typically strict secrecy surrounding the movements and missions of its submarine fleet. Even acknowledging a sub's general location is highly unusual, underscoring the gravity of a situation that required assistance.

The waters surrounding Greenland have been among the most strategically consequential terrain for military planners.

It includes passageways and choke points between Russia, Europe, and North America, particularly as ice continues to melt and the area becomes easier to navigate. China is also aiming to expand its footprint in the Arctic.

abcnews.com · ABC News

11. On Taiwan and Japan, Chinese Belligerence Backfires

Summary:

Ted Galen Carpenter argues Beijing’s coercive diplomacy toward Japan and Taiwan is backfiring politically. After Japan’s new prime minister declared a Taiwan crisis would threaten Japan’s survival, China responded with threats, economic penalties, and patrols near disputed islands, yet Japanese voters rewarded her with a two-thirds parliamentary majority. The article says similar dynamics occurred in Taiwan: pressure campaigns, military drills, and Hong Kong crackdowns hardened public opinion and strengthened pro-sovereignty leaders. Even opposition parties favoring calmer ties reject reunification under Communist rule. The author concludes PRC pressure repeatedly strengthens hawkish factions in neighboring democracies and narrows Beijing’s diplomatic options.

Comment: Should we invoke Bonaparte: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake?"  Beijing’s coercion is producing the opposite of strategic compliance. It is consolidating electoral mandates for leaders who define China as a threat and who justify stronger defense postures. Ted Galen Carpenter implies time favors Taiwan’s distinct identity. Each cycle of pressure reinforces public resistance, making political integration less feasible even if leadership changes.

If coercive signaling consistently hardens neighboring democracies instead of splitting them, what alternative strategy could Beijing employ that would actually widen its political options with Taiwan and Japan? 

On Taiwan and Japan, Chinese Belligerence Backfires

The American Conservative · The American Conservative · February 22, 2026

Ted Galen Carpenter

Feb 22, 2026

12:03 AM

Foreign Affairs

Beijing should turn down the temperature, for its own sake.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/on-taiwan-and-japan-chinese-belligerence-backfires/

Ted Galen Carpenter

Feb 22, 2026 12:03 AM

Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player...

When conservative Sanae Takaichi became the new leader of Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the country’s prime minister in October 2025, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) clearly was unhappy about that development. Chinese officials became even more annoyed when Takaichi voiced strong support for preserving the de facto independence of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province. During a parliamentary debate in November, she was asked repeatedly about how Japan should respond to a hypothetical Taiwan “security contingency.” Much to the surprise of most observers, Takaichi abandoned Tokyo’s longstanding evasion of the question and stated that a military crisis over Taiwan would constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially triggering collective self-defense and Japanese military involvement.

President Xi Jinping’s government responded with vitriol and threats. Beijing imposed a variety of economic penalties on Japanese companies. Chinese coast guard ships were sent to patrol the waters around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, which Tokyo and Beijing both claim. One ugly incident there took place between Japanese and PRC vessels early last December.

However, if Chinese leaders thought that Japanese voters would repudiate their new prime minister and her uncompromising stance toward Beijing, they miscalculated badly. Takaichi gambled by calling a snap election for early February, and the results were a spectacular political success for her and her party. The LDP and its small coalition partner won more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house of parliament—an indisputable mandate for her policies.

It is hardly the first time that Xi and his associates engaged in clumsy, tone-deaf policies that produced disastrous results for Beijing. In 2020, Chinese authorities imposed a harsh new national security measure on Hong Kong, which was supposedly guaranteed the right to autonomy and self-governance for 50 years under the terms of the treaty Beijing signed with Great Britain, Hong Kong’s departing colonial ruler, in 1997. The PRC’s contemptuous violation generated hostile reverberations far beyond Hong Kong. Beijing made the perception even worse when it tightened the original security measure in 2024. The sentencing this month of media tycoon Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison (which is effectively a death sentence given his age and health) is just the latest abuse to infuriate PRC opponents around the world.

As I noted as far back as 2014, PRC leaders could undoubtedly win a policy victory and successfully impose their ideological will in Hong Kong, but the long-term geopolitical cost, especially with respect to Taiwan, would be considerable. I renewed that warning in 2021 following Beijing’s imposition of the new national security law on Hong Kong the previous year. The PRC’s bullying tactics especially alienated public opinion in Taiwan, killing off any chance of an agreement for the island’s political reunification with the mainland.

Expectations that there might be a gradual rapprochement between Taipei and Beijing once seemed reasonably promising. From 2008 until 2016, Ma Ying-jeou of the moderate Kuomintang Party served as Taiwan’s president. Ma embraced a policy of conciliatory engagement with Beijing, an approach that stood in marked contrast to the extremely assertive policies of his predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, the first member of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to win the island’s presidency. During Ma’s two terms, economic ties between Taiwan and the mainland soared, as did tourism and other interactions between the two political entities.

PRC officials began to press Ma for more concessions, however, generating significant political pushback from the Taiwanese people, especially younger Taiwanese who joined the new Sunflower movement in 2014 advocating greater political transparency and other reforms to reduce corruption. Sunflower activists also contended that the KMT government was becoming too compliant with Beijing’s goals instead of standing up for important Taiwanese interests and values against the PRC’s pressure.

The combination of those volatile political factors produced a decisive victory for DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan’s 2016 presidential election. Instead of reacting calmly to the return of the DPP to power in a democratic system, however, PRC leaders denounced Tsai in the most harsh and inflammatory terms. Beijing also returned to the policy it pursued during Chen’s tenure of trying to isolate the island diplomatically and intimidate it militarily. The PRC intensified its efforts to induce the handful of small countries heavily dependent on Taiwan’s flow of economic aid that still maintained diplomatic relations with Taipei to switch their ties to Beijing, and 10 of them did so during her presidency. Militarily, the PRC boosted both the frequency and size of its military exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

Just as Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s democratic activists failed to sway Taiwan’s population to support appeasement and reunification, the PRC’s coercive measures against Tsai’s administration backfired. She won a landslide re-election victory in 2020 and, for the first time, the DPP also secured control of parliament. The PRC’s inexorable crackdown on Hong Kong enhanced the appeal of Taiwanese political leaders who insisted that they would never allow Taiwan to suffer a similar fate.

Indeed, the current government of Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te (William Lai) is even more hardline than that of Tsai Ing-wen. Lyle Goldstein, a scholar on East Asia issues and director of the Asia Program at the Defense Priorities think tank, notes that instead of trying to adopt a low profile and play down any claims to an explicitly independent status for Taiwan, as did Tsai, “Lai has lurched toward formal independence with a succession of speeches making the case for Taiwanese nationhood.” Indeed, Lai devoted nearly all of his initial national address to making the case for Taiwan’s right to sovereignty. As one prominent Taiwanese columnist noted: “Never before has a Taiwanese president devoted an entire speech to laying out clearly, point-by-point, and unequivocally how Taiwan is unquestionably a sovereign nation.”

Once again, PRC policymakers have reacted with a marked lack of subtlety. Just a few months after Lai’s election in 2024, PRC forces conducted extensive military drills directed against Taiwan. That pattern occurred again later in the year. Throughout 2025, the pace and scope of PRC military activity increased yet again. In late 2025, even more menacing exercises took place.

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PRC hardliners seem incapable of learning the basic lesson that a bullying strategy is counterproductive. Currently, Lai’s level of domestic support has dropped amid mounting evidence of DPP corruption and authoritarian tendencies at home. The emergence of a KMT administration in the next election is a distinct possibility. Indeed, the DPP could suffer a fate similar to the precipitous decline of the KMT leading up to the 2016 elections—and for similar domestic reasons. But Beijing’s boorish conduct may help keep the DPP in power for an extended period, despite such factors.

Moreover, even most members of the KMT, while they advocate a less confrontational relationship with Beijing, emphasize that they have no interest whatsoever in reunifying with the mainland while it is controlled by the Communist Party. Indeed, there are significant limits to the mundane policy concessions the KMT is willing to make to placate Beijing. PRC leaders need to be far more realistic about the nature and extent of policy options within Taiwan’s democratic political system. There is no popular mandate on the island for feckless appeasement.

Unfortunately, PRC policymakers seem clueless about such realities with respect to both Taiwan and Japan. Indeed, the biggest political beneficiaries of Beijing’s militant approach are the anti-China hawks in Taipei and Tokyo. Members of the PRC’s policy elite need to conduct some serious introspection about their current tactics toward Beijing’s neighbors.

The American Conservative · The American Conservative · February 22, 2026

12. Exclusive: New US military-led group aided Mexico's hunt for 'El Mencho' cartel boss

Summary:

Reuters reports a new U.S. military led intelligence effort, the Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel (JITF-CC), played a role in the Mexican raid that killed cartel leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera in Jalisco. U.S. officials said the task force was launched last month to map cartel networks on both sides of the border and involves multiple U.S. agencies. A U.S. defense official said the raid itself was Mexican. A former U.S. official said the U.S. provided Mexico a detailed target package drawing on law enforcement and intelligence. Mexico’s defense ministry said U.S. “complementary information” was provided; Mexico said no U.S. troops were involved.

Comment: JITF-CC appears to apply counterterrorism style network mapping to a criminal enterprise, seeking scalable effects by targeting nodes and enabling Mexican action while limiting U.S. physical involvement. (F3EAD?). Designation of cartels as terrorist organizations is being used to widen U.S. support and ISR authorities, which can accelerate operational tempo but also deepen legal and political contestation at home.

If the U.S. can deliver detailed targeting support without deploying forces, what guardrails will prevent mission creep from “complementary information” into de facto unilateral action inside Mexico?

Exclusive: New US military-led group aided Mexico's hunt for 'El Mencho' cartel boss

Reuters · Phil Stewart

By Phil Stewart and Laura Gottesdiener

February 23, 20266:42 AM GMT+9Updated 3 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/new-us-military-led-group-aided-mexicos-hunt-el-mencho-cartel-boss-2026-02-22/

• Summary
• U.S. task force mapping out cartel networks
• Ex-official says US gave Mexico detailed target package
• Mexico planned, executed raid, Mexican official says

WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - (This Feb 22 story has been corrected to change Oseguera's age to 59, not 60, in paragraph 9)

A new U.S.-military-led task force specializing in intelligence collection on drug cartels played a role in the Mexican military raid on Sunday that killed the Mexican drug lord known as 'El Mencho,' a U.S. defense official told Reuters.

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The Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel, which involves multiple U.S. government agencies, was formally launched last month with the goal of mapping out networks of drug cartel members on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. officials said.

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The U.S. official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, did not offer further details on any information that the U.S.-military-led task force may have offered Mexican authorities. The official stressed the raid itself was a Mexican military operation.

A former U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity without referring specifically to the task force, said the U.S. compiled a detailed target package for El Mencho and provided it to the Mexican government for its operation.

This detailed dossier included information provided by U.S. law enforcement, U.S. intelligence, the former official said.

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The former official added El Mencho was very high, if not at the top, of a list of U.S. targets in Mexico.

Mexican authorities killed drug lord Nemesio Oseguera, commonly known as 'El Mencho,' during an operation designed to capture him in the western state of Jalisco. The operation set off a wave of violence, with torched cars and gunmen blocking highways in more than half a dozen states.

Mexico's defense ministry said U.S. authorities had provided "complementary information," but offered no details. A Mexican government source familiar with the operation said the Mexican government designed and executed it, and that no U.S. military personnel were physically involved.

An ex-police officer, Oseguera, 59, was the shadowy leader of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), an international criminal enterprise widely viewed as one of Mexico's most powerful. He managed to evade arrest for years despite a $15 million bounty from the U.S. for information leading to his arrest or capture.

The kingpin's killing notches a major victory for Mexico's war on drug cartels that are responsible for smuggling billions of dollars in cocaine and fentanyl into the U.S.

President Donald Trump's administration has waged a pressure campaign on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's government to ramp up its crackdown on drug trafficking, including U.S. threats to intervene directly in Mexico.

Item 1 of 6 The burned wreckage of a truck, used as a barricade by members of organized crime following a series of detentions by federal forces, lies in Guadalajara, Mexico, February 22, 2026. REUTERS/Michelle Freyria

[1/6]The burned wreckage of a truck, used as a barricade by members of organized crime following a series of detentions by federal forces, lies in Guadalajara, Mexico, February 22, 2026. REUTERS/Michelle Freyria Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

U.S. MAPPING OUT CARTELS

There is little information publicly available about the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force-Counter Cartel, or JITF-CC. Its website says its goal is to "identify, disrupt, and dismantle cartel operations posing a threat to the United States along the U.S.-Mexico border."

U.S. Brigadier General Maurizio Calabrese, who leads the task force, spoke to Reuters this month about how the U.S. military is channeling its experience battling groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State to map out cartel networks.

"The cartels operate differently than al Qaeda or ISIS, different motivations, which makes it even more important for us to identify entire networks so that we can disrupt and dismantle (them)," Calabrese told Reuters, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Calabrese noted that estimates vary widely but said there were possibly a few hundred core cartel members "at the top."

"But then you have anywhere from 200,000 to 250,000 independent contractors that will help you move these drugs," Calabrese said.

Jack Riley, a former senior official at the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Trump's designation of Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations last year unlocked new kinds of U.S. military assistance.

He said that could be helpful when it comes to U.S. military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance resources.

"Our surveillance capabilities are going to be probably unlimited, and that will really help with real-time stuff," Riley told Reuters.

"But these guys are extremely astute at being able to cover their tracks, cover who's in charge and where those people are."

A second U.S. defense official, speaking to Reuters ahead of the Mexican operation, said the new task force fit into a broader U.S. strategy to combat drug trafficking that has seen the U.S. military take increasing operational control of the border with Mexico.

It also includes now-regular U.S. strikes on suspected drug boats in Caribbean and Pacific waters, the legality of which has been challenged by Democratic lawmakers and legal experts.

"The whole idea of creating an interagency effort is to not have stray voltage, is to bring it all together, synchronize it," the second official said of the task force.

Reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey, Mexico; Editing by David Gregorio

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Phil Stewart

Thomson Reuters

Phil Stewart has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award.

Laura Gottesdiener

Thomson Reuters

Laura Gottesdiener is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist in Reuters’ Mexico and Central America bureau. She has covered migration, human smuggling, drug trafficking, and human rights violations from across the region. She was part of the team that won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for the series “Fentanyl Express.”

Reuters · Phil Stewart

13. They Fought for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan. In America, They’re Living in Fear.

Summary:

The story follows former Afghan “Zero Units,” a CIA-funded surrogate force that fought alongside CIA and U.S. Special Operations, now living quietly in the United States on tenuous status. A Washington, D.C., shooting by an Afghan evacuee identified as a former Zero Unit member jolts their community and puts their immigration hopes at risk. The piece argues that secrecy long hid the scale of this force, its evacuation with families in 2021, and allegations of abusive raids. Now the men fear collective punishment, stalled cases, and raids, even as many see their service as a debt paid in blood.

Comment: It is Amazing that the CIA and Special Forces can actually work through, with, and by indigenous forces because of how the US has treated such forces (or abandoned them) when the US is finished using them (examples going back to WWII (e.g. Alamo Scouts), Korea (Korean Partisans), Vietnam (indigenous tribes) and now Afghanistan - and there are probably more in the works (Syria?) . Yet in every conflict they are able to gain the trust of indigenous forces and populations only to see our government use them up in the most pejorative sense.

If a surrogate force was “ours” in war, who owns the obligation in post-conflict and peace? Can a democracy ask men to fight in secrecy and then demand they stay silent when their lives unravel? Does The US gain security by freezing a whole cohort, or does this teach future partners that loyalty ends at the runway?

They Fought for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan. In America, They’re Living in Fear.

NY Times · Wesley Morgan · February 23, 2026

A shooting in Washington, D.C., threw their immigration status into jeopardy — and brought attention to a long-hidden dimension of America’s war.

By Matthieu Aikins and Wesley Morgan

Matthieu Aikins and Wesley Morgan spoke with 13 former members of the Zero Units and more than 30 veterans of the C.I.A. and U.S. Special Operations who served alongside them.

• Feb. 23, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/magazine/zero-units-cia-afghanistan.html

Mohammad IqbalCredit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

A shooting in Washington, D.C., threw their immigration status into jeopardy — and brought attention to a long-hidden dimension of America’s war.

Mohammad IqbalCredit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Mohammad Iqbal used to command more than 1,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, but late last year he was working maintenance at a hotel near where he lived in El Cajon, Calif., a working-class suburb of San Diego. Few outside the Afghan community there knew that the slight, soft-spoken father of six was anything more than another ordinary immigrant.

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He was at his shift on Nov. 26 when his phone started buzzing with notifications from a group chat for former members of his military unit. He was busy and ignored them, until a friend called and insisted that he open a TikTok link that had been shared in the chat. It was a video reporting that an Afghan immigrant had just shot two Army National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C.

Reeling, Iqbal checked the news, where the shooting was being called an act of terrorism. The authorities had identified the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, as an Afghan refugee who had been part of the Zero Units — the shadow army of Afghan soldiers, funded and directed by America’s Central Intelligence Agency, that Iqbal himself had fought with for more than four years. Iqbal called his former intelligence chief, also now living in the United States, and asked him if Lakanwal had been part of their unit. The officer confirmed that he had, and so had his brother Ismail.

For many Americans, news coverage of the attack was their introduction to the existence of the Zero Units, and to the fact that during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, some 10,000 members of the units were evacuated, along with their families, to the United States. In response to the shooting, President Trump announced a “permanent pause on third-world migration,” part of a newly intensified crackdown targeting asylum seekers from what he called “hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries.”

Iqbal addressing his soldiers, including Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s brother Ismail (right), after taking command of the Zero Unit assigned to Kandahar in 2021.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Portraying them as sources of crime and terrorism, Trump and his officials have blamed the Biden administration for bringing a total of nearly 200,000 Afghans to the United States without, they claim, proper vetting. A longtime C.I.A. asset like Lakanwal was no exception. “The individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here,” John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said in a statement the day after the shooting.

In fact, it was the C.I.A. that had brought Lakanwal and the rest of the Zero Units to the United States; Ratcliffe’s comments stunned many Americans who served alongside them. The Zero Units were a classified C.I.A. counterterrorism program, what was known as a surrogate force, armed, paid and controlled by the United States. While the C.I.A. has established other surrogate forces since the Sept. 11 attacks, including units in Iraq and Somalia, the Afghan program was the biggest. Their evacuation was regarded by many within the C.I.A. as fulfilling a debt of honor.

Three weeks after the shooting, Iqbal sat with several other former Zero Unit soldiers at a makeshift Afghan community center in El Cajon, trying to make sense of what the brutal act of violence would mean for them. Lakanwal had been part of an elite reconnaissance team, tasked with surveillance and plainclothes work.

The Zero Units had prided themselves on discipline and their loyalty to their American advisers. What could have made one of their own betray both his adopted country and his fellow soldiers? Lakanwal was accused of shooting the two soldiers in Washington at close range near a subway station; only one survived. Lakanwal, they speculated, must have been unable to adjust and suffered a mental breakdown. One of the men, who asked not to be identified because of his pending immigration claim, described what he heard about Lakanwal’s situation: “He didn’t have any work. He was still in his house. He was very upset.”

The Zero Unit soldiers had been evacuated in the name of saving them from the new Taliban government. But their salvation was tenuous. Most had been granted temporary status, and efforts to help them permanently immigrate had failed in Congress. “Everybody already knew what was happening with immigration and the new administration,” Iqbal said. “And now beyond that, you get this trouble.”

Even as the C.I.A.’s recent paramilitary operations in Venezuela have attracted public scrutiny, the extent of its wartime role in Afghanistan has yet to be fully understood. Although intended as a covert program, the Zero Units expanded into a sophisticated standing army controlled by the C.I.A., its allegiance well known to both the Afghan government and its insurgent foes. Although the units were dogged by allegations of abuses and labeled by some critics as death squads, U.S. commanders came to consider them their most effective and trustworthy local assets. As the Afghan Army and police faltered, they came to play a key role in the war in Afghanistan, including during Trump’s first term.

But public understanding of who the Zero Units were, and how they ended up in the United States, has been impeded by the C.I.A.’s habitual secrecy, even about programs that have operated in plain sight for years. “I’m scared to talk, to be honest,” Iqbal said. But he believed that the story of the Zero Units deserved to be told.

Iqbal at home in El Cajon, Calif., in December.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

‘We Trusted Them Completely’

Iqbal first heard about the C.I.A.’s mysterious commando units as a boy living in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan. The steep and heavily forested valleys there had long offered a base of operations for militants, including Al Qaeda. When the C.I.A. established its own outpost, Falcon Base, there in 2006, it recruited Afghans, including several of Iqbal’s relatives, through a local warlord.

The secrecy that surrounded the C.I.A.’s growing army was driven in no small part by bureaucratic imperatives. The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was led by small teams of Special Forces and C.I.A. operatives working with existing militias from the Northern Alliance, which had been at war with the Taliban regime for years. The Pentagon faced legal restrictions on paying foreign fighters, but not the C.I.A., which was legally permitted to hand out cases full of U.S. cash to local warlords. In the months and years that followed, the C.I.A. hired Afghan fighters directly into what it called Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams — the teams that would later come to be known as the Zero Units.

Because it was authorized as a covert intelligence program, the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams were cloaked by the fiction that they were run by independent Afghans who were only advised and assisted by Americans. Beyond providing the U.S. government deniability, this cover story also prevented embarrassment to the Afghan government over the presence of a foreign-controlled force within its own borders.

But there was little doubt on the ground about who was in charge of the Afghan fighters. “The way they were recruited, they were brought in locally, through word of mouth,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former C.I.A. base chief in Afghanistan. If any of the recruits underperformed or misbehaved, the C.I.A. could fire not only them but also the people who recommended them. The C.I.A. paramilitaries who ran the program — most of them veterans of the military’s elite Special Operations units who joined the spy agency as officers and contractors — called themselves advisers, but they trained their recruits, commanded them on missions and fought alongside them in battle. In addition to an unknown number of Afghans, at least nine C.I.A. officers and contractors died in combat with the teams.

One of the first to join the new teams was Mohammad Wali Tasleem, who was hired in 2002 when the agency asked several Northern Alliance commanders, including Tasleem’s uncle, to send recruits. Tasleem started out guarding C.I.A. officers as they moved around the country, but over time he was trained to conduct raids, clandestine surveillance operations and snatch-and-grab missions. “Just pick up the guys and run — no one would know,” said Tasleem, who emigrated to the United States in 2015, part of a trickle of unit members who obtained visas over the course of the war, before the Afghan government’s collapse.

The first C.I.A. teams worked out of what they called Eagle Base, located in a former brick factory northeast of Kabul International Airport, but other outposts spread around the country as the agency expanded its counterterrorism operations. Because the units operated under C.I.A. authority, they could carry out covert cross-border missions in Pakistan, but most of their work focused on fighting militants within Afghanistan, a role that expanded along with the U.S. presence.

The C.I.A.’s Eagle Base, home to one of the Zero Units for nearly 20 years, shortly after the agency left it during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

At the peak of the U.S. war, the C.I.A. maintained Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams at seven paramilitary bases, each one made up of several hundred soldiers, as well as a larger unit of thousands of soldiers in Khost Province that maintained checkpoints along the border. With striking unit names — Tigers, Vipers, Mustangs — and distinctive Vietnam-style tiger-stripe uniforms, the ostensibly covert program was well known to locals. As the units came to resemble a light infantry force, they were increasingly drawn into combat missions that blurred the line between intelligence and military operations.

U.S. military leaders embraced the C.I.A.’s paramilitary force. Under the Omega program, the Joint Special Operations Command sent its own teams out with the units, typically from the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 and Army Rangers. The Omega teams brought with them access to the military’s air power and the ability to send detainees to U.S. military prisons. “We trusted them completely,” said John Burnham, a retired SEAL officer who oversaw the Omega teams and other JSOC forces in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009. “They were tactically sound, well trained, and they had a feel for the local terrain that was essential.”

As time went on, the Afghan government chafed at the units’ total independence, and officials in Kabul began to complain about civilian casualties caused by units operating without their knowledge. In June 2009, the unit in the southern province of Kandahar clashed with the local police over the arrest of one of its members, resulting in a gun battle that killed 10 Afghan officials, including the provincial police chief. Furious, President Hamid Karzai demanded their arrest, and 41 soldiers from the unit were imprisoned.

The incident spurred the C.I.A. to integrate the program with the Afghan intelligence service, the N.D.S., which registered their men and weapons and assigned the units new names based on the Afghan codes for each province: Zero One was Kabul, Zero Two was Nangarhar, Zero Three was Kandahar and so on. Afghan officials soon began referring to them as qeteh-ye sefrdar, the Zero Units, the name by which they would eventually become known to the public.

The Zero Units were now formally part of the Afghan government, but they continued to be paid and commanded by their C.I.A. advisers. As the war entered its second decade and the United States began drawing down its military presence, the C.I.A. closed some bases and disbanded some of the Zero Units. But it kept the forces along the border and in cities like Kabul and Kandahar in place. A senior retired C.I.A. officer who was involved with the program put the reason for it bluntly: “We were forced to remain in place to keep the country from collapsing.”

Part of a mock village used for training at Eagle Base.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

‘There Was Never a Plan’

Iqbal joined the Zero Units in 2017, at a pivotal moment for the war in Afghanistan. Trump, who campaigned on a promise to quickly bring all of the American troops home, had been persuaded by his military commanders to begin a surge in hopes of bringing the Taliban back to the negotiating table. But the additional 4,000 soldiers were only a small fraction of those sent during his predecessor’s own surge, and U.S. and Afghan leaders leaned on special-operations forces like the Zero Units to execute Trump’s offensive. Iqbal, who had recently lost his job working as a military interpreter, was recruited to Zero Three, where several relatives also worked.

The unit operated out of Gecko Base, a U.S. compound at the bottom of a jagged spine of rock on the outskirts of Kandahar City that had once been home to the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Omar. Zero Three had its own section of the base, with a firing range, barracks, a meal hall and a landing pad for the Mi-17 helicopters that the C.I.A. used in Afghanistan. The Americans and the Afghans lived in separate parts of the compound but ate and trained together, sometimes running up the mountainside for exercise. Each month, Zero Three’s soldiers received $500 in cash from the Americans, roughly double what Afghan Army troops earned, in addition to a token salary, the equivalent of $8, from the Afghan intelligence service.

Iqbal at first worked as an interpreter in the intelligence section, which ran human sources in Kandahar and put together target packages for raids. He quickly clashed with his Afghan boss over what he said were sloppy practices that led to people being targeted based on weak intelligence, he said. But the C.I.A. advisers, appreciating his independence, promoted him to deputy and then head of the section.

Iqbal (top center) in Afghanistan.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Earlier in the war, Zero Three had focused on Qaeda operatives and other high-value targets, but now they hunted low-level insurgents in the rural districts surrounding Kandahar City, rolling out in drab-painted pickups or flying in Mi-17 helicopters operated by the C.I.A. In Kabul and Nangarhar, the Zero One and Zero Two units maintained an equally high tempo, hitting targets almost nightly in the provinces surrounding the capital city.

As the Zero Units took on a larger role in the war, they drew increasing scrutiny. Although the Afghan intelligence forces — which largely consisted of the Zero Units — were tiny in size compared with hundreds of thousands of army and police force members, the United Nations reported in 2018 that they were responsible for a majority of civilian casualties during government raids. The nature of combat in Afghanistan, which often took place inside homes and villages, meant that some civilian casualties were inevitable, but human rights groups and journalists accused the Zero Units of indiscriminate killings and summary executions.

Over the course of the war, the C.I.A. repeatedly denied such allegations, calling them Taliban propaganda. Some of the Zero Units’ former C.I.A. advisers say now that given the degree of U.S. supervision of their operations, it would have been impossible for the Afghans to carry out widespread abuses. “They weren’t perfect,” said a former paramilitary operative with the C.I.A., who like others who served with the units requested anonymity to discuss intelligence operations. “Neither were many American units. But the allegations of human rights violations are, in my experience, unfounded. It would’ve required more than complicity from advisers. It would’ve required direction. They followed our orders.”

But other former members of the Zero Units, the U.S. military and the C.I.A. described potentially illegal killings that were tacitly condoned, ordered or even carried out by American advisers, in the name of preventing militants from returning to the battlefield.

In this respect, far from being a renegade Afghan force, the Zero Units faced similar dynamics as other units within the U.S.-led special-operations campaign, which as time went on placed an increasing emphasis on killing rather than capturing those they suspected of being militants. It is, of course, legal to target opponents on the battlefield, but during the war in Afghanistan, aggressive raids in enemy-held terrain in some cases escalated to the killing of unarmed men who posed no immediate threat. In Britain and Australia, government inquiries have unearthed evidence of summary executions of captives, a war crime, and subsequent cover-ups by their nations’ special-operations units, and U.S. forces have faced similar allegations. Such practices, which were often concealed from higher command, were driven by frustrations with so-called catch-and-release detention, as well as the murkiness of an irregular war that blurred the distinction between combatant and civilian, one in which insurgent groups like the Taliban were also accused of committing extensive abuses.

One Special Operations veteran who served on the Omega teams said he’d been on multiple Zero Unit missions in which unarmed captives were shot. “We’d hear: ‘This guy is a bomb maker who keeps killing U.S. troops. He isn’t going to resist. He’s just going to surrender, but he’s just going to be released.’ So an adviser would tell a couple of guys to stay back and then kill him,” he said. Afterward, he said, photographs of the bodies would be taken with guns planted on them.

The executions would take place after most of the raid force left the target, to limit the number of people with direct knowledge. “I’ve seen it happen both ways, where a couple of Americans stayed behind and did it and where Afghans were told to do it. They were doing it willingly, but on an American’s instructions,” the former Omega team member said.

A former JSOC officer described an incident he witnessed while watching an aerial video feed of a Zero Unit convoy traveling through eastern Afghanistan in 2019. A group of Afghan soldiers dismounted and detained a man who had been watching their trucks go past, he said. Then a taller man from the convoy walked over and shot the prisoner. The footage was infrared, and there wasn’t enough detail to be sure whether the man was an Afghan or an American. But the officer said that he and others who watched the video with him believed that it was one of the C.I.A. advisers. “We taught these guys,” he said. “They shoot like us. They move like us. So I can’t be sure, but I thought it was an American because of his size. I watched someone be straight-up executed, a detainee, two in the chest and one in the head with a pistol.”

According to the officer, a formal military investigation was initiated and eventually turned over to the C.I.A. inspector general’s office. A spokeswoman for the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command declined to comment. Liz Lyons, the director of public affairs for the C.I.A., declined to comment on specific allegations but rejected them overall as baseless: “C.I.A. takes adherence to the law and the protection of civilian life extremely seriously.”

Other C.I.A. and Zero Unit veterans were adamant that they never participated in illegal killings and that any such allegations, if true, represented isolated incidents. Iqbal said he never witnessed any while he was with Zero Three; as a leader, he said, he didn’t permit them.

In early 2020, Iqbal was promoted to deputy commander of Zero Three just as the Trump administration was finalizing the Doha Accords with the Taliban, promising the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in 2021. Within the C.I.A., there was a widespread perception that Trump had signed the Afghan government’s death warrant. “We all knew,” said the senior retired C.I.A. officer who was involved with the Counterterrorism Pursuit Team program. “Nobody believed the government would survive.”

In Kandahar, Zero Three’s C.I.A. advisers stopped joining it on missions, Iqbal said, severely limiting its access to U.S. air support and medical evacuation, and foreshadowing the difficult battle it would face after the withdrawal. “It was very hard to convince my men we are capable,” Iqbal said. Many Afghan army and police units were facing waves of desertions. But Iqbal rallied Zero Three, arguing that it was their chance to counter their enemies’ claim that they were just mercenaries for the Americans.

Iqbal outside the makeshift Afghan community center in El Cajon.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

As the deadline for the U.S. withdrawal approached, the C.I.A. had decided that only a small group of Zero Unit soldiers — the high-profile commanders who were most at risk and those who were privy to intelligence information — were to be urgently resettled in the United States. The rest of the C.I.A.’s Afghan proxies would be given a choice: Either stay and fight by joining the Afghan intelligence service’s own special forces, which the C.I.A. would continue financially support, or accept a generous cash payout.

“There was never a plan to bring them all to America,” the senior retired C.I.A. officer said. He said the sentiment among many advisers was that resettling thousands of them in the United States was a bad idea. The cultural gap was too vast, and many of the soldiers had little education or experience with anything besides warfare. “The paramilitary guys I talked to were like, ‘I trust these guys with my life here, but I wouldn’t want them as my neighbor in the U.S.’”

‘We’re Not Leaving These Guys’

The chaos of the U.S. pullout would scramble that plan. After Joe Biden took office in 2021, he and his advisers felt that there was no choice but to continue with the withdrawal that Trump had negotiated. Biden announced that U.S. troops would be out by Sept. 11, but the U.S. military rushed to pull out even faster. Without foreign advisers and contractors, the Afghan police and army began to crumble. Around the country, districts and cities fell to the Taliban’s relentless march.

As Kandahar City fell under siege, the C.I.A. pulled out of Gecko Base, leaving Iqbal, who had recently been promoted to overall commander of Zero Three, to lead a last-ditch defense. On Aug. 12, the governor and army and police commanders surrendered to the Taliban, and it was clear that all was lost. Iqbal and his men retreated to Kandahar Airfield to seek whatever transport they could to Kabul.

When they arrived at the airfield, they found a desperate scene, with members of the police and army searching for hiding places as Taliban forces gathered outside the perimeter. The Taliban had given Iqbal a midnight deadline to surrender himself and his unit, with no guarantee that they wouldn’t be executed. Iqbal prepared to die. But before the airfield was finally overrun, a pair of transport planes landed on the tarmac. The C.I.A. had come to the rescue. Over three tense nights, Iqbal and the rest of Zero Three were flown to Kabul. Exhausted, Iqbal called a U.S. veteran he’d stayed friends with from his days as an Army interpreter in Kunar. “God has given us all another life,” he said.

The speed of the fall, it turned out, had upended the political calculus in Washington, where many were overcome with guilt and horror at the calamitous way the war was coming to an end. Suddenly, there was broad bipartisan support to evacuate Afghans who, because of their work for the United States, would face retribution from the Taliban. C.I.A. leadership decided to pull out all the Zero Units. “They were target No. 1 for the Taliban,” a former senior intelligence official said. “We’re not leaving these guys to get slaughtered by the people they’ve been fighting against for America.”

Zero Three had escaped to Kabul, but the Taliban were closing in on the capital, too. The other Zero Units in Nangarhar, Orgun and Khost raced to the capital by road, in some cases striking bargains with the Taliban for safe passage. Weary and demoralized, the secret army, some 10,000 men in total, converged on Eagle Base, the C.I.A.’s remaining stronghold on the edge of Kabul. The sheer speed of the insurgents’ advance had caught everyone by surprise.

On Aug. 15, three days after the fall of Kandahar, the Taliban reached Kabul. The capital’s defenders panicked. President Ashraf Ghani and his entourage fled by helicopter to Uzbekistan; soldiers and police officers threw down their weapons and uniforms and melted away. As darkness fell, thousands of desperate Afghans stormed Kabul International Airport, where the first C-17 transports had begun to ferry people out. A U.S. force led by the Marine Corps was supposed to secure the runway, but at that point only 350 Marines had landed. The crowds surged onto the tarmac as the Marines fell back; as dawn broke, desperate Afghans clung to the landing gear of a C-17 as it took off, falling to their deaths.

The evacuation ground to a halt. Thousands of U.S. and other allied nationals were still trapped in the capital. U.S. military commanders realized that there was only one force that could get rid of the crowds: the Zero Units. “It was a conversation on the ground between the agency and the military,” the former senior intelligence official said. “They were trying to clear what was an out-of-control situation.”

The C.I.A. and the military quickly drew up a plan. The Marines would hold the northern end of the airfield; the Taliban, meanwhile, had secured the civilian terminal in the south. Between these two blocking forces, the Zero Units would do the ugly work of evicting unarmed men, women and children from the runways.

The Taliban used vehicles seized from the Zero Units as part of their push into Kabul in August 2021.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

On the evening of Aug. 16, a convoy of more than 1,000 Zero Unit soldiers rolled out from Eagle Base. Arriving at the northwest side of the airport, they breached the perimeter wall and descended onto the crowd milling around the tarmac.

Among them was a combat interpreter with Nangarhar’s Zero Two unit who asked to be identified as Musa, his code name in the unit, out of concern that the Taliban would target his family in Afghanistan. “It was chaos,” Musa said. “The Marines who arrived, they were brand-new. They had no experience about Afghanistan.”

Some of the Marines were horrified by what they saw: Zero Units ramming their vehicles through crowds, firing live ammunition and beating people back with sticks. “The Afghans are firing rounds in the air, at people’s feet or at people to crowd control,” a Marine officer recounted in a military investigation into an ISIS suicide bombing that took place during the evacuation. Some Marine officers would later publicly claim, in the documentary “Escape From Kabul,” to have seen the Zero Units executing and running over unarmed civilians. The Marine Corps did not respond to a request for comment, and U.S. Central Command declined to comment. Zero Unit veterans pushed back on claims that they harmed civilians. “I didn’t see anything like that,” Musa said. “Yes, Zero Unit soldiers opened fire, but it was to scare the people. We fired in the air over them.”

By daybreak, the airfield was clear, and flights could resume. Over the next two weeks, the Zero Units and their C.I.A. advisers secured part of the airport perimeter, allowing many of them to bring out their immediate family members — more than 20,000 relatives, along with the 10,000 Zero Unit members. As the soldiers waited on the tarmac to board planes, the agency handed them their final payment in bundles of U.S. dollars.

No longer set apart by their tiger-stripe fatigues, the Zero Unit veterans were part of a wave of Afghan evacuees facing uncertain futures in exile. The United States granted them “humanitarian parole” — a temporary immigration status — and they scattered around the country. Some never saw their C.I.A. advisers again; others were helped by networks of veterans. Iqbal made his way to El Cajon by way of Seattle; Musa went to Texas, then landed in Virginia.

‘I See Them Like American Veterans’

In January, Musa was stocking the shelves at a halal market he runs in a town in Virginia where many Afghans have settled. The market, which bakes fresh naan twice a day, has become a gathering spot for his fellow Zero Unit veterans. That day, a group had bought a goat for a feast celebrating one veteran’s upcoming move to Nebraska. Another Zero Two veteran, a bomb-disposal specialist, proudly showed off his newly issued green card.

Permanent legal status, Musa said, was essential for Zero Unit veterans seeking to overcome the hurdles of culture shock and wartime trauma and integrate into American society. Without proper legal status, they were unable to work. When Musa lived in Texas, he saw jobless Zero Unit veterans living on the streets. “You will see a lot more of them become homeless in the near future because the administration has paused everything,” he said.

A uniform bearing the insignia of the Afghan intelligence service, the N.D.S., left by Zero One soldiers when they evacuated their base in Kabul.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Faced with bureaucratic delays and inaction by Congress in providing immigration visas, many of the Zero Unit soldiers are now seeking asylum — in theory, an even more arduous bureaucratic path — on the grounds that if they were sent back to Afghanistan, they would face retribution from the Taliban they once fought. And indeed, when Trump began his second term, his administration worked to clear roughly two-thirds of the remaining 3,000 outstanding Zero Unit immigration cases, including that of Lakanwal, the shooting suspect. Since that attack, however, all asylum and special immigrant visa cases in the United States have been put on hold, including those of the remaining 1,000 Zero Unit veterans.

As part of their crackdown on asylum seekers, government officials have taken aim at Afghan evacuees. At a congressional hearing on Dec. 11, Joe Kent, a former C.I.A. paramilitary operative who is now the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, said that migrants who entered under the Biden administration, like Lakanwal, were “probably the top terrorist threat.” He dismissed the idea that their C.I.A. vetting should set a standard for clearance to enter the United States. Lakanwal “was vetted to serve as a soldier in Afghanistan,” Kent said. “The Biden administration essentially used his tactical-level vetting as a ruse to bring him here and to bring him into our communities.”

Apart from Lakanwal, several of the C.I.A.’s Afghan allies have been the focus of domestic terrorism cases. In 2024, Nasir Tawhedi, a former security guard, was arrested and charged with plotting an Election Day attack on behalf of ISIS; he pleaded guilty. In December, Mohammad Alokozay, another Zero Three veteran, was charged with making bomb threats in Fort Worth — an incident that his former teammates say was blown out of proportion from comments made during a heated online argument. That same month, ICE arrested Jan Shah Safi, a former Afghan intelligence officer, and claimed that he’d been involved in supporting terrorism in Afghanistan, releasing a statement that his case “marks the third arrest of an Afghan national terrorist released into the country by the Biden administration in less than a week” — without mentioning that all three had worked with the C.I.A.

The crackdown on asylum seekers has led one arm of the national-security state to turn on another. U.S. asylum law bars applicants involved in serious crimes and, according to people familiar with the proceedings of Zero Unit veterans in ICE detention, the government has brought up the same human rights reports that the C.I.A. has dismissed as the results of Taliban propaganda. “Those who meaningfully assisted U.S. troops and do not pose a threat to the homeland will still qualify for immigration benefits, but those who have no basis to be here and pose a risk to the American people will be removed,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Former Zero Unit members and their supporters argue that a few isolated cases of violence don’t represent a vast majority who simply want to settle their families and move on with their lives. “I see them like American veterans,” the former paramilitary operative said. “Last year, we had an Army veteran run through a bunch of people in New Orleans with his car and a Marine veteran shoot up a church in Michigan. It’s horrible, but we don’t then paint the whole Army or whole Marine Corps with that brush.”

The Zero Units, like other migrants in the United States, live with a daily fear of detention and deportation. At his market, Musa pulled out his phone to share a Spanish-language TikTok video, posted the day before, that appeared to show ICE vehicles outside a nearby Costco. Another Zero Unit veteran, Musa explained, had called him in the middle of the night after watching the video, asking what would happen to them. Would ICE raid their homes?

Their history, for better or worse, was their only protection. The Zero Unit veterans “are in a tough position, and I wish the U.S. government would help them tell their story,” said Burnham, the retired Special Operations commander. “I understand the impulse for secrecy, but I think it would be more valuable to have these guys talking about what they did.”

For now, some veterans of the Zero Units — men who fought for years in America’s longest war — fear leaving their homes in the country that once employed them. “They can’t sleep,” Musa said of his former comrades in arms. One of them hung an old photo of himself in Zero Unit tiger stripes on his wall, Musa said, “so that if there’s an immigration raid, they’ll see that he fought for us.”

Matthieu Aikins is a contributing writer for the magazine and a fellow at Type Media Center. His work for The Times has won two Pulitzer Prizes. Wesley Morgan is the author of “The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley.”

Read by James Patrick Cronin

Narration produced by Tanya Pérez

Engineered by Devin Murphy

See more on: National Intelligence Estimates, Afghan National Army

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NY Times · Wesley Morgan · February 23, 2026

14. On Strategists and Strategies by Sir Lawrence Freedman

Summary:

Freedman introduces a new collection of essays, mixing autobiography with strategic concepts and portraits of strategists. He traces how early student politics taught him the practical problem of persuasion, framing, and the limits of radical change, which later became a habit of thinking in choices rather than ideals. His academic path moves from social psychology and community politics into nuclear strategy, then institutional leadership at King’s, where management realities refined his sense of how strategy works under constraint. He argues that practice and scholarship reinforced each other, and that new platforms like Substack let him capture judgments in real time.

Comment: I still regularly refer to his book's On Strategy and Command as they sit on the bookshelf immediately behind my desk. I will definitely be buying this one. 

Freedman’s strategy is less a theory than a craft, built from persuasion, institutions, time pressure, and imperfect information. He treats “strategy” as portable across domains, from war to universities to culture, because the common unit is choice under constraint.

If strategy is mostly about choices under constraint, what should we stop calling “strategy” and start calling aspiration or rhetoric? When platforms reward speed and certainty, how does a strategist preserve humility, revision, and intellectual honesty without losing influence?

On Strategists and Strategies

Lawrence Freedman

Feb 23, 2026

∙ Paid

https://samf.substack.com/p/on-strategists-and-strategies?r=7i07&utm

My latest book will be published on 2 March by Oxford University Press in the UK under the title On Strategists and Strategies: Collected Essays 2014-2024. It is already published in the US. The book contains some autobiographical pieces, consideration of key strategic concepts, and assessments of some key figures in the field. Although I have not included my commentaries on ongoing events, there are pieces on the Iraq and the Russo-Ukraine Wars. Around half the pieces first appeared on this substack.

To whet your appetite you can read below the introduction to the collection. There’s a link for UK subscribers to get a signed copy at the end.

My interest in strategy developed with my interest in politics, which began when I was at school. I felt strongly about some things, especially racism, but I can’t claim to have been excited by schemes for good governance nor did I have strong opinions let alone much knowledge about most policy issues. But I was attracted by having a ‘side’ to champion and opponents to challenge and was intrigued from the start about how to persuade people who were at best indifferent or at worst hostile to join my side. I was a member of the small and centrist Liberal Party, home for those dissatisfied with both the Conservative and Labour Parties. With the Liberals indifference was more of a problem than outright hostility.

Then I got caught up with the idea that my generation, the ‘baby boomers’, was at the vanguard of a transformational movement. This was already evident in popular music (‘we’re the young generation and we’ve got something to say’) and fashion, not that I was in any sort of vanguard in that department. I looked at the civil rights and anti-war movements in the United States, as well as the student protests already sweeping British universities, and was sure that they pointed to a better future. I wanted to be part of it. Fortunately for me the Young Liberals, more so than the parent party, had picked up on this mood, so they still seemed a suitable home.

Perhaps politics might be my vocation. To find out more I applied to do social sciences at university rather than the natural sciences for which I had been preparing. Teachers at my school took this to be almost a declaration of a revolutionary intent. The social sciences were associated with leftism and rowdy demonstrations at the London School of Economics. LSE rejected me but Manchester took me and in September 1967 I arrived at the university for a course that offered an introduction to all elements of the social sciences – economics and anthropology as well as politics and sociology.

This suited me. I found the insight into the workings of society and government fascinating. I was able to align my studies with the big questions that were already bothering me. Not unusually for someone in their late teens who thinks the world ready for a great and wonderful transformation, I could not understand why ordinary people could not see their needs as clearly as I could. I read extensively about rebels and revolutionaries, about those who wanted a better society and were determined to improve the lot of their fellow humans, who fought against inequality and injustice. The stories were often inspiring and the heroes brave and admirable, but I could not help but notice that, with a few exceptions, the common theme was one of failure.

Community Politics

As was obligatory for all radical activists, and indeed all students of social science, I read a lot about Marx and Marxists. But I was never a Marxist. I had perhaps been inoculated at school by reading Richard Carew Hunt’s treatise on Marxism. This was written early in the Cold War for British intelligence officers. It offered a clear exposition of the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism with a strong critique lest the exposition prove to be too convincing. I never quite shook that off which is perhaps why, unlike many of colleagues, I stuck with the Liberals and did not sign up to one of the many varieties of socialism on offer.

Almost everything I was reading over this period, including barely penetrable texts on the sociology of knowledge, was about how issues came to be framed and why people adopted the attitudes they did. In my first weeks as an undergraduate I picked up a reader on attitudes, edited by Marie Jahoda and Neil Warren. This was my first foray into social psychology. Nobody told me to read this and I’m not sure how well I understood many of the pieces but enough to demonstrate the need to look more into how social conditions shape the way we think, which led to a view that radical strategies had to start at the micro level.

This was reinforced by American political scientist Peter Bachrach, who I later got to know when he spent some time at Oxford, where he gave me lots of ideas and encouragement. His writings made me aware of the need to pay attention to what gets left out of everyday political battles as well as what makes the headlines. My first published academic paper, a critique of the so-called ‘bureaucratic politics model’ borrowed extensively from Bachrach. A variation on the same theme came from the Polish dissident Leszek Kolakowski, who I first read in 1969. Starting with the Church but with clear implications for the Communist Party, he demonstrated the links between rigid dogmas and organizational discipline, in ways that squeezed out heretics and penalized innovative thinking.

My studies and my political activity fed off each other. A sort of political philosophy emerged out of this which was in tune with the times – a belief in participatory democracy, a preference for non-violence on the grounds that the methods adopted should be in line with the ideal society, and a stress on the importance of engaging with local communities both to make a positive difference and garner support for the wider movement.

In 1969 with Gordon Lishman, a colleague and close friend at Manchester, I developed the idea of ‘community politics’ at a Young Liberal strategy meeting. Unlike me, Gordon remained a Liberal Party activist and he both developed and ran with the idea, helping to turn it into official party strategy, adopted by the Party at its 1970 Assembly, just after it had lost half its seats in a general election. I recall in our conversations stressing the importance of political action and not just good works. Gordon credited me with the observation that ‘Votes and government are the result of our activity, not the purpose.’

My conviction that political change had to start from the bottom up was also reflected in my work with the National Union of Students on community action and then into developing ideas about educational policy. If I am going to be honest I was better on the theory than the practice: I was so busy writing up my bright ideas that I never did much to test them on the ground.

It was not that my political life was anything other than full, but my engagement with ‘ordinary people’ whose needs I wished to promote was limited. Politics was more about sitting on committees, in the Liberal Party and at the University as a member of the Student Council, joining demonstrations, and, in February 1970, participating in a big sit-in at the University. I gave speeches, debated, and chaired meetings; I wrote papers and edited pamphlets. But gradually the enthusiasm of my late teens began to wane. The student movement was dominated by Trotskyists, which encouraged factionalism and dreary polemics, with rival but equally incredible theories about the eventual triumph of the working class. I wanted to make a difference but looking back I was not sure what years of frenetic activity had achieved. My expectations were gradually being scaled back

Eventually I’d had enough. My interest in active politics petered out soon after I reached Oxford in 1972. Yet while many things I said and did during those years now make me cringe I can now see how much those activist years shaped my subsequent career. I had learned that if you had something that was worth communicating you needed to make an effort to reach your audience. I knew how to chair committees and find an opportune moment to make my interventions. Combining this activism with my studies meant that I’d developed an ability to concentrate even while there was a hubbub around me or when I was supposed to be doing something else. (I later got a reputation for drafting articles during the boring bits of committees). But most of all I was in the habit of thinking and writing about strategy, moving from ‘how do we change the world’ to ‘what do we do now?’ I’d come to appreciate that even in my own small world, and despite the meagre results, there were always choices to be made and that it mattered who made them.

Big Strategy

After Manchester I went to York to do a one-year B.Phil (equivalent to a Masters) in the Politics Department and stayed to spend a year filling in for a member of staff on sabbatical as a (very) temporary teaching assistant. While doing this I identified US nuclear weapons policy as a field of study and in 1972 I was fortunate to get a place at Nuffield College Oxford to study for a doctorate. I had missed the high point of the nuclear disarmament campaigns in the early 1960s. During my formative political years the big issue for peace campaigners was Vietnam. I had been introduced to questions of nuclear strategy in an undergraduate course at Manchester on the politics of science and technology. I soon became intrigued by what seemed to me the crazy logic of deterrence and the special sort of expertise that shaped the way that the deterrence debates had been conducted.

As I describe in the first chapter the major influence on my thinking and subsequent career was Michael Howard, who was my supervisor at Oxford. Because of Michael, the classical issues of military strategy as well as those connected with nuclear weapons soon dominated my academic work. I remained influenced by earlier thoughts on institutional biases and the influence of doctrine on organizational behaviour, and these shaped the way that I went about my doctoral research on the role of intelligence assessments on the Soviet threat on US strategic arms policy. But I was also becoming more of a historian. Not only did I enjoy piecing together past decision-making but I was also increasingly interested in the origins of the ideas that animated policy-making.

I therefore relished the opportunity to embark on a history of nuclear strategy when I was offered the chance by Christoph Bertram, Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) which I joined in 1975. It was an enormous task, and took up all my spare time for the next six years, even after my move to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) the next year. Writing The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was arduous but also a tremendous education as I immersed myself in the literature of the nuclear age, still then just three decades old.

My work on nuclear issues began at a time of very little public interest in the topic. Just before I arrived at Oxford the first big strategic arms control agreements had been signed between Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev so it seemed that common sense had broken out. By the end of the 1970s arms control was in trouble and nuclear protests were starting up again. At this point, still identifying with the left, I had the odd experience of being denounced for views on deterrence which had previously been associated with the dovish side of the debate, but were now considered dangerously hawkish by the burgeoning nuclear disarmament movement.

Getting involved in these big debates forced me to sharpen my arguments. It also ironically helped me get my job at King’s College London. In 1980 I got an unexpected visit from Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Neil Cameron who had recently retired as Chief of the Defence Staff and has been appointed to be Principal of King’s. He explained to me that one of his conditions for taking the job was to fill the Chair of War Studies which had been left vacant after the previous incumbent, Laurence Martin, had left to become Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University. He also wanted someone to engage in the nuclear debates and that is why he hoped I would apply for the Chair when it was advertised. The advert duly appeared the day after my son was born in June 1981. As I was still only 32 had it not been for Neil Cameron’s encouragement I would not have bothered to apply. A couple of weeks before the interview The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was published to positive reviews. The timing could not have been better and I got the job.

When I arrived at King’s the next April, Neil said he was obliged to ask me if I was prepared to be Head of Department leaving me in no doubt about how I was supposed to answer. And so began the next stage of my engagement with strategy. I had run a unit of four doing policy studies while at Chatham House, and I probably had more experience of fund-raising than most academics in those days. The responsibilities were now altogether more substantial as I had to raise the profile and the income of what was still a tiny department (five full-time academics, including me, one part-timer, and a secretary), as well as make sure the routine administrative side of things was ticking over. The job brought out an entrepreneurial streak in me. I built up the department and then, in 2000, I became the Head of the new School of Social Sciences and Public Policy before moving on to spend ten years as a Vice Principal before retiring in 2014.

I found something satisfying in taking decisions and developing strategy at my relatively modest level while researching and writing about those taking decisions and developing strategy at the most senior levels of government. These two sides of my career reinforced each other. I could see the interaction of apparently disparate issues, the impact of time pressures and tiredness, the desire to keep options open just in case something turns up, the tendency to ask for more information in the usually mistaken belief that some killer fact will clarify a difficult decision, the embarrassment of realizing that a bright initiative is incapable of implementation, the suspicions that result when the ground has not been prepared when springing some major change on colleagues, and by claiming to consult when one’s mind is evidently made up.

Knowing King’s well made it easier for me to get things done because I was aware of the likely obstacles and who would help me get round them. So I also learned that organization charts rarely tell you much about where power really lies within an organization. I saw the interaction of structure with agency, that good strategy could be about making the most of unexpected opportunities just as the best ideas could be thwarted by systems resistant to change. A lot of what counted for success, especially at the College level, was the result of appreciating the possibilities opened up by changes in government policy – more money coming into the system to support research from 2004, or the change in policy on tuition fees in 2010. I also came back constantly to what I’d been told early in my management career – you can achieve more if you keep your ego under control.

Having thought about strategy throughout my career I decided I wanted to write a book about it. I got a contract from OUP in 1994 but I wasn’t ready – I hadn’t sorted out my ideas and I had two big distractions. In 1997 I was appointed to write the Official History of the Falklands campaign (which had obsessed me since it began the day after I started as Professor of War Studies and, despite my title, made me realise how little I knew about conventional warfare). The other was a book on the crises facing President Kennedy about which I had been gathering material for some time.

Eventually by the late 2000s I had developed the structure for a book that would look at strategy in all the different ways that I had encountered it – in the military sphere, radical politics, organizational management, as well as social theory. A research council grant enabled me to get some time off from my own management duties, and although I soon also acquired the extra demands of the UK Inquiry into the Iraq War, I had enough momentum behind the project to get me working on it whenever I had some spare time. With David McBride at OUP acting as an amazingly tolerant editor (with this book as well) I was able to dig deep into the classics of strategic thought, fill out half-developed ideas, and explore connections between thought and practice. Having ignored the literature on business strategy, even when it was relevant to my job, I devoured it enthusiastically, fascinated by the way that it had developed separately from military strategy. All my life experiences – from my early dabbling in student politics to a role in managing a large university – was poured into that book.

This Book

Strategy: A History was published in 2013 and for the first time in my life I had a bit of best seller. The next year I retired from King’s. At 65 I might then have looked for a non-executive role, but at the time the Iraq Inquiry was coming under a lot of pressure to get our report finished. I was worried that taking on something else might not look good. At any rate I wanted to write.

I was ready for a new book project and eventually settled on the idea of looking at how the idea of the Future of War had been treated in the past. This was followed by a book on Command which enabled me to explore post-1945 episodes in military history. This turned out to be a great pandemic project, confirming just how much serious research it is possible to do these days without moving from one’s study. I also found time to revise properly, with the help of my colleague Jeff Michaels, Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. This provided the odd sensation in my late 60s of rewriting chapters that I had written in my late 20s, noting both the precocity and verbosity of the younger me.

The biggest revelation came as I appreciated the new ways of commenting on current affairs. I had always done some media work, including writing for newspapers, although the Iraq Inquiry meant that I was advised not to take too high a profile. I was aware of Twitter (now X) because my son was an early user and I had tentatively started to engage on topics where I had some professional expertise. Developments in Ukraine over the course of 2014 made me aware of its value as I found myself in regular conversation with people who were following events closely from around Europe and North America. I also discovered that it was possible to write long form pieces, saying more than could be managed in an 800-word op-ed piece, and getting them out reasonably quickly. My discovery was made possible by War on the Rocks, a platform masterminded by Ryan Evans. The platform was then still in its infancy but I could see that it had a reach, especially when combined with Twitter, which provided opportunities to get out pieces, more essays than academic articles, with lots of theory and footnotes. I wrote three pieces for War on the Rocks on the Russo-Ukraine conflict over 2014-15. These were picked up by the journal Survival, for which I rewrote and updated them, getting them out to a different audience. Eventually they served as the basis for a short book, also with OUP – Ukraine and the Art of Strategy.

The biggest change to my writing life was the result of a conversation I had with my son Sam over Xmas 2021. Sam’s career had involved think-tanks, a spell in government, and running charities, all in some way connected with education. After a terrifying spell in intensive care some months earlier he decided on a life change and was also now writing for a living. This was already going well but he had decided to try something new. A self-publishing app called substack offered an opportunity to write pieces whenever you wanted on whatever you wanted at whatever length, to be posted for free or to paying subscribers. As Sam talked about his plans I could see the attractions. From ‘well I suppose I could contribute something now and then’ I ended up muscling in on his act so that it became a joint enterprise. We liked the idea of a father/son combination, and we thought that others might too. Moreover while our views and values are unsurprisingly quite similar our interests are different. Sam works on British politics and policy while I work on war and international politics.

So starting in January 2022 we decided to give it a try. After a promising few weeks the substack took off. My first piece after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, when I explained why I thought that this was a war Putin couldn’t win, got a quarter of a million downloads. While I kept posting on Ukraine, Sam was following one of the most chaotic years ever in British politics, with three prime ministers in a matter of months, and his blend of hard, data-driven analysis, sharp commentary, and occasional insider gossip, found a receptive audience.

One of the great advantages of substack is that one is left with a record of thoughts and reactions to events as they unfolded. One can point with pride to where one’s judgement was spot on and with embarrassment to where it went awry. Of the pieces included in this volume about half were originally published on substack. I have not included many of those that offered immediate commentary on events, because they would have required too much background to give them context. This collection therefore largely consists of items which I have written over the past decade that go beyond my attempts to make sense of ongoing conflicts.

The first section contains pieces that are more personal and autobiographical, helping explain the development of my approach to research and writing, with a couple of examples of my engagements in politics (the 1972 Democratic Party Convention in Miami) and policy-making (the debate prompted by President Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defence Initiative). The pieces in the next two sections take forward some of the ideas and interests found in my book on strategy. I have divided them, somewhat arbitrarily, into strategies and strategists. Under ‘strategies’ I consider the meaning of concepts regularly used in strategic discourse – such as tactics, terrorism, and stalemate. I also include an analysis of the movie Barbie to show that one can find strategy everywhere. (This was one of my most popular substack posts!). Among the strategists I include three individuals I knew well - Colin Gray, Michael Quinlan, and Robert Jervis. I did not know John MacDonald, who was one of the first popularisers of game theory, although after writing this piece I enjoyed a delightful email exchange with his daughter.

These two sections also allow me to deal with some of the issues that have occupied me for much of my professional life, notably nuclear strategy, and also one that did not interest me until it hit me and many others – the Covid pandemic. I conclude with two shorter sections on two conflicts which I studied intensively. The first on the 2003 Iraq War opens with a discussion of Tony Blair’s 1999 Chicago speech, for which I provided a draft, and which discussed the conditions for interventions, followed by three pieces which draw on the Iraq Inquiry’s report to show why and how the decision to go to war was made. Lastly while I have not included my regular commentaries on the Russo-Ukraine war here is one piece on Vladimir Putin’s strategy, another on how notions of escalation influenced the US response, and then a rethink on deterrence, another concept with which I was preoccupied for much of my professional life.

As I explain in the next chapter, I have never considered myself a model for others to follow. Apart from anything else my working methods derive from a period when approaches to theory and methods were more relaxed, and there were no constant demands to demonstrate statistical competence to be taken seriously in the field of international relations. I have always been eclectic and enjoyed working across disciplines. I hope these pieces also show why I find stimulus and purpose in writing about these matters. The study of war and strategy turned into an unexpected vocation and a constant and often enthralling challenge.

For those who would like a signed copy you can order one from Daunt Books. https://dauntbooks.co.uk/shop/books/on-strategists-and-strategy-2/

15. How Trump’s Beijing bargaining could derail Taiwan’s multibillion-dollar defence budget

Summary:

Taiwan’s parliament is set to prioritize review of a disputed NT$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion) special defence budget for 2026–2033 as lawmakers return on February 24. The package emphasizes asymmetric capabilities, drones, and air defense linked to a “Taiwan Shield” or “T-Dome” concept. Pressure from Washington increased after a bipartisan letter from 37 U.S. lawmakers urged full funding, warning partial approval could weaken deterrence. The debate is complicated by POTUS saying he was discussing future Taiwan arms sales with Xi and would decide soon, ahead of a reported April summit, though the White House later said policy had not changed.

Comment: The remark gives Taiwan’s opposition political cover to slow, cap, or reshape the bill while claiming uncertainty about U.S. follow-through. It also risks making air defense and other still-negotiated items more vulnerable to great-power bargaining optics, even if previously approved packages proceed.

If deterrence depends on commitments that look non-negotiable, how does Taipei preserve legislative momentum when Washington’s signals look adjustable?

How Trump’s Beijing bargaining could derail Taiwan’s multibillion-dollar defence budget

US leader’s talk of consulting Xi Jinping on arms sales could hand Taiwan’s opposition a ‘lifeline’ to reshape spending bill, experts say

Lawrence Chungin Taipei

Published: 6:00pm, 22 Feb 2026

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3344220/how-trumps-beijing-bargaining-could-derail-taiwans-multibillion-dollar-defence-budget

Lawrence Chungin Taipei

Published: 6:00pm, 22 Feb 2026

Taiwan’s parliament is set to prioritise review of a disputed NT$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion) special defence budget bill when its new session begins on Tuesday, as pressure mounts from Washington.

But US President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about consulting Chinese President Xi Jinping on arms sales could complicate the debate, potentially giving Taipei’s opposition parties greater room to manoeuvre and reshape the final version of the bill, according to analysts.

The renewed push follows an unusual bipartisan letter from 37 US lawmakers on February 12 urging Taiwan’s legislature to fully fund the eight-year package.

The lawmakers warned that Beijing’s “military pressure is intensifying” and that approving only part of the budget proposed by Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te in November “could weaken deterrence”.

They stressed that Taipei “must demonstrate resolve by increasing defence spending” in line with Lai’s proposal.

In response, Taiwan’s legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu said the bill would be “given top priority” once lawmakers returned to work on February 24 after the Lunar New Year recess.

He described Taiwan-US ties as “grounded in shared democratic values and a joint commitment to maintaining stability in the Indo-Pacific”.

The proposed special budget, covering 2026 to 2033, aims to accelerate asymmetric capabilities, expand drone procurement and strengthen air defence – core elements of a proposed missile defence network dubbed the “Taiwan Shield” or “T-Dome”.

Yet Trump’s comments have introduced fresh uncertainty.

Speaking aboard Air Force One last Monday, Trump said he was discussing future US arms sales to Taiwan with Xi and would “make a determination pretty soon”, ahead of an expected April summit in Beijing.

The remarks unsettled Taiwan watchers because they appeared to run counter to one of the Six Assurances issued by the US in 1982, after Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.

One assurance states that the United States “has not agreed to consult [Beijing] on arms sales to Taiwan” – a position long intended to prevent mainland China from gaining leverage over the island’s defence capability.

David Sacks, a Taiwan expert at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, called Trump’s statement “deeply misguided” and warned it could hand Taipei’s opposition a “lifeline” just as momentum behind the special budget was building.

“It undercuts the short-term objective,” Sacks told The Sydney Morning Herald. “At the more strategic level, it heightens a sense in Taiwan that the US is not reliable.”

The White House later said there had been “no change” to US policy towards Taiwan.

In Taipei, the debate remains politically sensitive.

The island’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) argues that sustained increases in defence spending are essential to maintaining deterrence credibility and preserving international confidence.

DPP legislative caucus secretary general Chen Pei-yu said “strengthening air defence, drones and other asymmetric capabilities” was necessary as Beijing intensified military pressure.

The opposition should “prioritise the overall interests of the people when addressing issues concerning Taiwan’s security”, she said.

The Kuomintang (KMT), the island’s main opposition party, said that once the new session began, developments regarding the special bill would move quickly.

However, it insisted that the scale of the NT$1.25 trillion package – alongside annual defence budgets exceeding NT$900 billion and billions in undelivered US weapons already paid for – required stricter scrutiny.

“We will certainly respond to US expectations. However, we will not compromise on our responsibility to oversee and scrutinise the budget,” said KMT legislator and spokesman Niu Hsu-ting.

He added that the KMT would coordinate with the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) – a smaller ally – to integrate an opposition version of the bill.

The TPP has submitted its own draft that caps spending at NT$400 billion but has indicated willingness to send the government’s version to committee alongside its proposal.

TPP chairman Huang Kuo-chang said weapons approved by the US Congress and listed by the State Department had already been incorporated into the party’s own draft of the defence bill.

“If the United States announces additional items approved for sale to Taiwan, we will adopt a rational stance and review them based on Taiwan’s defence needs,” Huang said.

‘Every bit of strength’: Taiwanese leader William Lai vows to boost island’s defences

Analysts said Trump’s remarks could complicate the political calculation.

They added that if Washington appeared to treat Taiwan arms sales as part of broader negotiations with Beijing ahead of the April summit, opposition parties might find stronger justification for slowing or reshaping the proposal, particularly if doubts grew about the durability of US support.

Chieh Chung, a professor of strategic studies at Tamkang University in New Taipei City, said Trump’s remarks “effectively reverse a 44-year executive branch position that Washington would not consult Beijing in advance on Taiwan arms sales”.

While previously announced packages might remain unaffected, Chieh warned that systems currently under discussion – including additional Patriot missiles and integrated air defence command systems central to the T-Dome concept – could “become vulnerable if arms sales are entangled in summit diplomacy”.

In December, the Trump administration approved a US$11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan, including Himars rocket systems, Javelin anti-tank missiles and Altius loitering munitions.

Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that Washington was compiling another package potentially worth US$20 billion, prompting Beijing to privately warn that such a move could derail Trump’s planned visit.

Dennis Lu-Chung Weng, an associate professor of political science at Sam Houston State University in Texas, said the deeper risk was in arms sales being incorporated into a transactional framework.

“Once arms sales become an adjustable item on the negotiating table, Taiwan’s security shifts from a threat-based decision to part of great-power interest exchange,” he wrote on social media.

He said that deterrence worked because certain commitments were perceived as non-negotiable.

“If those commitments are viewed as open to bargaining, their signalling power diminishes,” Weng said.

For Taiwan, the dilemma is sharpening.

Washington is urging Taipei to demonstrate resolve by accelerating defence spending and clearing legislative obstacles, said Max Lo, executive director of the Taipei-based Taiwan International Strategic Study Society.

At the same time, Trump’s remarks had introduced ambiguity over whether US arms support would remain insulated from broader negotiations with Beijing, he added.

“As parliament reconvenes next week, the question is no longer only whether Taiwan will spend more on defence,” Lo said.

“It is whether it can do so with confidence that the strategic foundations underpinning that spending remain intact.”

Trump’s comments, he added, might give the opposition “greater justification to reject the government’s draft and push through a significantly revised version instead”.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China and has never ruled out the use of force to reunite it with the mainland.

Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons to defend itself.

Lawrence Chung

Lawrence Chung covers major news in Taiwan, ranging from presidential and parliament elections to killer earthquakes and typhoons. Most of his reports focus on Taiwan’s relations with China, specifically on the impact and possible developments of cross-strait relations under

16. Economic Statecraft and the Federal Institutional Architecture

Summary:

Willam Norris argues that U.S. national security now depends on economic decisions made across a sprawling system where firms, not states, execute most global activity. “Economic statecraft” is defined as using legal authorities to shape private incentives to manage security externalities. Instead of cataloging tools, it proposes organizing by strategic ends through four “P’s”: Promote, Protect, Prevent, Punish. He maps a fragmented federal architecture, with the Executive Office of the POTUS coordinating imperfectly, and “big four” departments (Treasury, Defense, Commerce, State) driving key functions alongside many others. He spotlights CFIUS and export controls as high-impact, capacity-strained mechanisms, and calls for doctrine, planning capacity, institutional redesign, and a cross-sector talent pipeline.

Comment: The U.S. system is optimized for episodic mobilization, not sustained competition, so it risks ceding initiative to adversaries who treat economics as a standing campaign. Without a shared doctrine and professional cadre, interagency “coordination” will default to Treasury or the White House, leaving uneven execution and unclear accountability.

If economic statecraft is meant to align private incentives with national security, what is the minimum set of common “ends” Washington must codify so agencies and firms can act without waiting for crisis orders? ("Mission command" for the interagency and private business?)

If only there was a unifying overarching national concept. Such as ... I don't know... the inauguration of organized political warfare? 

Washington, May 4, 1948.

The Problem

The inauguration of organized political warfare.

Analysis

1. Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace. In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures 

[Page 669]

(as ERP), and “white” propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of “friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d269

Economic Statecraft and the Federal Institutional Architecture

warontherocks.com

William Norris

February 23, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/economic-statecraft-and-the-federal-institutional-architecture/

Editor’s note: This article is the second in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.

Who actually runs America’s economic statecraft?

The answer matters because in today’s great power competition, national security increasingly hinges on economic decisions made across a sprawling federal system — and often outside government altogether.

At its core, economic statecraft refers to the deliberate use of the government’s economic policy tools and authorities to shape the behavior of commercial actors in ways that produce, mitigate, or manage national security externalities. Firms, not states, are the actors conducting global economic activity. The consequences of their transactions — from investment to supply‑chain structuring — often create strategic ripple effects. States can use government policy tools to intervene to align private incentives with national security priorities. This is the essence of contemporary economic statecraft.

What are the roles and responsibilities of the numerous U.S. government players involved in exercising economic statecraft authorities? This discussion about institutional architecture begins by offering a straightforward way to categorize the many authorities associated with economic statecraft. It then maps the landscape of key U.S. government players in this space before closing with several suggestions for how economic tools of national power can be used more effectively.

Traditionally, U.S. policymakers have understood and organized economic statecraft through the lens of the various tools in a toolkit, including sanctions, export controls, tariffs, development aid, and critical‑infrastructure investment. But this is not a strategically coherent approach. The number of tools is almost infinite, and the relevant authorities are legion. A better way to organize this conceptual landscape is by the strategic ends that economic tools of national power can be used to pursue. This begins with adopting a common definition of economic statecraft that supports the development of doctrine. This adoption should transcend interagency boundaries. It can serve as the basis for improving cross-silo communication as well as building out planning capacity and analysis related to economic statecraft. A serious effort to improve how we conduct economic statecraft might also involve institutional and process redesign. Perhaps most significantly, we should invest in the human capital pipeline of talented individuals capable of operating effectively across both the private and public sectors. Our higher educational system needs to begin developing the skills and knowledge for a new generation of economic statecraft professionals. The way to begin is by clearly articulating the ends to which economic tools may be applied.

The Four P’s of Economic Statecraft

The United States is a rule-of-law system and our economic statecraft institutional architecture reflects that transparent formality. When the government seeks to engage in economic statecraft, it acts through explicit “authorities”: legislation, executive orders, statutes, or other legal and regulatory capacities that are often exercised by specific parts of the federal government.

Most of these authorities can be grouped into four kinds of activities:

Promote describes targeted manipulation of incentives facing firms and actors that has the effect of advancing the opportunities of U.S. companies, investors, institutions, etc.

Protect deals with government intervention designed to shield firms, industries, sectors, etc. from the market outcomes and commercial trends that have produced or may be producing outcomes that harm U.S. security. This includes measures traditionally considered “protectionist.”

Prevent describes government actions that neutralize, block, remediate, or address acute (often discrete, specific) economic activities that threaten national security. This strategic effect is generally reactive and often involves specifically tailored measures (like Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States reviews).

Punish involves manipulating the economic levers designed to cause harm, reduce capacity, or undermine the target. Unlike the other three P’s that often include an instrumental element to their strategic objectives, punishment seeks to inflict economic damage as an end in itself.

These four P’s capture most of the ways the U.S. government conducts economic statecraft. Broadly adopting this framework and a private sector-centric approach to economic statecraft can help move the U.S. government toward an official, common operating picture.

Who’s In Charge?

The current institutional landscape responsible for U.S. economic statecraft is sprawling. More than 1,400 offices spread across 13 departments, and 10 federal agencies share authorities and tools relevant to managing the economic dimensions of national security. This dispersion poses significant challenges. Agencies rely on legacy systems and approaches built for earlier eras and threat environments, reducing their ability to respond cohesively to today’s challenges. Communication gaps between often siloed departments further complicates planning and implementation. There is a real need to develop a coherent interagency conceptual approach to economic statecraft that is doctrinally rigorous and includes planning and analysis capabilities that do not exist today.

The system tends to look upward for clear direction and instruction. Economic statecraft capabilities generally remain dormant until ordered into action by the White House or a proactive Department of the Treasury, State, Defense, or Commerce secretary. Although this passivity is somewhat understandable, the aggregate result is a tendency toward inertia and siloed economic statecraft in the face of myriad and complex challenges.

At the center of the U.S. government economic statecraft apparatus sits the Executive Office of the President that nominally coordinates cross‑government economic statecraft activity through the . The National Security Council, however, is structurally inclined toward crisis response, limiting its ability to serve as a long‑range integrator of economic statecraft. Other components within the Executive Office of the President — including the National Economic Council, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of the National Cyber Director — can also play significant roles frequently bringing distinct institutional perspectives into the process.

Interagency integration of economic tools has typically been channeled through a hierarchy of Policy Coordinating Committees, Interagency Policy Committees, and their working subgroups and Deputies Committees. These bodies often focus on specific issues or policy challenges, convening relevant departments when a decision or coordinated strategy is required. Yet even this structure tends to be reactive and fragmented rather than proactive, sustained, and strategic.

The Big Four (and Everyone Else)

Beyond the White House, there are four key departments that have typically been involved in leading various aspects of economic statecraft: the Departments of the Treasury, Defense, Commerce, and State. Improving information flows across these functional silos of economic statecraft would enhance the system’s ability to coordinate and marshal the various capacities toward more unified strategic objectives.

Within the Department of the Treasury lie many of the government’s most consequential economic statecraft authorities. Treasury houses the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — agencies central to sanctions implementation, counter‑illicit finance efforts, and financial‑system security. Other Treasury offices track international markets, development finance, and multilateral institutions. While Treasury plays an indispensable economic statecraft role, its institutional culture traditionally emphasizes macroeconomic stability and financial‑system integrity rather than a strategic or security‑driven mindset. This can create dissonance when economic tools must be applied with geopolitical intent.

The Department of Defense represents another major player in economic statecraft. Although its authorities focus primarily on protecting defense missions and the defense industrial base, it brings advanced planning capacity, deep technical expertise, significant budgets, and a threat‑oriented strategic culture. Key Defense entities include the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Technology Security Administration, and the offices responsible for elements of research, engineering, and acquisitions.

The Defense Department also has more explicitly economic statecraft-oriented components like the Office of Strategic Capital and the Office of Global Investment & Economic Security. A future article in this series will focus on additional Defense Department concepts like the Economic Warfare Operations Capability and the Economic Defense Unit. The Office of Global Investment and Economic Security evaluates national security risks associated with global transactions, serves as the Defense Department’s point of contact for the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, assesses mergers and acquisitions affecting defense supply chains, and develops mitigation strategies for transactions deemed risky. It also participates in interagency bodies such as Team Telecom and contributes to antitrust reviews conducted by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Beyond domestic responsibilities, the Office of Global Investment and Economic Security collaborates with U.S. allies to strengthen and coordinate industrial‑base resilience efforts across partner countries.

The Department of Commerce also plays a central role in economic statecraft due to its control over export regulations, technology governance, and a host of other authorities. Its Bureau of Industry and Security administers export controls and maintains the Entity List, while the Export Enforcement Bureau and the Office of Export Enforcement investigate violations. Additional Commerce components — such as the International Trade Administration, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology — contribute analytic capacity, standards leadership, commercial promotion, data aggregation, and regulatory tools. Commerce wields many of the authorities central to technology‑focused economic statecraft, though its traditional commercial‑promotion culture can sometimes be in tension with the strategic imperatives of security‑driven economic statecraft policy.

Finally, the State Department functions as a natural integrator across many dimensions of economic statecraft by virtue of its diplomatic role. Its Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs works globally to support U.S. companies, promote foreign investment into the United States, and deploy economic tools to constrain adversarial actors, including terrorists, corrupt officials, and human‑rights abusers. Embassy teams — including ambassadors, commercial officers, Treasury attachés, and State Department economic officers — engage directly with foreign governments and businesses, often serving as frontline practitioners of American economic statecraft.

An interesting innovation in State’s approach to economic statecraft has been the deployment of Deal Teams, designed to mobilize interagency resources to support U.S. commercial competitiveness abroad. These teams help U.S. firms compete in strategic sectors by coordinating feasibility studies, financing packages, technical assistance, and diplomatic engagement. Operating across posts worldwide and supported by a central Washington‑based team, Deal Teams connect U.S. commercial activity with broader strategic objectives while leveraging the full interagency toolkit of the U.S. government.

In addition to these “big four” economic statecraft departments and their associated offices, there are numerous other departments and agencies (e.g., the Federal Reserve, Department of Transportation, Export-Import Bank, Federal Communications Commission, National Science Foundation, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Department of Agriculture, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Energy, etc.) that might also own more specialized components of the economic statecraft responsibilities. Secondary and independent agencies can play substantial roles, but their contributions are rarely synchronized within a broader strategy.

Beyond these executive branch players, Congress acts as an important but structurally challenged participant. Legislative committees receive disparate information, and jurisdiction is splintered across multiple committees, complicating coherent oversight and strategic alignment. It is not clear that Congress is appropriately organized or institutionally prepared to effectively legislate on (or for oversight of) economic security challenges given its current jurisdictional committee lines. Economic statecraft issues need a defined path for legislation, oversight, and funding that currently does not exist in Congress. An institutional change may be in order, either by standing up a new committee with the appropriate jurisdictional and oversight authority to address the transcendent nature of economic statecraft challenges, or by establishing a coordinating body for leaders of standing congressional committees with jurisdictional and oversight interests to raise, analyze, prioritize, and act on such matters. Contemporary economic statecraft is still quite nascent for the federal government. Much of this terrain is unprecedented. The practice of economic statecraft is likely to continue to be somewhat experimental. During this period of maturation, we should be flexible in our willingness to experiment and deliberate in our evaluation of what is working and what should be adjusted.

The institutional landscape of U.S. economic statecraft is highly fragmented. The authority to influence commercial behavior in support of national security is distributed across numerous departments — each with unique cultures, priorities, and processes. The challenge and opportunity ahead lie in forging a more coherent and strategically aligned system that can better coordinate tools, communicate priorities, and engage effectively with the private sector. We should innovate our government institutional design to facilitate more effective economic statecraft. As the economic dimensions of national security continue to expand — from technology competition to supply‑chain security to financial‑system resilience — the need for integrated, modernized processes will only grow more urgent.

In addition to this institutional landscape, there are two high-profile standing interagency coordination processes that deserve attention: the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and the export control regime.

Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States plays a central role in safeguarding U.S. national security by reviewing transactions that involve foreign investment or real estate acquisitions by foreign persons. The committee operates as an interagency body chaired by the Department of the Treasury, which oversees these reviews through its Office of Investment Security. Its core mandate is to identify and mitigate national security risks arising from foreign access to U.S. businesses, assets, technologies, or sensitive locations.

The Committee’s authority derives primarily from Section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended, and is implemented through Executive Order 11858 and regulations detailed in Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations. More recent presidential direction, including Executive Order 14083 issued in Sept. 2022, expanded and clarified the factors that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States considers, particularly in areas such as supply‑chain security, sensitive data, and technological leadership.

The committee’s work depends on coordinated analysis by the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, the Department of Commerce, and other agencies. The Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 marked the most significant update to authorities in decades, broadening jurisdiction to include certain non‑controlling investments and specific real estate transactions.

These efforts sought to modernize the process in response to emerging risks, but challenges remain. For example, the committee acts preventatively but only on a case‑by‑case basis, making it difficult to keep pace with the quantity of rapidly evolving foreign‑investment threats. The system’s reactive and bespoke approach can get overwhelmed and can miss activities, prompting calls for mechanisms to more easily clear benign and block clearly illegitimate transactions.

Export Controls

Export controls govern the transfer of specific items, technologies, and services that may pose national security risks if provided to certain actors or destinations. The process begins with identifying an item’s technical attributes and intended use, then classifying it under the appropriate Export Control Classification Number within the Commerce Control List, which determines the level of control required.

The Export Administration Regulations cover dual‑use, commercial, and less‑sensitive military items. Even low‑tech goods may require licensing depending on the destination, end user, or end use. The Bureau of Industry and Security evaluates four key factors to determine license requirements: what is being exported, where it is going, who will receive it, and how it will be used.

Effective export‑control administration requires extensive interagency coordination led by the Department of Commerce and involving the Departments of Defense, State, Treasury; intelligence agencies; and others. Export controls were initially designed during the Cold War to prevent the transfer of military technology to adversary nations. The expanded application of export controls in the semiconductor realm as part of a larger effort to hamstring China’s technological prowess and maintain U.S. leadership over key dual-use technologies of the future has strained existing institutions like the Export Control Review Committee. We are trying to do a lot of economic statecraft using interagency institutional coordinating mechanisms that do not scale well.

Where We Go from Here

As we seek to enhance and leverage American economic power, we should do so in a way that is politically and economically durable and redounds to our considerable natural strengths. We also should be humble and realistic as we try new efforts to improve economic statecraft. Much of this is uncharted waters for the United States.

William Norris, Ph.D., is director of the economic statecraft program and an associate professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

**Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.

Image: United States Department of Commerce via Wikimedia Commons.

warontherocks.com

17. Army using AI to update doctrine

Summary:

The Army is training doctrine writers at the Combined Army Doctrine Directorate to use generative AI to speed research and drafting of field manuals. Internal tools help search large text sets for examples and improve clarity and grammar. Leaders stress human judgment, citing AI “hallucinations.” The move aligns with broader battlefield AI efforts.

Comment: Can AI support this?

“A 1950 definition called doctrine ‘the compilation of principles and theories applicable to a subject, which have been developed through experience or by theory, that represent the best available thought and indicate and guide but do not bind in practice.’”

“Doctrine is basically a truth, a fact, or a theory that can be defended by reason.” 

“Doctrine cannot replace clear thinking…under the circumstances prevailing.”  

– LTG John Cushman 

Army using AI to update doctrine

militarytimes.com · Eve Sampson Saturday, Feb 21, 2026

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/02/20/army-using-ai-to-update-doctrine/

When a soldier reads a field manual, they are studying the Army’s guide on how to fight. Now, doctrine writers are using artificial intelligence to update those manuals, the service shared in a press release this week.

Leaders at the Combined Army Doctrine Directorate have started training authors on generative AI tools to speed up research and drafting, a move that reflects the military’s broader efforts to quickly push updated guidance to a force facing a rapidly-evolving battlefield.

“We have had people ask us about using AI and large language models to speed up the doctrine development process for years,” said Richard Creed Jr., the directorate’s leader. “So, when some of these tools became available, the first thing we did was figure out their capabilities,” he said.

Doctrine development has historically been a time consuming and tedious process that stretches years, and officials are looking to speed it up by incorporating AI into the writing process, the Army said.

For example, one internally-developed tool lets authors speedily search hundreds of texts for historical examples, transforming a task that may have previously taken days of investigation. Another tool helps writers check grammar and how easy their work is to comprehend, freeing up leaders to focus on other parts of the process.

Still, officials noted in the release that the technology is far from perfect and cannot be used without human judgment .

Lt. Col. Scott McMahan, a doctrine writer assigned to the Operational Level Doctrine Division acknowledged that the tools are flawed and that AI models may “hallucinate,” and make up information that is not factually accurate. The models are improving though, he said.

“You treat it like a resourceful and motivated young officer who might not know all the information, but they can certainly assist you in cutting some corners and being a little more efficient,” McMahan said.

Army leaders have been talking about AI on the battlefield as well, warning that a future large-scale fight could overwhelm human capacity with thousands of targets per day. The service has also stood up a dedicated AI and machine learning career field for officers to specialize.

About Eve Sampson

Eve Sampson is a reporter and former Army officer. She has covered conflict across the world, writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.

18. The VA Excellence Campaign: A Strategic Plan for Transformational Veterans Care

​Summary:

Scott Rutter argues the VA should shift from a regionally segmented system to “One VA,” delivering truly national, seamless care. He frames the “VA Excellence Campaign” as a four line effort: streamline organization for Veteran outcomes, accelerate next generation technology through public private partnership, build a unified nationwide scheduling system, and integrate DoD and VA systems to remove transition gaps. He critiques current VISN driven boundaries that force Veterans to re register when they move and slow provider credentialing. He calls for centralized scheduling, registration, contracting leverage, interoperable records, telehealth scale, and better workforce oversight, including visibility on physician fatigue and outside employment.

The VA Excellence Campaign: A Strategic Plan for Transformational Veterans Care

by Scott Rutter

02.23.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/23/the-va-excellence-campaign/

The Department of Veterans Affairs has a singular, sacred mission: to provide exceptional care for Veterans injured while serving our country. Today, under Secretary Collins’ leadership, the VA is embarking on bold initiatives that combine the best of government healthcare delivery with private sector innovation and technology. Secretary Collins is actively meeting with VA leaders across the nation to refocus the organization and get the VA back on target, a crucial first step in this transformative campaign. As both a combat veteran and a VA beneficiary, I’ve experienced the dedication of VA professionals firsthand and understand the tremendous potential these transformative changes hold for Veterans nationwide.

When Servicemembers risk their lives in defense of this nation, they think only of their dedication to our country, our freedoms, and their fellow Servicemembers. I know, I was there. And now, I am here, a beneficiary of the VA system, advocating for the continued evolution of Veterans care.

Campaign Mission and Intent

The VA Excellence Campaign’s mission is clear: secure the highest quality, most accessible care for our Veterans through strategic organizational transformation and aggressive technology implementation. Like any successful military operation, this campaign requires a clear plan of action. There are four interconnected “Lines of Advance”:

1) Streamlined organizational structure optimized for Veteran outcomes

2) Aggressive implementation of next-generation technology in partnership with private industry

3) Implementation of a nationwide unified scheduling system

4) Seamless integration between DoD and VA systems.

Each task builds upon the others to achieve mission success.

Understanding the Current Structure and the Opportunity Ahead

The VA’s current structure evolved from the 1995 “Vision for Change” initiative, which established Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) to better coordinate regional care. Today, 21 VISNs manage hospitals and clinics across designated geographical areas, with each VISN leadership team reporting metrics to VA headquarters in Washington, DC.

This structure has served Veterans for decades, but the healthcare landscape has transformed dramatically. Secretary Collins recognizes that the same structural framework that once promoted regional coordination now creates opportunities for improvement toward a seamless, national care experience Veterans deserve. His engagement with VA leadership at all levels demonstrates a commitment to understanding operational realities and driving meaningful change.

Consider a common scenario: A Veteran exits service at Fort Stewart, GA and relocates to Portland, OR. Upon arrival, they register with the Portland VA Health Care System, and all their care is tracked within that specific system. If they later move again, they must de-register and re-register, restarting the process. While this system enables regional accountability, it also creates artificial boundaries in what should be a unified national healthcare network.

The opportunity is clear: transform from a collection of regional healthcare systems into One VA, a truly national healthcare network where every Veteran has access to every resource, regardless of location.

Line of Advance 1: Organizational Excellence Through Integration

The first Line of Advance builds upon Secretary Collins’ leadership engagement to create a streamlined structure where each VA hospital reports to a strengthened central VA leadership, supported by national-level functions for scheduling, registration, and credentialing.

This transformation will eliminate redundant administrative layers while preserving local clinical excellence. All scheduling and registration will transition to a national system, ensuring Veterans are registered with “The VA,” not with individual facilities. Credentialing of healthcare providers will occur at a single point, shareable across all VA facilities, ending the current practice where providers undergo separate credentialing processes at each location, sometimes taking six to nine months per facility.

Industry partnership is essential here. Private sector organizations have developed sophisticated credentialing platforms used by major hospital networks nationwide. The VA should leverage these proven solutions which adapted to meet federal requirements.

Under this Line of Advance, funding for VA hospitals will be based on patient care delivered – determined through centralized registration and scheduling functions –creating transparency and avoiding misaligned incentives. Contracting functions will be modernized, with facility-level procurement supported by a centralized contracting office that maintains nationwide pricing and terms, leveraging the VA’s purchasing power while enabling rapid local response.

This is not destruction of the VA, it is strategic optimization to unleash the system’s full potential.

Line of Advance 2: Technology-Enabled Transformation Through Public-Private Partnership

Technology is the catalyst that will enable every other element of this campaign. Secretary Collins’ meetings with VA leadership must include a frank assessment of technology capabilities and deficiencies. As these strategic discussions unfold, Secretary Collins and his team should ask themselves a critical question: Do we have representatives from Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs) at the table?

SDVOSBs represent a unique and invaluable resource. These companies are led by Veterans who understand both the mission and the operational challenges firsthand. They bridge the gap between military culture and private sector innovation. They have skin in the game, literally. Many SDVOSB leaders rely on VA care themselves and are deeply invested in solving the problems that impact their fellow Veterans. Excluding them from strategic planning discussions means losing crucial perspectives and proven capabilities.

The question is simple: Why can Amazon or Walmart track inventory worldwide with a button click, while Veterans can’t seamlessly access care across the VA system? The answer isn’t capability, it’s execution. The technology exists today to create One VA.

Strategic Technology Priorities:

Cloud Computing Implementation: The VA must fully embrace FedRamp-certified cloud service providers. The notion that VA patient data requires unique protection beyond HIPAA and HHS standards is outdated. Private healthcare systems like Columbia Presbyterian protect millions of patient records using commercial cloud infrastructure. SDVOSBs specializing in cloud migration and cybersecurity have successfully implemented similar transformations for major healthcare systems and government agencies. The VA should partner with certified cloud providers, particularly SDVOSBs with proven track records, to deliver secure, scalable, cost-effective infrastructure that enables real-time data access nationwide.

Industry Innovation Integration: Private companies, including numerous innovative SDVOSBs, are developing breakthrough medical solutions, scheduling platforms, telehealth technologies, and operational software. The VA must create agile evaluation and procurement processes to rapidly implement solutions that work. SDVOSBs bring unique advantages: they combine technical expertise with intimate knowledge of VA operations and Veteran needs. This is where Veterans benefit most from private sector partnership, not by outsourcing care, but by integrating best-in-class technology and innovation.

Electronic Health Record Optimization: Modern EHR systems must provide seamless information flow between facilities, enabling any provider at any location to access complete patient histories instantly. SDVOSBs have successfully implemented interoperability solutions for complex healthcare networks and understand the unique challenges of government IT modernization.

Telehealth Expansion: Technology enables expert specialists in Wisconsin to treat Veterans in New Mexico via telehealth. One VA means every Veteran has access to every specialist, regardless of geography. Many SDVOSBs, including the Valor Network, have pioneered telemedicine platforms specifically designed for government healthcare delivery, demonstrating that Veteran-owned companies can deliver world-class technical solutions at scale.

Real-Time Operational Transparency: Modern analytics platforms can provide leadership with real-time visibility into operations, quality metrics, wait times, and resource utilization, enabling rapid problem-solving and eliminating the reporting delays that have historically masked problems. SDVOSBs specializing in data analytics and business intelligence can implement these solutions rapidly and cost-effectively.

Provider Management and Workforce Analytics: Secretary Collins has observed that many VA physicians are tired, a critical observation that demonstrates the kind of situational awareness necessary for effective leadership. However, this observation demands deeper examination. In the military, when leaders notice fatigue among troops, they immediately assess the operational tempo, deployment schedules, and overall mission demands. The same leadership principle applies here.

The reality is that many VA physicians are indeed fatigued, but not solely from their VA responsibilities. A significant number of VA physicians work additional jobs after completing their VA shifts, moonlighting at private hospitals, emergency rooms, or private practices. This raises fundamental questions that Secretary Collins and his leadership team must address:

Does VA leadership have situational awareness of physicians outside employment? In the military, commanders maintain accountability for their personnel and understand their commitments. Service members cannot simply take on outside employment without approval and awareness from their chain of command. The question is whether VA physicians are required to request permission or notify their leadership about additional employment that may impact their readiness, performance, and ability to serve Veterans.

Is there a formal approval process? If physicians are working 40+ hours at the VA and then working additional shifts elsewhere, leadership needs to know. This isn’t about restricting physicians’ rights to supplemental income, it’s about ensuring patient safety, physician wellbeing, and maintaining the quality of care Veterans deserve. Fatigue-related medical errors are well-documented in healthcare literature. A physician working a full VA shift followed by an overnight ER shift elsewhere may not be operating at peak performance the following day when treating Veterans.

Are current policies enforced? The VA likely has policies governing outside employment, but are they enforced? Does leadership actively track and approve secondary employment, or is this happening without proper oversight? Secretary Collins’ team needs clear situational awareness: Who is working where, when, and how much? This information is essential for workforce planning, quality assurance, and patient safety.

What does this reveal about compensation and culture? If physicians routinely need secondary employment to meet their financial obligations, this signals either inadequate compensation or a cultural expectation that has become normalized but shouldn’t be. The VA must offer competitive compensation that allows physicians to focus their professional energy on Veterans rather than requiring additional employment to maintain their standard of living.

Modern workforce management platforms can track provider schedules, credentials, work hours, and performance metrics in real-time. These systems, commonly used in large healthcare networks, enable leadership to maintain situational awareness about physician workload, fatigue risk, and outside employment. Implementing such systems would give Secretary Collins and his team the visibility they need to ensure physicians are rested, focused, and dedicated to Veteran care. A centralized credentialing and provider management system would enable proper tracking of physician work hours and outside employment, protecting both physicians and patients.

Secretary Collins and his team should implement clear policies requiring disclosure and approval of outside employment, establish maximum work-hour guidelines consistent with patient safety standards, and ensure leadership at all levels maintains accountability for physician wellness and readiness, just as military commanders do for their troops.

The SDVOSB Imperative: As Secretary Collins shapes his leadership team and advisory groups, the absence of SDVOSB representation should raise immediate red flags. These businesses aren’t just contractors, they’re stakeholders with lived experience, technical expertise, and unwavering commitment to the mission. When planning sessions occur without SDVOSB voices, the VA loses access to some of its most qualified and motivated problem-solvers. Secretary Collins should ensure that SDVOSBs are not merely vendors but strategic partners in this transformation.

The partnership between VA expertise, SDVOSB innovation, and broader private sector capabilities will create a healthcare delivery model that exceeds purely privatized care, which faces its own challenges with profit motives and insurance company limitations.

Line of Advance 3: Unified National Scheduling, Eliminating Barriers to Access

Building on organizational integration and technology implementation, Line of Advance 3 establishes a revolutionary nationwide scheduling system. This represents one of the most tangible improvements Veterans will experience.

The Vision: When Veterans separate from service, they register with “The VA,” not a specific facility. They gain immediate access to scheduling resources across every VA hospital nationwide. If Centers of Excellence exist for specific treatments, Veterans are automatically connected to those resources.

How It Works:

National Scheduling Centers: Veterans call a national number and reach trained schedulers with real-time visibility into appointments nationwide. If a Veteran needs urgent psychological care, schedulers immediately provide options, local VA appointments, telehealth appointments, or private sector appointments coordinated by the VA, all while the Veteran is on the phone.

Digital Scheduling Platform: Younger Veterans comfortable with technology can access an online portal to view and book appointments across the entire VA system, including telehealth options. SDVOSBs have developed sophisticated patient engagement platforms that could be adapted for VA-wide deployment, creating user experiences comparable to commercial healthcare apps.

Coordinated Care, Not Privatized Dumping: The system coordinates with credentialed private providers when appropriate, ensuring continuity of care rather than disconnected outsourcing.

Metric Integrity: National scheduling eliminates the perverse incentives of the current system. Success metrics shift from “appointments made” to “Veterans treated successfully.”

Private industry partners, including SDVOSBs with healthcare IT expertise, bring proven scheduling technologies used by major healthcare networks. Companies like Epic, Cerner Oracle, and specialized healthcare scheduling platforms have solved these problems for large integrated delivery networks. The VA should leverage these solutions, working with SDVOSBs who can customize platforms for Veterans’ unique needs and provide implementation expertise informed by military experience.

This transformation isn’t just possible, it’s overdue and entirely achievable with today’s technology and the right partners.

Line of Advance 4: Seamless DoD-VA Integration, Honoring the Transition

The final Line of Advance eliminates the artificial boundary between DoD and VA systems, ensuring continuity of care precisely when Veterans need it most. Secretary Collins’ commitment to getting the VA back on track must include prioritizing this critical integration.

The Current Gap: Injured Servicemembers face bureaucratic obstacles exactly when they deserve streamlined support. Medical records don’t automatically transfer from DoD to VA. Disability determinations require lengthy claims processes after separation. These delays cost Veterans health outcomes and cost taxpayers money through preventable complications.

The Solution: With current technology, there is no viable reason for this gap to exist.

Implementation Steps

Automatic Medical Record Transfer: DoD electronic health records automatically migrate to VA systems upon separation, with Veterans’ electronic health history immediately available to VA providers. SDVOSBs with expertise in health information exchange and interoperability have successfully connected disparate healthcare systems and can accelerate this integration.

Pre-Separation Disability Determinations: Initial disability evaluations occur before separation, with determinations ready upon transition. Veterans requiring ongoing treatment move seamlessly into VA care without gaps.

Integrated Transition Clinics: Joint DoD-VA transition clinics, already piloted in some locations, should expand nationwide, ensuring hand-off of care rather than cold handoff of paperwork.

Technology Backbone: Modern health information exchanges enable secure, real-time sharing between DoD and VA systems. This technology is proven and operational, it requires organizational will and resource allocation. SDVOSBs specializing in government health IT have the security clearances, technical capabilities, and mission understanding to implement these solutions rapidly.

Claims backlog disappears for combat-injured Veterans who receive determinations before separation. Only Veterans who develop service-connected conditions later would file traditional claims – which is a manageable volume if handled efficiently through modernized digital systems developed in partnership with SDVOSBs that understand claims processing from both sides.

The Path Forward: A National Treasure, Modernized

The Department of Veterans Affairs is indeed a national treasure. We need this institution, and it must evolve to provide care worthy of Veterans who volunteered to protect our freedoms. We enjoy our way of life, our security, opportunity, and freedom, because of our military. We owe these men and women more than gratitude; we owe them exceptional care.

Secretary Collins’ direct engagement with VA leadership across all levels signals a recognition that transformation requires top-down commitment and bottom-up input. As Secretary Collins conducts these crucial meetings and shapes the VA’s strategic direction, the composition of his advisory circle matters enormously. If Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses are not represented in these strategic discussions, Secretary Collins and his team should pause and ask why. SDVOSBs represent the intersection of military experience, entrepreneurial innovation, and technical expertise, exactly the combination needed to drive this transformation.

This transformation will challenge entrenched interests related to employment, contracts, and funding. But we have reached an inflection point. Incremental change is insufficient. The choice before us isn’t between government care and privatized care, it’s between the status quo and transformation.

With these changes, the VA will emerge as a powerhouse of medical excellence, combining government stability and mission focus with private sector innovation and agility, particularly the mission-driven innovation of SDVOSBs, delivering care that exceeds profit-driven private healthcare constrained by insurance company limitations.

Conclusion: Mission Success Defined

Mission success means every Veteran receives the highest quality care, wherever and whenever they need it. It means seamless transition from military service to Veterans care. It means technology that enables rather than hinders. It means leadership that maintains true situational awareness, understanding not just what challenges exist, but why they exist and who is accountable. It means One VA, unified in purpose, empowered by innovation, and uncompromising in its commitment to those who served.

Secretary Collins began the crucial work of getting the VA back on target through direct engagement with leadership at all levels. This campaign plan provides a strategic framework to guide that effort. As Secretary Collins builds his team and shapes strategy, ensuring SDVOSB participation isn’t just good policy, it’s mission-critical. These Veteran-owned businesses bring unique capabilities, unwavering commitment, and proven track records. They deserve a seat at the table, and the VA needs their expertise.

The American people rely on our military to protect us into the next century. Our military must know with absolute certainty that if they are injured in that service, their nation will provide exceptional care delivered by physicians who are properly supported, adequately compensated, and not compromised by fatigue from excessive outside employment. Secretary Collins has demonstrated his commitment to this mission. Now we must execute with the same precision, commitment, and relentlessness our Veterans demonstrated in uniform.

The campaign begins now. Success requires the right strategy, the right leadership, the right partners, including those who have already proven their dedication through both military service and business excellence, and most importantly, the situational awareness to understand what’s really happening on the ground and the courage to address it.

Tags: Department of Veterans Affairs(VA), Medicine, SWJ Cares, Veteran's Affairs

About The Author

• 
  
• Scott Rutter
• LTC Scott Rutter, USA (Retired), is the former Commander of Task Force 2-7 Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), during Operation Iraqi Freedom I. He is the CEO of the Valor Network of Glassboro, NJ. Find his forthcoming book Damn Fine Soldiers (Simon & Schuster) on July 2026.
• View all posts LTC, USA (Retired)

​19. The Diego Garcia showdown

​Comment: "Suboptimal." As in:

MARK MONTGOMERY, the former director of operations at U.S. Pacific Command, told NatSec Daily it’s “suboptimal to find out that one of the facilities that was somewhere in your strike plan is no longer available.” He added: “It’s not the same as having an aircraft carrier have a maintenance issue and have to go off-station, but it has an operational impact.”

The Diego Garcia showdown

Politico · Phelim Kine · February 23, 2026

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2026/02/23/the-diego-garcia-showdown-00793472

With help from Daniel Lippman

The status of Diego Garcia — an island in the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago that is home to a joint U.S.-U.K. military base — is roiling Washington-London ties as the Trump administration mulls possible military strikes on Iran.

Military experts are renewing their attacks on the U.K.’s move in 2025 to cede control of Chagos to Mauritius as a threat to U.S. national security by potentially impeding U.S. access to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia. The facility has been a staging point for American military operations in the Middle East for decades.

China hawks warn that the deal may enable Beijing to wield economic pressure on Mauritius to block U.S. access to the base. China and Mauritius sealed a free trade deal in 2019 and the island nation touted its value to Beijing as “a strategic regional platform” in July.

That influence may allow Beijing to “incrementally encroach on Diego Garcia and render the base operationally irrelevant,” BRENT SADLER, who led Maritime Strategy and Policy at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command from 2012-2015 and is now at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, told NatSec Daily.

That criticism follows President DONALD TRUMP’s assertion that the U.K. risks “losing control” of the base in a social media post last week — and at exactly the wrong time. U.K. Prime Minister KEIR STARMER shouldn’t give away Diego Garcia at a time when the U.S. may need it for military action “should Iran decide not to make a deal,” Trump said.

Starmer’s government pushed back by declaring the agreement is “the only way to guarantee the long-term future” of the base, per BBC last week. The text of the U.K.-Mauritius agreement guarantees “unrestricted access, basing and overflight for United Kingdom and United States of America aircraft and vessels.” Starmer has denied Trump’s request to use the facility to attack Iran, The Times newspaper reported last week. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment about that report.

MARK MONTGOMERY, the former director of operations at U.S. Pacific Command, told NatSec Daily it’s “suboptimal to find out that one of the facilities that was somewhere in your strike plan is no longer available.” He added: “It’s not the same as having an aircraft carrier have a maintenance issue and have to go off-station, but it has an operational impact.”

NatSec Daily asked the British embassy in Washington and the embassy of Mauritius for comment. Neither responded.

Trump’s comments were particularly surprising because they contradicted the State Department’s support of the agreement a day earlier (State didn’t reply to NatSec Daily’s request for comment).

Trump’s social media post reflects “the policy of the Trump administration,” White House spokesperson KAROLINE LEAVITT told reporters last week when asked why Trump disagreed with State’s assessment.

If the U.S. starts to feel its access to Diego Garcia is threatened, there’s a chance the administration would up its pressure campaign against the U.K. deal, or even seize the base, ARZAN TARAPORE, former Australian military liaison to the U.S. during the Obama administration, told NatSec Daily.

“In a shooting war, either in the Middle East or West Pacific, the U.S. will not abide any loss of access to Diego. It will fight for it. Legal status, whether a lease or sovereignty, won’t matter,” Tarapore said.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

https://apstrategy.org/

Executive Director, Korea Regional Review

https://www.upi.com/Korea-Regional-Review/

Editor-at-large, Small Wars Journal

https://smallwarsjournal.com/

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com