Quotes of the Day:

"To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart." 

– Eleanor Roosevelt

"To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop." 

– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be masons and dictions, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” 

– Ulysses S. Grant speech at the annual reunion of the Society of the Army of Tennessee at Des Moines, Iowa, 29 September 1875

1. Army Is Slashing Thousands of Jobs to Focus on Russia and China

2. U.S. Military Theories of Victory for a War with the People's Republic of China

3. Opinion: Putin Knows What to Expect – Time to Surprise Him and Reduce the Disparity Between Russia and Ukraine

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 27, 2024

5. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, February 27, 2024

6. Ukraine’s experience to become foundation of new global security architecture - Umerov

7. Here are the winners and losers in US Army’s force structure change

8. Beijing’s Post-Election Plan for Taiwan

9. How to hold Ukraine over until Congress passes more aid funding

10. Preventing a Ramadan Explosion in the Holy Land

11. Army Sending Innovators Downrange

12. Next Night Stalker Little Bird Helicopter Now Dubbed MH-6R

13. Leaked Russian military files reveal criteria for nuclear strike

14. Putin's new military decree preparation for "large scale" war with NATO—ISW

15. Services prepare to brief Secretary Austin on a plan to get Ospreys flying again

16. A Framework for Foresight: Methods to Leverage the Lessons of History

17. IW 101 Has Launched

18. SASC Votes Paparo Nomination for INDOPACOM Out of Committee

19. ‘Incompetence’: Democrats join Republicans in faulting Austin and his team over hospital secrecy

20. Backgrounder: Ethnic Armies in the Myanmar Civil War

21. We salute the brave men who took part in – and named – ‘Operation Bunghole’

22. The Age of Amorality – Can America Save the Liberal Order Through Illiberal Means?

23. The Israeli General Who Believes in Winning Wars

1. Army Is Slashing Thousands of Jobs to Focus on Russia and China

COIN is a four letter word. And that is going to damage our force planning because we seem to be making an assumption that anything associated with COIN will never be needed again, especially in strategic competition and large scale combat operations. The problem is that COIN is just one aspect of Irregular Warfare and it is IW that is going to be conducted across the spectrum of conflict, as part of integrated deterrence, strategic competition, and even (and especially) during large scale combat operations. (And I would add that strategic competition is really about political warfare at the national level and IW is the military contribution to political warfare).

Excerpt: 

For more than 20 years, American military commanders and senior defense officials have fretted over whether the focus on counterinsurgency fighting had left the military unprepared for a great powers land war.

I acknowledge that cuts have to be made and we are going to cut muscle and bone because we cannot man the force. But I fear COIN is the "easy button" criteria for cutting forces when in fact we will be cutting forces that have necessary and relevant IW capabilities to support US national security interests.

Unfortunately there is no easy answer. But we need to conduct through analysis - both data driven and also "coup d'oeil driven" (the inward looking eye of military genius and judgement based on education and experience that goes beyond data). Some of the effects we need to achieve are not easily measurable or measurable in the time period of even a POM cycle. Some of the effects require long term investment to see the results. The Army recognized this when they established Security Forces Assistance Brigades. Their effects are not measurable in a single deployment or again, perhaps even in a POM cycle or may not be measurable until host nation forces are employed in combat operations (to include large scale combat operations).

And regarding SOF: SOF capabilities are demonstrating utility and necessity in Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan. But I acknowledge that due to the manning challenge SOF will have to take a haircut as well.

Army Is Slashing Thousands of Jobs to Focus on Russia and China

By HELENE COOPER The New York Times2 min

February 27, 2024

View Original

The U.S. Army is cutting 24,000 positions as the Pentagon continues to shift its priority to countering Chinese and Russian military might after two decades of focusing on the fight against terrorism, according to a new Army document.

The cuts are in line with the national defense strategy begun by President Donald J. Trump and largely endorsed by the Biden administration that emphasizes rising threats to the United States from an emboldened Russia and China.

Army numbers swelled to almost 600,000 during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the end of those conflicts has contributed to a steady decrease as soldiers returned to the garrison.

The job cuts, reported earlier by The Associated Press, also implicitly acknowledge the recruiting woes that have plagued the Army — and indeed, other military services — in recent years. The Army, the Navy and the Air Force failed to meet recruiting goals last year. Army officials have been traveling to college campuses in urban areas to try to tap into underrepresented communities for recruits.

The new document says the cuts will “allow the Army to narrow the gap between force structure, which was designed to accommodate 494,000 soldiers, and current active-duty end strength, which is set by law at 445,000.” The goal now, according to the document, will be to bring an Army end strength of 470,000.

Defense Department officials say that several issues have hobbled recruitment. The percentage of young Americans who qualify, and are interested, in military service has dropped, they note. A low unemployment rate has also meant that young people have other options.

“The Army will shrink excess, largely unmanned ‘hollow’ force structure and build new formations equipped with new capabilities needed for large-scale combat operations,” the document said. “By bringing force structure and end strength into closer alignment, the Army will ensure its formations are filled at the appropriate level to maintain a high state of readiness.”

Defense Department officials said last year that the Army planned to cut some 3,000 positions from its Special Operations forces. That number would come out of the 24,000, an official said on Tuesday.

For more than 20 years, American military commanders and senior defense officials have fretted over whether the focus on counterinsurgency fighting had left the military unprepared for a great powers land war.

But even as the Pentagon continues its shift toward the latter, events in the Middle East spurred by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel and Israel’s resulting campaign of retribution in Gaza have underlined that the Pentagon — and the Army — will have to do both, and probably for years to come.

Pentagon officials say that challenge continues to push a military that is already stretched. Added to that is the uncertainty that has surrounded the Pentagon’s budget since 2011, when mandatory spending caps were put in place.

“The things we are reducing in our formation are actually things that are not going to make us successful on the battlefield going forward,” Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, told reporters on Tuesday at a breakfast hosted by the Defense Writers Group.

He said the Army had other capabilities “we want to grow and add,” including those that help protect troops, and Americans, from drone, rocket and even ballistic missile attacks.

2. U.S. Military Theories of Victory for a War with the People's Republic of China

The 43 page report can be downloaded here: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA1700/PEA1743-1/RAND_PEA1743-1.pdf

As in the title, there is a lot of theory and theories in this. They seem logical from a US perspective. But are these theories logical from a PRC perspective?

Also, no mention of the Korea factor in this.

U.S. Military Theories of Victory for a War with the People's Republic of China

Published Feb 21, 2024

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA1743-1.html?

by Jacob L. Heim, Zachary Burdette, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga

• 
  
• Related Topics:
• China,
• Military Strategy,
• Nuclear Deterrence,
• Taiwan,
• Warfare and Military Operations

A military conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) would entail escalation risks that the United States has not seriously considered since the Cold War. The authors of this paper consider how the United States can prevail in a limited war with the PRC while avoiding catastrophic escalation. 

The authors do so by considering theories of victory for the United States in a war with China. A theory of victory is a causal story about how to defeat an adversary: It identifies the conditions under which the enemy will admit defeat and outlines how to shape the conflict in a way that creates those conditions. The authors consider five theories of victory and identify two as most viable: denial (persuading the enemy that it is unlikely to achieve its objectives and that further fighting will not reverse this failure) and military cost-imposition (using military force to persuade the enemy that the costs of continuing the war outweigh the benefits). The authors maintain that denial offers the best chance for delivering victory while avoiding catastrophic escalation, whereas military cost-imposition has lower prospects of success and higher chances for catastrophic escalation.

3. Opinion: Putin Knows What to Expect – Time to Surprise Him and Reduce the Disparity Between Russia and Ukraine

Excerpts:

But it is a part of the flawed i.e. not working strategy. As one of my friends on the social media where we push against Russian propaganda wrote recently: “The problem with the ‘help Ukraine for as long it takes’ strategy is that it doesn’t address how to go about actually giving Ukraine a decisive victory. Do they believe Ukraine can defeat Russia?”

...

The element of surprising Russians was gone.

To bring it back, the least “nuclear” option would be to admit Ukraine to NATO – to start the process. But we all know how it goes: a choir immediately points to NATO's rule of not accepting states with border disputes. By the way, my 2-year experience with fighting Russian propaganda indicates that this argument was picked up by Russian bots and they spread it most effectively.

If not NATO trembling with fear, then there are only two centers of power capable of bringing in an element that would knock down Russians – it would be the presidents of the US and Ukraine, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky.

...

I can however already hear all the voices pitying us for the ‘ignorance’ of dismissing the elephant in the room – Russia’s nuclear powers.

That is exactly how Putin keeps winning the deterrence here - by reiterating all too often - again this week commenting on rumors that the Western European countries are planning to send their troops to Ukraine - that he has the magic - nuclear button he would not hesitate to press.

My response to those voices:

What could he possibly hit with a nuclear missile, and not be hit back? What target could he hit even with tactical nukes and not be hit back? There is also this detail that in Russia, like the US, the process of launching nuclear weapons does not belong to one person alone.

Here it would be good if the US president was seen as 100 percent predictable – that he would not allow Russian rogue behavior to go unpunished. At stake are other actors – Iran on its path to obtaining nuclear weapons, China and North Korea already having ones. The West cannot afford to show weakness here.

...

Only a few days ago Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski pointed to the potential results of the US leaving Ukraine without the pledged aid:

“If the US allies get the idea that the United States might not be able to help you even if the Commander-in-Chief wants to help you, that will have profound consequences for all America’s alliances around the world,” Sikorski said, adding, “Some countries will start hedging and others will be considering developing their own nuclear weapons programs.”

The disparity between the Ukrainian and Russian military capabilities, the number of troops, cannot be leveled even if Russia imploded because the remaining Russia, not a federation anymore, but a purely national Russian state – would still have twice as big a population as Ukraine.

And not everything on the front line can be decided by the spectacular shooting down of Russian A-50 AWACS or other aircraft.

Despite what some among Ukrainian leadership might think – Ukraine would have, as always, also in negotiations about any sort of “hedging,” a committed supporter: Poland.

Opinion: Putin Knows What to Expect – Time to Surprise Him and Reduce the Disparity Between Russia and Ukraine

It’s time for the US and the West to stop walking on eggshells when it comes to Russia.

By Anna Magdalena Wielopolska

February 27, 2024, 2:40 pm | Comments ( 1)

kyivpost.com · by Anna Magdalena Wielopolska · February 27, 2024

For two years Russia has been paralyzing the West with threats limiting Western response to Russian terror in Ukraine. To stop the carnage Putin must be surprised. There are three possibilities here.

The current state of the Russian war is defined by two factors:

• The painful disparity between the Ukrainian and Russian forces – not only that Ukrainians are running out of ammunition but also in numbers of troops – the loss of the major stronghold in Donetsk Oblast, Avdiivka, may be only the first.
• The Western allies’ strategy not to let Ukraine fall only leads to a longer war with more people killed.

Experts list remedies – the West must tighten sanctions to cripple Russian capabilities to produce ammunition and weapons, Ukraine needs American aid asap and the West must support Ukraine as long as it takes.

But it is a part of the flawed i.e. not working strategy. As one of my friends on the social media where we push against Russian propaganda wrote recently: “The problem with the ‘help Ukraine for as long it takes’ strategy is that it doesn’t address how to go about actually giving Ukraine a decisive victory. Do they believe Ukraine can defeat Russia?”

Element of surprise must return

Vladimir Putin said not long ago that he prefers 'more predictable' President Biden over Donald Trump. ‘Predictable’ is the key here. What the West, including the US, has been doing for the past year – since the successful 2022 offensive of the AFU -- is predictable and thus manageable for the Kremlin.

Ukraine’s success in the first year was possible because it caught the Russians off guard. Everything was surprising – Ukraine’s resistance, Hostomel airport defense, Western sanctions against Russia, the speed with which the West unified behind Ukraine, its resolve to support Ukraine and most surprising of all – a growing, throughout the first 7-8 months of the war, stream of weapons supplies to Ukraine.

Other Topics of Interest

ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 27, 2024

Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

Then the stream, instead of accelerating – almost dried up. Kerch Bridge was on fire in October 2022, President Zelensky came to taste watermelons in liberated Kherson in November and then there was his Christmas address that felt like a punch in the stomach – he was forced to plead ! for more weapons. The ensuing battle for Leopard tanks lasted for months, ATACMS, F-16s, we all know the story and how the pause in the Ukrainian offensive enabled the Kremlin to revise their approach.

The element of surprising Russians was gone.

To bring it back, the least “nuclear” option would be to admit Ukraine to NATO – to start the process. But we all know how it goes: a choir immediately points to NATO's rule of not accepting states with border disputes. By the way, my 2-year experience with fighting Russian propaganda indicates that this argument was picked up by Russian bots and they spread it most effectively.

If not NATO trembling with fear, then there are only two centers of power capable of bringing in an element that would knock down Russians – it would be the presidents of the US and Ukraine, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky.

President Biden’s surprise – what could it be?

America’s status as a global superpower rests upon successful military deterrence of its enemies. This concept protects America’s national security and its interests around the globe. It also keeps up America’s political/security alliances.

In deterrence, however, it is Vladimir Putin who is winning. He managed to stop the West, the US from responding decisively to his blatant breaking of the fundamental world order rule – the inviolability of the states’ sovereignty.

Another friend of mine from social media wrote recently: “How many have to die before President Joe Biden will actually use the American military that I and my neighbors pay $850 billion/year to support? What’s the point of spending all that money if the military can’t be used in a just cause? Personally, I have never seen a more just cause for military intervention in my life…”

My friend has many like-minded neighbors.

I can however already hear all the voices pitying us for the ‘ignorance’ of dismissing the elephant in the room – Russia’s nuclear powers.

That is exactly how Putin keeps winning the deterrence here - by reiterating all too often - again this week commenting on rumors that the Western European countries are planning to send their troops to Ukraine - that he has the magic - nuclear button he would not hesitate to press.

My response to those voices:

What could he possibly hit with a nuclear missile, and not be hit back? What target could he hit even with tactical nukes and not be hit back? There is also this detail that in Russia, like the US, the process of launching nuclear weapons does not belong to one person alone.

Here it would be good if the US president was seen as 100 percent predictable – that he would not allow Russian rogue behavior to go unpunished. At stake are other actors – Iran on its path to obtaining nuclear weapons, China and North Korea already having ones. The West cannot afford to show weakness here.

The Kremlin realizes this. But Putin’s bet with the war on Ukraine was that anything below the red line of nuclear engagement is for the West predictably negotiable. The West always recoils at using a terminal means. That feeling of impunity in the area below the nuclear bar allowed Putin to invade Ukraine. This feeling of his should be shattered.

Not only the status of global power – but leaving the Cold War paradigms behind

The need to sustain the status of global superpower should be enough for the US to come up with a more decisive policy to deter Russia than we’ve so far seen. But there is also a bilateral dimension here and not less important than the global stage.

Ukrainians have the right to feel that the US let them down twice already.

The first time, luckily for Ukrainians the weakness of the collapsing Soviet Union was helpful. Still it is shocking to listen to the infamous “Chicken Kiyv Speech” by President George H.W. Bush, delivered on August 1, 1991, and in which he called on Ukrainians to resign their “suicidal nationalism.”

It was a moment when Ukraine had a chance to gain independent statehood! Fortunately, Ukrainians did not fall for this colossal misjudgment and implemented the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine (Poland was the first country together with Canada to recognize the state of Ukraine, the US did it only in December of that year).

The second time – it was the American power of persuasion 30 years ago that made Ukrainian leaders give up and give away nuclear weapons they held after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Wouldn’t it be the time for the US now to get out of the Cold War concretely and choose unequivocally Eastern Europe over Russia? To stop walking around Russia as if on eggshells?

Ukrainians will never surrender. It is an utter determination – as President Zelensky said on the second anniversary of the invasion: “We are 730 days closer to victory.”

They will never give up because they are at the next height in their state-building process – they have never before put up a similar fight and never before been as successful as they are now. For any nation, a moment like this war is defining for centuries to come.

Is Ukraine’s destiny sentenced now only to waiting for the US to do something? No.

President Zelensky’s surprise – what could it be?

In the late 1990s, NATO was dragging its feet about Poland’s application to join the Alliance. It was also becoming clear that Russia was not heading toward a stable democracy but descending into a corrupt unpredictable entity.

From Poland's security point of view, it was becoming dangerous.

The Poles needed to ensure Poland’s security, if not through NATO membership then by…acquiring nuclear weapons. Scott Anderson mentions this in his chronicles of the CIA in Eastern Europe, “The Quiet Americans,” that the country’s leaders told NATO – unofficially – they would go nuclear if Poland didn’t gain admission back in the 90s.

On March 12,1999 Poland with Hungary and the Czech Republic became the first former members of the Warsaw Pact to join NATO.

Only a few days ago Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski pointed to the potential results of the US leaving Ukraine without the pledged aid:

“If the US allies get the idea that the United States might not be able to help you even if the Commander-in-Chief wants to help you, that will have profound consequences for all America’s alliances around the world,” Sikorski said, adding, “Some countries will start hedging and others will be considering developing their own nuclear weapons programs.”

The disparity between the Ukrainian and Russian military capabilities, the number of troops, cannot be leveled even if Russia imploded because the remaining Russia, not a federation anymore, but a purely national Russian state – would still have twice as big a population as Ukraine.

And not everything on the front line can be decided by the spectacular shooting down of Russian A-50 AWACS or other aircraft.

Despite what some among Ukrainian leadership might think – Ukraine would have, as always, also in negotiations about any sort of “hedging,” a committed supporter: Poland.

kyivpost.com · by Anna Magdalena Wielopolska · February 27, 2024

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 27, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-27-2024

Key Takeaways:

Russian forces are attempting to exploit tactical opportunities offered by the Russian seizure of Avdiivka and appear to be maintaining a relatively high tempo of offensive operations aimed at pushing as far as possible in the Avdiivka area before Ukrainian forces establish more cohesive and harder-to-penetrate defensive lines in the area.

Russian forces are likely attempting to create an operational maneuver force for the exploitation of recent Russian advances in the Avdiivka direction.

The Russian command likely hopes that the reorganization of command structures will establish more cohesive Russian grouping of forces throughout the theater in Ukraine.

 Recent developments in Transnistria, the pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova, are unlikely to pose a military threat to Ukraine and will more likely impact Moldova’s European Union (EU) integration prospects. ISW is amending its warning forecast in light of continued Transnistrian officials’ statements that the upcoming Congress of Transnistrian Deputies will discuss Moldovan economic policies, likely related to changes to Moldova’s Customs Code that went into effect on January 1, 2024.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu continues to highlight recent Russian tactical successes in Ukraine as substantial battlefield victories for political purposes ahead of the upcoming Russian presidential election. Shoigu additionally highlighted Russia’s Central and Eastern Military Districts (CMD and EMD) to posture against supposed anti-Russian activity in Central Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

Ukrainian forces have reportedly shot down two Russian Su-34s on February 27, the tenth downed Russian military aircraft within roughly as many days.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) reported on February 27 that the ongoing Russian information campaign to demoralize Ukrainian society will intensify between March and May 2024.

Russia likely tested an element of its Sovereign Internet on February 27, likely in an effort to strengthen control over individual aspects of the Russian information space.

Russian forces advanced west of Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements across the theater.

A Ukrainian official warned that Russia seeks to ramp up force generation efforts in occupied Ukraine following the formal integration of occupied and claimed Ukrainian territories into the Russian Southern Military District (SMD).

Russian authorities are reportedly systematizing the adoption of deported Ukrainian children in Russia.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Feb 27, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 27, 2024

Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan

February 27, 2024, 9:15pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:30pm ET on February 27. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the February 28 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian forces are attempting to exploit tactical opportunities offered by the Russian seizure of Avdiivka and appear to be maintaining a relatively high tempo of offensive operations aimed at pushing as far as possible in the Avdiivka area before Ukrainian forces establish more cohesive and harder-to-penetrate defensive lines in the area. Russian forces temporarily decreased their tempo of operations as they cleared Avdiivka following the Russian seizure of the settlement on February 17, but have since resumed a relatively high tempo of assaults further west and northwest of Avdiivka.[1] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Dmytro Lykhovyi stated on February 27 that Russian forces have recently increased the size of their assault groups in the Tavriisk direction (Avdiivka through western Zaporizhia Oblast) from small squad-sized groups to platoon-sized and even company-sized groups.[2] Russian forces are currently focusing assaults west of Avdiivka in the direction of Berdychi, Orlivka, and Tonenke, where Ukrainian forces established immediate defensive positions to cover their withdrawal from Avdiivka and to receive oncoming Russian offensive operations.[3] Lykhovyi and Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated that Ukrainian forces have stabilized their defensive lines along the Tonenke-Orlivka-Berdychi line as of February 27.[4] Ukrainian military observers characterized Ukrainian fortifications west of Avdiivka as “disappointing” and ”problematic,” however.[5] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are struggling to hold defensive positions immediately west of Avdiivka and forecasted that Ukrainian forces will concentrate on a defensive line further west that Ukrainian forces began constructing in November 2023.[6]

Russian forces are likely continuing attempts to advance in order to deprive Ukrainian forces of the respite that would allow Ukraine to establish a more cohesive and harder-to-penetrate defensive line in the immediate vicinity of Avdiivka. The seizure of Avdiivka has allowed Russian forces to press on positions that Ukrainian forces have manned for a shorter period than Ukrainian positions in Avdiivka or further west, and Russian forces are likely sustaining a high operational tempo to try to exploit this tactical opportunity. Russian forces may be able to seize settlements immediately west and northwest of Avdiivka in the coming weeks, but terrain and water features further west of Avdiivka, particularly the body of water that runs between Berdychi-Semenivka-Orlivka, will likely slow the already relatively slow rate of Russian advances in the area. This difficult terrain will likely constrain further Russian tactical gains and allow Ukrainian forces to establish prepared defensive positions that will likely prompt the eventual culmination of the current Russian offensive effort in the area at least until or unless the Russians reinforce their attacking elements.[7]

Russian forces are likely attempting to create an operational maneuver force for the exploitation of recent Russian advances in the Avdiivka direction. Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated on February 27 that Russian forces have formally transferred responsibility for the Donetsk City-Avdiivka axis to the Russian Central Grouping of Forces and formally transferred the Central Grouping of Forces’ previous area of responsibility (AOR) in the Lyman direction to Russia’s Western Grouping of Forces.[8] Russia’s Western Grouping of Forces (likely comprised almost entirely of elements of the Western Military District [WMD]) assumed responsibility for at least a portion of the Lyman direction in late fall and early winter 2023 after the Russian command transferred the bulk of the committed formations of the Central Grouping of Forces (primarily comprised of elements of the Central Military District [CMD]) to the offensive effort to seize Avdiivka in October 2023.[9] Russian officials have recently praised the Central Grouping of Forces for the seizure of Avdiivka and have notably highlighted CMD Commander Colonel General Andrei Mordvichev and increasingly identified the Avdiivka direction as the AOR of the Central Grouping of Forces.[10] The Russian command may have decided to codify the de facto command structure that has existed in the Avdiivka area since late Fall 2023 to explicitly establish a maneuver force intended to exploit recent Russian advances in the area. The Avdiivka-Donetsk axis is a relatively narrower AOR compared to the AORs of other Russian force groupings in Ukraine, and this focused responsibility suggests that the Russian military command likely intends for CMD elements to continue offensive efforts in the Avdiivka area in the near and medium term.

The Russian command likely hopes that the reorganization of command structures will establish more cohesive Russian grouping of forces throughout the theater in Ukraine. Russian forces recently reorganized the command structure of the Russian grouping of forces in southern Ukraine, abolishing an unnamed grouping of forces that defended against the Ukrainian summer 2023 counteroffensive and distributing its elements between the Russian “Dnepr” Grouping of Forces (AOR in Kherson Oblast and western Zaporzihia Oblast) and the Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces (AOR in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area and western Donetsk Oblast).[11] The Russian Western Grouping of Forces has launched an ongoing multi-axis offensive operation along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border and has designed elements of that operation based on its control over a cohesive force grouping along a wide AOR.[12] Mashovets noted that the transfer of the Avdiivka-Donetsk City axis to the Central Grouping of Forces bisects the Russian Southern Grouping of Forces, which previously had responsibility for the frontline from the Bakhmut direction through the Marinka direction.[13] It is unclear if this bisection will generate further command and control (C2) difficulties for Russian forces near Bakhmut and west and southwest of Donetsk City beyond the pervasive C2 issues that Russian forces already face writ large in Ukraine.[14] This apparent Russian reorganization effort suggests that the Russian command may be attempting to implement lessons it has learned about organizing command structures in areas in which it intends to prioritize offensive efforts as the more cohesive Russian groupings of forces are engaged in more concerted or broader offensive efforts.

Recent developments in Transnistria, the pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova, are unlikely to pose a military threat to Ukraine and will more likely impact Moldova’s European Union (EU) integration prospects. Ukrainian officials stated that Russian drones flew into Moldovan airspace on the night of February 26-27 during a Russian strike series targeting Ukrainian rear areas.[15] The Moldovan Ministry of Defense (MoD), however, denied that any drones flew over Moldova.[16] ISW continues to assess that the Russian forces currently in Transnistria are not capable of posing a meaningful military threat to Ukraine without reinforcements, which Russia has no likely way of bringing to Transnistria rapidly or at scale, and ISW has not observed any clear indications of Russian military preparations to intervene in Transnistria or Moldova more generally.[17] The flight of a drone over Moldovan airspace has more direct implications for Moldovan sovereignty than for Ukrainian security.

ISW is amending its warning forecast in light of continued Transnistrian officials’ statements that the upcoming Congress of Transnistrian Deputies will discuss Moldovan economic policies, likely related to changes to Moldova’s Customs Code that went into effect on January 1, 2024.[18] ISW issued a warning forecast on February 22 and assessed that Transnistrian officials may call for a referendum on annexation to Russia during the Congress of Transnistrian Deputies on February 28 to support Russian hybrid operations intent on politically and socially destabilizing Moldova.[19] The last Congress of Transnistrian Deputies was convened in March 2006, at which Transnistrian deputies decided to hold a referendum on Transnistria’s independence and future subsequent annexation into Russia.[20] The 2006 congress similarly occurred a few weeks after Ukraine imposed new customs regulations on Transnistria.[21] While the referendum received overwhelming popular support in 2006, neither Russia nor Transnistria advanced legal mechanisms for annexation at that time.

Moldova’s path towards EU membership required Moldova to change to its Customs Code to align with EU regulations.[22] Moldova had previously exempted Transnistrian businesses from paying duties to the Moldovan government for Transnistrian imports from and exports to the EU and instead allowed Transnistrian businesses to pay duties to the Transnistrian government.[23] Transnistria responded to the January 2024 changes requiring that Transnistrian businesses pay required duties to the Moldovan government by increasing taxes on about 2,000 Moldovan businesses in Transnistria, but Transnistrian President Vadim Krasnoselsky stated on February 24 that customs payments to the Transnistrian budget still decreased by 18 percent since the start of 2024.[24]

Major actors in Transnistria have varying economic and political interests. The American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project (CTP) previously assessed that Transnistria is a mafia state run by Viktor Gushan, whose company Sheriff Enterprises controls a majority of the Transnistrian economy and receives large portions of Transnistria’s government spending.[25] Gushan’s businesses have been heavily oriented towards the EU after Moldova signed a trade deal with the EU in 2014 that guaranteed tariff-free access to EU markets. Gushan’s businesses would also benefit from the reestablishment of good Ukrainian-Transnistrian relations, as Transnistria imported and exported most of its goods through Ukraine until Ukraine closed those borders in 2022 due to Russia's full-scale invasion — facts that would give Gushan good reason to oppose Transnistrian annexation into Russia for economic reasons. EU officials have indicated that Moldova could join the EU without Transnistria.[26] Gushan may prefer a Western-oriented Moldova in which Transnistria enjoys special tax exceptions over annexation into Russia or Moldovan EU membership without Transnistria. Moldova, however, is unlikely to reverse its customs code changes given its current commitment to joining the EU. Gushan’s calculus, therefore, is complex, and his preferences are unclear at this time. ISW will provide an update following the Congress of Deputies on February 28.

Russia may also hope to exploit a hybrid play in Transnistria taking advantage of recent developments. Gushan likely competes with the Transnistrian Ministry of State Security (MGB), reportedly a “department” of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) that takes orders from the Kremlin.[27] Citizens of both Russian-influenced regions of Moldova — Transnistria and Gagauzia — notably recently protested Moldova’s new Customs Code.[28] Russia may attempt to exploit domestic opposition to Moldovan policies to sow instability in Moldova and delay Moldova’s accession to the EU.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu continues to highlight recent Russian tactical successes in Ukraine as substantial battlefield victories for political purposes ahead of the upcoming Russian presidential election. Shoigu addressed the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) board on February 27 and reported that Russian forces are continuing efforts to improve their positions in the Donetsk (Avdiivka) and Kupyansk (Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border area) directions.[29] Shoigu reported that Russian forces have pushed Ukrainian forces out of Lastochkyne and Sieverne (both west of Avdiivka) and Pobieda (southwest of Donetsk City) and claimed that Russian forces have captured about 327 square kilometers of territory since the beginning of 2024. ISW currently assesses that Russian forces have captured closer to 205 square kilometers since January 1, 2024, and Shoigu likely deliberately overstated Russian territorial gains. Shoigu’s promotion of the Russian capture of very small settlements of limited tactical significance suggests that the Russian MoD is trying to emphasize even such small gains to present an image of a constantly advancing Russian military. All three of the settlements that Shoigu chose to prominently highlight are comprised of small semi-urban areas spanning a few blocks, so Russian forces’ capture of these settlements was a very tactical endeavor. ISW recently assessed that the Russian MoD is likely trying to play up recent tactical gains to generate positive informational effects before the March 2024 presidential election.[30]

Shoigu additionally highlighted Russia’s Central and Eastern Military Districts (CMD and EMD) to posture against supposed anti-Russian activity in Central Asia and the Indo-Pacific.[31] Shoigu discussed security challenges emanating from Central Asia, specifically highlighting threats from Afghanistan, a purported increase in the number of Islamic State fighters in the region, and the spread of “radical ideology and subversive activities” targeted at the southern borders of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Shoigu claimed that the CMD will focus efforts on responding to various “crisis situations” in the Central Asian region through military exercises with CSTO member states. Shoigu also emphasized that the CMD is equipped with Iskander-M ballistic missiles and Tornado-G MLRS systems. Iskander-M and Tornado-Gs are not weapons systems particularly appropriate for responding to terrorist threats. Shoigu was more likely highlighting the capabilities of the CMD in this region to posture and project the impression of Russian military power and tacitly to threaten retaliation in the case of any perceived anti-Russian activities in this region. Shoigu also accused the US of fomenting tensions in the Indo-Pacific region and claimed that the EMD is increasing its combat capabilities in response to rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula and around Taiwan. Shoigu also likely intended to project the image of Russian military might into the Indo-Pacific and tacitly threaten the US for its own efforts in this region while also supporting efforts to portray itself as an equal Indo-Pacific security partner for China. The bulk of CMD and EMD personnel, commanders, and military district-level assets are currently heavily committed in Ukraine, and the Russian military command may feel this vulnerability in Russia’s ability to protect its southern and eastern flanks or play the role that the Kremlin desires to play in the geopolitics of both regions.

Ukrainian forces have reportedly shot down two Russian Su-34s on February 27, the tenth downed Russian military aircraft within roughly as many days. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces downed two Russian Su-34 fighter jets on February 27, at least one of which was downed in eastern Ukraine.[32] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated on February 21 that Ukrainian forces have downed seven Russian Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets since February 16.[33] The February 27 Su-34 shoot-downs are likely connected with Russian glide bomb strikes in Donetsk Oblast, particularly near Avdiivka as Russian forces use heavy glide bomb strikes in an attempt to exploit gains in the Avdiivka area. Ukraine’s downing of a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft on February 23 has likely constrained Russian strategic reconnaissance capabilities. Ihnat stated that Russian forces have not deployed another A-50 over the Sea of Azov since the downing and have increased their use of aerial reconnaissance drones across the theater to compensate.[34]

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) reported on February 27 that the ongoing Russian information campaign to demoralize Ukrainian society will intensify between March and May 2024.[35] The SBU reported that the information campaign, which they call “Maidan-3," intends to sow panic and discontent among the Ukrainian population and drive a wedge between civilians and military and political leadership. The Ukrainian Presidential Intelligence Committee reported that Russia has spent a total of $1.5 billion on this information campaign (including $250 million on information operations on the Telegram messaging app alone) and noted that this spending is on par with Russia’s spending on conventional military activities. The SBU noted that the information campaign will intensify from March to May 20, 2024 to exploit the Ukrainian political situation and foment distrust in and discontent with the Ukrainian government. The March to May timeline is significant—if Russia had not illegally invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainian presidential election would have been scheduled to occur on March 31, 2024 and May 20, 2024 is the fifth anniversary of Zelensky’s inauguration.[36] Russia appears to be pursuing this extremely costly information campaign to undermine trust in Ukrainian leadership and spread discontent with the aim of weakening Ukrainian society.

Russia likely tested an element of its Sovereign Internet on February 27, likely in an effort to strengthen control over individual aspects of the Russian information space. Russian sources reported several widespread outages of prominent social media platforms on February 27, including Telegram, YouTube, VKontakte (VK), Viber, WhatsApp, and Zoom, and later reported that service has since been restored.[37] Russian sources also reported that Russians were able to access some blocked social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, during the outage.[38] Russian State Duma Committee on Information Policy Deputy Head Anton Tkachev stated that Russian federal censor Roskomnadzor caused the outage while testing and reconfiguring gateways to identify and close “bottlenecks” to prohibited content.[39] BBC Russian Service quoted Russian organization ”Network Freedoms” as saying that Roskomnadzor may have been adjusting settings related to “technical means of countering threats” (TSPU), a set of tools that Russian federal law obligates Russian telecom providers to possess.[40] “Network Freedoms” told BBC Russian Service that Roskomnazdor is developing procedures and training specialists to use TSPU to centrally manage the Russian internet and develop a service on state-affiliated social media network VK to better censor content on the site.[41] Russia is likely attempting to expand this centralization to other social media sites that are active in Russia given the Kremlin’s tensions with other social media platforms. Russia has declared Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp parent company Meta as a “terrorist” organization, and Telegram has refused to comply with some of the Kremlin’s more extensive censorship measures.[42]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian forces are attempting to exploit tactical opportunities offered by the Russian seizure of Avdiivka and appear to be maintaining a relatively high tempo of offensive operations aimed at pushing as far as possible in the Avdiivka area before Ukrainian forces establish more cohesive and harder-to-penetrate defensive lines in the area.
• Russian forces are likely attempting to create an operational maneuver force for the exploitation of recent Russian advances in the Avdiivka direction.
• The Russian command likely hopes that the reorganization of command structures will establish more cohesive Russian grouping of forces throughout the theater in Ukraine.
•  Recent developments in Transnistria, the pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova, are unlikely to pose a military threat to Ukraine and will more likely impact Moldova’s European Union (EU) integration prospects. ISW is amending its warning forecast in light of continued Transnistrian officials’ statements that the upcoming Congress of Transnistrian Deputies will discuss Moldovan economic policies, likely related to changes to Moldova’s Customs Code that went into effect on January 1, 2024.
• Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu continues to highlight recent Russian tactical successes in Ukraine as substantial battlefield victories for political purposes ahead of the upcoming Russian presidential election. Shoigu additionally highlighted Russia’s Central and Eastern Military Districts (CMD and EMD) to posture against supposed anti-Russian activity in Central Asia and the Indo-Pacific.
• Ukrainian forces have reportedly shot down two Russian Su-34s on February 27, the tenth downed Russian military aircraft within roughly as many days.
• Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) reported on February 27 that the ongoing Russian information campaign to demoralize Ukrainian society will intensify between March and May 2024.
• Russia likely tested an element of its Sovereign Internet on February 27, likely in an effort to strengthen control over individual aspects of the Russian information space.
• Russian forces advanced west of Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements across the theater.
• A Ukrainian official warned that Russia seeks to ramp up force generation efforts in occupied Ukraine following the formal integration of occupied and claimed Ukrainian territories into the Russian Southern Military District (SMD).
• Russian authorities are reportedly systematizing the adoption of deported Ukrainian children in Russia.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports. 

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Positional fighting continued along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on February 27, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this the area. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 500 meters deep north of Synkivka (northeast of Kupyansk) and 300 meters deep west of Kreminna near Terny and Torske, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[43] Positional fighting continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; northwest of Svatove near Ivanivka, Kyslivka, and Tabaivka; and west of Kreminna near Terny.[44] Ukrainian Khortytsia Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions are conducting glide bombs strikes on Ukrainian artillery positions and tank crews and are using Shahed-136/131 drones to strike Ukrainian frontline positions.[45] The spokesperson for a Ukrainian brigade operating in the Kupyansk direction stated that Russian forces continue to conduct offensive operations towards Kupyansk with an alternating intensity, wherein Russian forces initially attack for a period, then decrease the tempo of their offensive operations after suffering losses to regroup and replenish, and then later intensify assaults once again.[46] ISW has previously assessed that Russian forces likely intend to alternate the intensity of operations along the entire Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line in a staggered manner in order to allow Russian forces to periodically regroup and prepare for future assaults.[47] Elements of the 144th Motorized Rifle Division’s 283rd and 388th motorized rifle regiments (20th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Western Military District [WMD]) and elements of the 25th CAA’s 31st and 37th motorized rifle regiments and 19th Tank Regiment reportedly continue to operate west of Kreminna near Yampolivka and Terny.[48]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces reportedly advanced west of Bakhmut amid continued positional engagements in the Bakhmut direction on February 27. Several Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced on the northern and southeastern outskirts of Ivanivske (directly west of Bakhmut) and are moving towards the center of the village.[49] Ukrainian Khortytsia Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash noted that Chechen Akhmat units are attacking southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka in an attempt to break through to Chasiv Yar (west of Bakhmut).[50] Ukrainian and Russian sources noted that heavy fighting is ongoing northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske; and southwest of Bakhmut near Andriivka, Klishchiivka, and Kurdyumivka.[51] Elements of the Russian 331st Guards Airborne (VDV) Regiment (98th VDV Division) continue to operate northwest of Bakhmut between Bohdanivka and Ivanivske.[52] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported that elements of the 102nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (150th Motorized Rifle Division, 8th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) recently arrived in the Bakhmut direction and advanced northeast of Ivanivske.[53]

Russian forces advanced west of Avdiivka following Ukrainian forces’ withdrawal from two settlements in the area on February 27. Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Dmytro Lykhoviy stated on February 27 that Ukrainian forces withdrew from Sieverne (west of Avdiivka) and Stepove (northwest of Avdiivka) after fierce battles overnight on February 26-27.[54] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) subsequently claimed that Russian forces completely captured Sieverne.[55] Lykhoviy also reported that Ukrainian forces stabilized their defenses along the Tonenke-Orlivka-Berdychi line that runs just west of the Sieverne-Stepove area.[56] Geolocated footage posted on February 27 shows a Russian soldier of the 15th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd CAA, Central Military District [CMD]) in western Stepove, confirming that Russian forces have captured the settlement.[57] Additional geolocated footage posted on February 27 shows that Russian forces advanced along a windbreak northwest of Avdiivka.[58] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces advanced into northeastern Orlivka (about 3km west of Avdiivka) and east and southeast of Berdychi (about 4km northwest of Avdiivka), although ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation of Russian advances on the outskirts of these two small settlements.[59] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced about 2.68km wide and 1.1km deep in the general Avdiivka direction on February 27.[60] Elements of the Russian 15th and 21st Motorized Rifle Brigades (both 2nd CAA, CMD), 35th and 55th Motorized Rifle Brigades (both 41st CAA, CMD), and various 1st Donetsk People’s Republic Army Corps (DNR AC) elements continue to fight in the Avdiivka direction.[61]

Russian forces reportedly advanced west and southwest of Donetsk City on February 27, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of changes to the frontline in this area. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced in southern Krasnohorivka and northwest of Marinka (both west of Donetsk City).[62] Milbloggers additionally claimed that Russian forces advanced within eastern Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City), although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of recent Russian advances in Novomykhailivka.[63] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported continued positional engagements west of Donetsk City near Krasnohorivka and Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka and Pobieda.[64]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Positional engagements continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on February 27, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Vuhledar; south of Velyka Novosilka near Staromayorske and Urozhaine; southwest of Velyka Novosilka near Malynivka; and southeast of Hulyaipole near Marfopil.[65]

Positional engagements continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on February 27, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. Ukrainian and Russian forces stated that positional engagements continued near Robotyne and Verbove (east of Robotyne).[66] One Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces may have seized Robotyne but noted that this information is still unconfirmed.[67] Other milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces still maintain positions in Robotyne, and ISW has not observed visual evidence showing that Russian forces have completely captured the settlement.[68] Elements of the Chechen ”Vostok” Akhmat Battalion are reportedly operating near Robotyne.[69]

Positional engagements continued in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast near Krynky on February 27.[70]

Ukrainian officials continued to highlight the structural inferiority of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) base in Novorossiysk, Krasnodar Krai. Ukrainian Navy Spokesperson Captain Third Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk stated on February 27 that Russian forces are still loading Kalibr missile systems on ships and submarines at the Russian naval base in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea because the base in Novorossisyk lacks the capacity to handle such missiles.[71] Pletenchuk also stated that the Novorossisyk base has less space for ships to dock and lacks the infrastructure to house Russian personnel and their families.

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

The Ukrainian Air Force stated that Russian forces launched an unspecified number of Iskander-M ballistic missiles and North Korean-provided Kn-23 missiles, four Kh-59 cruise missiles, one Kh-31P anti-radar missile, and 13 Shahed-136/131 drones on the night of February 26 to 27 and that Ukrainian forces shot down two Kh-59s and 11 Shaheds over Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytskyi, and Kirovohrad oblasts.[72] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces have used a “qualitatively different approach” in the strikes over the past few days and are targeting Ukrainian aviation infrastructure.[73] ISW has observed Russian forces employing various strike packages against Ukrainian infrastructure over the past several days.

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

A Ukrainian official warned that Russia seeks to ramp up forcible mobilization efforts in occupied Ukraine following the formal integration of occupied Ukrainian territories into the Russian Southern Military District (SMD). Ukrainian Berdyansk Military Administration Head Viktoriya Halitsyna reported on February 27 that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree incorporating occupied Ukraine into the SMD enters into force on March 1, after which Russia will formally conduct mobilization and conscription in occupied Ukraine until April 1.[74] These efforts, if confirmed, likely aim to bolster Russia’s ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts in Russia and occupied Ukraine and do not likely reflect a broader Russian willingness to conduct another wave of mobilization. Russia’s forcible mobilization of a population it occupies is likely a violation of international law.[75]

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik reportedly stated on February 27 that North Korea munitions factories are operating at full capacity to supply munitions to Russia.[76] South Korean news agency Yonhap News Agency cited Shin as estimating that North Korea has shipped 6,700 containers of munitions and equipment to Russia since September 2023, enough to hold up to three million 152mm artillery rounds or 500,000 122mm artillery rounds. Shin reportedly stated that North Korea’s weapons factories, unlike its munitions factories, are only operating at 30 percent capacity due to supply shortages. Shin reportedly stated that Russia appears to be supplying North Korea with food, raw materials and parts for weapons manufacturing, and likely satellite-related technology in exchange for the weapons deliveries.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Nothing significant to report.

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Ukraine’s European partners continue efforts to source and finance artillery shells for Ukraine. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala stated that 15 European states are involved in the Czech Republic’s initiative to source weapons for Ukraine from outside of EU member states.[77] Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte stated that the composition of this coalition is classified information but that the Netherlands has allocated more than 100 million euros (about $108 million) to this initiative.[78] French President Emmanuel Macron stated that he also supports this initiative.[79]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian authorities are reportedly systematizing the adoption of deported Ukrainian children in Russia. Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on February 27 that Russian authorities in Moscow Oblast created “training programs” for people potentially considering adopting illegally deported Ukrainian children in Russia.[80] The program reportedly falsely conflates Ukrainian and Russian culture. The program reportedly tells participants that their main objective is to create a “second homeland” for Ukrainian children in Russia and that they will need to overcome “difficulties in international differences.” Participants of the training program must undergo interviews in which Russian authorities ask if they have Ukrainian friends and relatives. ISW continues to assess that the forced deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children likely amounts to a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Russian Red Cross (RRC) is reportedly functioning as a Kremlin propaganda tool in occupied Ukraine and does not have the proper mandate to operate in war zones like the International Committee of the Red Cross.[81] A group of Russian and European media outlets published an investigation into the RRC based on leaked Russian Presidential Administration documents. The RRC has reportedly worked with and awarded organizations under sanctions for raising funds for or providing weapons to the Russian military. RRC employees have also reportedly issued pro-Russian statements publicly. The investigation stated that the RRC set up organizations under its name, including the “Donetsk Red Cross” and “Luhansk Red Cross,” in order to portray Russia’s occupation of Ukraine in a more positive light. The RRC also reportedly had access to Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) and refugees, whom RCC workers insulted and abused.

Ukrainian sources stated that Ukrainian partisans reportedly detonated explosive devices at the office of the United Russia party in occupied Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast that will also operate as polling stations in the upcoming Russian presidential election.[82]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian officials accused Ukrainian special forces of using a “chemical warfare agent” in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast on February 27, likely to deflect from Ukrainian reports about widespread Russian use of chemical weapons along the frontline.[83] Russian officials did not identify the specific “chemical warfare agent “that they accused Ukrainian forces of using. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly reported that Russian forces are increasing their use of illegal chemical weapons in Ukraine in an apparent violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to which Russia is a signatory.[84] The Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade recently acknowledged in a now-deleted post that elements of the brigade deliberately used K-51 grenades with riot control agents (RCAs) prohibited by the CWC on Ukrainian positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast.[85]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Nothing significant to report.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

5. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, February 27, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-february-27-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Iraq: Two Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated sources told the New York Times that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias “fiercely resisted” IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani’s orders in late January to halt attacks targeting US forces in the region.
• The timeline of events indicates that Ghaani—not Iraqi leaders—was instrumental in convincing Kataib Hezbollah to pause attacks. Kataib Hezbollah responded to Iranian directives from Ghaani by announcing that it would “suspend attacks” on January 30—roughly 24 hours after the meeting with Ghaani on January 29.
• Iraqi Shia clerics in Najaf may also lack the influence to convince Kataib Hezbollah to cease attacks. Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba are loyal to the Iranian supreme leader, not Iraqi Shia clerics in Najaf.
• Ghaani’s visit to Baghdad illustrates both the extent of and limits to Iran’s control of its proxy network in the Middle East. Most of Iran’s proxies and partners in Iraq immediately ceased attacks following Ghaani’s directive, though it is possible additional pressure from the Iraqi government further reinforced Ghaani’s orders.
• Gaza City: The IDF 162nd Division continued its clearing operation in Zaytoun neighborhood, southeastern Gaza City, on February 27. Palestinian militias claimed at least 16 attacks targeting Israeli forces in Zaytoun, southeastern Gaza City on February 27.
• Iran and Yemen: The United States and the United Kingdom sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and Houthi members on February 27.

IRAN UPDATE, FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Feb 27, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, February 27, 2024

Andie Parry, Amin Soltani, Peter Mills, Alexandra Braverman, Kathryn Tyson, and Brian Carter

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report. Click here to subscribe to the Iran Update.

Two Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated sources told the New York Times that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias “fiercely resisted” IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani’s orders in late January to halt attacks targeting US forces in the region.[1] The two IRGC-affiliated sources claimed that Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba commanders refused to stop attacking US forces during a meeting with Ghaani in Baghdad, which Reuters reported occurred on January 29.[2] Iranian and Iraqi sources added that senior Iraqi Shia clerics in Najaf and influential Iraqi politicians, including the Iraqi prime minister, convinced Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba to halt the attacks.

The timeline of events indicates that Ghaani was instrumental in convincing Kataib Hezbollah to pause attacks, not Iraqi leaders. Kataib Hezbollah responded to Iranian directives from Ghaani by announcing that it would “suspend attacks” on January 30—roughly 24 hours after the meeting with Ghaani on January 29. Reuters reported that Ghaani directed Iranian-backed Iraqi groups to “pause” attacks on US forces during the January 29 meeting. A senior Iranian-backed Iraqi militia commander told Reuters that Ghaani’s influence was essential in convincing Kataib Hezbollah to pause attacks. Reuters added that one group, presumably Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, did not “initially agree” to Ghaani’s directive.[3] Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba said on February 2 that it would continue attacks targeting US forces.[4] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed three attacks targeting US forces after Ghaani’s visit.[5]

Iraqi Shia clerics in Najaf may also lack the influence to convince Kataib Hezbollah to cease attacks. Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba are loyal to the Iranian supreme leader, not Iraqi Shia clerics in Najaf.[6] It is not clear why Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba would follow orders from Iraqi Shia clerics over Ghaani, who speaks for the Iranian supreme leader.[7]

Ghaani’s visit to Baghdad illustrates both the extent of and limits to Iran’s control of its proxy network in the Middle East. Most of Iran’s proxies and partners in Iraq immediately ceased attacks following Ghaani’s directive, though it is possible additional pressure from the Iraqi government further reinforced Ghaani’s orders. Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba initially did not agree to stop attacks, but Iranian-backed Iraqi groups have not resumed attacks targeting US forces since February 4. The Iraqi prime minister has ample reason to attempt to stop Iranian-backed attacks against US forces to avoid additional US airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed groups in Iraq. The attacks—and the ensuing US airstrikes—undermine the prime minister’s ability to retain even a small international coalition presence to support Iraqi forces against ISIS.[8] Ghaani and Iran can pressure their partners and proxies to pause or resume these attacks as needed, however. Ghaani represents the Iranian supreme leader, to whom groups like Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba proclaim loyalty, meaning that many Iranian-backed groups will respond as Ghaani directs.[9]

Key Takeaways:

• Iraq: Two Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated sources told the New York Times that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias “fiercely resisted” IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani’s orders in late January to halt attacks targeting US forces in the region.
• The timeline of events indicates that Ghaani—not Iraqi leaders—was instrumental in convincing Kataib Hezbollah to pause attacks. Kataib Hezbollah responded to Iranian directives from Ghaani by announcing that it would “suspend attacks” on January 30—roughly 24 hours after the meeting with Ghaani on January 29.
• Iraqi Shia clerics in Najaf may also lack the influence to convince Kataib Hezbollah to cease attacks. Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba are loyal to the Iranian supreme leader, not Iraqi Shia clerics in Najaf.
• Ghaani’s visit to Baghdad illustrates both the extent of and limits to Iran’s control of its proxy network in the Middle East. Most of Iran’s proxies and partners in Iraq immediately ceased attacks following Ghaani’s directive, though it is possible additional pressure from the Iraqi government further reinforced Ghaani’s orders.
• Gaza City: The IDF 162nd Division continued its clearing operation in Zaytoun neighborhood, southeastern Gaza City, on February 27. Palestinian militias claimed at least 16 attacks targeting Israeli forces in Zaytoun, southeastern Gaza City on February 27.
• Iran and Yemen: The United States and the United Kingdom sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and Houthi members on February 27.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is building a “well-controlled IDF highway” south of Zaytoun to enable “at least another year” of operations in the Gaza Strip.[10] CTP-ISW previously reported the IDF’s east-to-west road construction on February 19.[11] The IDF has not officially commented on the construction, but two journalists embedded with Israel forces operating in Gaza have published accounts of the construction project.[12] A correspondent from Israel Army Radio, a media organization run by the IDF, said Israeli forces are also building three forward operating bases near the east-west road for future raids and operations in the Gaza Strip.[13]

The IDF 162nd Division continued its clearing operation in Zaytoun neighborhood, southeastern Gaza City, on February 27.[14] The 932nd Battalion (assigned to the Nahal Brigade) has operated in Zaytoun for a week to “destroy the enemy" in the area.[15] The battalion has raided Hamas buildings, weapons warehouses and observation posts to find intelligence on Hamas operations. The IDF Nahal Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) killed a Palestinian militia squad with tank fire and destroyed Hamas buildings as part of the division-sized clearing operation.[16] The 401st Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) killed Palestinian fighters at close range, directed airstrikes targeting Palestinian fighters, and uncovered a weapons factory in Zaytoun.[17]

Palestinian militias claimed at least 16 attacks targeting Israeli forces in Zaytoun, southeastern Gaza City on February 27.[18] The groups used rocket propelled grenades, mortars, explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs), improvised explosive devices, and small arms in their attacks.[19] Palestinian Islamic Jihad engineers targeted Israeli infantry by detonating a missile from an F16 that they had rigged as an improvised explosive device in a house near al Dawla roundabout in Zaytoun.[20] The high number of attacks and the use of more sophisticated capabilities — such as EFPs — is inconsistent with an Israeli Army Radio journalist‘s characterization of the fighting on January 27 as “relatively [small in] scale.”[21] Palestinian militias conducted over triple the number of attacks on Israeli forces in southern Gaza City as they did in Khan Younis Governorate on February 27.

The IDF has continued to conduct clearing operations in western Khan Younis. The IDF 7th Brigade and 35th Paratrooper Brigade detained Palestinian fighters who tried to hide among evacuating civilians to escape Khan Younis.[22] The 7th Brigade detained Palestinian fighters attempting a similar escape on February 25.[23] The IDF Maglan and Egoz special operations forces continued clearing operations in western Khan Younis over the last week.[24] The special operations forces raided a Hamas compound and seized a large amount of weapons in western Khan Younis on February 27.[25] The special operations forces have killed and detained dozens of fighters per day for the last week.[26] Palestinian militias conducted at least five attacks on Israeli forces operating in central and western Khan Younis on February 27.[27]

The IDF Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) conducted clearing operations in the Gaza Strip along the Israel-Gaza border in eastern Khan Younis Governorate.[28] PIJ claimed mortar attacks targeting Israeli forces operating in the border area in Abasan al Kabira.[29]

PIJ fired a rocket barrage from the Gaza Strip targeting Ashkelon on February 27.[30] The rocket barrage caused damage to civilian infrastructure. [31]

The IDF Gaza Division and Southern Command directed airstrikes targeting a Palestinian militia command center in the central Gaza Strip that Palestinian fighters used to direct rocket fire into Israel on February 26.[32] PIJ and the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement both conducted rocket attacks on February 26.[33]

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters at least three times in the West Bank on February 27.[34] Israeli forces killed a senior member in Palestinian Islamic Jihad‘s Tubas Battalion south of Tubas on February 27.[35]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted at least ten attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on February 26.[36] Lebanese Hezbollah launched approximately 35 rockets targeting an IDF base on Mount Meron that hosts air traffic control, radar, surveillance, communications, and jamming facilities.[37] The IDF said that the attacks did not cause any casualties or damage to the area.[38]

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said that Lebanese Hezbollah will "pay a very high price" for its continued attacks targeting northern Israel during a speech at the IDF 146th Division headquarters on February 27.[39] Lebanese Hezbollah said that it fired dozens of rockets targeting the headquarters on the same day.[40]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

The United States and the United Kingdom sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and Houthi members on February 27.[41] The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the United Kingdom designated the following individuals and organizations:

• IRGC Quds Force Deputy Commander Mohammad Reza Falahzadeh for generating revenue to fund Houthi operations
• Houthi member Ibrahim al Nashiri
• A Hong Kong-based shipping company that was responsible for facilitating the transport of Iranian commodities sold in China by the Said Jamal network. Said Jamal is a Houthi and IRGC Quds Force financial facilitator sanctioned by the United States on January 12.[42]

Falahzadeh has played a key role in supporting and financing Houthi, Hamas, and Hezbollah operations.[43] OFAC stated that the IRGC Quds Force and the Houthis sell Iranian commodities to foreign buyers to generate funds to support the Houthis. The US State Department designated the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group in January 2024.[44] The US State Department designated the entire IRGC–including the Quds Force–as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in April 2019.[45]

US CENTCOM stated that it destroyed three surface naval attack drones and two mobile anti-ship cruise missiles in Houthi-controlled Yemeni territory on February 26 that were ready-to-launch in Houthi-controlled Yemen.[46] Houthi-affiliated media outlets reported on February 26 that the United States conducted airstrikes targeting Houthi positions north of Hudaydah.[47]

6. Ukraine’s experience to become foundation of new global security architecture - Umerov

Ukraine’s experience to become foundation of new global security architecture - Umerov

ukrinform.net

February 27, 2024

View Original

https://www.ukrinform.net/amp/rubric-defense/3831904-ukraines-experience-to-become-foundation-of-new-global-security-architecture-umerov.html?utm_source=pocket_saves

This was stated by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov during the Ukraine. Year 2024 Forum, reports Ukrinform.

"Today we are talking about war. Russia's war against Ukraine today is the biggest war since World War II. We have a 3,200km-long front line, we run intensive combat operations on the 1,200km-long front line. And today, Ukraine is the only country that not only has unprecedented experience of using weapons from all over the world on the battlefield, Ukraine is the only country that has unique knowledge about the peculiarities of warfare waged by the Russian army. We understand their strategy, tactics, we know their strengths and weaknesses. We collect experience from the battlefield, conduct analysis, and develop recommendations for manufacturers," Umerov emphasized.

Read also: Syrskyi and Umerov visit command posts in combat zone

He noted that it is in Ukraine that the distance from the design office to battlefield use is the shortest.

The minister also recalled that at the latest meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council at the level of defense ministers, a decision was made to create a joint Training and Education Analysis Center. This is the first joint institution of the Alliance and Ukraine.

"Our knowledge and experience will become the foundation for the creation of a new global security architecture," Umerov emphasized.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the Ukraine. Year 2024 Forum is being held on Sunday. The main topics of the event include achieving Ukraine’s goals in the ongoing war, developing the country’s Defense and Security Forces, running the national defense and industrial complex, ensuring economic growth and Ukraine’s integration into world markets, implementing Volodymyr Zelensky’s Peace Formula, achieving security guarantees, and protecting the lives of Ukrainians.

7. Here are the winners and losers in US Army’s force structure change

Winners and losers? Is that how we really want to characterize this?

But regarding SOF. Conventional modeling does not work in quantifying SOF effects. We do need a SOF specific model.

Special Operations Forces did not double in size. Especially Army Special Operations. The 2006 QDR directed SOF growth. The Army added 1 SO aviation battalion (added to the three battalions). 1 Ranger Company to each of the 3 battalions. Increase from 1 active duty CA battalion to a CA Brigade, (yes this is more than doubling in size - the Army also added an active duty CA brigade outside of SOF but then subsequently deactivated it). 1 PSYOP group added to the 1 active duty PSYOP group (the only one to double in size).  Increase of the 528th Sustainment Battalion to a Sustainment Brigade and 1 Special Forces Battalion to each of the 5 active duty Special Forces Groups. However, the 5 Special Forces battalions could not be fully manned by 2013 so the decision was made to reorganize it for a new advanced special forces mission (which actually has great utility in strategic competition) and turn back a large number of 18 series MOS positions back to the Army. So Army SOF did not "double in size." It did grow significantly in some areas and was incapable of growing in other areas but responsibly turned back unfilled spaces to the Army that it could not man.

What did grow (and significantly)? TSOCs which arguably are the SOF unit of action. Civilian manning of HQ (USSOCOM and components) and enablers - logistics, intelligence, and communications (note that PSYOP and Civil Affairs are not enablers as some on the Hill call them - they are operational forces). We also added the Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC) and I am sure AFSOC had some significant growth especially in ISR and UAS (drones) - though AFSOC has already cut its FID/advisory squadron and non standard aircraft platforms. I'm sure Naval Special Warfare had some slight growth but I do not think their growth had any significant impact on the Navy.

Excerpts:

The Army also observed that its special operations forces had doubled in size over the past 20 years. “The Army conducted extensive analysis examining special operations requirements for large scale combat in multiple theaters and applied additional modeling to understand the requirements for special operators during the campaigning phase of great power competition,” the document stated.

The service concluded the structure there could be reduced by 3,000 spaces. “Specific reductions will be made based on an approach that ensures unique SOF capabilities are retained,” the paper added. “Positions and headquarters elements that are historically vacant or hard to fill will be prioritized for reduction.”

Here are the winners and losers in US Army’s force structure change

Defense News · by Jen Judson · February 27, 2024

The U.S. Army has unveiled a whitepaper detailing how the service plans to shrink the force in some places and grow it in other areas.

The document’s release on Tuesday comes as the Army continues transitioning from counterinsurgency missions to large-scale combat operations against technologically advanced adversaries, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth explained at a Feb. 27 event in Washington hosted by the Defense Writers Group.

Force structure changes are also necessary, she said, because the Army is working through a massive modernization effort involving a wide variety of new capabilities coming online now and over the next two decades.

“What we’ve done through the force structure changes is make room for some of the new formations,” she said, adding this equates to 7,500 new spaces for soldiers to go.

At the same time, the service’s recruiting challenges have left it with a “hollow force structure,” Wormuth said, “so we needed to basically reduce 32,000 spaces to both shrink over-structure and make room for that 7,500 [spaces] of new structure.”

The Army’s current authorized force structure is 445,000 active duty soldiers, but the service was designed for 494,000. The new force structure is meant to shore the gap, bringing troop levels to approximately 470,000 soldiers by fiscal 2029.

Wormuth told Defense News in an interview last fall that the Army was preparing to go to Capitol Hill to address some vital changes that would include both reductions from the counterinsurgency-related structure and high-tech additions to the force’s inventory. The planned force structure would focus more on operations at the corps and division levels, and less on brigade combat teams.

“By bringing force structure and end strength into closer alignment, the Army will ensure its formations are filled at the appropriate level to maintain a high state of readiness,” the Army’s whitepaper stated. “At the same time, the Army will continue to transform its recruiting efforts so that it can build back its end strength, which is needed to provide strategic flexibility, reduce strain on frequently deploying soldiers, and add new capabilities to the force.”

What’s in?

Some major elements of the new force structure will include building out the Army’s five theater-level multidomain task forces, or MDTF.

The Army has already established three MDTFs: two in the Indo-Pacific theater and one in the European theater. The service plans to set up another dedicated to the Pacific region, and yet another that is “service-retained” to likely focus on U.S. Central Command’s area of operation, Wormuth said at the Defense Writers Group event.

The MDTFs will consist of a headquarters and headquarters battalion, a multidomain effects battalion, a long-range fires battalion, an Indirect Fire Protection Capability battalion, and a brigade support battalion, the whitepaper noted.

“As discussions with allied countries progress over time, the Army will likely forward station elements of the MDTFs permanently, such as the multi domain effects and long range fires battalions, to strengthen deterrence,” the document stated.

The Army will also make “significant investments” in structure for integrated air and missile defense at both the corps and division levels to include four additional Indirect Fire Protection Capability battalions that offer defense against rockets, artillery, mortars, drones and cruise missiles at fixed and semi-fixed sites; and four additional Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense battalions.

The document noted that these new and additional formations are “only a representative sample of the Army’s full capability growth.”

What’s out?

Some of the structure that is coming out of the force are spaces authorized but not filled by soldiers. The Army won’t be asking current soldiers to leave, the paper explained.

“The Army looked carefully at each military occupational specialty, and examined each skill set and functional area for efficiencies,” the paper read. For instance, the Army will reallocate engineer assets at the brigade combat team level to the division echelon, “which allows the Army to reduce the overall number of engineer positions while giving division and corps commanders flexibility to concentrate assets as necessary during large scale combat operations.”

The Army reduced almost 10,000 spaces through efficiencies like reallocating engineer assets. The service also reduced 2,700 authorizations based on modeling, the paper stated, to include factors like “demand over time, capacity to meet National Defense Strategy requirements and past deployment stress.”

Some other Army-wide reductions will come from adjustments to close combat forces, according to the paper, to include inactivation of cavalry squadrons in continental U.S.-based Stryker brigade combat teams and infantry brigade combat teams, converting the latter’s weapons companies to platoons and eliminating some positions in the security force assistance brigades “representing a decrement to capacity at minimal risk.”

These reductions equate to another 10,000 reductions in space, the paper noted.

The Army also observed that its special operations forces had doubled in size over the past 20 years. “The Army conducted extensive analysis examining special operations requirements for large scale combat in multiple theaters and applied additional modeling to understand the requirements for special operators during the campaigning phase of great power competition,” the document stated.

The service concluded the structure there could be reduced by 3,000 spaces. “Specific reductions will be made based on an approach that ensures unique SOF capabilities are retained,” the paper added. “Positions and headquarters elements that are historically vacant or hard to fill will be prioritized for reduction.”

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

8. Beijing’s Post-Election Plan for Taiwan

Excerpts:

In other words, these were not Xi’s post-election musings. They were his pre-election marching orders to the CCP’s ideological foot soldiers and cyberwarriors. While Beijing may have fallen short in securing the DPP’s outright defeat, the strategically timed release of Xi’s speech appears aimed at validating his approach—one that blends disinformation, economic coercion, and threatening military drills—to advance China’s reunification agenda. The speech’s declassification also underscores Xi’s intention to sustain what he likely views as a winning political warfare strategy, with the goal of further undermining popular support for the DPP and galvanizing opposition unity.

Just how might this unfold?

For starters, China’s military drills to intimidate Taiwan’s population may soon resume, with Beijing stepping up patrols off the coast of Taiwan’s Kinmen archipelago. Politically, Beijing will likely move quickly behind the scenes to encourage collaboration between anti-DPP legislators, gently prompting them to support joint initiatives that undermine Lai’s agenda. Prior to local elections in 2026, China may also resume providing financial and other support to opposition candidates promoting closer cross-strait ties, as Taiwanese prosecutors found Beijing to have done ahead of last month’s election. Such meddling will almost certainly occur alongside covert Chinese efforts to identify, cultivate, and ultimately back a consensus candidate capable of challenging Lai in 2028, a herculean task predicated upon fostering KMT-TPP unity through facilitated negotiations and backroom politicking.

Beijing’s Post-Election Plan for Taiwan

Expect China to double down on political warfare.

By Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton

• China
• Taiwan

February 27, 2024, 2:00 PM

At first blush, the results of Taiwan’s national elections last month read like a clear rebuke of China’s coercive reunification agenda. Despite Beijing’s incessant branding of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as “separatist,” Taiwanese voters extended the DPP’s presidential reign for an unprecedented third consecutive term. International headlines hailed the election as a major “setback” for China, which had warned that casting a ballot for the DPP was tantamount to voting for war with the mainland. Some media even framed the DPP’s victory as an act of defiance by the Taiwanese people, rebuffing Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s assertion in his recent New Year’s address that reunification between China and Taiwan is “inevitable.”

But the political fallout following Taiwan’s election is more nuanced. Dig deeper, and Taiwan’s fractured electoral outcome foreshadows political divisions that China will exploit. It also suggests that Beijing’s pre-election meddling may have actually succeeded in advancing Xi’s dual-pronged strategy of undermining popular support for the DPP and sowing societal discord to reduce resistance to China’s reunification calls.

For starters, while the DPP’s presidential candidate, William Lai, won decisively, his victory did not translate into an overwhelming mandate because he secured only 40 percent of the vote in a three-way race. The two opposition candidates, representing the Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), garnered the remaining 60 percent of ballots. Minor differences aside, both opposition parties set themselves apart from the DPP by pledging to stabilize cross-strait relations through dialogue with the mainland, a prospect China dismissed as impossible under a DPP-led administration.

Beijing undoubtedly took note of these distinctions. Before the election, Chinese-owned social media platforms popular in Taiwan, like TikTok, amplified content that portrayed the opposition candidates and their parties positively, according to analyses conducted by Mandiant, Numbers Protocol, Doublethink Lab, and other cyberthreat firms. These platforms simultaneously unleashed a deluge of disinformation denigrating Lai and the DPP, including false claims the DPP collaborated with Washington to build bioweapons—an echo of Moscow’s propaganda claims against Ukraine. In other instances, Chinese bot farms established internet profiles impersonating genuine Taiwanese news websites and began propagating seemingly legitimate broadcast clips aligning with China’s preferred political narratives about reunification.

Evaluating disinformation’s impact on elections is extremely difficult—not just in Taiwan. But the Chinese campaigns almost certainly fostered skepticism toward Lai and his agenda. Lai still won, but his share of the vote fell far behind that of outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, under whom Lai served as vice president. With all of the votes now counted, Lai’s result was 17 points lower than Tsai’s victory in 2020 and 16 points lower than her victory in 2016, when she vanquished KMT candidate Han Kuo-yu and third-party challenger James Soong.

More importantly for Beijing than Lai’s weak mandate, his presidential victory did not translate into DPP success in the parliamentary election held on the same day. The DPP lost its legislative majority, shedding 10 seats, while the KMT and TPP gained 14 and three seats, respectively. Now, the KMT controls Taiwan’s parliament, with Han—humiliatingly defeated by Tsai eight years ago—tapped to serve as speaker. This new reality augurs bitter infighting over Lai’s political agenda, not least defense priorities and other policies to deter Chinese aggression. This is an outcome Beijing likely welcomes.

Practically speaking, this could spell trouble for Lai’s plans to sustain several Tsai-era initiatives, including Taiwan’s indigenous submarine program and plans to extend military conscription from four months to one year—a move the KMT campaigned against. Opposition legislators, nervous about provoking Beijing, could also employ obstructionist tactics to complicate Lai’s other stated goal of strengthening defense, diplomatic, and trade ties with Washington. Amid the discord over security policy, Taiwan’s ability to present a unified defense against external threats could weaken, leaving it vulnerable to Beijing’s coercion and ill-prepared to repel a potential invasion, blockade, or other hostile act.

China’s public response to the election, while swift, hardly denoted a nation sulking over the defeat it was supposedly handed by Taiwanese voters. If anything, Beijing’s bombast bordered on triumphant. Seizing on the fragmented outcome, China dismissed Lai and the DPP as out of touch with “mainstream public opinion in Taiwan.” Beijing also insisted that the result did not alter the fundamental nature or trajectory of cross-Strait relations, suggesting Beijing views the opposition’s gains as validating its view that Taiwan’s population remains receptive to a reunification dialogue. Tellingly, China has not ordered new military drills encircling Taiwan since the election, likely because its months-long marathon of maneuvers already achieved their intended purpose of undermining popular support for the DPP.

Xi’s response, above all others, loomed largest. Two days after Lai’s victory, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) news magazine and official theoretical journal, Qiushi, published a speech Xi delivered to party elites about Taiwan. In it, Xi hammered home the importance of “developing and strengthening patriotic, pro-unification forces in Taiwan,” a reference to parties, politicians, and elements of the population opposed to the DPP. Xi also championed the United Front—the arm of the Chinese Communist Party responsible for international political warfare and disinformation operations—in aggressively countering “separatist acts of Taiwanese independence.” In Beijing’s eyes, separatism can be anything Taiwan does to maintain international relations and evade Beijing’s coercive tactics—it does not have to be a formal declaration of independence, which Lai has repeatedly ruled out.

On their own, Xi’s remarks hardly broke new ground. What is significant is that Xi actually delivered the speech not in response to the election but 18 months ago—more precisely, one week before then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taiwan to meet Tsai, a trip that ignited China’s drive to stoke invasion fears and delegitimize the DPP.

In other words, these were not Xi’s post-election musings. They were his pre-election marching orders to the CCP’s ideological foot soldiers and cyberwarriors. While Beijing may have fallen short in securing the DPP’s outright defeat, the strategically timed release of Xi’s speech appears aimed at validating his approach—one that blends disinformation, economic coercion, and threatening military drills—to advance China’s reunification agenda. The speech’s declassification also underscores Xi’s intention to sustain what he likely views as a winning political warfare strategy, with the goal of further undermining popular support for the DPP and galvanizing opposition unity.

Just how might this unfold?

For starters, China’s military drills to intimidate Taiwan’s population may soon resume, with Beijing stepping up patrols off the coast of Taiwan’s Kinmen archipelago. Politically, Beijing will likely move quickly behind the scenes to encourage collaboration between anti-DPP legislators, gently prompting them to support joint initiatives that undermine Lai’s agenda. Prior to local elections in 2026, China may also resume providing financial and other support to opposition candidates promoting closer cross-strait ties, as Taiwanese prosecutors found Beijing to have done ahead of last month’s election. Such meddling will almost certainly occur alongside covert Chinese efforts to identify, cultivate, and ultimately back a consensus candidate capable of challenging Lai in 2028, a herculean task predicated upon fostering KMT-TPP unity through facilitated negotiations and backroom politicking.

In tandem, Beijing will likely offer preferential treatment, including market access, to Taiwanese businesses supporting closer ties with China—in hopes of luring the business community away from the DPP. China could also offer economic incentives and investment opportunities that benefit regions or industries traditionally represented by the KMT and TPP, thereby encouraging these parties to continue supporting policies that align with Beijing’s long-term interests. Targeted measures could include increased Chinese imports of agricultural products from rural areas that have historically been KMT strongholds, as well as new manufacturing investments in KMT-controlled industrial zones.

Beyond politics and economics, Beijing will wield its considerable control over social media to champion narratives highlighting the benefits of closer cross-strait relations, albeit on Xi’s terms. China may also seek to restart once-dormant people-to-people exchanges to deepen ties between regions and groups perceived as anxious over the DPP’s agenda, which would help lay the groundwork for broader opposition support during future election cycles. Lastly, China will double down on diplomatic efforts to reduce Taiwan’s international standing, as reflected in its convincing the Pacific island of Nauru to switch recognition from Taipei to Beijing two days after Lai’s election victory. Beijing’s next target is likely Tuvalu, which would then leave Taiwan with only 10 partners recognizing it, rather than Beijing.

All told, Taiwan’s election result does not mark the dawn of a DPP dynasty, nor does it spell the end of China’s reunification ambitions by whatever means necessary. If anything, the DPP’s diminished standing suggests Beijing will double down on the political war it is already waging and winning, rather than start an armed one it could lose. That prospect, however, should be of little solace to Taiwan, where the battleground has shifted from missiles to mandates, and where resilience against political subversion remains the ultimate defense.

Foreign Policy · by Craig Singleton

9. How to hold Ukraine over until Congress passes more aid funding

How to hold Ukraine over until Congress passes more aid funding

Defense News · by John Hardie and Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery (ret.) · February 27, 2024

Without U.S. aid, Ukraine cannot defend its current lines, let alone liberate more territory, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Sunday, shortly after Kyiv’s troops were forced to withdraw from the eastern city of Avdiivka amid a severe ammunition shortage. Yet the House Republican leadership is still refusing to consider, much less pass, further security assistance funding for Kyiv.

There is, however, a way Washington could help hold Ukraine over until Congress gets its act together. While the administration has declared it’s “out of money” for Ukraine aid, it retains the authority to give Kyiv over $4 billion worth of materiel from U.S. stocks. The administration has declined to tap this authority because it’s out of funding to replace the donated equipment. But there are key weapons America could send now without compromising U.S. military readiness.

Ukraine is suffering from a shortage of men and materiel, particularly artillery ammunition. Congress’ monthslong delay in passing supplemental aid funding has exacerbated this challenge. Yet after rejecting an aid bill passed by the Senate earlier this month, House Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be in no rush to tackle the issue. It could be months before a bill reaches the president’s desk. Ukraine can’t afford to wait that long.

RELATED

Comparing Russian, Ukrainian forces two years into war

Data from a recent military report offers a comparison between the military forces of the two countries.

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Washington has relied on presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, as its primary vehicle for Ukraine aid. PDA allows the administration to give foreign partners weapons taken from existing U.S. stocks, expediting delivery. Through PDA, the United States has provided Kyiv with regular shipments of artillery ammunition, air defense interceptors and other critical capabilities.

Normally, the Pentagon replaces equipment donated under PDA by procuring new systems or munitions, which the military receives within months or at most a year or two. In 2022 and 2023, Congress provided both additional PDA for Ukraine as well as funding to replace the donated equipment.

However, the PDA packages for Ukraine ground to a halt in late December. The issue isn’t a lack of PDA itself; the administration can still donate around $4.2 billion worth of weapons. Rather, as the Office of Management and Budget’s director explained, the administration made a “very tough decision” to forgo the remaining PDA because the Pentagon has run out of money to buy replacement equipment.

The Defense Department presumably worries, despite its $850 billion-plus annual budgets, that continued donations within this $4 billion limit could jeopardize U.S. military readiness, absent assured replacement funding.

The administration is obviously right to prioritize American warfighters. But the U.S. military’s vast inventories contain plenty of things that wouldn’t be missed by American troops but would be a godsend to Ukraine. The Pentagon could afford to wait to replace these items — if it bothers to replace them at all.

Most notably, the United States could probably spare some more cluster munitions for Ukraine’s Western-made artillery systems. Known as dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICM, these rounds release dozens of smaller sub-munitions, increasing lethality. The Biden administration first provided 155mm DPICM rounds to Ukraine last summer as Western stocks of standard shells ran low. Ukrainian forces have since employed these munitions to great effect.

While it’s unclear how many DPICM rounds Kyiv has already received, the United States probably has a lot left. America’s DPICM inventory reportedly totaled nearly 3 million rounds as of spring 2023. Some of those munitions may be expired or otherwise unsuitable for Ukraine, but a considerable portion is probably still available.

It’s doubtful sending Ukraine more now would harm U.S. readiness. Pentagon policy discourages U.S. commanders from using DPICMs, particularly those with a dud rate greater than 1%, which are supposed to be retired from service.

In addition to shells, Ukraine needs more protected mobility. Even outdated vehicles like the humble M113 armored personnel carrier could offer significant value if provided in sufficient quantities. M113s play a key role in evacuating wounded Ukrainian soldiers and moving forces around the battlefield, but Kyiv needs more of these vehicles. Absent enough armored vehicles, Ukrainian troops must rely on civilian alternatives that provide little protection against Russian artillery and other threats.

The U.S. Army has thousands of M113s in long-term storage and is actively replacing those still in service. Sending a significant number of them to Ukraine would prevent avoidable casualties. That’s especially important at a time when Kyiv needs to husband its scarce manpower.

To be clear, this stopgap solution would not obviate the need for Congress to pass additional security assistance funding. It would merely buy time. U.S. assistance for Ukraine will not be sustainable without that funding, and there’s a limit to what America should provide without assured replacements.

Administration officials may chafe at having to explain how they’re able to resume aid despite being “out of money.” They may also fear weakening — if only slightly — the pressure on House Republicans to pass the supplemental. But those are poor reasons not to take a simple step that would save Ukrainian lives.

Ukrainian troops are fighting not only for their freedom but also vital U.S. interests. America cannot afford to leave them out to dry indefinitely.

John Hardie is deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, where retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow.

10. Preventing a Ramadan Explosion in the Holy Land

Preventing a Ramadan Explosion in the Holy Land

How Israeli self-restraint and American diplomacy can ward off potential escalation during the upcoming Muslim holy month.

https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/preventing-a-ramadan-explosion-in?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=fcxdf&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

JONATHAN SCHANZER AND MARK DUBOWITZ

FEB 27, 2024

23

6

An Israeli soldier stands guard in East Jerusalem with the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the background. (Credit: Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images)

The Muslim holiday of Ramadan begins on March 11 this year. How Israel handles this month-long festival of fasting by day and feasting by night will exert significant influence on the wider conflict in the Middle East—and a possible hostage deal between Israel and Hamas that yields a pause in the current war in Gaza could help mitigate the prospects of unrest. Other players may have significant roles to play, too.

First, it is important to understand the role Ramadan has played in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over recent years.

The 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in 2021 was undeniably connected to Ramadan. It began after Israeli police, amidst security concerns, closed the plaza outside one of the gates of Jerusalem’s Old City at the start of Ramadan. Nightly clashes erupted in the city, holy to all three monotheistic faiths. Tensions further escalated over reports of the possible eviction of Arab families from homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah (the eviction never occurred). Soon enough, the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas began to fire rockets out of Gaza. In the final days of Ramadan, the violence spiraled into all-out war.

Not surprisingly, the Islamic Republic of Iran played a significant role in stoking that clash in 2021. On al-Quds Day—a day created in 1979 by the regime’s first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to make the last Friday of Ramadan a flash point between Israel and the Palestinians—current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei exhorted Palestinians to “continue their legitimate, morally correct fight” against Israel. He hailed the use of “precision missiles,” and glorified “martyrs” from terror groups.

The following year’s Ramadan also proved violent. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal threatened that his group would “escalate in Ramadan, and we are on the verge of hot days.” He was not wrong. The month of fasting was preceded by a week of terror that left 11 dead in Israel. After the holiday began, a terror shooting attack rocked Tel Aviv. Senior terrorist leaders encouraged their followers to attack Israel and warned of a “crime against al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.” Clashes soon erupted on the Temple Mount, where Palestinian agitators threw stones and shot fireworks at Israeli police who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

All signs pointed to another major conflict in 2022. But the policy of Naftali Bennett’s government was an important factor in preventing a large conflagration. As Prime Minister Bennett’s national security advisor Eyal Hulata, now a colleague at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told us, “the key was making sure that the Palestinians saw blue, not olive, uniforms.” In other words, the presence of police rather than military troops was a psychological distinction that may have helped keep a lid on a wider conflict. Admittedly, a short war between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad did erupt that August, with some 1,100 rockets fired into Israel eliciting nearly 150 strikes by the Israeli Air Force.

Ramadan in 2023 passed without major incident. This was early in the tenure of the current government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. If anything, political unrest on the streets of Israel in response to the government’s attempts at a judicial overhaul overshadowed the Palestinian arena.

This Ramadan could look a lot more like 2021. War has been raging in the Gaza Strip since Hamas perpetrated a mass slaughter of 1,200 Israelis on October 7 and took 241 Israelis and foreigners, including Americans, hostage. The subsequent war has brought destruction to Gaza, even as the Israeli military tries to limit civilian casualties in a brutal urban warfare environment where Hamas uses human shields. War on Israel’s northern border kicked off one day after the Hamas assault when Hezbollah attacked Israel; Hezbollah has since carried out more than 700 attacks on Israeli territory.

As it fights Hamas in Gaza and against Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border, the Israeli military has also operated almost nightly in the West Bank, arresting as many as 7,000 suspects, killing more than 200 terrorists, and destroying homes of those convicted of carrying out violence against Israel. The last few days alone have witnessed a terrorist attack near Maale Adumim, a drone strike against an Islamic Jihad commander in Jenin, and rock-throwing by Palestinians at Israeli vehicles. The West Bank is so volatile that today there are more Israeli military battalions operating there than in Gaza, according to a former Israeli official we spoke to earlier this month. This is to say nothing of the Iran-backed militias attacking Israel and the United States out of Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

In short, the region is on fire. The White House desperately seeks to prevent a wider war, particularly as America enters a presidential election cycle. Israel continues to work with Washington to this end, focusing primarily on the war in Gaza, while endeavoring to prevent other fronts from exploding. Israeli solutions have ranged from aggressive action to pre-empt terrorist attacks in the West Bank, to potentially offering greater freedoms to Arab residents of Jerusalem, to offering financial perks to the Palestinian Authority. While this might all sound helpful, none of these measures will matter amidst efforts by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to forge a unity government with Hamas. This initiative is deemed a nonstarter by the government in Jerusalem, which seeks to delegitimize (if not destroy) Hamas above all else.

But there’s another factor that could undermine efforts to contain a violent Ramadan: Israel’s right-wing minister for national security, Itamar Ben Gvir. The minister has vowed to bolster security in the West Bank and Jerusalem since the war began, messaging directly to his right-wing and religious supporters. His rhetoric has been troubling to some, including statements promoting the re-settlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.

Israeli forces under Ben Gvir’s command—regardless of whether they wear blue or olive—have the potential to set off a chain reaction that nobody wants. Tensions are already rising over the security-related limitations that Israel may impose on prayers at the al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu must now consider sidelining Ben Gvir to the extent possible, for the sake of Israeli national security. The prime minister has the authority to take control of the Israeli police and other internal security forces under his command—and he should do so, at least temporarily during Ramadan. Doing so won’t be easy, given that Ben Gvir is a key pillar of the Netanyahu government. Should Ben Gvir decide to walk away, Netanyahu would have to either replace his party in the coalition or face the prospect of new elections.

In the end, the real key to preventing a Ramadan explosion this year likely lies in a hostage deal between Hamas and Israel. Obviously, the Israelis are eager to make a deal that would see the release of more than 100 hostages held by Hamas for more than four months—and they are pushing hard for a deal before Ramadan begins. The French hosted meetings in Paris last Friday to that end, and those talks yielded an outline agreed upon by all sides. Negotiations are ongoing in Qatar, with some further signs of optimism.

Should a deal be reached in the next few days and weeks, it could lower the temperature across the region. If the last ceasefire was any indication, it could lead to a cessation or reduction of violence on the northern border with Lebanon, and perhaps mitigate security crises in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The United States could tout such a deal as providing respite to the Palestinian population in Gaza. Such a message might resonate across the Arab world during Ramadan, and ultimately make it easier for the Saudis to reengage on normalization talks with Israel.

A hostage deal during Ramadan might have one other positive impact. It could provide the Israelis and Egyptians the time they need to iron out a plan to deal with the estimated 1.4 million Palestinians currently sheltering in tents and temporary housing in the town of Rafah. The Israeli military will need to conduct ground maneuvers in Rafah soon to destroy the remaining Hamas battalions, block tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, and stop the transfer of weapons to Hamas. But a plan to evacuate civilians is urgently needed before this crucial battle can occur.

As always, there are many moving parts. Several malign actors—Iran, Qatar, Turkey, Hamas, Hezbollah—could play the role of spoiler. If there was ever a time for the United States to wield its influence as a superpower on these actors, this would be it. Washington must convey clearly to Qatar that it is time to get Hamas in line. The U.S. must also convey to Iran, Turkey, and the other Hamas backers that this year’s Ramadan cannot spin out of control. 

Calm must be brokered soon. A ceasefire during Ramadan is urgently needed. After that, war will almost certainly resume, with the goal of defeating Hamas’s military in its entirety. But this objective must be achieved without sparking a regional conflict. With a little effort, a wider conflagration could be contained… at least for now.

Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Mark Dubowitz is chief executive officer. Follow them on X @JSchanzer and @MDubowitz.

11. Army Sending Innovators Downrange

Excerpts:

George said the war in Ukraine has shown the need to reduce the logistics footprint. “One of the things that I'm a huge fan of is hybridization of our vehicles just because I think whatever we can do to reduce our logistics footprint is going to help,” he said.

“We're learning in Ukraine as far as what we can do, what we can fix forward and what we don't have to drag back,” he said.

In a recent exercise, the Army deployed a division into the field, and it was able to reduce its footprint by 75 percent by eliminating vehicles and radars, he said. It also deployed netting to reduce its electronic signature by 85 percent, he said.

“It's one thing to hide in plain sight in an urban environment, it's much harder to do out in the desert, and so that's what they were doing,” he said. “And they have to still figure out how to command and control a very big, large, complex organization, they had to worry about UAS that are trying to find them and to kill them out there.”

“We're doing this to all of our formations out there,” he continued. “We have an active live [opposition force] for which they are 3D printing drones and going after our troops.” The opposition forces have a sensor that can pick up signals from troops’ watches and phones.

“So, we're looking constantly ... at everybody's digital footprint that is out there,” he said. “If you can be seen on the battlefield, you can be killed. And I think that's what we want to make sure that everybody is training differently.”

Army Sending Innovators Downrange

nationaldefensemagazine.org · by Sean Carberry

ARMY NEWS

2/27/2024

By

Army counter-UAS training

Army photo

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While the war in Ukraine is validating large-scale Army modernization efforts like integrated air and missile defense and long-range fires, the proliferation of small drones and commercial technology on the battlefield has prompted the service to forward deploy personnel to innovate in theater, senior service leaders said.

The Army has begun an initiative called “transforming in contact” to experiment with technologies like 3D printing to develop counter-UAS technology, Gen. Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, told reporters at a Feb. 27 Defense Writers Group discussion.

“We are transforming in contact when it comes to counter-UAS in the Middle East, which means we are getting all of our capabilities forward with users, developers and testers, and we are transforming as we go because the battlefield is changing,” he said.

“We have also selected three brigades and they are going to prototype new formations and we're going to give them new equipment — counter-UAS, Next Generation Squad Weapon and infuse them with the kind of new tech that they need on the battlefield,” he said.

“We are trying to build a culture of continuous transformation where everybody realizes — and our challenge to everybody is — that our formations have to look better,” he said. “This isn't like two or three [Program Objective Memorandum] cycles, we have to look better this next year. We have to look better in a couple of months.”

George said advances in commercial technology are outpacing military development, and the service will phase out its Raven and Shadow drones because they were good systems but for a different battlefield.

“We are looking at how we are going to test and operate drones in contested environments, that's something that we have to do,” he said. “Every drone that we're going to have [has] to be open architecture so we can adjust it with software, we can make adjustments on the road.”

That also requires improvement in how the Army buys things and works with industry, he added.

“We are looking at how we would fund things,” he said. “And we obviously have to work with the appropriators on this to explain how we can do this with the proper oversight. But for unmanned systems, for countering unmanned systems and [electronic warfare], things are moving so fast that … you can't wait and say, ‘OK, we'll get that in the next [Program Objective Memorandum], and then they'll be there two years from now.’”

However, funding continues to be an obstacle as the Army has had relatively flat budgets, and continuing resolutions are delaying new investment, said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth.

“Without the ability to do new starts, without the ability to do reprogramming things, we can't invest in development of UAS and counter-UAS systems. We can't train with those systems. We can't produce those systems as rapidly as we want to,” she said.

Investments in munitions production or the Army’s Mid-Range Capability, which is now a program of record, are at risk if there is no budget passed or a supplemental appropriation, she said.

“We have a $500 million investment that we want to make in that program going forward that we won't be able to pursue under a [continuing resolution], she said.

“There is, I think, $560 million in the supplemental just for counter-UAS. Now, that's for all services, not all of that is Army, but we could use that, we could do a lot with that,” she added.

Counter-UAS also involves making combat vehicles more survivable, Wormuth said.

“Drones are really essentially — when it comes to our combat vehicles — flying IEDs. And I think we've got to think about protection for our tanks, Bradleys, Strykers and so on,” she said.

“One of the things that we've been pursuing in that way is directed energy, high-powered microwave,” she continued. “We've got some of our directed energy prototypes out now in the field being tested, having some successful engagements. … One challenge there is how do we make those systems affordable?”

Another area of focus for the service is reducing its footprint and logistics tail in the field by reducing the size of command posts and limiting electronic emissions, Wormuth said, noting progress she saw during a recent visit to a training exercise in Germany.

“I saw a tactical command post that used to be three Stryker vehicles with full crews in each of the vehicles and a pretty significant radar that would be placed outside, they have skinnied all of that down now to basically two vehicles, no radar,” she said. “All of the major sort of comms and network systems are in one of the Strykers.”

George said the war in Ukraine has shown the need to reduce the logistics footprint. “One of the things that I'm a huge fan of is hybridization of our vehicles just because I think whatever we can do to reduce our logistics footprint is going to help,” he said.

“We're learning in Ukraine as far as what we can do, what we can fix forward and what we don't have to drag back,” he said.

In a recent exercise, the Army deployed a division into the field, and it was able to reduce its footprint by 75 percent by eliminating vehicles and radars, he said. It also deployed netting to reduce its electronic signature by 85 percent, he said.

“It's one thing to hide in plain sight in an urban environment, it's much harder to do out in the desert, and so that's what they were doing,” he said. “And they have to still figure out how to command and control a very big, large, complex organization, they had to worry about UAS that are trying to find them and to kill them out there.”

“We're doing this to all of our formations out there,” he continued. “We have an active live [opposition force] for which they are 3D printing drones and going after our troops.” The opposition forces have a sensor that can pick up signals from troops’ watches and phones.

“So, we're looking constantly ... at everybody's digital footprint that is out there,” he said. “If you can be seen on the battlefield, you can be killed. And I think that's what we want to make sure that everybody is training differently.”

Topics: Army News

nationaldefensemagazine.org · by Sean Carberry

12. Next Night Stalker Little Bird Helicopter Now Dubbed MH-6R

Next Night Stalker Little Bird Helicopter Now Dubbed MH-6R

Plans for what might eventually succeed the Night Stalker Little Bird fleet’s are uncertain following a shakeup of Army aviation programs.

twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick · February 27, 2024

The next version of the famed Little Bird helicopter for the U.S. Army's elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also known as the Night Stalkers, has reportedly been designated the MH-6R. This comes as U.S. Special Operations Command continues to move ahead with its Mission Enhanced Little Bird-X upgrade effort amid new uncertainty about the future of these helicopters following the U.S. Army's cancellation of its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program, or FARA. The expectation had previously been that around half of the 160th's Little Birds would eventually be replaced by a special operations version of the final FARA design.

The announcement about the MH-6R designation for Little Birds in the future Mission Enhanced Little Bird-X (MELB-X) configuration came at the 2024 International Military Helicopter conference, according to a post on X from Janes' Gareth Jennings. He also wrote that the first of 52 MELB-Xs for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), upgraded from its existing fleet of M variant Little Birds, is set to be delivered sometime in the 2025 Fiscal Year. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) first announced the MELB-X program, effectively a rebranding of what was previously called Future Little Bird (FLB), in 2021.

It is unclear whether or not there is a companion AH-6R designation. Army special operations versions of the H-6 have historically been designated MH-6s and AH-6s depending on their configuration, despite the underlying helicopters being readily convertible from one setup to the other. The MH-6 designation has been used for a light personnel transport configuration with planks on either side for special operators to ride on and the Fast Rope Insertion Extraction System (FRIES). AH-6s are configured for light attack missions and are capable of carrying an array of weaponry, including Galting-type machine guns, Hellfire missiles, and 70mm rockets.

An MH-6M Little Bird. Air National Guard Air National Guard

An AH-6M Little Bird. U.S. Army

Today, the 160th's Little Birds, which are small and highly maneuverable, provide valuable niche capabilities, including the ability to operate in more physically constrained environments. The size of the helicopters also gives them immense flexibility when it comes to where they can operate from. They can also be readily loaded and unloaded onto various kinds of cargo aircraft, including C-130 Hercules variants, which can then be used to get them more rapidly to and from forward locations, and be ready for flight in minutes.

An AH-6M Little Bird is seen here being unloaded from a C-130-series aircraft. Note the upturned rocket pods and the folded main rotor, which help reduce the helicopter's physical size for ease of transport. DOD

Details about what new capabilities and features might come with the MELB-X upgrade package have been limited. The 160th's Little Birds have already been steadily upgraded since the 1980s, with the current Block III AH/MH-6M MELB versions having six-blade rotors and expanded takeoff weights compared to their predecessors. The Block IIIs also have newly-machined zero-lifed reinforced airframes. In addition, the AH-6/MH-6s have been receiving additional incremental upgrades, including new radios, fuel tanks, and seats, in recent years.

The potential for a further improved Block IV configuration for the Little Bird has been raised in the past. There has also been talk about a potential major engine upgrade, possibly involving a type of hybrid turbine-electric configuration that could offer a significant boost in performance and better fuel economy. The top speed of existing AH/MH-6s is said to be around 90 knots.

“We've looked at the Little Bird, we figured out how can we reconfigure that platform to accommodate a hybrid electric configuration," Geoffrey Downer, head of U.S. Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) Program Executive Office for Rotary Wing (PEO-RW), told The War Zone and other outlets at a press briefing on the sidelines of the annual SOF Week conference in May 2023. "The studies that we've done show that you can get anywhere from 25 to 100 percent increase in speed. So, if I'm flying in at 90 knots now, I can get 170-180 knots. That's huge."

The War Zone has reached out to SOCOM and Boeing, the current prime contractor for the 160th's Little Birds, for more information about the MH-6R/MELB-X effort.

Further upgrading the 160th's Little Birds has now taken on substantial new significance following the Army's cancellation of the FARA program earlier this month.

“When these FARA and FLRAA [Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft] aircrafts start coming into SOCOM in the early 2030s timeframe, and we get those into our fleet… we will have replaced over 50 percent of our fleet with those platforms with the numbers the Army... is planning on giving to us,” SOCOM's Downer said at SOF Week last year. "It [the Little Bird] only flies 90 knots, so it'll [FARA] give us critical speed that we need."

A side-by-side of the two contenders in the new canceled FARA competition. At left, Sikorsky's Raider X and, at right, Bell's 360 Invictus. Sikorsky/Bell

This was in line with what Downer had said at the same conference in 2022. “My big concern is we're modernizing our fleet to flying at 200-plus knots and I’ve got an aircraft that flies 80-90 knots, so it's not going to be able to keep up,” he said at that time, referring adjacent plans to acquire special operations-specific versions of the Army's Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA).

The Army selected a design based on Bell's V-280 Valor tilt-rotor as the winner of the FLRAA competition in December 2022. SOCOM still expects the 160th SOAR to eventually field a special operations FLRAA subvariant, which will supplant a portion of its existing MH-60M Black Hawk fleet.

Similar speed concerns, as well as ones relating to range, especially in the context of a potential future high-end conflict in the Pacific, such as one against China, look to have contributed significantly to the decision to axe FARA, as The War Zone recently explored in detail.

For many years it appeared that MELB-X might itself be canceled and the 160th's Little Birds retired entirely. The Night Stalkers are the only operators of H-6 series helicopters in the U.S. military.

“We don't know which platform the army is going to select for Future Vertical Lift. There are a lot of decisions we have going forward," SOCOM's Downer had said in 2021, according to Janes. "Maybe [MELB-X] is really just a placeholder for instant market options going forward. We don't know whether or not we're going to do a [Little Bird] Block IV modification to do that configuration."

At that time, Downer raised questions about just how much more capability could realistically be squeezed out of the H-6 series design.

Members of the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment ride on 160th SOAR MH-6Ms during a training exercise in 2023. U.S. Army

SOCOM certainly seems more committed to the idea of another major upgrade for the 160th's Little Bird fleet now. There are still questions about how the H-6 series will be able to keep up with other aviation modernization efforts and what else the U.S. special operations community might pursue to provide similar capabilities in future major conflicts.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick · February 27, 2024

13. Leaked Russian military files reveal criteria for nuclear strike

An influence operation?

Leaked Russian military files reveal criteria for nuclear strike

Financial Times · by Max Seddon · February 28, 2024

Vladimir Putin’s forces have rehearsed using tactical nuclear weapons at an early stage of conflict with a major world power, according to leaked Russian military files that include training scenarios for an invasion by China.

The classified papers, seen by the Financial Times, describe a threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons that is lower than Russia has ever publicly admitted, according to experts who reviewed and verified the documents.

The cache consists of 29 secret Russian military files drawn up between 2008 and 2014, including scenarios for war-gaming and presentations for naval officers, which discuss operating principles for the use of nuclear weapons.

Criteria for a potential nuclear response range from an enemy incursion on Russian territory to more specific triggers, such as the destruction of 20 per cent of Russia’s strategic ballistic missile submarines.

“This is the first time that we have seen documents like this reported in the public domain,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “They show that the operational threshold for using nuclear weapons is pretty low if the desired result can’t be achieved through conventional means.”

Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons, which can be delivered by land or sea-launched missiles or from aircraft, are designed for limited battlefield use in Europe and Asia, as opposed to the larger “strategic” weapons intended to target the US. Modern tactical warheads can still release significantly more energy than the weapons dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.

Although the files date back 10 years and more, experts claim they remain relevant to current Russian military doctrine. The documents were shown to the FT by western sources.

The defensive plans expose deeply held suspicions of China among Moscow’s security elite even as Putin began forging an alliance with Beijing, which as early as 2001 included a nuclear no-first-strike agreement.

In the years since, Russia and China have deepened their partnership, particularly since Xi Jinping took power in Beijing in 2012. The war in Ukraine has cemented Russia’s status as a junior partner in their relationship, with China throwing Moscow a vital economic lifeline to help stave off western sanctions.

Yet even as the countries became closer, the training materials show Russia’s eastern military district was rehearsing multiple scenarios depicting a Chinese invasion.

The exercises offer a rare insight into how Russia views its nuclear arsenal as a cornerstone of its defence policy — and how it trains forces to be able to carry out a nuclear first strike in some battlefield conditions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in March 2023 © Pavel Byrkin/Sputnik/Kremlin/Reuters

One exercise outlining a hypothetical attack by China notes that Russia, dubbed the “Northern Federation” for the purpose of the war game, could respond with a tactical nuclear strike in order to stop “the South” from advancing with a second wave of invading forces.

“The order has been given by the commander-in-chief . . . to use nuclear weapons . . . in the event the enemy deploys second-echelon units and the South threatens to attack further in the direction of the main strike,” the document said.

China’s foreign ministry denied there were any grounds for suspicion of Moscow. “The Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation between China and Russia has legally established the concept of eternal friendship and non-enmity between the two countries,” a spokesperson said. “The ‘threat theory’ has no market in China and Russia.”

Putin’s spokesperson said on Wednesday: “The main thing is that the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons is absolutely transparent and is spelled out in the doctrine. As for the documents mentioned, we strongly doubt their authenticity.”

A separate training presentation for naval officers, unrelated to the China war games, outlines broader criteria for a potential nuclear strike, including an enemy landing on Russian territory, the defeat of units responsible for securing border areas, or an imminent enemy attack using conventional weapons.

The slides summarise the threshold as a combination of factors where losses suffered by Russian forces “would irrevocably lead to their failure to stop major enemy aggression”, a “critical situation for the state security of Russia”.

Other potential conditions include the destruction of 20 per cent of Russia’s strategic ballistic missile submarines, 30 per cent of its nuclear-powered attack submarines, three or more cruisers, three airfields, or a simultaneous hit on main and reserve coastal command centres.

Russia’s military is also expected to be able to use tactical nuclear weapons for a broad array of goals, including “containing states from using aggression […] or escalating military conflicts”, “stopping aggression”, preventing Russian forces from losing battles or territory, and making Russia’s navy “more effective”.

Putin said last June that he felt “negatively” about using tactical nuclear strikes, but then boasted that Russia had a larger non-strategic arsenal than Nato countries. “Screw them, you know, as people say,” Putin said. The US has estimated Russia has at least 2,000 such weapons.

Putin said last year that Russian nuclear doctrine allowed two possible thresholds for using nuclear weapons: retaliation against a first nuclear strike by an enemy, and if “the very existence of Russia as a state comes under threat even if conventional weapons are used”.

But Putin himself added that neither criteria was likely to be met, and dismissed public calls from hardliners to lower the threshold.

The materials are aimed at training Russian units for situations in which the country might want the ability to use nuclear weapons, said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, rather than setting out a rule book for their use.

“At this level, the requirement is for units to maintain — over the course of a conflict — the credible option for policymakers to employ nuclear weapons,” Watling added. “This would be a political decision.”

While Moscow has drawn close to Beijing since the war games and moved forces from the east to Ukraine, it has continued to build up its eastern defences. “Russia is continuing to reinforce and exercise its nuclear-capable missiles in the Far East near its border with China,” said William Alberque, director of strategy, technology and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “A lot of these systems only have the range to strike China.”

Russia was still behaving in accordance with the “theory of use” of nuclear weapons set out in the documents, Alberque said. “We have not seen a fundamental rethink,” he said, adding that Russia is probably concerned that China may seek to take advantage of Moscow being distracted “to push the Russians out of Central Asia”.

The documents reflect patterns seen in exercises the Russian military held regularly before and since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Alberque, who previously worked for Nato and the US defence department on arms control, pointed to examples of Russian exercises held in June and November last year using nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in two regions bordering China.

While Russia’s president has the sole authority to launch a first nuclear strike, the low threshold for tactical nuclear use set out in the documents conforms with a doctrine some western observers refer to as “escalating to de-escalate”.

Under this strategy a tactical weapon could be used to try to prevent Russia from becoming embroiled in a sprawling war, particularly one in which the US might intervene. Using what it calls “fear inducement”, Moscow would seek to end the conflict on its own terms by shocking the country’s adversary with the early use of a small nuclear weapon — or securing a settlement through the threat to do so.

“They talk about ‘soberising’ their adversaries — knocking them out of the drunkenness of their early victories by introducing nuclear weapons,” said Alberque. “The best way that they think they can do that is to use what they call a lower ‘dosage’ of nuclear weapons at a much lower level of combat to prevent escalation.”

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Ukrainian officials argued that Putin’s nuclear threats convinced US and other allies not to arm Kyiv more decisively early in the conflict, when advanced Nato weaponry could have turned the tide in Ukraine’s favour.

Alberque said Russia would probably have a higher threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, which does not have its own nuclear capability or the ability to launch a ground invasion on the same scale, than against China or the US.

Russian leaders believe that, whereas a nuclear strike against China or the US could be “soberising”, a nuclear strike on Ukraine would be likely to escalate the conflict and lead to direct intervention by the US or UK, Alberque said. “That is absolutely the last thing Putin wants.”

Additional reporting by Joe Leahy in Beijing

Financial Times · by Max Seddon · February 28, 2024

14. Putin's new military decree preparation for "large scale" war with NATO—ISW

Putin's new military decree preparation for "large scale" war with NATO—ISW

Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · February 27, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin's new military decrees re-establishing the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts indicate he is preparing for a potential large-scale war with NATO in the future, a U.S.-based think tank has said.

Kremlin propagandists have routinely warned of a looming world war. Ties between Washington and other NATO member states and Moscow have become increasingly strained over Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state agency Sputnik on February 27, 2024, Russia's President Vladimir Putin makes a video address at the Kremlin in Moscow. On Monday, the Russian president signed decrees which... In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state agency Sputnik on February 27, 2024, Russia's President Vladimir Putin makes a video address at the Kremlin in Moscow. On Monday, the Russian president signed decrees which reorganize Russia’s military-administrative structure. ALEXANDER KAZAKOV/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

Russian officials and guests on Russian state TV have called for strikes on U.S. soil and the West over aid and weapons provided by the Biden administration and other NATO members to Kyiv.

On Monday, the Russian president signed the decrees that reorganize Russia's military-administrative structure. One decree deprives Russia's Northern Fleet—which was previously responsible for land in the Northwestern Federal District—of its status as an "interspecific strategic territorial association," or joint headquarters.

The other decree formally re-establishes the Leningrad Military District and the Moscow Military District, with the Leningrad Military District taking over most of the territory previously under the Russia's Northern Fleet and the Moscow Military District taking over most of the territory previously under the Western Military District, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in its latest analysis of the conflict in Ukraine on Monday.

The think tank noted that the second decree signed by Putin also incorporates the four regions of Ukraine that Putin proclaimed to have annexed in the fall of 2022— the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts—as well as Crimea, occupied since 2014.

"The inclusion of both the occupied and un-occupied parts of Ukrainian territory further suggests that Russia maintains maximalist objectives in Ukraine and seeks to fully absorb all five of these Ukrainian territories into the Russian Federation," the ISW said.

The re-creation of the Moscow Military District and Leningrad Military District "supports the parallel objectives of consolidating control over Russian operations in Ukraine in the short-to-medium term and preparing for a potential future large-scale conventional war against NATO in the long term," the think tank assessed.

Russian military analyst Yuri Fedorov previously told Russian investigative site Agentstvo that the recreation of the Leningrad Military District suggests that Russia is gearing up for possible conflicts with the Baltic States and NATO.

The Leningrad Military District, stationed close to new NATO member Finland and the Baltic States, is a key component of the Russian armed forces that oversees parts of the nation's defense strategy in Russia's western region. Finland shares an 800-mile border with Russia.

Finland joined the NATO military alliance last year in response to Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Baltic States—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—have worked throughout the invasion to ramp up their defenses while sending aid to Ukraine.

Sweden cleared the last hurdle to joining NATO when Hungary's parliament ratified its bid to join the alliance on Monday.

The Leningrad Military District was merged in 2010 with the Moscow Military District, the Northern Fleet and the Baltic Fleet to form the Western Military District. However, Moscow changed course in August 2023 when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the military districts were under active formation.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Defense Ministry and NATO for comment via email.

Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about the Russia-Ukraine war? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · February 27, 2024

15. Services prepare to brief Secretary Austin on a plan to get Ospreys flying again

What about the confidence of those flying and riding in these aircraft?

Services prepare to brief Secretary Austin on a plan to get Ospreys flying again

BY TARA COPP AND LOLITA C. BALDOR

Updated 5:14 PM EST, February 27, 2024

AP · February 27, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The military services will take a key step toward getting the V-22 Osprey fleet back in the air as they lay out their plans Friday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for addressing safety concerns stemming from a fatal crash in Japan, three defense officials said.

The U.S. fleet of about 400 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft has been grounded for 83 days following the crash of a U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command CV-22B on Nov. 29 in Japan that killed eight service members. It’s unclear how quickly Austin would make any decision on the matter.

The Air Force has said it knows what failed in the Osprey but still does not know why it failed. In the months since, the services have worked on a plan to mitigate the known material failure through additional safety checks and also by establishing a new, more conservative approach to how the Osprey is operated to safely work around the known issue, a fourth official, a senior defense official familiar with the V-22 program, said.

Japan is the only international partner in the Osprey program and also grounded its fleet of 14 V-22s after the November crash. A return to flight is a sensitive topic in the country, where public opinion on the Osprey is mixed. One of the defense officials said none of the U.S. Ospreys would return to flight until Japan has had an opportunity to weigh in on the military’s plan.

After that, each service would decide on its own return to flight. Not all services would need to put their Ospreys back into operation simultaneously.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the Osprey decision process.

The V-22 Osprey can take of and land like a helicopter, but then tilt its engines and rotor blades to fly like an airplane. The combination has enabled the services to travel vast distances faster during military operations and land in locations that are more difficult for normal aircraft.

The military-wide grounding has left the deepest impact on the U.S. Marine Corps, which relies on more than 300 MV-22 Ospreys to conduct a major part of its aviation mission. Air Force Special Operations Command has about 50 CV-22B Ospreys. The Navy is planning on replacing its C-2 Greyhounds, which transport passengers to aircraft carriers, with more than two dozen CMV-22 Ospreys.

The presidential fleet also uses a limited number of Ospreys to ferry White House staff, security personnel and reporters. Those have also been grounded since Dec. 6.

A small number of Marine Corps MV-22s in Djibouti have had an exemption to the grounding since Jan. 17 due to mission needs and have flown since then without incident.

The extraordinary decision in December to ground the aircraft military-wide reflected questions about the safety of the platform. Just before the November incident in Japan, an Osprey crash in August killed three Marines.

The first Ospreys only became operational in 2007 after decades of testing. But more than 50 troops have died either flight testing them or conducting training flights over the program’s lifespan.

The loss of the Osprey has had an operational impact, but a return to flight won’t be immediate and will still be higher risk due to the amount of time those crews have not been flying.

Flight safety is dependent on pilots maintaining currency on an aircraft — meaning that they are flying regularly enough to be proficient in all types of flying, such as night missions, close formation flying and refueling. The senior defense official said it will take at least 30 days to get crews flying once the grounding is lifted.

The services have also had to ensure the aircraft are ready. Both the Air Force and Marine Corps have been running the Osprey’s engines; the Marines have been conducting ground movements to keep the aircraft working.

AP · February 27, 2024

16. A Framework for Foresight: Methods to Leverage the Lessons of History

Good to see Thinking in Time discussed. I think that is an important book. Good article by a Georgetown SSP graduate.

Excertps;

Conclusion

The established methods and practices of applied history provide a framework for more effective decision-making. Their adoption and refinement would systematize how lessons are framed and help wean policymakers from their propensity to embrace specious historical analogies and act before getting their facts straight. These methods, even faithfully applied, do not guarantee positive results, but they can provide, as Neustadt and May hoped, “a little sharper sense of purpose here, a little clearer sense of danger there.” In a broader sense, their adoption could help leaders foster what Francis Gavin calls “historical sensibility,” which he defines as “a familiarity with the past and its powerful and often unpredictable rhythms.” This sensibility, he clarifies, is “less a method than a practice, a mental awareness, discernment, responsiveness to the past and how it unfolded into our present world.” Systematic methods for analyzing and applying history exist, in part, to ensure the discernments and actions of those who seek to cultivate a historical sensibility are… sensible.

Along with questioning the conceptual value of analogies and lessons, historians should remind policymakers of the wealth of resources available to improve their search for guidance from the past. Moreover, leaders should take steps to integrate existing and emergent methods of applied history into formal planning and decision-making processes. These methods, combined with other established analytic techniques, would invariably sharpen and improve debate and the decisions that follow. The national security community should further commit to closing the “history deficit” that starves decision-makers of fuel for intuitive judgement. A lack of historical sensibility results in a blinkered perspective on available options, and a lack of methodological rigor results in tainted water being drawn from an already shallow well.

Finally, policymakers should train themselves to think in time-streams. This involves examining present issues with a sense of the past and future, honing the mental instinct to readily connect discreet phenomena over time and repeatedly check for connections. In this way, leaders will assess their actions in the broader current of time, with the ensuing humility, perspective, and prudence that placement inspires. The continued march of folly through Washington indicates that too few policymakers have embraced a sophisticated framework for applying the past to the present. After his victory at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington famously told a contemporary that the battle had been “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,” with victory or defeat hinging on ostensibly minor actions and decisions. In deciding matters of state, the “little sharper sense of purpose here” and “little clearer sense of danger there” can make all the difference.

A Framework for Foresight: Methods to Leverage the Lessons of History - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Joe Donato​· February 28, 2024

The Scottish poet, novelist, and historian Andrew Lang once quipped that politicians use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: “for support rather than illumination.” Indeed, the same line might be applied to the way policymakers use, or rather misuse, history. From incongruous analogies to procrustean parallels, the lamentable catalogue of abuses has prompted some historians to question the value of historical lessons and analogies as signposts for strategists.

In a recent article, historian Joseph Stieb warned policymakers against drawing too many lessons from history due to the endemic danger of distortion and misapplication. His warning is well founded, but he overlooks instructive methods applied historians have developed to mitigate the very pitfalls he laments. These techniques constitute a checklist to evaluate analogies, question presumptions, and place situations in their proper historical context; they prompt policymakers to systematically scrutinize historical parallels and substantiate their assertions with evidence instead of instinct. Their employment will not eliminate misuses of history but would refine how historical lessons are sourced and applied in decision-making.

Historical analogies are ineluctable in the decision-making process. The past, Robert Crowcroft notes, is “our sole repository for information about what works and what does not; we have nothing else to drawn upon.” Parallels from the past enable strategists to orient themselves in complex and dynamic situations. They provide an indispensable adaptive technique to inform judgement, recognize patterns, and understand perennial drivers of crisis and conflict. Notwithstanding the persistent danger of distortion, policymakers would find themselves in a worse predicament without lessons from history. It would be foolish, therefore, to abandon these instruments of orientation, especially without a sufficient replacement. When judiciously curated and applied, historical analogues can be invaluable aides for preventing war and managing fractious foreign partners. Despite their limitations, analogies, axioms, and lessons will continue to inform and influence how decision-makers orient, decide, and act on the world stage. Historians, therefore, should endeavor to ensure policymakers use them with greater precision.

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Methods for Thinking In Time

In their classic work Thinking In Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers, the late Harvard historians Richard Neustadt and Ernest May sought to survey, analyze, and ameliorate the haphazard uses of history that had contributed to the foreign and domestic policy debacles of their time. Writing in 1986, the authors assessed that in the preceding decades, debate over an emergent situation too often jumped directly to what was to be done, with insufficient attention given to background and historical context. Key presumptions were accepted without close evaluation and references to history, when they did arise, often came in the form of simple analogies from the remembered past of the proponent. Under the relentless pressure of time, the need for a decision would drive leaders toward an ill-conceived course of action. History, like intelligence, is a critical decision-making input, and the probabilistic judgements it shapes form the essence of decision.

In the spirit of reform, Neustadt and May devised a series of “mini-methods” aimed at slowing the “plunge toward action” and facilitating a more systematic framework for applying history to decision-making. The foremost method, one they hoped would become a standard staff practice, aimed at preventing emergent assumptions and analogies from becoming answers. As a situation emerged, decision-makers were instructed to list known, unclear, and presumed facts (from the standpoint of the decision-maker) that distinguished the current state from the past. When analogies invariably arose, they would list the likenesses and differences between the two situations while highlighting phrases that captured distinctions. May counseled that unless at least three points of difference and similarity were noted, further discussion was warranted. It stands to reason that this simple exercise would prune the endemic false analogies that distort our contemporary discourse.

Over the course of almost 300 pages, Neustadt and May outline nearly a dozen methods for enriching and improving decision-making through a more systematic and structured application of history. Understanding “issue history” and placing persons, organizations, and events in their proper context are central aims of their system. Through simple timelines, practitioners can trace salient events as far back as practicable, noting trends and changes. Asking journalist’s questions (i.e., who, what, where, when, and why) would flesh out the remaining details and further contextualize the emergent picture. Other techniques include placing bets and odds on expected outcomes and asking Alexander’s Question(that is, what new evidence might change a current presumption). Finally, before reaching a decision, placement would improve the “starting stereotype” of key persons and organizations by placing them in their proper historical context and noting the key events and experiences likely to have shaped their outlook and perspective.

U.S. Army officers may note the similarity between these methods and elements of the Military Decision-Making Process. Indeed, many applied history techniques complement that process, as well as the structured analytic techniquesused by the U.S. intelligence community. Considering this complementarity, an impactful application for these techniques would be their integration into official decision-making processes. Proper issue history and placement of the Iraqi people in 2002, for example, would have produced a more sophisticated understanding of the population and its complex sectarian dynamics before the decision to remove Saddam Hussein (who was routinely compared to Adolf Hitler in the decades preceding the 2003 U.S.-led invasion). A comparison of likenesses and differences between Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009 might have clarified why the counterinsurgency tactics which succeeded in the former state might not work as well in the latter. Asking Alexander’s Question might help planners reassess presumptions that underpin Western war aimsin Ukraine. For example, if Ukraine is unable to significantly increase domestic armaments production in the coming months, it might be unable to sustain its forces in the field, necessitating a reevaluation of when to negotiate peace.

Methods in Practice: A Salient Success Story

In their work, Neustadt and May examined numerous case studies from the preceding three decades of American history. Several of these were classified as “horror stories” in which misconstrued historical analogues, erroneous presumptions, and insufficient knowledge of important issues led policymakers into fateful miscalculations. The salient success story of the book, and a clinic in the effective use of history in decision-making, is the management of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although the methods outlined in Thinking In Time would not be codified for another quarter-century, their presence can be seen throughout the reflective and systematic approach that President John F. Kennedy and his team took to applying parallels from the past to their debates and decisions in the pivotal autumn of 1962.

As the crisis developed that October, analogies with the recent past made their usual appearance. In a departure from standard practice, however, Kennedy and his Executive Committee (ExComm) subjected these analogies to rigorous evaluation. The compelling moral analogy between a proposed American strike on Cuba and the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for example, persuaded Kennedy against launching a precipitous aerial attack, while less instructive parallels with the Suez Crisis (1956) or the Berlin blockade (1948–49) were dropped. Neustadt and May note that, “the proceedings of the ExComm [were] distinguished by the extent – unusual – to which analogies were invoked sparingly and, when invoked, were subjected to scrutiny.” Of course a thorough analysis of National Security Council debates since the crisis might produce comparable cases of effective analogizing, but the persistent embrace of specious analogies to frame contemporary security issues suggests that the systematic evaluation that guided the Kennedy administration has dissipated over time.

Beyond their effective evaluation of analogies, the ExComm paid close attention to the history of relevant issues, individuals, and organizations as well as their sources and context. ExComm members continuously evaluated thepresumptions that underpinned their assessment of the situation. Kennedy consulted a wide range of experts and exhibited an impressive openness to reevaluating his own suppositions as new information was presented. He exhibited empathywith his Soviet counterpart, endeavoring to view the crisis from his vantage. His reading of Barbara Tuchman’s now-classic The Guns of August months before the crisis inspired him to think in historical terms. He was determined that future historians would not write a similar work about how his administration had stumbled into catastrophe. It would be simplistic to assert that a sophisticated application of history was responsible for defusing the crisis, but it would be imprudent to ignore the pivotal role it played in framing and sharpening decisions.

Parallels and Patterns

In the spirit of Kennedy, Neustadt and May encouraged future policymakers to accumulate a robust stock of historical knowledge on which their methods could be applied. They assert that good judgement rests on historical understanding, even if that understanding is largely intuitive or unconscious. Herbert Simon, a pioneer in the study of decision-making, noted that intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. The richer the repository of history in the mind, therefore, the greater the range of potential pattern recognition. Of course, the environment in which one operates invariably impacts the capacity for intuition. In his landmark work Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman warns that “intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment.” Complex environments, however, are not inherently disordered, and some stable regularities can exist amid chaos. All this is to say that there is a sound theoretical basis for asserting that a deep knowledge of history can stimulate the pattern recognition that forms the basis of intuition. It is essential, however, to employ techniques that help to distinguish intuitive gold from pyrite.

Conclusion

The established methods and practices of applied history provide a framework for more effective decision-making. Their adoption and refinement would systematize how lessons are framed and help wean policymakers from their propensity to embrace specious historical analogies and act before getting their facts straight. These methods, even faithfully applied, do not guarantee positive results, but they can provide, as Neustadt and May hoped, “a little sharper sense of purpose here, a little clearer sense of danger there.” In a broader sense, their adoption could help leaders foster what Francis Gavin calls “historical sensibility,” which he defines as “a familiarity with the past and its powerful and often unpredictable rhythms.” This sensibility, he clarifies, is “less a method than a practice, a mental awareness, discernment, responsiveness to the past and how it unfolded into our present world.” Systematic methods for analyzing and applying history exist, in part, to ensure the discernments and actions of those who seek to cultivate a historical sensibility are… sensible.

Along with questioning the conceptual value of analogies and lessons, historians should remind policymakers of the wealth of resources available to improve their search for guidance from the past. Moreover, leaders should take steps to integrate existing and emergent methods of applied history into formal planning and decision-making processes. These methods, combined with other established analytic techniques, would invariably sharpen and improve debate and the decisions that follow. The national security community should further commit to closing the “history deficit” that starves decision-makers of fuel for intuitive judgement. A lack of historical sensibility results in a blinkered perspective on available options, and a lack of methodological rigor results in tainted water being drawn from an already shallow well.

Finally, policymakers should train themselves to think in time-streams. This involves examining present issues with a sense of the past and future, honing the mental instinct to readily connect discreet phenomena over time and repeatedly check for connections. In this way, leaders will assess their actions in the broader current of time, with the ensuing humility, perspective, and prudence that placement inspires. The continued march of folly through Washington indicates that too few policymakers have embraced a sophisticated framework for applying the past to the present. After his victory at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington famously told a contemporary that the battle had been “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,” with victory or defeat hinging on ostensibly minor actions and decisions. In deciding matters of state, the “little sharper sense of purpose here” and “little clearer sense of danger there” can make all the difference.

Become a Member

Joe Donato​ is a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve who currently serves as a contemporary historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. Out of uniform, he is Deputy Director of Operations, Joint Staff at Onebrief, Inc. Joe served as a political-military advisor to the commander of a combined joint task force in Iraq from 2018–19, and a John S. McCain Strategic Defense Fellow at the Department of Defense from 2020–21.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Joe Donato​· February 28, 2024

17. IW 101 Has Launched

February 22, 2024

IW 101 Has Launched

https://irregularwarfarecenter.org/news/announcement/iw-101-has-launched/

The Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) has just launched its first openly available online course and it is called Irregular Warfare 101 or IW101. This course is meant for both military and civilians of all ranks and all grades, as well as our partners and allies.

IW101 offers an introduction to the fundamental aspects of Irregular Warfare and it consolidates key concepts from U.S. policy, doctrine, and academia in about 90 minutes. This course has three sections which include 1) strategic competition, forms of warfare and definition and nature of IW, 2) describing IW operations and activities, and 3) discussing the global practitioners of IW and trends.

IW 101 is available on the Defense Security Cooperation University virtual classroom called MyDSCU and can be accessed by registering at this link and then searching for Irregular Warfare 101 Course.

IW 101 is accessible via computer, tablet, or smartphone and is the first in a series of IW courses from the Irregular Warfare Center, whose abbreviated mission is to serve as the central mechanism for developing the Department of Defense’s (DoD) IW knowledge.

18. SASC Votes Paparo Nomination for INDOPACOM Out of Committee

What about the next commander in Korea? I have seen no nomination.

SASC Votes Paparo Nomination for INDOPACOM Out of Committee - USNI News

news.usni.org · by Mallory Shelbourne · February 27, 2024

U.S. Capitol on Dec. 29, 2022. USNI News Photo

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted Adm. Samuel Paparo’s nomination to lead U.S. Indo-Pacific Command out of committee on Tuesday.

The upper chamber advanced a flew of nominations across the services. The nominations will now go to the Senate floor.

If confirmed, Paparo would replace Adm. John Aquilino as the head of INDOPACOM. The role is a three-year job and one that Aquilino has held since April 2021. Paparo has led U.S. Pacific Fleet since May 2021, when he replaced Aquilino.

Paparo appeared before the Senate panel earlier this month for his confirmation hearing, when he voiced concerns to lawmakers over the state of the U.S. civilian mariner sector and endorsed the Pentagon effort known as Replicator that seeks to quickly develop and field unmanned capabilities to the fleet.

“I think there are a number of initiatives, such as the Department of Defense’s Replicator initiative that seeks to gain scale with innovative practices and by closing on design and invoking small business and increasing the defense industrial base,” Paparo told SASC during his Feb. 1 confirmation hearing.

“I think another key point is to understand the opacity of the financial community and the extent to which investments in the [People’s Republic of China] – through their civil-military fusion – directly could confer to weapons building that could affect and could harm Americans on the battlefield.”

At PACFLEET, Paparo has overseen the first operational test of unmanned surface vehicles in the Western Pacific and has pushed for the rapid development of unmanned capabilities that could help the fleet thwart a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

“There are battlespaces where it may not be necessary to contest air and maritime superiority one for one,” Paparo said this month at the WEST 2024 conference, co-hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA. “But simply to deny its use to an enemy that wants to use that battlespace for its own purposes.”

“A principled highly effective concept of operations of sea denial, with unmanned undersea vessels, with smart undersea capabilities, with surface capabilities and aerial capabilities is the ability to meet some of the principles … which is don’t send a human being to do something dangerous that a machine can do better, faster, and more cheaply,” he added.

Related

news.usni.org · by Mallory Shelbourne · February 27, 2024

19. ‘Incompetence’: Democrats join Republicans in faulting Austin and his team over hospital secrecy

‘Incompetence’: Democrats join Republicans in faulting Austin and his team over hospital secrecy

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/27/incompetence-austin-hospital-secrecy-00143553?utm

Senators also faulted DOD for keeping parts of its review into the matter classified.

“I don't think there was anything untoward. My view is to never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said. | Denes Erdos/AP

By JOE GOULD and CONNOR O’BRIEN

02/27/2024 01:07 PM EST

Senate Democrats and Republicans emerged from a classified briefing Tuesday deeply frustrated by the initial secrecy surrounding Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization as well as the Pentagon’s own probe into the episode.

Pentagon officials briefed Senate Armed Services Committee members behind closed doors about the department’s 30-day investigation into the matter, which found that senior officials had no “ill intent” in not informing the White House or the public about Austin’s hospitalization until days later.

Some senators said they were also vexed that the review does not blame any staffers for the process and communications breakdown, in which the White House was not told of Austin’s early December cancer diagnosis, his late December surgery or his Jan. 1 hospitalization due to complications from the procedure.

Austin apologizes for hospital debacle: 'I did not handle this right'

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But they also fumed about Austin, who has previously taken responsibility for the communication breakdown, for showing poor judgment. Austin has said his need for privacy overcame his duty to inform the commander in chief and the American people about his state.

The bipartisan frustrations with the classified review, the first examination into Austin’s secretive hospitalization, show the episode will likely continue to dog the Pentagon chief. And it’s a negative sign as Austin prepares to confront similar questions publicly on Thursday when he testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on the matter.

“The secretary has taken responsibility; he is clearly responsible,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said. “People take their lead from the leader.”

She agreed with the report’s conclusion that there was no malicious intent by Austin or his staff.

“I don’t think there was anything untoward. My view is to never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence,” Shaheen said.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said he was among lawmakers in both parties who, during the briefing, questioned Austin’s judgment as defense secretary.

“Republicans and Democrats alike … had questions about trust, judgment, about lack of common sense, hiding behind process,” Cramer said. “What Lloyd Austin tried to get by with is just so obvious.”

Austin’s hospital debacle: A timeline of events

BY POLITICO STAFF | JANUARY 08, 2024 04:23 PM

Cramer stopped short of calling for Austin’s resignation but said the defense secretary needs to answer questions when he next appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee in the coming weeks to defend the administration’s budget request. Cramer criticized Austin for putting President Joe Biden in the awkward position of having to defend him after keeping him in the dark.

“I don’t know if he should resign or not,” Cramer said of Austin. “I would feel duty bound to if I was him.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said the public needs to see the full report, parts of which are classified, and that it ought to be the basis for accountability.

“I have very strong, severe questions remaining for the Pentagon as to how this seeming concealment was handled, and I think there ought to be some public accountability,” Blumenthal said. “Whether there’s discipline or not, at this point, I’m not going to conclude but certainly the facts ought to be known.”

The review, ordered by Austin’s chief of staff, Kelly Magsamen, was sent to Congress late last week. An unclassified summary was released Monday by the Pentagon​.

Pentagon, White House do damage control after Austin hospitalization

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Austin was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in early January for complications from a December surgery to treat prostate cancer. But it was three days before President Joe Biden and top White House officials learned of Austin’s hospitalization, despite his transferring authorities to his deputy, Kathleen Hicks. It took even more time for Biden and the public to learn that Austin had been diagnosed with cancer.

The public summary of the classified report says procedures to transfer authorities were followed normally during the episode, but also notes that Austin’s team “was faced with an unprecedented situation” during the Pentagon chief’s hospitalization. It also underscored that, given privacy concerns, Austin’s team was “hesitant to pry or share any information that they did learn.”

The briefing and report’s secrecy, Cramer argued, is designed to dodge public scrutiny and accountability.

“This briefing is a classic example of a lack of accountability,” Cramer said. “They sent a pretty low-level bureaucrat who did a 30-day process evaluation — interviewed a few people, came out with a secret report that doesn’t have a single secret in it, and they’re trying to run interference or obfuscate.”

Republicans in the briefing argued that Austin was already required by law to notify Congress that he was incapacitated. The briefing was conducted by Jennifer Walsh, director of administration and management at the Pentagon.

Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) defended the initial review, but said senators still need to see the findings of an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general. The watchdog office said in January it would assess the handling of Austin’s hospitalization.

“This was a discrete look at [Austin’s] second hospitalization, and it was very well done,” Reed told reporters. “But there are additional issues that I think we have to look at and the IG is pursuing.

“I think we need more comprehensive reporting and that, I hope, will come with the IG’s report,” he said.

But it’s clear patience with Austin is running short for some lawmakers.

Ahead of what’s certain to be a tense House Armed Services hearing on Thursday, the panel’s Republican chair, Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, argued the review lacked accountability because it was “conducted by his own subordinates” and “subject to his approval.”

“This is why we are conducting our own investigation. We will seek answers at our hearing,” Rogers said in a statement on social media.

• FILED UNDER: JACK REED, WALTER REED, LLOYD AUSTIN, JOE BIDEN 2024

20. Backgrounder: Ethnic Armies in the Myanmar Civil War

This is quite a list.

Backgrounder: Ethnic Armies in the Myanmar Civil War

https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/backgrounder-ethnic-armies-in-the-myanmar-civil-war/

BACKGROUNDERS - February 27, 2024

By Antonio Graceffo

The Myanmar civil war can be traced back to 1948, when the Karen National Union (KNU) emerged as the first ethnic armed organization (EAO) to deploy on the battlefield. With Burma comprising 135 ethnic groups, numerous armed factions have arisen since then, often accompanied by corresponding political wings. Some groups dissolved, rebranded, and reentered the fray. Presently, over 25 armed factions operate, with most opposing the government, and some aligning with it, and others observing a ceasefire. Despite repeated attempts by the government to secure a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with resistance armies, many have refused. Some initially signed the NCA but resumed hostilities against the Tatmadaw following the 2021 coup.

The ongoing conflict, characterized by its smoldering, low-intensity nature, occasionally escalates into more intense bouts of fighting before subsiding. However, since the 2021 coup, reported clashes have surged by about 67%. The ‘1027 Offensive,’ launched by the Three Brotherhood Alliance last October, appears to signal a significant shift in the conflict, with resistance forces securing substantial territorial gains and achieving numerous victories. This success has also emboldened other ethnic armed groups (EAO) to join the alliance.

Since the coup, several new EAOs and militias have emerged or reactivated, with many rallying under the National Unity Government (NUG). Comprising lawmakers elected in the 2020 election, the NUG aims to consolidate command over diverse EAOs to counter the Tatmadaw. Its military arm, the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), strives to unify all autonomous PDFs under a single command structure. While tensions persist among some EAOs, the NUG, and PDF, most disputes are set aside to facilitate collective efforts aimed at ending the military dictatorship.

Below is a comprehensive and up-to-date list of current armed groups and political parties, along with brief explanations of their backgrounds and activities. It’s important to note that the fluid nature of conflicts in certain regions means that new groups can form, existing ones may splinter, and alliances can shift over time. While this list provides an overview of the current landscape, the situation on any given day may vary.

Armed Groups and Political Organizations in Myanmar Civil War

All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF): Operates along the Myanmar–Thailand border, India–Myanmar border, and China–Myanmar border. Joined the CRPH/NUG following the 2021 Myanmar coup.

Arakan Army (AA): Active in Chin State, Kachin State, Rakhine State, Shan State, Bangladesh–Myanmar border, and India–Myanmar border. Claimed troop strength of 30,000 in 2021, with over 15,000 in Chin and Rakhine State, and approximately 1,500 in Kachin and Shan State. Serves as the armed wing of the United League of Arakan and is part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, Northern Alliance, and Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee.

Arakan Liberation Army (ALA): Operates in Kayin State and Rakhine State. Serves as the armed wing of the Arakan Liberation Party. Maintains close ties with the Karen National Union (KNU). Joined the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH)/National Unity Government (NUG) after the 2021 Myanmar coup.

Border Guard Forces: These are subdivisions of the Tatmadaw, operating under Regional Military Commands and composed of former insurgent groups from various ethnic backgrounds. Examples include the Karen Border Guard Force and the Kokang Border Guard Force.

Border Guard Police: This is a department of the Myanmar Police Force, specializing in border control, counterinsurgency operations, crowd control, and security checkpoints in border and insurgent areas.

Chinland Defense Force (CDF): Operates in Chin State, Magway Region, Sagaing Region, and along the India–Myanmar border.

Chin National Army (CNA): Active in Chin State and serving as the armed wing of the Chin National Front. It is a part of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC).

Chin National Defense Force: Operates in Chin State, Magway Region, Sagaing Region, and along the India–Myanmar border. It serves as the armed wing of the Chin National Organisation.

Chin National Front: A Chin nationalist political organization advocating for a federal union based on self-determination. It is a member of the National Unity Consultative Council.

Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH): An exiled Burmese legislative entity comprising of National League for Democracy lawmakers and parliamentarians displaced following the 2021 Myanmar coup d’état. With a membership drawn from both the Pyithu Hluttaw and Amyotha Hluttaw, totaling 17 individuals, the Committee aims to assume the responsibilities of Myanmar’s dissolved legislative body, the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw. Additionally, it has established a government-in-exile, the National Unity Government, collaborating with various ethnic minority insurgent factions.

Kachin Independence Army (KIA): Formed in response to Ne Win’s 1962 Burmese coup, the KIA operates in Kachin State and northern Shan State. It serves as the armed wing of the Kachin Independence Organisation and is part of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC). Additionally, it is a member of the Northern Alliance and the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee.

Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO): Led by Chairman N’Ban La, its armed wing is financed primarily via the cross-border trade with China in jade, timber, and gold. Additionally, funds are raised through taxes imposed by the KIA on locals.

Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA): Operates across Kayah State, Kayin State, and the Tanintharyi Region, serving as the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU) and a member of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC). It broke its ceasefire following the 2021 coup.

Karen National Union (KNU): Operates in Kayah State and Kayin State as an affiliate of the Karen National Union. After the 2021 coup, it broke its ceasefire agreement, shifting its goal from independence to establishing a federal, democratic system in Burma.

Karenni Army (KA): Operates in Kayah State, serving as the armed wing of the Karenni National Progressive Party. It is also a member of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC). The group resumed hostilities following the 2021 coup.

Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF): Operates in Kayah State, Shan State, Kayin State, and along the Myanmar–Thailand border; formed in response to the 2021 coup. It claims to be a unified organization comprising various Karenni youth resistance forces, totaling 22 battalions, including three based in Karenni State, two in Shan State, and several ethnic armed organizations. It includes other groups such as the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) and aims to overthrow the junta, following the defense policy of the National Unity Government (NUG) and the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH).

Karenni National People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF): A communist and Karenni nationalist insurgent group, the KNPLF is active in Kayah State. Initially served as a government Border Guard Force, it now collaborates with various armed groups, including the Karenni Army, Karenni Nationalities Defence Force, Karen National Liberation Army, and People’s Defence Force.

Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP): A political organization based in Kayah State. In 2021, the KNPP joined the National Unity Consultative Council.

Kokang Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA): Operates in the Kokang region. It broke its ceasefire agreement following the coup and resumed fighting against the government. The MNDAA participated in Operation 1027 alongside its allies, the Arakan Army and Ta’ang National Liberation Army. On January 5, 2024, the MNDAA seized full control of Laukkai, the capital of Kokang, after defeating Tatmadaw forces.

Mon National Liberation Army (MNLA): Operates in Mon State and the Tanintharyi Region, serving as the armed wing of the New Mon State Party. It entered into a ceasefire agreement in 2018.

Mon National Liberation Army (Anti-Military Dictatorship) (MNLA A-MD): Formed in 2024 after splitting from the MNLA. It disregarded the ceasefire and joined the anti-junta forces.

Myanmar Army, or ‘Tatmadaw’: Along with its affiliated political entity, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), and the ruling junta known as The State Administration Council (SAC), the Tatmadaw emerged as a combatant following the 2021 coup, led by Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services Min Aung Hlaing. The National Defence and Security Council declared a state of emergency, granting the commander-in-chief absolute legislative, executive, and judicial authority as per the constitution. Min Aung Hlaing delegated his legislative powers to the SAC, which he leads, establishing a provisional government, with Min Aung Hlaing also serving as the prime minister of Myanmar.

Myanmar Air Force: Equipped with jets and attack helicopters from Russia and the People’s Republic of China, the Air Force regularly violates Thai airspace and has been reported to drop bombs on civilians near the border.

Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA): Operates in Shan State (Kokang) after splitting from the Communist Party of Burma. It serves as the armed wing of the Myanmar National Truth and Justice Party and is part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, the Northern Alliance, and the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee.

National League for Democracy (NLD): The pro-democracy political party led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, which emerged victorious in both the 2015 and 2020 elections. Although the NLD does not have a direct militia, it garners support from various resistance armies. The junta dissolved the NLD, purportedly due to its failure to renew its registration as a political party.

National Unity Government (NUG): Established in 2021 by Min Ko Naing, a prominent pro-democracy figure, with a significant representation of members from ethnic minority communities. Min Ko Naing declared that ousted leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint would retain their positions within the NUG and urged the international community to recognize their government instead of the ruling junta. The European Union has acknowledged the NUG as the government-in-exile, and the NUG has appointed representatives in the USA and UK. The People’s Defense Force (PDF) serves as its armed wing, and the NUG has instituted People’s Administration Teams (Pa Ah Pha) to oversee areas under its control.

Northern Alliance: Comprising of the Arakan Army (AA), the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Northern Alliance is active in Shan State. The alliance is also a member of the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC).

Pa-O National Army (PNA): Operates in Shan State and allied with the Tatmadaw. It serves as the armed wing of the Pa-O National Organisation and is responsible for safeguarding the PNO-administered Pa-O Self-Administered Zone, comprising of Hopong, Hsi Hseng, and Pinlaung townships in southern Shan State. Since the 2021 coup, the PNA has actively recruited for the Tatmadaw.

Pa-O National Liberation Army (PNLA): Aligned with the resistance against the Tatmadaw and has pledged support to the National Unity Government (NUG) in defeating the junta and establishing a federal system. In 2024, it formally revoked its ceasefire and began coordinating with local People’s Defense Forces (PDF) and the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF), launching attacks against the junta and its aligned forces.

Pa-O National Organisation (PNO): Maintains close ties with the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

People’s Defense Forces (PDF): Serves as the military wing of the National Unity Government (NUG) and comprises of roughly 65,000 troops. Composed of resistance groups and anti-junta ethnic militias, the PDF bears ethnic or regional names such as Chinland Defence Force, People’s Defence Force (Kalay), and Karenni People’s Defence Force.

People’s Liberation Army (PLA): Affiliated with the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), the PLA was reactivated on March 15, 2021, when communist fighters crossed from China into Kachin State. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) provided them with weapons to combat the ruling junta. Additionally, the PLA operates within the Tanintharyi Region, situated in the southernmost part of Myanmar, extending along the upper Malay peninsula to the Kra Isthmus. It shares borders with the Andaman Sea to the west, Thailand beyond the Tenasserim Hills to the east, and the Mon State to the north. Collaborating with the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), the PLA asserts to have approximately 1,000 active troops as of December 2023.

Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO): Operates in Rakhine State and along the Bangladesh–Myanmar border. It was reactivated since the coup.

Shan State Army North (SSA-N): Operates in Shan State and serves as the armed wing of the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP). Allied with the Tatmadaw, it declared a truce with the Shan State Army – South on November 30, 2023, claiming to be planning to unite the two armies in the future.

Shan State Army – South (SSA-S): Operates in Shan State along the Myanmar–Thailand border and stands as one of the largest insurgent groups in Myanmar. Serving as the armed wing of the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and a part of the Shan State Congress, it maintains alliances or ceasefire arrangements with the Tatmadaw. Currently not aligned with the resistance, it is led by Lieutenant General Yawd Serk and is headquartered in Loi Tai Leng. Its political arm is the Restoration Council of Shan State. On February 19, 2024, the RCSS implemented mandatory conscription for all citizens aged 18–45 residing in its territory, obliging them to serve a minimum of six years in the SSA-S, with severe penalties for refusal.

Shanni Nationalities Army (SNA): Operates in Kachin State and aligns itself with the Shan State Army – South and the Tatmadaw.

State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC): Later rebranded as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), emerged as a military junta following the pro-democracy People Power Uprising of 1988, also known as the 8888 uprising.

Student Armed Force (SAF): Established after the coup by members of Yangon-based University Student Unions. They received basic military training from the Arakan Army. Former actress Honey Nway Oo currently holds a senior officer position within the SAF.

Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA): Operates in Shan State with an estimated troop strength of 10,000 to 15,000. It is a member of the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), the Three Brotherhood Alliance, the Northern Alliance, and the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee. The TNLA also governs the Pa Laung Self-Administered Zone.

Three Brotherhood Alliance: Consists of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and the Arakan Army (AA). It is an anti-junta alliance operating primarily in Rakhine State and northern Shan State. The alliance spearheaded Operation 1027, a successful offensive against the junta in northern Shan State, marking a significant turning point in the conflict.

United Wa State Army (UWSA): Operates in Shan State and is regarded as Myanmar’s most powerful and well-armed army, boasting around 30,000 troops equipped with modern weapons. It serves as the armed wing of the United Wa State Party (UWSP) and is a member of the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee. The UWSA governs the Wa Self-Administered Division (Wa State) and maintains a de facto ceasefire with the government. It has frequently allied with the Tatmadaw to combat Shan nationalist militia groups, including the Shan State Army – South. Unlike other armed groups, the UWSA is not pursuing independence or secession. Instead, it engages in extensive business and trade with China and earns revenue from drug and weapon production. Notably, the UWSA has acquired surface-to-air missiles from China to counter the Tatmadaw’s air superiority, a critical asset for insurgent groups.

United Wa State Party: The governing party of Wa State, led by Bao Youxiang (known as Tax Log Pang in Wa, Dax Lōug Bang in Chinese Wa, and Pau Yu Chang in Burmese). Bao Youxiang serves as the President of the Wa State People’s Government, the General Secretary of the United Wa State Party, and the Commander-in-Chief of the United Wa State Army.

21. We salute the brave men who took part in – and named – ‘Operation Bunghole’

War requires a sense of humor.

You know the troops who named this simply wanted to make the Generals back in DC. used the operation codename out loud.

We salute the brave men who took part in – and named – ‘Operation Bunghole’

Operation Bunghole, launched 80 years ago this week, helped lead to the rescues of Allied pilots shot down over the Balkans.

BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED FEB 27, 2024 3:29 PM EST

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · February 27, 2024

In the annals of history, no secret mission can boast a better codename than Operation Bunghole, which U.S. intelligence launched 80 years ago this month.

How exactly the mission was named “Bunghole” is a question lost to the ages. It wasn’t until decades after World War II that the animated series “Beavis and Butthead” made the term “Bunghole” part of the mainstream repertoire.

The mission took place in February 1944 in German-occupied Yugoslavia, where the Partisans waged arguably the most formidable insurgency the Nazis faced in all of Europe — the so-called French “Resistance” pales in comparison.

Operation Bunghole — hereafter referred to as simply “Bunghole” — was carried out by the Office of Strategic Services, the United States’ intelligence service during WWII and the predecessor of the CIA.

Led by Army Maj. Gen. William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the OSS took part in daring missions behind enemy lines, and it created a field manual with tips for sabotage that ironically provides an accurate picture of how U.S. government agencies work today.

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“When possible, refer all matters to committees, for ‘further study and consideration,’” the sabotage manual says. “Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.”

Bunghole’s goal was to establish a weather station in present-day Bosnia to make U.S. bombing raids against targets in Central and Eastern Europe more effective and support efforts to supply the Partisans in the Balkans, according to an official history of U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II.

The first airdrop took place on Feb. 27, 1944, when one of two C-47s managed to fly below the clouds and locate a drop zone marked by signal fires. Three meteorologists and their equipment successfully landed and linked up with the Partisans.

They were escorted to Drvar, Bosnia, where Marshal Josip Broz Tito, leader of the Yugoslav resistance, was headquartered. Tito would later serve as Yugoslavia’s post-war communist dictator until he died in 1980.

The team began taking four weather observations a day and transmitting the data to OSS headquarters in Bari, Italy. The OSS ultimately landed several more meteorological teams in the Balkans.

Bunghole is a little-known success story that allowed the Allies to increase the flow of supplies to the Partisans fighting the Germans and enabled future rescue missions of Allied pilots who had been shot down over Yugoslavia, said retired Air Force Tech. Sgt. Bryan Carnes, a former special operations weather technician.

One of the teams was still at Tito’s headquarters when the Germans tried to capture the Yugoslav resistance leader, so they had to be evacuated, said Carnes, who researched the mission.

One of Bunghole’s enduring results is that it paved the way for the Air Force’s current special operations weathermen, Carnes said.

Between 2002 and 2003, Carnes was deployed to remote outposts in Southwest Asia providing the exact same sort of meteorological information to U.S. commanders in Afghanistan that the OSS weather teams collected in Yugoslavia during Bunghole.

Despite his impressive level of knowledge about the mission, Carnes said he was never able to learn how Bunghole got its name. Task and Purpose suspects an E-4 on the team had something to do with it.

It is worth noting that the Allies also launched Operation Manhole in February 1944 to transport Russian military representatives to Yugoslavia. The reason why Bunghole and Manhole took place in the same month is a question for historians to debate.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · February 27, 2024

22. The Age of Amorality – Can America Save the Liberal Order Through Illiberal Means?

Excerpts:

The United States should, however, be more cautious about courting countries that regularly engage in the very practices it deems most corrosive to the liberal order: systematic torture or murder of their people, coercion of their neighbors, or export of repression across borders, to name a few. A Saudi Arabia, for instance, that periodically engages in some of these practices is a troublesome partner. A Saudi Arabia that flagrantly and consistently commits such acts risks destroying the moral and diplomatic basis of its relationship with the United States. American officials should be more hesitant still to distort or destabilize the politics of other countries, especially other democracies, for strategic gain. If Washington is going to get back into the coup business in Latin America or Southeast Asia, the bad outcomes to be prevented must be truly severe—a major, potentially lasting shift in a key regional balance of power, perhaps—to justify policies so manifestly in tension with the causes the United States claims to defend.

Mitigating the harm to those causes means heeding a further principle: marginal improvement matters. Washington will not convince leaders in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, or Vietnam to commit political suicide by abandoning their domestic model. But leverage works both ways in these relationships. Countries on the firing line need a superpower patron just as much as it needs them. U.S. officials can use that leverage to discourage extraterritorial repression, seek the release of political prisoners, make elections a bit freer and fairer, or otherwise obtain modest but meaningful changes. Doing so may be the price of keeping these relationships intact, by convincing proponents of human rights and democracy in Congress that the White House has not forgotten such issues altogether.

This relates to an additional principle: the United States must be scrupulously honest with itself. American officials need to recognize that illiberal allies will be selective or unreliable allies because their domestic models put them at odds with important norms of the liberal order—and because they tend to generate resentment that may eventually cause an explosion. In the same vein, the problem with laws that mandate aid cutoffs to coup plotters is that they encourage self-deception. In cases in which Washington fears the strategic fallout from a break in relations, U.S. officials are motivated to pretend that a coup has not occurred. The better approach, in line with reforms approved by Congress in December 2022, is a framework that allows presidents to waive such cutoffs on national security grounds—but forces them to acknowledge and justify that choice. The work of making moral tradeoffs in foreign policy begins with admitting those tradeoffs exist.

Some of these principles are in tension with others, which means their application in specific cases must always be a matter of judgment. But the issue of reconciling opposites relates to a final principle: soaring idealism and brutal realism can coexist. During the 1970s, moral debates ruptured the Cold War consensus. During the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan adequately repaired—but never fully restored—that consensus by combining flexibility of tactics with clarity of purpose.

Reagan supported awful dictators, murderous militaries, and thuggish “freedom fighters” in the Third World, sometimes through ploys—such as the Iran-contra scandal—that were dodgy or simply illegal. Yet he also backed democratic movements from Chile to South Korea; he paired rhetorical condemnations of the Kremlin with ringing affirmations of Western ideals. The takeaway is that rough measures may be more tolerable if they are part of a larger package that emphasizes, in word and deed, the values that must anchor the United States’ approach to the world. Some will see this as heightening the hypocrisy. In reality, it is the best way to preserve the balance—political, moral, and strategic—that a democratic superpower requires.

The Age of Amorality

Can America Save the Liberal Order Through Illiberal Means?

By Hal Brands

March/April 2024

Published on February 20, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Hal Brands · February 20, 2024

“How much evil we must do in order to do good,” the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in 1946. “This, I think, is a very succinct statement of the human situation.” Niebuhr was writing after one global war had forced the victors to do great evil to prevent the incalculably greater evil of a world ruled by its most aggressive regimes. He was witnessing the onset of another global conflict in which the United States would periodically transgress its own values in order to defend them. But the fundamental question Niebuhr raised—how liberal states can reconcile worthy ends with the unsavory means needed to attain them—is timeless. It is among the most vexing dilemmas facing the United States today.

U.S. President Joe Biden took office pledging to wage a fateful contest between democracy and autocracy. After Russia invaded Ukraine, he summoned like-minded nations to a struggle “between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” Biden’s team has indeed made big moves in its contest with China and Russia, strengthening solidarity among advanced democracies that want to protect freedom by keeping powerful tyrannies in check. But even before the war between Hamas and Israel presented its own thicket of problems, an administration that has emphasized the ideological nature of great-power rivalry was finding itself ensnared by a morally ambiguous world.

In Asia, Biden has bent over backward to woo a backsliding India, a communist Vietnam, and other not so liberal states. In Europe, wartime exigencies have muted concerns about creeping authoritarianism on NATO’s eastern and southern fronts. In the Middle East, Biden has concluded that Arab dictators are not pariahs but vital partners. Defending a threatened order involves reviving the free-world community. It also, apparently, entails buttressing an arc of imperfect democracies and outright autocracies across much of the globe.

Biden’s conflicted strategy reflects the realities of contemporary coalition building: when it comes to countering China and Russia, democratic alliances go only so far. Biden’s approach also reflects a deeper, more enduring tension. American interests are inextricably tied to American values: the United States typically enters into great-power competition because it fears mighty autocracies will otherwise make the world unsafe for democracy. But an age of conflict invariably becomes, to some degree, an age of amorality because the only way to protect a world fit for freedom is to court impure partners and engage in impure acts.

Expect more of this. If the stakes of today’s rivalries are as high as Biden claims, Washington will engage in some breathtakingly cynical behavior to keep its foes contained. Yet an ethos of pure expediency is fraught with dangers, from domestic disillusion to the loss of the moral asymmetry that has long amplified U.S. influence in global affairs. Strategy, for a liberal superpower, is the art of balancing power without subverting democratic purpose. The United States is about to rediscover just how hard that can be.

A DIRTY GAME

Biden has consistently been right about one thing: clashes between great powers are clashes of ideas and interests alike. In the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War was fueled by doctrinal differences no less than by the struggle for European primacy. In the late eighteenth century, the politics of revolutionary France upheaved the geopolitics of the entire continent. World War II was a collision of rival political traditions—democracy and totalitarianism—as well as rival alliances. “This was no accidental war,” German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop declared in 1940, “but a question of the determination of one system to destroy the other.” When great powers fight, they do so not just over land and glory. They fight over which ideas, which values, will chart humanity’s course.

In this sense, U.S. competition with China and Russia is the latest round in a long struggle over whether the world will be shaped by liberal democracies or their autocratic enemies. In World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, autocracies in Eurasia sought global primacy by achieving preeminence within that central landmass. Three times, the United States intervened, not just to ensure its security but also to preserve a balance of power that permitted the survival and expansion of liberalism—to “make the world safe for democracy,” in U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s words. President Franklin Roosevelt made a similar point in 1939, saying, “There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded.” Yet as Roosevelt understood, balancing power is a dirty game.

Western democracies prevailed in World War II only by helping an awful tyrant, Joseph Stalin, crush an even more awful foe, Adolf Hitler. They used tactics, such as fire-bombing and atomic-bombing enemy cities, that would have been abhorrent in less desperate times. The United States then waged the Cold War out of conviction, as President Harry Truman declared, that it was a conflict “between alternative ways of life”; the closest U.S. allies were fellow democracies that made up the Western world. Yet holding the line in a high-stakes struggle also involved some deeply questionable, even undemocratic, acts.

Clashes between great powers are clashes of ideas and interests alike.

In a Third World convulsed by instability, the United States employed right-wing tyrants as proxies; it suppressed communist influence through coups, covert and overt interventions, and counterinsurgencies with staggering death tolls. To deter aggression along a global perimeter, the Pentagon relied on the threat of using nuclear weapons so destructive that their actual employment could serve no constructive end. To close the ring around the Soviet Union, Washington eventually partnered with another homicidal communist, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. And to ease the politics of containment, U.S. officials sometimes exaggerated the Soviet threat or simply deceived the American people about policies carried out in their name.

Strategy involves setting priorities, and U.S. officials believed that lesser evils were needed to avoid greater ones, such as communism running riot in vital regions or democracies failing to find their strength and purpose before it was too late. The eventual payoff from the U.S. victory in the Cold War—a world safer from autocratic predation, and safer for human freedom, than ever before—suggests that they were, on balance, correct. Along the way, the fact that Washington was pursuing such a worthy objective, against such an unworthy opponent, provided a certain comfort with the conflict’s ethical ambiguities. As NSC-68, the influential strategy document Truman approved in 1950, put it (quoting Alexander Hamilton), “The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief.” When the West was facing a totalitarian enemy determined to remake humanity in its image, some pretty ugly means could, apparently, be justified.

That comfort wasn’t infinite, however, and the Cold War saw fierce fights over whether the United States was getting its priorities right. In the 1950s, hawks took Washington to task for not doing enough to roll back communism in Eastern Europe, with the Republican Party platform of 1952 deriding containment as “negative, futile, and immoral.” In the 1960s and 1970s, an avalanche of amorality—a bloody and misbegotten war in Vietnam, support for a coterie of nasty dictators, revelations of CIA assassination plots—convinced many liberal critics that the United States was betraying the values it claimed to defend. Meanwhile, the pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, a strategy that deemphasized ideological confrontation in search of diplomatic stability, led some conservatives to allege that Washington was abandoning the moral high ground. Throughout the 1970s and after, these debates whipsawed U.S. policy. Even in this most Manichean of contests, relating strategy to morality was a continual challenge.

In fact, Cold War misdeeds gave rise to a complex of legal and administrative constraints—from prohibitions on political assassination to requirements to notify congressional committees about covert action—that mostly remain in place today. Since the Cold War, these restrictions have been complemented by curbs on aid to coup makers who topple elected governments and to military units that engage in gross violations of human rights. Americans clearly regretted some measures they had used to win the Cold War. The question is whether they can do without them as global rivalry heats up again.

IDEAS MATTER

Threats from autocratic enemies heighten ideological impulses in U.S. policy by underscoring the clash of ideas that often drives global tensions. Since taking office, Biden has defined the threat from U.S. rivals, particularly China, in starkly ideological terms.

The world has reached an “inflection point,” Biden has repeatedly declared. In March 2021, he suggested that future historians would be studying “the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy.” At root, Biden has argued, U.S.-Chinese competition is a test of which model can better meet the demands of the modern era. And if China becomes the world’s preeminent power, U.S. officials fear, it will entrench autocracy in friendly countries while coercing democratic governments in hostile ones. Just witness how Beijing has used economic leverage to punish criticism of its policies by democratic societies from Australia to Norway. In making the system safe for illiberalism, a dominant China would make it unsafe for liberalism in places near and far.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforced Biden’s thesis. It offered a case study in autocratic aggression and atrocity and a warning that a world led by illiberal states would be lethally violent, not least for vulnerable democracies nearby. Coming weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin had sealed a “no limits” strategic partnership, the Ukraine invasion also raised the specter of a coordinated autocratic assault on the liberal international order. Ukraine, Biden explained, was the central front in a “larger fight for . . . essential democratic principles.” So the United States would rally the free world against “democracy’s mortal foes.”

Biden delivering remarks in Warsaw, Poland, February 2023

Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters

The shock of the Ukraine war, combined with the steadying hand of U.S. leadership, produced an expanded transatlantic union of democracies. Sweden and Finland sought membership in NATO; the West supported Ukraine and inflicted heavy costs on Russia. The Biden administration also sought to confine China by weaving a web of democratic ties around the country. It has upgraded bilateral alliances with the likes of Japan and Australia. It has improved the Quad (the security and diplomatic dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan) and established AUKUS (a military partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom). And it has repurposed existing multilateral bodies, such as the G-7, to meet the peril from Beijing. There are even whispers of a “three plus one” coalition—Australia, Japan, the United States, plus Taiwan—that would cooperate to defend that frontline democracy from Chinese assault.

These ties transcend regional boundaries. Ukraine is getting aid from Asian democracies, such as South Korea, that understand that their security will suffer if the liberal order is fractured. Democracies from multiple continents have come together to confront China’s economic coercion, counter its military buildup, and constrict its access to high-end semiconductors. The principal problem for the United States is a loose alliance of revisionist powers pushing outward from the core of Eurasia. Biden’s answer is a cohering global coalition of democracies, pushing back from around the margins.

Today, those advanced democracies are more unified than at any time in decades. In this respect, Biden has aligned the essential goal of U.S. strategy, defending an imperiled liberal order, with the methods and partners used to pursue it. Yet across Eurasia’s three key regions, the messier realities of rivalry are raising Niebuhr’s question anew.

CONTROVERSIAL FRIENDS

Consider the situation in Europe. NATO is mostly an alliance of democracies. But holding that pact together during the Ukraine war has required Biden to downplay the illiberal tendencies of a Polish government that—until its electoral defeat in October—was systematically eroding checks and balances. Securing its northern flank, by welcoming Finland and Sweden, has involved diplomatic horse-trading with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, in addition to frequently undercutting U.S. interests, has been steering his country toward autocratic rule.

In Asia, the administration spent much of 2021 and 2022 carefully preserving U.S. ties to the Philippines, at the time led by Rodrigo Duterte, a man whose drug war had killed thousands. Biden has assiduously courted India as a bulwark against China, even though the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has curbed speech, harassed opposition leaders, fanned religious grievances, and allegedly killed dissidents abroad. And after visiting New Delhi in September 2023, Biden traveled to Hanoi to sign a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Vietnam’s one-party regime. Once again, the United States is using some communists to contain others.

Then there is the Middle East, where Biden’s “free world” coalition is quite the motley crew. In 2020, Biden threatened to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. By 2023, his administration—panicked by Chinese inroads and rising gas prices—was trying to make that country Washington’s newest treaty ally instead. That initiative, moreover, was part of a concept, inherited from the Trump administration, in which regional stability would rest on rapprochement between Arab autocracies and an Israeli government with its own illiberal tendencies, while Palestinian aspirations were mostly pushed to the side. Not surprisingly, then, human rights and political freedoms receded in relations with countries from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates. Biden also did little to halt the strangulation of democracy in Tunisia—just as he had decided, effectively, to abandon Afghanistan’s endangered democracy in 2021.

Indeed, if 2022 was a year of soaring rhetoric, 2023 was a year of awkward accommodation. References to the “battle between democracy and autocracy” became scarcer in Biden’s speeches, as the administration made big plays that defied that description of the world. Key human rights–related positions at the White House and the State Department sat vacant. The administration rolled back sanctions on Venezuela—an initiative described publicly as a bid to secure freer and fairer elections, but one that was mostly an effort to get an oppressive regime to stop exporting refugees and start exporting more oil. And when a junta toppled the elected government of Niger, U.S. officials waited for more than two months to call the coup a coup, for fear of triggering the cutoff of U.S. aid and thereby pushing the new regime into Moscow’s arms. Such compromises have always been part of foreign policy. But today, they testify to key dynamics U.S. officials must confront.

THE DECISIVE DECADE

First is the cruel math of Eurasian geopolitics. Advanced democracies possess a preponderance of power globally, but in every critical region, holding the frontline requires a more eclectic ensemble.

Poland has had its domestic problems; it is also the logistical linchpin of the coalition backing Ukraine. Turkey is politically illiberal and, often, unhelpful; nonetheless, it holds the intersection of two continents and two seas. In South and Southeast Asia, the primary barrier to Chinese hegemony is a line of less-than-ideal partners running from India to Indonesia. In the Middle East, a picky superpower will be a lonely superpower. Democratic solidarity is great, but geography is stubborn. Across Eurasia, Washington needs illiberal friends to confine its illiberal foes.

The ideological battlefield has also shifted in adverse ways. During the Cold War, anticommunism served as ideological glue between a democratic superpower and its autocratic allies, because the latter knew they were finished if the Soviet Union ever triumphed. Now, however, U.S. enemies feature a form of autocracy less existentially threatening to other nondemocracies: strongmen in the Persian Gulf, or in Hungary and Turkey, arguably have more in common with Xi and Putin than they do with Biden. The gap between “good” and “bad” authoritarians is narrower than it once was—which makes the United States work harder, and pay more, to keep illiberal partners imperfectly onside.

High-stakes rivalries carry countries, and leaders, to places they never sought to go.

Desperate times also call for morally dexterous measures. When Washington faced no serious strategic challengers after the Cold War, it paid a smaller penalty for foregrounding its values. As the margin of safety shrinks, the tradeoffs between power and principle grow. Right now, war—or the threat of it—menaces East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Biden says the 2020s will be the “decisive decade” for the world. As Winston Churchill quipped in 1941, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” When threats are dire, democracies will do what it takes to rally coalitions and keep the enemy from breaking through. Thus, a central irony of Washington’s approach to competition is that the same challenges that activate its ideological energy make it harder to keep U.S. diplomacy pure.

So far, the moral compromises of U.S. policy today are modest compared with those of World War II or the Cold War, in part because the constraints on unsavory methods are stronger than they were when Hitler and Stalin stalked the earth. But rules and norms can change as a country’s circumstances do. So Biden and his successors may soon face a daunting reality: high-stakes rivalries carry countries, and leaders, to places they never sought to go.

When the Cold War started, few officials imagined that Washington would conduct covert interventions from Afghanistan to Angola. Just three years ago, hardly anyone predicted that the United States would soon fight a proxy war meant to bleed Putin’s army to death in Ukraine. As the present competitions intensify, the tactics used to wage them could become more extreme.

Washington could find itself covertly trying to tip the balance in elections in some crucial swing state if the alternative is seeing that country shift hard toward Moscow or Beijing. It could use coercion to keep Latin America’s military facilities and other critical infrastructure out of Chinese hands. And if the United States is already ambivalent about acknowledging coups in out-of-the-way countries, perhaps it would excuse far greater atrocities committed by a more important partner in a more important place.

Those who doubt that Washington will resort to dirty tricks have short memories and limited imaginations. If today’s competitions will truly shape the fate of humanity, why wouldn’t a vigilant superpower do almost anything to come out on top?

DON’T LOSE YOURSELF

There’s no reason to be unduly embarrassed about this. A country that lacks the self-confidence to defend its interests will lack the power to achieve any great purpose in global affairs. Put differently, the damage the United States does to its values by engaging dubious allies, and engaging in dubious behavior, is surely less than the damage that would be done if a hyperaggressive Russia or neototalitarian China spread its influence across Eurasia and beyond. As during the Cold War, the United States can eventually repay the moral debts it incurs in a lengthy struggle—if it successfully sustains a system in which democracy thrives because its fiercest enemies are suppressed.

It would be dangerous to adopt a pure end-justifies-the-means mentality, however, because there is always a point at which foul means corrupt fair ends. Even short of that, serial amorality will prove politically corrosive: a country whose population has rallied to defend its values as well as its interests will not forever support a strategy that seems to cast those values aside. And ultimately, the greatest flaw of such a strategy is that it forfeits a potent U.S. advantage.

During World War II, as the historian Richard Overy has argued, the Allied cause was widely seen to be more just and humane than the Axis cause, which is one reason the former alliance attracted so many more countries than the latter. In the Cold War, the sense that the United States stood, however imperfectly, for fundamental rights and liberties the Kremlin suppressed helped Washington appeal to other democratic societies—and even to dissidents within the Soviet bloc. The tactics of great-power competition must not obscure the central issue of that competition. If the world comes to see today’s rivalries as slugfests devoid of larger moral meaning, the United States will lose the asymmetry of legitimacy that has served it well.

This is not some hypothetical dilemma. Since October 2023, Biden has rightly framed the Israel-Hamas war as a struggle between a flawed democracy and a tyrannical enemy seeking its destruction. There is strong justification, moral and strategic, for backing a U.S. ally against a vicious proxy of a U.S. enemy, Iran. Moreover, there is no serious ethical comparison between a terrorist group that rapes, tortures, kidnaps, and kills civilians and a country that mostly tries, within the limits war imposes, to protect them.

Yet rightly or wrongly, large swaths of the global South view the war as a testament to American double standards: opposing occupation and appropriation of foreign territory by Russia but not by Israel, valuing the lives and liberties of some victims more than those of others. Russian and Chinese propagandists are amplifying these messages to drive a wedge between Washington and the developing world. This is why the Biden administration has tried, and sometimes struggled, to balance support for Israel with efforts to mitigate the harm the conflict brings—and why the war may presage renewed U.S. focus on the peace process with the Palestinians, as unpromising as that currently seems. The lesson here is that the merits of an issue may be disputed, but for a superpower that wears its values on its sleeve, the costs of perceived hypocrisy are very real.

RULES FOR RIVALRY

Succeeding in this round of rivalry will thus require calibrating the moral compromises inherent in foreign policy by finding an ethos that is sufficiently ruthless and realistic at the same time. Although there is no precise formula for this—the appropriateness of any action depends on its context—some guiding principles can help.

First, morality is a compass, not a straitjacket. For political sustainability and strategic self-interest, American statecraft should point toward a world consistent with its values. But the United States cannot paralyze itself by trying to fully embody those values in every tactical decision. Nor—even at a moment when its own democracy faces internal threats—should it insist on purifying itself at home before exerting constructive influence abroad. If it does so, the system will be shaped by regimes that are more ruthless—and less shackled by their own imperfections.

The United States should also avoid the fallacy of the false alternative. It must evaluate choices, and partners, against the plausible possibilities, not against the utopian ideal. The realistic alternative to maintaining ties to a military regime in Africa may be watching as murderous Russian mercenaries fill the void. The realistic alternative to engaging Modi’s India may be seeing South Asia fall further under the shadow of a China that assiduously exports illiberalism. Similarly, proximity to a Saudi regime that carves up its critics is deeply uncomfortable. But the realistic alternative to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is probably a regime that remains quite repressive—and is far less committed to empowering women, curbing religious zealots, and otherwise making the country a more open, tolerant place. In a world of lousy options, the crucial question is often: Lousy compared with what?

Another guiding principle: good things don’t all come at once. Cold War policymakers sometimes justified coup making and support for repressive regimes on grounds that preventing Third World countries from going communist then preserved the possibility that they might go democratic later. That logic was suspiciously convenient—and, in many cases, correct. Countries in Latin America and other developing regions did eventually experience political openings as they reached higher levels of development, and democratic values radiated outward from the West.

Morality is a compass, not a straitjacket.

Today, unseemly bargains can sometimes lead to better outcomes. By not breaking the U.S.-Philippine alliance during Duterte’s drug war, Washington sustained the relationship until a more cooperative, less draconian government emerged. By staying close to a Polish government with some worrying tendencies, the United States bought time until, late last year, that country’s voters elected a coalition promising to strengthen its democratic institutions. The same argument could be made for staying engaged with other democracies where autocratic tendencies are pronounced but electoral mechanisms remain intact—Hungary, India, and Turkey, to name a few. More broadly, liberalism is most likely to flourish in a system led by a democracy. So simply forestalling the ascent of powerful autocracies may eventually help democratic values spread into once inhospitable places.

Similarly, the United States should remember that taking the broad view is as vital as taking the long view. Support for democracy and human rights is not an all-or-nothing proposition. As Biden’s statecraft has shown, transactional deals with dictators can complement a strategy that stresses democratic cooperation at its core. Honoring American values, moreover, is more than a matter of hectoring repressive regimes. A foreign policy that raises international living standards through trade, addresses global problems such as food insecurity, and holds the line against great-power war serves the cause of human dignity very well. A strategy that emphasizes such efforts may actually be more appealing to countries, including developing democracies from Brazil to Indonesia, that resist democracy-versus-autocracy framing because they don’t want any part of a Manichean fight.

Of course, these principles can seem like a recipe for rationalization—a way of excusing the grossest behavior by claiming it serves a greater cause. Another important principle, then, revives Hamilton’s dictum that the means must be proportioned to the mischief. The greater the compromise, the greater the payoff it provides—or the damage it avoids—must be.

By this standard, the case for cooperation with an India or a Poland is clear-cut. These countries are troubled but mostly admirable democracies that play critical roles in raging competitions. Until the world contains only liberal democracies, Washington can hardly avoid seeking blemished friends.

The United States should, however, be more cautious about courting countries that regularly engage in the very practices it deems most corrosive to the liberal order: systematic torture or murder of their people, coercion of their neighbors, or export of repression across borders, to name a few. A Saudi Arabia, for instance, that periodically engages in some of these practices is a troublesome partner. A Saudi Arabia that flagrantly and consistently commits such acts risks destroying the moral and diplomatic basis of its relationship with the United States. American officials should be more hesitant still to distort or destabilize the politics of other countries, especially other democracies, for strategic gain. If Washington is going to get back into the coup business in Latin America or Southeast Asia, the bad outcomes to be prevented must be truly severe—a major, potentially lasting shift in a key regional balance of power, perhaps—to justify policies so manifestly in tension with the causes the United States claims to defend.

Chaos at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 2021

Sgt. Victor Mancilla / U.S. Marine Corps / Reuters

Mitigating the harm to those causes means heeding a further principle: marginal improvement matters. Washington will not convince leaders in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, or Vietnam to commit political suicide by abandoning their domestic model. But leverage works both ways in these relationships. Countries on the firing line need a superpower patron just as much as it needs them. U.S. officials can use that leverage to discourage extraterritorial repression, seek the release of political prisoners, make elections a bit freer and fairer, or otherwise obtain modest but meaningful changes. Doing so may be the price of keeping these relationships intact, by convincing proponents of human rights and democracy in Congress that the White House has not forgotten such issues altogether.

This relates to an additional principle: the United States must be scrupulously honest with itself. American officials need to recognize that illiberal allies will be selective or unreliable allies because their domestic models put them at odds with important norms of the liberal order—and because they tend to generate resentment that may eventually cause an explosion. In the same vein, the problem with laws that mandate aid cutoffs to coup plotters is that they encourage self-deception. In cases in which Washington fears the strategic fallout from a break in relations, U.S. officials are motivated to pretend that a coup has not occurred. The better approach, in line with reforms approved by Congress in December 2022, is a framework that allows presidents to waive such cutoffs on national security grounds—but forces them to acknowledge and justify that choice. The work of making moral tradeoffs in foreign policy begins with admitting those tradeoffs exist.

Some of these principles are in tension with others, which means their application in specific cases must always be a matter of judgment. But the issue of reconciling opposites relates to a final principle: soaring idealism and brutal realism can coexist. During the 1970s, moral debates ruptured the Cold War consensus. During the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan adequately repaired—but never fully restored—that consensus by combining flexibility of tactics with clarity of purpose.

Reagan supported awful dictators, murderous militaries, and thuggish “freedom fighters” in the Third World, sometimes through ploys—such as the Iran-contra scandal—that were dodgy or simply illegal. Yet he also backed democratic movements from Chile to South Korea; he paired rhetorical condemnations of the Kremlin with ringing affirmations of Western ideals. The takeaway is that rough measures may be more tolerable if they are part of a larger package that emphasizes, in word and deed, the values that must anchor the United States’ approach to the world. Some will see this as heightening the hypocrisy. In reality, it is the best way to preserve the balance—political, moral, and strategic—that a democratic superpower requires.

• HAL BRANDS is Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Foreign Affairs · by Hal Brands · February 20, 2024

23. The Israeli General Who Believes in Winning Wars

The Israeli General Who Believes in Winning Wars

For the past two decades, Gershon Hacohen has been a lonely dissenter in the highest ranks of the IDF. Unfortunately, he was proven right.

BY

ARMIN ROSEN

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Tablet · by Armin Rosen · February 28, 2024

Four-and-half months after Hamas commandos overran the police station in the center of Sderot, all that remains is a dusty lot of twisted rebar. Although the city’s police killed over two dozen terrorists before the IDF arrived late in the morning of Oct. 7, it took over a dozen tank shells to bring down the hijacked station, where outnumbered officers had fought Hamas’ Nukhba forces to a bloody impasse. An Israeli tank had never fired on an Israeli building on Israeli territory in combat before.

A freshly painted mural next to the former site of the demolished station memorializes this unprecedented breach in the national reality of the Jewish state: A tank is shown bombarding the building against eerily colorful skies. The numinous image of an open Torah scroll hovers above the scene, recalling the desecrated happiness of the holiday on which the fighting took place. On the day I visited, earlier this month, an American family was on a guided tour, feet away from a group of several dozen uniformed policemen who were also on some kind of organized visit to their force’s newest national shrine. On Feb. 11, the Times of Israel reported that rubble from the station, which was bulldozed the morning of Oct. 8, had been dumped in a nature preserve north of the city.

Is the Sderot battle something to be canonized or buried? It isn’t surprising that the answers, as expressed in the present, are so bizarrely incoherent. One of the major features of the war that began on Oct. 7 is its persisting lack of clarity. Israel might be on the verge of defeating Hamas in Gaza—or it could be weeks away from the steep strategic setback of American recognition of a Palestinian state. While the demobilization of reservists and a newly announced government timeline for the repopulation of the Gaza border region has partly relieved the feeling of an active emergency, an even worse crisis looms in the form of a potential war with Hezbollah, a threat that has so far prevented 60,000 displaced Israelis from returning to their homes in the north.

Months after Hamas’ destruction of a 30-year-old illusion of a settled national existence and the discrediting of most of those responsible for theorizing and implementing it, there is societywide consensus on the need to defeat Hamas and a fog over nearly everything else. There are relatively few senior Israelis left who have proved themselves qualified to see through the morass. Of those few remaining former generals, government ministers, and agency heads still worth listening to, almost none held as senior a position in the security apparatus as Maj. Gen. (Res.) Gershon Hacohen.

‘The fact that Tel Aviv is still full with life is due to the fact that we are controlling Judea and Samaria.’

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In 2000, when Hacohen was the head of the IDF general staff’s training and doctrine division, he was asked to produce a paper about how Israel could defend itself without control of the Jordan Valley, which was to be ceded to a future Palestinian state under peace plans that Prime Minister Ehud Barak, nearly the entire top leadership of the IDF, and the next decade’s worth of Israeli leaders did not think were irresponsible. “My paper was very short: It is like asking an F-15 pilot to just rise up without an engine,” he recalled. “No way.”

In the years before his retirement from active duty in the mid-2000s, Hacohen, who was also the commander of Israel’s national defense college, emerged as one of the IDF’s strongest and highest-ranked internal dissenters. Hacohen, now 69, claimed to me that he was the only active-duty general to accurately warn about the likely security consequences of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, an operation he was then put in charge of.

In a war game in April of 2005, four months before the withdrawal, the IDF general staff simulated a scenario in which terrorists in the coastal strip launched rockets at Ashdod, Sderot, and Ashkelon. Hacohen’s advice in the midst of the exercise was to tell Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that “we don’t have a full way to retaliate because we will not be allowed to cross the border every week, we will not be allowed to launch artillery at a refugee camp of 50,000 residents, we will kill uninvolved people … therefore tell him what will happen will be a disaster, and we will not have a good way for retaliation.” After giving this assessment, Hacohen said he “was warned by chief of staff,” Moshe Ya’alon, “that I was speaking politically. I told him: ‘I am the only one here speaking professionally.’”

Hacohen was given a monthlong time frame for the removal of Gaza’s 9,000 remaining Israeli civilians, a job he finished in only two weeks. “Why did I succeed?” he asked. “Because I convinced the settler leaders to join me, to understand that they must struggle, but not to the fatal end, because in that way they will lose that legitimation they needed for the main battle about Judea and Samaria.” No soldiers died implementing the withdrawal, the settlement movement retained its credibility in Israeli society and dramatically grew in power, and there were no subsequent unilateral Israeli pullouts from the West Bank.

Hacohen is active in the Bitchonistim, an organization of over 20,000 former security and defense officials who are opposed to any overly risky concessions to Israel’s enemies, most notably the Palestinians. In 2022, the organization presented a detailed security assessment in which it argued for the strategic necessity of forcibly disarming the Gaza Strip. Yoav Gallant, the current minister of defense, attended the launch event for the paper—retired Gen. Amir Avivi, the Bitchonistim’s founder, worked closely with both Gallant and Hacohen when he was in the army. Members of the Bitchonistim are perceived, fairly or unfairly, as having access to the current government, which has informally drawn on their advice over the course of the war.

Israel is a country where ex-generals, including the quietly influential ones, have no particular aura to them—within the martial and Jewish-flavored egalitarianism of Israeli society, a former member of the general staff could be mistaken for a professor or a farmer or a bus driver. Hacohen is different even from the typical run of Israeli former officials. He speaks in a hypnotically slow, even, and high-pitched English, and the spindly retired officer often looks and sounds like a poet or a desert hermit who only happened to have commanded men into battle for over 40 years. I met him late on a Thursday night in Tel Aviv in mid-February, at a mostly deserted cafe near the Defense Ministry headquarters. A few hours earlier, protesters had blocked traffic in front of the ministry, demanding new elections and an immediate hostage release deal, even though there is no realistic one on offer. The demonstration was the city’s one glaring pocket of abnormality: Dizengoff was packed even beyond pre-conflict levels; my hotel in Ramat Gan was at capacity with Israelis heading to a concert at nearby Menora Mivtachim Arena.

“Tel Aviv was empty like a dead city at the beginning of the war. It took time to resurrect it. What you can see now is a miracle,” Hacohen said. Was the miracle the performance of the IDF in Gaza? I ventured, given that the army was slowly progressing toward full control of the territory and rocket fire from the Strip hadn’t threatened the city in weeks. “No,” he replied, “it is because of the power of life.”

The endurance of even a superficially normal existence in wartime Tel Aviv was a fragile miracle in the former military man’s view, and not only because of the long-range missiles that Hezbollah has aimed at the city. “The idea of President Biden to build a Palestinian state is a threat much more serious to the existence of Israel than the nuclear bomb in Iran—definitely,” he said. “And if Israel will not struggle against this idea, we are just opening the door for the fatal end of Israel.”

Israel’s closest ally is now supporting two regional military forces who see their paramount foe as Israel, and provide practical support and political cover for Iranian-backed terror militias.

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Hacohen’s injunctions might sound unduly alarmist. Then again, few military professionals foresaw the current nightmare on the eve of the Gaza pullout, and many serious Israeli security types thought that Operation Guardian of the Walls was a game-changing victory just a couple of years ago, showcasing Israel’s technological superiority and ability to dictate to its enemies. “The fact that Tel Aviv is still full with life is due to the fact that we are controlling Judea and Samaria,” Hacohen said. The loss of that control would bring Israel to a dire existential crux.

Hacohen then rapidly moved on to the bigger question of why the country needs to exist at all. Security is a necessary condition of life anywhere, he said, but that was not the point of Jews being sovereign in the land of Israel. “If the American administration thinks that we are here just for security, as they are always telling us, I’m telling them, always, that our story is not security. If all our anxieties are just security, why not look to find that in New Jersey? What’s bad there? Why struggle here for more than 100 years, only for security that’s still not achieved? Security is only the means for another goal. The main goal is redemption … Tel Aviv without being a gateway to Jerusalem is nothing beyond Brooklyn on the Mediterranean.”

“I spoke like that always while in the army,” Hacohen said. The religious register was once a commonplace of the worldview and vocabulary of Israeli military figures who are now considered icons of the country’s snuffed-out era of hopeful secular liberalism: “This was the way in which Moshe Dayan spoke. Yitzhak Rabin spoke like that,” Hacohen said. Over time, that mutually reinforcing sense of danger and purpose grew dimmer in Israel, even though the basic realities of the country hadn’t really changed. In Hacohen’s view, the country’s elite lost sight of continuities in the Israeli condition, the nature of war, and the connection between war and national survival, a mass delusion that Hamas shattered in horrifying fashion.

Hacohen began his career in the army in the early 1970s and was one of the soldiers who crossed the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. One day in 1977, as a company commander along the front line in the Golan Heights, he loaded a dozen tanks onto flatbed trucks to send them to a nearby live-fire exercise. Gen. Rafael Eitan, soon to become IDF chief of staff, was on hand and suddenly ordered a different kind of drill: Hacohen was to imagine the Syrians were attacking across the line of control, right that very second, meaning he had to get the tanks off the trailers as fast as humanly possible. “He did that to emphasize that the enemy is coming by surprise: Everything could happen at the very definite wrong moment, unexpectedly,” Hacohen said.

“The basic principle of defense is that you are not dependent in the field upon an alert,” he continued. “It is a part of the military profession as commander to keep the ritual of readiness.”

The ritual lapsed, along with the culture and the mindset that allowed it to exist in the first place. Even now, months after Oct. 7, it is possible to trick yourself into thinking that Eitan’s snap exam in the Golan belonged to a different era in warfare. It is true enough that the Syrian army of the late 1970s, whatever its myriad faults, was at least a uniformed regular military with a doctrine based around actual combat and a sense of honor that compelled it to stand and fight against other soldiers. In contrast, on Oct. 7, Hamas commandos fled from active confrontation with armed Israelis in order to maximize the number of Israeli civilian dead, and the group’s tactics in Gaza are based on sacrificing the largest possible number of Palestinian civilians while avoiding combat altogether. But if the long-ago Syrian army is a different kind of opponent than today’s Hamas, it requires a similarly inventive and broad-minded approach to military leadership to see each enemy clearly. Hacohen believes that mentality has all but vanished within the IDF.

In Hacohen’s view, the army lost the institutional memory of what it really means to “participate in a huge war,” something the IDF hadn’t done since the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In time, Hacohen said, “most of the commanders did not have that experience of warfare.” The end of the Cold War tricked the world’s leading militaries into believing that generals no longer needed to think or even care that much about the prospect of major combat for military leadership, and that wars would be small and manageable from now on—as Hacohen noted, even the viciously unsentimental Vladimir Putin was convinced that a handful of special forces could conquer Ukraine in a couple of days.

Hacohen, at right, speaks with a settler during the Gaza disengagement, 2005Yagil Henkin/Alamy

In the post-Cold War era of the Oslo Accords, peace with Jordan, and near-peace with Syria, the Israeli establishment became convinced that the country had fought its final existential battle. The rising generation of IDF generals were people who seemed well-suited to the smaller, more contained, lower-stakes conflicts of the post-historical world. “Those who were promoted came from special forces,” Hacohen said. “They cannot understand warfare in the same way that a very excellent brain surgeon cannot understand [general] medicine.”

According to Hacohen, the belief that mass-maneuver warfare was a relic of military textbooks from the past, and that the skills involved in fighting such conflicts no longer had any relevance, fed a growing institutional malaise within the IDF. The country’s strategic complex, busily preparing itself for peace with Yasser Arafat, generated self-fulfilling excuses for why the army needed to move away from the rough business of large-scale conflict. The profession of an IDF general went from existential warfare to “fire dominance by standoff,” as Hacohen explained—the idea that enemies could be fought at a distance through specialized units, airpower, and technological superiority. This was convenient, given that these were areas in which Israel already excelled, and which were central to the country’s newfound economic prosperity.

Candidates for high rank in the IDF weren’t prized for their ability to think creatively or deliver victories—victory being an outmoded concept in the new age of surgical operations in the service of peace—but for being good organizational functionaries. As war itself became hopelessly abstracted, the Israelis responsible for its theory and practice grew alienated from their core civic function, which is to prepare for the unthinkable, to live at the brink of national doomsday so that civilian life could be as orderly and productive as possible. Hacohen said that in his experience, when given the chance to study in the United States, most active-duty Israeli generals chose to learn industrial management at the National Defense University in Washington, rather than field command at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania. Even chiefs of staff, Hacohen said, saw these stints in Washington as a chance for officers to educate themselves for their post-military careers.

“Warfare is a realm of uncertainty,” Hacohen said. “It is definitely a different profession. Most of the generals are not at all fitted to the profession of warfare. They are not educated enough, and actually also in Israel generals don’t like warfare. They don’t like their profession. They are not learning about it—not learning enough.”

Instead, he said, they are learning “bullshit, management, studying in the Wexner program at Harvard—knowing how to speak nicely.”

I was in Israel earlier this month as part of a fact-finding mission organized by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum—I met Hacohen the evening after the program concluded. Early in the trip we got a vivid sense of what Hamas accomplished within the strategic blind spots of the IDF’s standoff doctrine, which Hacohen said the Islamists had started to counter in the mid-2000s by putting tarps up over the streets of Khan Yunis, creating a highly effective, low-cost shield against Israeli surveillance aircraft.

The group saw a display of weapons recently recovered from tunnels in Gaza. The dozens of stubby metal cylinders capped with flat-topped cones were antitank mines; a wide plastic tube connected to a hoselike detonator was a tunnel bomb, cemented into the boundary between an underground passageway and the street above. There were frisbee-shaped antipersonnel mines, as well as an explosive metal frame used for breaking through fencing. Hamas figured out that with a little clever modification, a gardening hose could be used as a delivery system for a strip of TNT. All of these devices were produced in Gaza, where Hamas had developed a capability that even the most generous two-state outcomes do not envision a Palestinian state possessing: a domestic military industry that can equip a vast army for tactical and even strategic victories over its Israeli enemy through the mass production of “improvised” weapons.

Hamas’ strategy is based on “deniability of superiority,” Hacohen said, which is strategically though not tactically reminiscent of Egypt’s area-denial strategy in 1973, in which Soviet-made antitank and antiaircraft missiles stopped Israeli armor and air power during the Egyptian army’s advance across the Suez Canal. In today’s world, far vaster disparities in military power can be bridged though even simpler means. An adversary no longer needs even a single warship to successfully fight the United States Navy—they just need Chinese-, Russian- or Iranian-produced land-to-sea missiles, like the Houthis in Yemen have, that can collapse the Navy’s advantages over a much smaller force, at least within the context of current U.S. naval warfighting doctrine in the Red Sea. Similarly, much of the IDF’s comparative strengths against Hamas threaten to evaporate if they’re fighting on the Islamists’ terms—the size or sophistication of the invasion force might not matter if Hamas can slow down the IDF’s advance and hold out underground long enough for the U.S. or the international community to order a stop to any Israeli operation.

“Hamas, Hezbollah, and other militia are postmodern military organizations,” Hacohen explained. “They don’t need an air force, a navy, or artillery, and yet they are creating an enormous strategic threat.”

What they did need was displayed for our group: Mass-produced simple explosives, North Korean-made rocket-propelled grenade launchers, locally made rockets, Iranian-built drones just a couple meters in length. We got the fortunately rare and psychologically jarring chance for a hands-on examination of a real-life suicide belt, with the ice pack-like explosives swaddled in plastic to insulate them against the muggy atmosphere of a Gazan tunnel. The vest had two color-coded arming plugs connected to a 5-volt battery and a pair of identical green buttons ensconced in black rectangular holders, a redundancy in case one of the mechanisms failed. Pressing either button is the culmination of an entire lifetime. In much the same way, the Hamas statelet’s decision to launch a self-destructive, genocidal war on Israel fulfilled the intended end result of what is objectively the Palestinian people’s freest and most advanced project of national autonomy. The vest, like Oct. 7, was the enemy’s way of proclaiming their fundamental worldview as loudly as possible.

Hacohen is not a believer in peace with the Palestinians, but he does not think violence alone can solve Israel’s strategic dilemmas. Two days before I met him, the MEF group had been in the north of Israel, looking through binoculars into the dread stillness of communities that had been ghost towns since early October. The naked eye could spot a white building on a far ridge, a U.N. post 80 meters inside of Lebanese territory where Hezbollah staged a military demonstration in April of 2023. The evacuation of 60,000 Israelis from 43 towns within 5 kilometers of the border had created a free-fire zone for the Shiite jihadists, who have blown up over 500 Israeli houses since October, and severely wounded a 15-year-old in Kiryat Shmona earlier that same day. Without an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, Iran-backed militants seemed unlikely to withdraw to the Litani River, their farthest permitted position under the worthless U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 Lebanon war.

Hacohen does not think such an invasion will be easy. “First of all it is a mountainous area,” he said. “We must learn from the Allied forces, the United States and the British in their march under the command of Patton from Sicily to Monte Casino. It took them too much time. … The Germans succeeded to stop them for nine months in Monte Casino.” Southern Lebanon “is a land, a very specific infrastructure, and a terrain giving all conditions for a small army to stand against a huge army,” he said.

Even if Hezbollah were chased back to the Litani, Hacohen thinks that peace would be unlikely to dawn over northern Israel, or any other part of the country for that matter, because so much of the Jewish state would still be within range of Hezbollah’s surviving arsenal. “They intentionally build themselves so that they can fight even by losing that southern part of Lebanon. They have depth,” Hacohen warned. Hezbollah would be able to bombard the center of Israel even if the IDF made it all the way to Beirut. “The idea that [Hezbollah] can go ahead with warfare, even though they are defeated in the battlefield, it is one of the [things] explaining the difference between the 1967 war and now,” he said.

There was one more crucial layer of complication: The Lebanese army, like the Palestinian Authority security forces, is a project of the United States, meaning Israel’s closest ally is now supporting two regional military forces who see their paramount foe as Israel, and provide practical support and political cover for Iranian-backed terror militias. “We must admit that there is huge strategic embarrassment for Israel,” Hacohen said.

“The first solution is to be aware about the dilemma,” he explained. The way out of the morass might involve careful diplomacy with the U.S., clever war-planning, and a high national threshold for chaos—above all, it means steeling the Israeli public for a second unprecedented national crisis in six months.

If Hacohen is optimistic about anything, it is the Israelis themselves, who “decided to fight for the honor of the Jewish people” after Oct. 7. Hacohen, who says he has 50 family members on active IDF duty, credits the army’s successes in Gaza to the rank-and-file rather than their commanders. The IDF had spent three decades avoiding massive face-to-face combat. Its soldiers have now dismantled three-quarters of Hamas’ brigades and chased its terrorists through hundreds of miles of cramped and booby-trapped tunnels without any sag in morale.

Hacohen used an unlikely example to illustrate how this fight for survival might change Israel. During World War II, Marlene Dietrich’s “Lili Marleen” became a favorite of both Allied and Axis soldiers. Dietrich, who as Hacohen noted performed in Israel in 1960, knew that she was the last female voice that thousands of young men would ever hear. In light of her significance to the deadliest event in human history, a postwar career in Hollywood proved unsatisfying to Dietrich, who opened a club that veterans from across America flocked to. The German actress, like the soldiers who had heard her over the radio and who now came to hear her sing in person, realized that the war had been more than just an episode, and that it had become a defining aspect of her own identity.

The point of Dietrich’s story is that “if you are a real warrior, a real general, participating in a war that is almost like independence warfare, it is just the highlight of your life,” Hacohen said almost wistfully. “After that, just to be something else, it is not really to respect what happened in that huge challenge that you overcame.”

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have fought in such a war for their national existence since Oct. 7. How they understand what they’ve fought for and why could determine the country’s future as much as any geopolitical event. Against a sometimes-bleak horizon of official failure and looming conflict, the strength of Israel’s people is perhaps the most important remaining unknown.

Tablet · by Armin Rosen · February 28, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com