​Quotes of the Day:

"At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.  There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed. There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight."

– President Lyndon Johnson

"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else." 

– Booker T. Washington

"All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution."

– Havelock Ellis

1. Who Consolidates Gains? The Enduring Requirement for Manpower in Army Formations

2. China This Week: Strategic Moves and Messaging

3. Hawaii’s 25th Infantry Division gears up for combat ‘rehearsals’ in the Philippines

4. How China’s Crypto Seizures Are Quietly Powering Its Digital Asset Reserves

5. Korean War vet to get Medal of Honor for longest dogfight in US military history

6. The Tech Policy Toolkit | Data Tools for Economic Statecraft and National Security

7. A brief history of the US military's presence in Greenland

8. Musk Shuts Down Russian Army Starlink Terminals in Ukraine, Kremlin Forces Lose Internet

9. What Are the Pros and Cons of Data Centers?

10. Xi’s military purges will make him wary of invading Taiwan

11. Thinking Like Beijing: Why Xi’s Purge Matters More Than It Looks

12. Xi, Trump and why their talks are stoking unease in Taiwan

13. The Marine Corps presence in Okinawa is critical to deterring China and North Korea

14. Trump signs bill allocating more than US$1.4bn to Taiwan security

15. Russian General With Key Intelligence Role Is Shot in Moscow

16. Five Questions for a General: Admiral Harry Harris

17. Is the Age of Drones Really the Age of Poor Maneuver?

18. Trump Told Iranian Protesters Help Was on the Way. What Happened?

19. Trump’s Voters Will Back an Iran Strike

20. Beyond simple analogies: Japan, Poland, and the challenge of Taiwan deterrence

21. Takaichi’s Long Trip From Heavy-Metal Drummer to Japan’s Political Heavyweight

1. Who Consolidates Gains? The Enduring Requirement for Manpower in Army Formations

​Summary:

Amos Fox argues the Army’s plan to convert most Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (about 4,500 soldiers) into Mobile Brigade Combat Teams (about 1,900 soldiers) trades manpower for technology and misreads what wins wars. Drawing on Colin Gray and Robert Citino, he contends advanced technology’s advantages even out, while land warfare still turns on quantity and the ability to exploit success and consolidate gains. He calls the MBCT a “Potemkin force” driven by innovation narratives, FOMO, and confirmation bias that discounts disconfirming evidence, including from Ukraine. Fox identifies three fatal flaws: high risk of culmination, weak exploitation capacity, and inability to consolidate gains, leaving the Army the joint force’s weakest link.

Excerpts:

In this article, I provide a basic logic of operations to explain why the MBCT is not the right solution to problems of warfare that the U.S. Army – or any likeminded armies – will experience in the future. First, the MBCT does not provide the Army and the joint force with the capability to exploit positive changes to the battlefield situation and accompanying conditions. Second, as case studies illustrate, the MBCT will not provide the Army with the manpower it needs to overcome negative situations and conditions on the battlefield. Third, in being slightly larger in manpower than most traditional infantry battalions, once committed to ground combat or identified on the battlefield, the MBCT will be hyper-sensitive to rapid culmination and piecemeal destruction. Fourth, if the MBCT survives long enough to make it through exploitation operations, the formation will not possess sufficient manpower to consolidate the gains made through the preceding phases of operations. Thus, the Army will have to commit more brigades to consolidate the positive outcomes they’ve been able to generate. Furthermore, as the recent past warns, the Army will have to commit additional brigades to control the situation on the ground. In both instances, the requirement to compensate for the MBCT’s limited manpower means that the formation will be able to do little more than shape and enable for a fight in which it culminates before arriving to, or not possess the strength to do anything meaningful once it arrives.

...

Moving forward, the U.S. Army should re-evaluate its embrace of the MBCT. It should do so void of fanciful visions of the future which placed preferred outcomes ahead of empirically informed continuities of war. In addition, it should emphasize the enduring character of land wars in which manpower in the land forces are a recurring driver of victory and failure. The Army’s forces should be built to thrive in close combat.

To conclude, The MBCT is a Potemkin force. The MBCT, which possess 58% less manpower than the IBCT, increases Army forces’ stand-off striking power. This will turn the Army into a shaping and enabling force, but one that won’t possess the manpower to win close combat. Without manpower, the MBCT cannot consolidate gains. As the Army sells off its manpower and IBCTs for MBCTs, it is ceding the U.S. military’s ability to consolidate tactical and operational opportunities on the battlefield. Though there are many historical examples, the looming lesson for the U.S. Army is that modern military technology should enhance manpower, not replace it.

Comment: I wonder if we cannot develop the right mix of IBCTs and MBCTs for the full range of missions. I do believe the Army understands the requirement of mass in terms of soldiers but I also believe it must exploit the incredible technologies being developed while sustaining its ability to conduct missions, i.e. consolidate gains, that are manpower intensive. 

And as an aside, I do believe that transformation in contact is the right concept versus the traditional modernization paradigm. That is not based on FOMO in my opinion. It is about doing the right thing for our nation. But I agree with Amos that there is still the absolute requirement for large numbers of boots on the ground. The challenge is balancing transformation in contact with the numbers of soldiers needed. Perhaps a force structure increase for the Army is necessary? 

Who Consolidates Gains? The Enduring Requirement for Manpower in Army Formations

by Amos Fox

|

02.06.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/06/mobile-brigade-combat-team-land-warfare/

The late Colin Gray offers prophetic advice to those thinking about innovation, technology, and the future of war. In Gray’s Strategy for Chaos, his research “Shows clearly the limited value of advanced technology as a source of strategic effectiveness…Military advantages and disadvantages will tend to even out over a period, and leave the contest to be decided by the issue of quantity rather than quality.”

When developing war-fighting concepts and military doctrine, Robert Citino also provides prudent counsel. Citino posits that, “There is something incomplete about a way of war that relies on the shock value of small, highly mobile forces and airpower, that stresses rapid victory over all, and that then has a difficult time putting the country it has conquered back together again.” Considering both Gray and Citino’s caution, it is important to examine the U.S. Army’s move to transform most of its Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) into Mobile Brigade Combat Teams, or MBCTs.

The MBCT is the product of the U.S. Army’s desire to support a technology-centric Department of Defense innovation narrative to “accelerate like hell,” and to move beyond what the department calls a “peacetime science fair.” This “peacetime science fair” is what many others might call rigorously examined and empirically informed concept and capabilities development.

In a stark tradeoff of quantity for quality, the MBCT sheds significant amounts of manpower for technological updates. To be sure, the IBCT consists of approximately 4,500 personnel, whereas the MBCT shrinks to only 1,900 soldiers – a 58% decrease in manpower in each converted brigade combat team. Technology along the lines of drones and sensors makes up the difference. Yet, modern conflicts and wars are often won or lost by manpower, and not technological superiority. The MBCT reflects an incorrect rendering of winning and losing in war that posits that things (e.g., drones, sensors, and artificial intelligence), not functional requirements, like controlling territory and defeating threat forces, fuels success and failure.

In this article, I assert that the MBCT is a Potemkin force – it looks great on paper, sounds spectacular when discussed amongst likeminded institutionalists, technocrats, and futurists, and appeals to government officials seeking to minimize boots on the ground in conflict and war. But the MBCT, and its placement within existing Multidomain Operations doctrine and future military strategy, lacks the quantity of manpower that the continuities of war indicate are necessary to weather the rigors of combat and win.

Furthermore, the MBCT reflects the Army’s application of confirmation bias and systematically excludes disconfirming evidence from the Russia-Ukraine War and other conflicts to “transform in contact.” In doing so, the MBCT does not truly reflect the causal challenges associated with winning and losing in war. Rather, the MBCT, continuous transformation, and accelerating innovation “like hell” all position innovation as a goal in and of itself.

A detailed examination of continuous transformation and innovation exceeds the scope of this article; however, it must be noted that innovating for the sake of innovation should never be the goal. Innovation must answer to the questions, “why are we innovating,” and “to what goal does that purpose fulfill?” Consequently, innovation should never be the bedrock of force design and force structure development. Rather, force design and force structure should be based on the “science fair” of rigorously examined empirical evidence regarding the causality of winning and losing in war.

Similarly, force design and force structure should never be based on the “fear of missing out,” or FOMO. For instance, the U.S. Army embraces FOMO as a transformation imperative each time it points to what Ukraine, Russia, China, Israel, and others are doing and then, without contextual self-reflection, point to itself, and passionately asserts that the U.S. military doesn’t look enough like the others, that it doesn’t possess the same military capabilities as those other actors, nor that it matches their operations and tactics. That is, the Army has selectively focused on its looks and its perception, but not on requirements and the causality to generate positive outcomes in war. Just flash, glitz, and narratives.

Considering those points, the MBCT lacks the capabilities and capacity to fight and win 21st century conflict and wars. This is because the MBCT possesses three fatal flaws. First, the MBCT’s small manpower base means that it is uniquely prone to culmination if drawn into close combat or identified and targeted from afar. Second, the MBCT’s limited manpower negatively impacts the formation’s potential to exploit opportunities that are created by shaping and enabling operations. The MBCT itself is little more than a shaping-enabling force. Third, if exploitation is successful, and assuming the MBCT hasn’t culminated, it lacks the capabilities and capacity to consolidate the gains generated during the shape-enable and exploit portions of an operation. Thus, the MBCT leaves the Army with a bedrock formation that is (1) highly sensitive to culmination, (2) unable to exploit the benefits of shaping-enabling activities, and (3) is unable to consolidate gains.

Regarding the Army’s contribution to a joint task force or land component command, the MBCT makes the Army the joint service’s weakest link. Whereas the other services will continue to conduct their core functions, an MBCT-laden Army won’t be able to exploit the opportunities created by joint shaping-enabling operations, nor will it be able to consolidate battlefield gains into meaningful outcomes.

In this article, I provide a basic logic of operations to explain why the MBCT is not the right solution to problems of warfare that the U.S. Army – or any likeminded armies – will experience in the future. First, the MBCT does not provide the Army and the joint force with the capability to exploit positive changes to the battlefield situation and accompanying conditions. Second, as case studies illustrate, the MBCT will not provide the Army with the manpower it needs to overcome negative situations and conditions on the battlefield. Third, in being slightly larger in manpower than most traditional infantry battalions, once committed to ground combat or identified on the battlefield, the MBCT will be hyper-sensitive to rapid culmination and piecemeal destruction. Fourth, if the MBCT survives long enough to make it through exploitation operations, the formation will not possess sufficient manpower to consolidate the gains made through the preceding phases of operations. Thus, the Army will have to commit more brigades to consolidate the positive outcomes they’ve been able to generate. Furthermore, as the recent past warns, the Army will have to commit additional brigades to control the situation on the ground. In both instances, the requirement to compensate for the MBCT’s limited manpower means that the formation will be able to do little more than shape and enable for a fight in which it culminates before arriving to, or not possess the strength to do anything meaningful once it arrives.

Keeping in spirit with Gray and Citino’s cautions, I examine a set of case studies from 21st century conflicts and wars. In doing so, I find that the need for manpower in the land forces is more important to a conflict and wars outcome than innovative military technology.

To that end, I find that the winners and losers in most 21st century conflicts were those with manpower asymmetry, not just technological advantages. This is because manpower asymmetry provides militaries with the ability to create situationally relevant ground combat lopsidedness that positively changes the conditions on the battlefield to their favor. For instance, drones, long-range precision strike, cyber, and land forces can all destroy and neutralize threats. Yet, it is only the manpower within a land force that can (1) take, retake, hold, and control terrain, (2) protect populations, (3) seal borders and boundaries, and (4) provide the human-to-human interface so often needed during security operations and small wars. In short, when considering the continuities of war, the MBCT is a liability, not an upgrade. The MBCT increases the Army’s inability to generate tactical, operational, and strategically relevant battlefield outcomes and instead contributes to futile battlefield muddling.

Following the case studies, I conclude this article with a set of recommendations. First, when innovating for the future of war, recent history and the continuities of land warfare must be placed ahead of preferred futures and unproven technology. Second, when innovating for the future, the exploit and consolidate gains phase must be at the fore of development. And third, the structural dynamics of competition, survival, and the pursuit of self-interest must be placed ahead of fantastical ideas like cognitive paralysis, decapitation, and other wishful goals.

Case Studies

The Army’s confirmation bias and exclusion of disconfirming evidence is quite easy to see (see Table 1). If one sets aside the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War because it is a small-theater outlier, and the 2025 Iran-Israel Conflict because it wasn’t fought on land, it is apparent that being the most technologically advanced side in medium- to large-theater conflicts in the 21st century does not equate to strategic victory. In fact, the evidence indicates that manpower advantage is a leading factor in generating positive strategic outcomes in war.

For this study, manpower advantage is classified in two ways. The first method is the most basic – quantitative asymmetry; or having more soldiers or fighters on the ground than the other side. The second method is employing a Fabian strategy and operating via positional warfare to overcome an opposing force’s manpower asymmetry. Third, and closely related to the second method, includes operating from sanctuaries outside of combat zones that prevent unnecessary losses. These three categories are not mutually exclusive either. A combatant might use one method or any combination of the three methods. For instance, in Ukraine, Russia possesses a quantitative advantage in forces on the ground, but they also operate from relative safety within Russia to protect their forces and generate combat power.

Table 1: 21st Century Medium- to Large-Theater Conflicts

In the U.S.’s conflicts listed within Table 1, American strategy tended to use technology as the preferred replacement for manpower. In those cases, the lack of land forces proved the critical vulnerability that unraveled American military strategy. As the selected case studies will highlight, this caused U.S. military commanders to continually pine for additional land forces to help address the security issues that remained unresolved and beyond the reach of drones, long-range precision strike, and cyber capabilities.

In the other conflicts, success was determined by two primary factors. First, strategic success was decided by the side who could either control territory, or at a minimum deny their adversary from controlling the disputed ground. Second, strategic success was decided by the side who could disrupt the security situation such that their adversary could not generate the forces and force density at the point and time of need required to prevail.

The following case studies, simplified for the sake of brevity, explain this in more detail. Regarding case study selection, Afghanistan and Iraq are used because they are the best examples of large-scale U.S. military operations in the 21st century. Both phases of Russia’s war against Ukraine are used because they are the die upon which the Army casts the MBCT.

Afghanistan War (2001-2021)

There is no single cause of failure for the U.S.’s 20-year war in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the U.S.’s insufficient number of troops, from the planning of the invasion in 2001 to the fall of Kabul in 2021, is an unmistakable trendline that contributed to the U.S.’s strategic defeat in Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan War ended in the Taliban regaining control of the country after two decades of U.S. political and military floundering. Under the leadership of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. naïvely judged that transformative technology would obviate the causal logic and historical precedent for manpower needs in Afghanistan.

Instead, Rumsfeld opted for a small, light force focused on eliminating Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Rumsfeld disregarded the potential need to control terrain, secure the population, and partner with the instruments of governance and security. Rubber-stamped by the excessively deferential generalship of U.S. Central Command’s commander, General Tommy Franks, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan outmanned and critically underprepared for the continuities of warfare that routinely surface in land wars.

The true impact of Rumsfeld and Franks’ misguided decisions on the mission, and the forces required to accomplish the task, was not immediately felt because of early success. The U.S. military quickly upended Al Qaeda and the Taliban’s control of the government and key population centers. Consequently, a vast number of Al Qaeda and Taliban political and military leaders fled to Pakistan to wait-out the Americans. In the place of Taliban political leadership, a resilient and well-provisioned insurgency rapidly materialized.

Perhaps believing the hype about their own superiority, not strategizing sufficiently, or discrediting and discarding unwanted information, the U.S. military was seemingly surprised and caught off guard when their troop levels proved insufficient for occupation and security duties in the face of the Afghan insurgency. Moreover, the insufficient number of U.S. (and partner) troops on the ground facilitated the Taliban fighters’ ability to lurk in the background, terrorize the population, and gradually wrest back control of large portions of the country.

Despite the overwhelming amount of high-tech sensors and lethal weaponry, U.S. commanders from General David McKernan and Stanley McChrystal to David Petraeus all petitioned the White House for more troops to address the causal logic of the war in which they were engaged – they needed land forces to take, retake, and hold the territory. They needed land forces to clear hostile threats from difficult terrain like the mountains and urban areas. They needed land forces to seal borders and to protect local populations. Drones, long-range precision strike, and high-tech cyber capabilities did not disavow the continuity of these requirements, nor were they even slightly capable of accomplishing these tasks.

The White House authorized various troop increases in Afghanistan over the years, but none of the surges provided strategically relevant impacts. The Taliban played hide-and-seek, while the U.S. military used a high-tech whack-a-mole strategy that served as little more than pinpricks against the weight of the strategic, operational, and tactical problems at hand. As a result of that mix of bad strategy and tactics, large portions of the country remained beyond the U.S. and the Afghan government’s control.

What’s more, the U.S. and its strategic security partners spent twenty years and $88 billion training, advising, and equipping the Afghan security forces, but the Afghans never metastasized into a credible security force. As a Congressional Research Service report highlights, by 2018 the Taliban controlled 40% of Afghanistan. The lack of U.S.-coalition manpower, coupled with the void in security and control provided by the Afghan security forces facilitated the Taliban’s incremental reassertion of political power and physical control in Afghanistan.

The U.S. military’s technological asymmetry lacked the complimentary and compounding impact that manpower unlocks when applied within the framework of combined arms and joint operations. As a result, the U.S. military could not exploit success nor consolidate gains beyond the most tactical situations. The lack of sufficient forces on the ground to control terrain, defeat security threats, exploit opportunities, and consolidate military gains into strategically relevant outcomes was the fountainhead from which the U.S. lost the war in Afghanistan. All other strategic failures in the war rolled downhill from the decision to place faith in technology ahead of humans. That deficiency, not the lack of a coherent counterinsurgency strategy, nor more high-tech sensors and kinetic strike capability, unraveled U.S. military strategy and the White House’s policy for Afghanistan.

Iraq (2003-2011)

As with Afghanistan, there is no single cause for the U.S.’s sputtering in Iraq, but sufficient manpower is without question one of the major causes of failure. Moreover, as with the invasion of Afghanistan, Rumsfeld’s preference for transformation, at the expense of resourcing the U.S. military for the long-standing continuities of land wars, doomed the U.S. invasion from its earliest days of planning. Rumsfeld rejected plans that included large troop deployments. For instance, when Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) Eric Shinseki stated that the U.S. Army would need several hundred thousand soldiers to effectively defeat the Iraqi military, replace the Saddam Hussein regime, and conduct occupation and security operations during the transition period before a new Iraqi government could be on its feet, Shinseki was pushed into retirement.

Rumsfeld shunned the reality that toppling and replacing Saddam’s government would necessitate that the U.S. military would have to control Iraq’s territory, political structures, populations, and borders for a conditional period of time. Instead of embracing the reality of conflict, he favored a preferred future that included quickly transitioning control to Iraqi authorities and returning U.S. forces home after rapidly defeating the Iraqi armed forces, toppling Saddam Hussein, and replacing Hussein’s Ba’ath party regime with a pro-U.S. government. Thus, he approved a meager plan, that settled on a 190,000-man force, which Michael O’Hanlon ironically called a “smart plan.” After tremendous success defeating Iraq’s military, however, Rumsfeld’s “smart plan” quickly fell apart.

In the spring of 2003, insurgent networks sprouted, Iranian proxies were activated and infiltrated west, and a host of outside influence generated complete chaos in Iraq. By 2004, a full-blown insurgency was underway. Because of the relatively small size of the U.S. land forces, and their partners, in relation to the emerging problems on the ground, they were quickly overwhelmed by a host of security challenges. Consequently, these challenges became requirements.

As reporting from RAND highlights, the U.S.’s land forces were required to take, retake, and hold territory from insurgent and proxy threats. Furthermore, U.S. land forces had to clear threats from difficult terrain, like in Fallujah, Ramadi, Tal Afar, and Sadr City. Likewise, U.S. land forces had to seal boundaries in areas of substantial sectarianism like Tal Afar and Sadr City. Moreover, U.S. land forces had to control borders in places like Al Qa’im and Al Faw. And perhaps most importantly, U.S. land forces had to protect the Iraqi population, to include civilians, political leaders, law enforcement, and civilian objects. In addition to that, U.S. land forces had to protect their bases, provide liaisons throughout the theater, and at any given time, a large number of personnel were unavailable due to injury, leave, or other reasons.

Manpower was in high demand, but supply remained low. This caused the U.S. military to contract many non-combat requirements, enact stop-loss, overtax the reserve component, and give soldiers little time at home between deployments to Iraq (or Afghanistan). Suffice it to say, Rumsfeld’s “smart plan” was quite possibly the most inappropriate strategy for the situation – U.S. land forces were overstretched, undermanned, and short on time. To make matters worse, many people had advised against Rumsfeld’s “smart plan,” but their caution was dismissed, while the prophets of transformation and technology rubber stamped Rumsfeld’s transformation strategy.

Between 2005-2006, the security situation completely collapsed. As Ben Connable notes, the insurgency overwhelmed U.S. land forces and it largely dictated the war’s terms and conditions, from the strategic level to the most tactical elements. At best, security and the control of territory, politics, and the population was contested. At worst, it resided with the insurgency – in many places the U.S. land forces and the dysfunctional Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) lacked the numbers and the associated footprint to effectively gain control and provide security. Instead, both the U.S. land forces and the ISF muddled their way through incipient counterinsurgency efforts. Under General David Petraeus, and subsequently General Ray Odierno, the U.S. military conducted a ‘surge’ – an increase in the number of land forces to help gain control of the situation on the ground and improve security throughout the country.

The surge, which added eight U.S. brigade combat teams, plus other additional capabilities, in conjunction with negotiations with a host of competing strategic actors, eventually calmed things to the point that the U.S. passed control and security to the Iraqi government and the ISF. This precipitated the conditions required for the Americans to humbly exit the conflict in December 2011.

In hindsight, Shinseki was right. The U.S. military needed a large land force, not for the invasion, but for the meaty middle segment of the war that connected the U.S.’s initial military activity with its policy goals for Iraq. Much like Colin Gray writes that strategy serves as the bridge to connect tactical action with political goals, so land forces serve as the bridge in land wars between initial intervention and generating the desired political outcome.

Thus, a key takeaway from the Iraq War (2003-2011) is that policymakers must understand that a light, quick moving, high-tech military might rapidly and decisively defeat a hostile armed force. However, threat and terrain-driven requirements in armed conflict tend to not care about their adversary’s transformation initiatives and technology-driven warfighting doctrine. More germane, the threat forces in Iraq illustrated that once they have identified how an aggressor operates, they will do nearly everything in their power to offset those preferences and seek their own self-interested path to strategic victory. Manpower-rich land forces provide strategic leaders and operational and tactical commanders a buffer against the “unknown unknowns,” and war’s long-standing continuities, in ways for which transformative technology cannot.

Russo-Ukrainian War (2014-2015)

Gudren Persson, and many others, state that Russia’s significant reliance on land forces in eastern Ukraine between 2014-2015 is lost in the hoopla surrounding Moscow’s use of little green men, the reconnaissance-strike complex, battlefield transparency, and hybrid warfare. To be sure, despite the glitz and glitter, Russia fought a war of attrition, anchored by stout land forces. These robust forces included a proxy army built to somewhat mirror Russian mechanized battalions.

Between April and August 2014, Russia and their proxy forces deftly wrested control of significant portions of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts from Ukraine’s national and local security forces. Between August and September 2014, Kyiv’s forces effectively countered Russia and their proxy forces’ territorial control in many contested areas in the Donbas. Nonetheless, as Ukrainian security forces took the upper hand at places like Ilovaisk, Donetsk airport, and Debal’tseve, Russia doubled down on their initial investment in advisors and proxy forces. In place of additional advisors and proxies, the Kremlin opted for conventional land force deployments. As a result, proxies, mechanized forces, artillery, multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), drones, and cyber effects converged in the Donbas to thwart Kyiv’s efforts at reasserting physical, political, and domestic control in many parts of the region.

Through November 2014 and February 2015, the quantity of Russian land forces increased in Ukraine. Consequently, Russia’s ability to control occupied terrain, defeat prostrate Ukrainian security forces, and consolidate the Kremlin’s policy aims in the region increased in stride. Russian counterattacks at Ilovaisk, Donetsk Airport, and Debal’tseve gradually broke Kyiv’s military capacity and political will to reassert control over Russia’s territorial gains in the Donbas and Crimea. Ukraine’s defeat at Ilovaisk directly fueled the Minsk Protocol, a failed ceasefire which never truly materialized. Likewise, Russia compounded the operational and strategic impact of the Ilovaisk victory via sequencing significant tactical victories at Donetsk Airport (January 2015) and Debal’tseve (February 2015). These string of victories facilitated the Minsk II Agreement in March 2015 which formally terminated the conflict, despite many breaches in the ceasefire up to February 2022.

Policymakers must appreciate that the Donbas campaign highlights the importance of land forces, despite the presence of new technologies and new ways of warfare. For Russia, their land forces were the critical capable that accomplished the waypoint objectives which gradually advanced the Kremlin toward its policy aims in Ukraine, even if they fell short of maximalist goals. Likewise, the persistent presence of Russian proxies and their advisors in the region provided the springboard for Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

On the other hand, policymakers must also understand that Ukraine’s lack of manpower in their land forces was the critical vulnerability that contributed to Kyiv’s strategic defeat during the Donbas campaign. Kyiv lacked the numbers required to address immediate military situations, much less react to emerging security situations elsewhere with more than a token force. Setting aside the contested 3:1 attack-to-defend heuristic, Ukraine’s force structure lacked the depth and redundancy to take, retake, or hold its territory, and simultaneously clear threats from difficult terrain, protect its population, and seal its borders.

To conclude, policymakers must understand that the glitz and glitter of emerging technology didn’t win or lose the 2014-2015 war in Ukraine. Russia won the Donbas campaign because they used land forces to gain and maintain control in the region. Likewise, Russia consolidated their gains with manpower – they possessed the capacity to reinforce the occupied regions of the Donbas with significant numbers and capabilities to deter future attempts on the part of Ukraine to retake that land. Ukraine, on the other hand, lost because their land forces didn’t possess the sufficient depth in manpower to endure a war of attrition predicated on territorial control. When success did occur – early in the battles at Ilovaisk, Donetsk airport, and Debal’tseve, for instance – they lacked the capacity to consolidate their gains and exploit their successes.

As a result, Ukraine’s lack of land force capacity boxed policymakers into bad strategic situations. This occurred because they lacked tactical and operational options to positively change the situation and conditions on the battlefield in their favor. Because Ukraine’s force was unable to evict Russian land forces from the region, Russia prevailed in the preamble to their 2022 reinvasion.

Russo-Ukraine War (2022-present)

Many commenters point to the current iteration of the Russo-Ukrainian War as the paradigmatic example for how 21st century technology has transformed war. Yet, none of the technology – drones, long-range precision strike, cyber, and sensor technology – has delivered strategic victory to either side. Why? Because Russia consolidated their territorial gains in Ukraine with manpower and fortifications, and thus flipped the script on Ukraine.

By establishing a defensive belt from Luhansk in the north to Crimea in the south, and running through most of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts—and Russifying everything behind that line—Russia created a problem which exceeds Ukraine’s ways and means. As a result, the Kremlin has obtained their policy aims, even if it is the minimal limit of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s wider policy ambition for Ukraine. Nonetheless, for Ukraine to achieve President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s policy goals, Kyiv’s forces must find a way to remove Russian forces from the contested territory. Considering the on-going negotiations to end the conflict, however, this remains to be seen.

When physical control of territory is nine-tenths of the law in international affairs, international law is of little help – it possesses no army divisions, which tend to be the key driver of change against states and non-state actors that aren’t interested in adhering to the norms and laws of global politics. As a result, by digging in and building an interconnected defensive line that meshes reconnaissance outposts, infantry positions and other traditional land force capabilities, with their sensors, cyber, drones, and long-range precision strike, Russia’s control of Ukrainian territory provides the Kremlin with strategic options that outweigh Ukraine’s ability to overturn. Thus, Russia finds itself at a very advantageous position regarding its policy aims and negotiations with Kyiv to end the war.

Ukraine, on the other hand, must regain control of the territory, politics, and population in the areas Russian forces occupy. Ukraine’s strategic problem is that despite their bevy of glitzy technology and innovative tactics, their land forces lack the strategic depth to positively change the tactical and operational situation on the ground. To make matters worse, morale in front line units is quite low. Reports illustrate a severe morale problem, specifically amongst infantry formations. To be sure, reporting states that prosecutors in Ukraine opened 250,000 cases regarding absence without leave (AWOL) and desertion since February 2022. The problems of morale only complicate an already perplexing manpower challenge for Kyiv.

As a result, Ukrainian military operations are incapable of providing their senior military leaders and policymakers with strategically relevant battlefield outcomes. Offensive operations that liberate and hold Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, for instance, would cause significant concern in Moscow, while positively changing the strategic situation for Kyiv. Moreover, these types of operations would further endear international support for Ukraine’s war effort, and likely boost domestic support and morale in Ukraine’s front-line units. Yet, Ukraine lacks the manpower and land force to bring about this sort of positive strategic change.

Drones, long-range precision strike, cyber, and sensing technology helped Ukraine not lose the war, but none of those considerations have generated operational or strategic victory. The Ukrainian land forces lack of manpower has proven the missing component – their critical vulnerability. This situation inhibits Kyiv’s ability to flip the operational and tactical situation on the battlefield and consequently create strategic options for their policymakers. To state it another way, Kyiv’s lack of manpower in their land forces has prevented their military from being capable of both (1) exploiting the micro-tactical success of drone and long-range precision strike missions, and (2) being capable of consolidating the gains generated from the stand-off and exploitation phase of their operations.

At the outset of the conflict, Kyiv’s reliance on light, small, and dispersed land forces operating with a clear technological and innovative advantage, allowed Ukraine to avoid being quickly and entirely overrun by Russian land forces. That is, Ukraine’s technology and innovation advantage allowed Ukraine to not lose the war.

Yet, those tools did not enable operational and strategic victory. In the intervening period, several constraints hampered the Ukrainian way of warfare. First, Kyiv is unable to generate sufficient land forces. Second, because of those manning and force structure shortfalls, Ukraine’s armed forces are unable to consolidate the gains made by its innovative tactics and technologically sophisticated force. Third, because Ukraine’s forces cannot exploit the success of their innovative tactics and technology – that is, consolidate gains – they cannot create strategically important battlefield outcomes. Fourth, the lack of strategic progress on the battlefield, despite the amazing displays of technological ingenuity, hampers Ukraine’s negotiating position regarding war termination with Russia.

Conclusion

At the risk of over-simplifying the chaotic dynamics of warfare, the case studies examined above find that innovative technology and tactics, especially when not coupled with sufficient manpower in an actor’s land force, proved to be ineffectual. A host of variables impact winning and losing wars. However, within the military element of national power, few considerations are more germane than possessing the manpower in one’s land forces to successfully address the historical continuities of war. As Robert Citino reminds the reader, light, small, technology-oriented land forces, which sacrifice manpower for tech-power tend to come up short in the long run because they cannot exploit initial success and consolidate those gains into lasting, substantial success. This is a concept that the case studies examined herein support.

The MBCT fits this bill and, if history and the reality of modern conflict provide any true insight to how to prepare for the future of war, then the U.S. Army’s forces and commanders will yet again find themselves struggling to provide credible military outcomes to the state’s strategic outcomes in war. A simple logic helps illustrate why.

In A x B = C, A is the independent variable, B is the intervening variable (and causal mechanism), and C is the dependent variable, or desired outcome. If A is shaping and enabling activities, B is exploitation and consolidating gains, and C is desired battlefield outcomes, then: shaping and enabling activities multiplied by exploitation and consolidating gains equals desired battlefield outcome. Flipping the equation to begin with the goal, then the desired battlefield outcome (C) materializes from the multiplicative interaction between an actor’s shaping and enabling activities (A) and their exploitation and consolidation capacity (B).

It must also be noted that the logic expressed in this equation is theoretical insofar as there has yet to be an empirically identified activation threshold (i.e., a ‘magic’ force ratio) that causes the opportunities created at A to generate C when acted upon in B. Likewise, this theoretical model does not account for all the variables that contribute to success and victory in war and warfare. This theory is a heuristic to help simplify understanding one (of many) cause of victory and failure in land war.

Continuing with the examination, in simple terms, drones, long-range precision strike, and cyber and sensing operations conduct the shaping and enabling activities of 21st century conflict. In A x B = C, these tools and activities are A.

Mobile land forces – infantry, tanks, engineers, artillery, and others – exploit the situationally relevant conditions created by shaping and enabling forces and activities. They do so by using their mobility and flexibility to capitalize on providential situations created by shaping and enabling activities (i.e., exploit) and then use mobility and flexibility to consolidate the beneficial conditions on the ground. In A x B = C, these tools and activities are represented as B. Manpower is the critical component that facilitate activities within B (See Figure 1).

C is the effect and the outcome created by the amplifying factor of A and B’s interrelated capabilities and activities. The effect is C’s physical component; that is, the effect is either the destruction of a force, taking of territory, protection of local population, or any other number of measurable impacts of military operations. The outcome is C’s cognitive component. That is, successful effects, like retaking an oblast, reshaping the policymakers’ understanding of the situation. In doing so, successful effects provide policymakers with a new range of options because of the change in the physical conditions and the situation. Though not a linear process, nor as simple as explained, each actor in war iterates through A and B until (1) they generate C, (2) they are defeated in pursuit of C, or (3) they must withdraw from the process because they lack the resources and will to continue.

Figure 1: Logic of Land Warfare. Source: Author (author’s note: image create using ChatGPT. Not to scale. For visual representation of a concept, only).

The MBCT, which lacks much manpower, does not possess the key variable that facilitates a land force’s ability to exploit shaping and enabling activities and consolidate the associated gains throughout the iterative process of A x B. Those using different formations, each case study highlights this situation – a lack of sufficient manpower in the land forces prevented the associated army from being able to accomplish their required tasks, whether those were protecting the population, taking or retaking territory, holding terrain, or sealing borders and boundaries. Or in the case of Russia in Ukraine, the advantage in manpower across their land forces, throughout the theater of conflict, allowed Moscow to parry the innovating and technologically sophisticated Ukrainian forces.

Moving forward, the U.S. Army should re-evaluate its embrace of the MBCT. It should do so void of fanciful visions of the future which placed preferred outcomes ahead of empirically informed continuities of war. In addition, it should emphasize the enduring character of land wars in which manpower in the land forces are a recurring driver of victory and failure. The Army’s forces should be built to thrive in close combat.

To conclude, The MBCT is a Potemkin force. The MBCT, which possess 58% less manpower than the IBCT, increases Army forces’ stand-off striking power. This will turn the Army into a shaping and enabling force, but one that won’t possess the manpower to win close combat. Without manpower, the MBCT cannot consolidate gains. As the Army sells off its manpower and IBCTs for MBCTs, it is ceding the U.S. military’s ability to consolidate tactical and operational opportunities on the battlefield. Though there are many historical examples, the looming lesson for the U.S. Army is that modern military technology should enhance manpower, not replace it.

Tags: land warfare, manpower in war, military innovation, Military strategy, Mobile Brigade Combat Team, Multidomain operations, U.S. Army force structure

About The Author

• 
  
• Amos Fox
• Dr. Amos C. Fox is a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University's Future Security Initiative. He is the Managing Editor of Small Wars Journal.
• Amos also hosts the Revolution in Military Affairs podcast, which focuses on war, strategy, international affairs, and the impact of technology on warfare.
• Amos is the author of Conflict Realism: Understanding the Causal Logic of War and Warfare and Maneuver is Dead: Land Warfare in the Twenty-First Century and he is the co-editor of Multidomain Operations: The Pursuit of Battlefield Dominance in the 21st Century.
• Amos has a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Reading, masters degrees from the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) and Ball State University, and a bachelors degree from Indiana University-Indianapolis.
• Amos is also a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel.

2. China This Week: Strategic Moves and Messaging

​Summary:

Beijing treated governance as operational power across three lanes. Inside the PLA, discipline campaigns were recast as combat readiness doctrine, tying effectiveness to political rectification and compressing dissent, while risking performative metrics and brittleness under stress. In Europe, UK engagement was framed as “historic” institutional exchange, scaling services and AI cooperation to create durable administrative dependencies and shape allied decision environments and third markets. Globally, Xi coordinated “global governance” messaging with Russia while managing US optics through process language paired with a hard Taiwan boundary. In the Global South, Uruguay outreach pushed “governance experience” and sector alignment to lock in standards, procurement, and bloc voting behavior. Party to party CPC–KMT channels sought to bind Taiwan into China’s 15th Five-Year Plan.

Excerpts:

Chinese Vulnerabilities & US Counter-Opportunities

This week’s signals show a system converting disruption into doctrine and process. As governance discipline becomes synonymous with readiness, the system’s tolerance for ambiguity and corrective feedback narrows. By redefining political rectification as a prerequisite for combat effectiveness, Beijing increases compliance while raising dependence on filtered reporting and performative loyalty, especially under near-term milestone pressure.

Externally, Beijing continues to invest in mechanism-driven influence: institutional exchanges, sector-specific cooperation lanes, and party-to-party channels that shift political disputes into administrative normalcy. These approaches leave durable and observable governance footprints—formal language, forum design, planning-cycle hooks, and sector targeting—that reveal where China is concentrating leverage and conditioning foreign decision environments over time.

For US defense analysis, PLA rectification campaigns should be treated as readiness events to be monitored, not just as political purges. Externally, mapping China’s institutional exchanges, planning-cycle hooks, and party-to-party channels becomes a practical counter-intel and policy design task for the US and allies.

Comment: I find Erika LaFrennie's analysis very helpful. I do not know of anyone else or any other resource that provides such insightful analysis of China's narratives. 

China This Week: Strategic Moves and Messaging

January 30 – February 5, 2026

Erika Lafrennie

Feb 06, 2026

https://www.xinanigans.com/p/china-weekly-2026-2-6?utm

A standing weekly operational intelligence brief tracking China’s governance-based competition.

Bottom Line: This week, Beijing treated governance as operational power in three lanes: it converted elite military disruption into a readiness doctrine that fuses political rectification with combat effectiveness; expanded influence through institutionalized bilateralism designed to shape third-party decision environments; and tightened cross-strait political conditioning through party-to-party channels that bind Taiwan into China’s planning cycle. The pattern reflects governance as both engine and battlespace, compressing internal dissent while shaping external expectations without force.

1. PLA Rectification Recast as Combat Readiness Doctrine

PLA Daily coverage framed the handling of Zhang Youxia, a top CMC vice chair, and Liu Zhenli, chief of the Joint Staff, as both ideological purification and forward-leaning enhancement of combat effectiveness, explicitly linking political rectification to near-term readiness milestones and long-term force construction. The language emphasized “root-level political rectification,” “ideological poison-cleansing,” and organizational “renewal,” positioning prolonged discipline campaigns as essential to building a first-class military.

Why it matters:

This move converts elite disruption into institutional logic by turning a discipline campaign into the organizing principle for readiness. By fusing rectification doctrine with combat narratives, the Party redefines readiness as inseparable from political purity, narrowing space for professional dissent and treating governance discipline as a prerequisite for operational credibility. Elite instability is reframed as necessary maintenance rather than risk.

Implications for US National Security:

• Readiness reframed as loyalty: Combat effectiveness is rhetorically tied to political rectification rather than independent professional judgment.
• Signal compression inside the PLA: Caution or dissent risks being interpreted as ideological resistance, reducing corrective feedback.
• Milestone distortion: Public linkage to near-term readiness objectives incentivizes performative compliance and metrics-driven reporting.
• Brittleness under stress: Systems optimized for purity campaigns struggle with rapid adaptation when assumptions are wrong.

2. UK Engagement as Institutional Capture: ‘Historic Visit’ Framing and Services/AI Lanes

People’s Daily coverage cast UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Beijing visit as a strategic opening for a “long-term and stable” partnership, with explicit emphasis on deepening “institutional exchanges,” scaling services trade, and expanding cooperation in AI, digital economy, and other emerging sectors.

Why it matters:

Beijing is working the European theater through mechanisms, not just messaging: regularized dialogues, sector-specific cooperation, and people-to-people facilitation are governance tools that shape what becomes “administratively normal” and therefore politically sustainable inside partner systems. The “historic outcomes” line is a pressure move: it raises the expectation that institutions should produce deliverables, which shifts the burden of restraint onto the visitor.

Implications for US National Security:

• Standards and compliance terrain: Cooperation in services, AI, and market connectivity creates downstream governance dependencies. Those dependencies are hard to unwind quietly.
• Alliance decision-environment shaping: Beijing’s goal is durable administrative normalcy, which complicates rapid alignment on screening, export controls, and enforcement during crises.
• Global South triangulation: The “trilateral cooperation” lane explicitly targets third markets, for example infrastructure and digital connectivity, expanding China’s influence via joint commercial governance in the global South.

3. China–Russia Global Governance Framing and Xi–Trump Call as Agenda Management

Xi’s meeting with Putin emphasized coordination to build a “more just and equitable global governance system,” defend a UN-centered international system, and safeguard “global strategic stability,” while the Xi–Trump call framed 2026 as a year for stabilizing ties and reasserted Taiwan as the central issue China will not compromise on.

Why it matters:

This is governance competition at the narrative-architecture layer: China is simultaneously 1. legitimizing Russia-aligned positioning through “global governance” language, and 2. managing US bilateral optics through process-oriented reassurance (“step by step,” “manage differences”) paired with a hard sovereignty boundary on Taiwan. Together, they shape expectations about what “responsible major powers” should do, and then weaponize that expectation against US freedom of action.

Implications for US National Security:

• Norm-setting as strategic cover: “UN-centered” and “global governance” framing provides reputational insulation for alignment that undercuts US coalition leverage, especially in UN Security Council and wider multilateral venues.
• Taiwan boundary reinforcement: Reasserting Taiwan as the priority constraint in leader-level dialogue is designed to harden perceived escalation thresholds.
• Process capture risk: “Step by step” relationship management pushes disputes into managed channels where Beijing can slow-roll, compartmentalize, and trade procedural concessions, while presenting this as responsible management.

4. Global South Relationship-Building Through “Governance Experience” and Development Alignment in Uruguay

Xi’s meeting with Uruguay’s President Orsi emphasized mutual support on core interests, “exchanges on governance experience,” alignment of development strategies, and expanded cooperation in ICT, digital economy, AI, and clean energy, all framed inside Global South solidarity and multilateral blocs (G77+China, CELAC, MERCOSUR).

Why it matters:

This is governance export as influence: “governance experience” exchanges and sectoral alignment build administrative intimacy—shared standards, procurement logic, and digital infrastructure choices—that outlast leadership cycles. The multilateral references are operational: they name the institutional venues where China wants sympathetic procedural outcomes and voting behavior. In practice, “governance experience” exchanges typically operate through regulatory templating, procurement-linked standards adoption, and bureaucratic embedding—mechanisms that align administrative defaults over time without requiring overt political commitments.

Implications for US National Security:

• Institutional perimeter building: China is deepening Latin American institutional pathways that can blunt US leverage inside regional and multilateral governance bodies.
• Digital governance footholds: ICT/digital economy language often precedes durable dependencies in standards, security posture, and data governance.
• Bloc coordination capacity: Explicit integration with G77+China framing strengthens China’s ability to mobilize “procedural majorities” on governance disputes.
• Administrative default capture: Governance exchanges shape regulatory and procurement baselines in ways that persist across political cycles.

Irregular Warfare Spotlight

China’s gray zone tactics often hide in plain sight. Each week, I will feature one that deserves a closer look.

Party-to-Party Capture: CPC–KMT Channels Used to Bind Taiwan into the 15th FYP Planning Cycle

Wang Huning’s message emphasized the “1992 Consensus,” opposition to Taiwan independence, and invited Taiwanese compatriots and enterprises to participate in implementation of the 15th Five-Year Plan as part of “integrated development” across the Strait.

Why this is an irregular warfare case study:

This is governance warfare that hides in plain sight because it is framed as “exchange” and “cooperation,” yet it operates as political conditioning and institutional absorption. The mechanism is administrative: tying Taiwanese economic participation to the PRC planning cycle turns economic activity into a compliance and legitimacy channel, while party-to-party formats bypass state-to-state constraints and normalize Beijing’s claimed political prerequisites as the entry ticket for “cooperation.”

Implications for US National Security:

• Planning-cycle capture: Embedding Taiwan-facing economic incentives inside the 15th FYP treats integration as an administrative inevitability, not a political choice.
• United front normalization: Party-to-party frameworks reduce political friction around Beijing’s prerequisites by presenting them as “common foundation” language.
• Cross-strait constraint shaping: “Oppose independence and oppose external interference” positions third-party support as illegitimate intervention in a domesticated governance frame.

Chinese Vulnerabilities & US Counter-Opportunities

This week’s signals show a system converting disruption into doctrine and process. As governance discipline becomes synonymous with readiness, the system’s tolerance for ambiguity and corrective feedback narrows. By redefining political rectification as a prerequisite for combat effectiveness, Beijing increases compliance while raising dependence on filtered reporting and performative loyalty, especially under near-term milestone pressure.

Externally, Beijing continues to invest in mechanism-driven influence: institutional exchanges, sector-specific cooperation lanes, and party-to-party channels that shift political disputes into administrative normalcy. These approaches leave durable and observable governance footprints—formal language, forum design, planning-cycle hooks, and sector targeting—that reveal where China is concentrating leverage and conditioning foreign decision environments over time.

For US defense analysis, PLA rectification campaigns should be treated as readiness events to be monitored, not just as political purges. Externally, mapping China’s institutional exchanges, planning-cycle hooks, and party-to-party channels becomes a practical counter-intel and policy design task for the US and allies.

Know someone who should be tracking this? Please share.

3. Hawaii’s 25th Infantry Division gears up for combat ‘rehearsals’ in the Philippines

​Summary:

The Hawaii based 25th Infantry Division will deploy to the Philippines next month as part of U.S. Army Pacific’s Operation Pathways, which leaders stress are “rehearsals,” not “exercises,” for defending Philippine territory. Pathways began in 2014 as Pacific Pathways and shifted in 2023 into an Army campaign focused on deterrence, aimed mainly at China amid South China Sea friction and reported harassment of Philippine vessels. Events start in March with Salaknib, reportedly expanding to include Japan and Australia. Balikatan follows in April with maritime strikes, amphibious, cyber, coastal defense, and disaster relief. In May, the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center deploys with its largest footprint yet to provide real time feedback. June brings Operation Maneuver, while 25th ID continues converting brigades into lighter mobile formations using drones, HIMARS, and new infantry squad vehicles.

Comment: Rehearsals versus exercises? Euphemism? Jargon? Or describing the activities in the right frame? And we could describe these as actual operations to achieve a strategic effect - I think we need inculcate this mindset. Every action, activity, event is conducted to achieve operational and strategic effects. There is no such thing as "just" training (even though training is fundamental and foundational to everything we must do).

And the age-old dilemma: How do you measure and assess deterrence: If rehearsals are meant to deter, what concrete operational outcome should define success? Of course the flippant answer is if there is no war or conflict that is successful deterrence. 

It will be good to read Erika LaFrennie's "China This Week: Strategic Moves and Messaging" omn coming months to see what China says about our rehearsals. That will be one indicator of an effect.

And we should note that once again, the Philippines is strategic terrain (just for different reasons that when we negotiated the Taft-Katsura agreement in 1905 in Portsmouth)

Hawaii’s 25th Infantry Division gears up for combat ‘rehearsals’ in the Philippines

Stars and Stripes · Wyatt Olson · February 5, 2026

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2026-02-05/pacific-pathways-army-25th-id-20630812.html?utm

Members of the 25th Infantry Division fire machine guns during a Balikatan live-fire drill in Aparri, Philippines, May 3, 2025. (Malia Sparks/U.S. Marine Corps)

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — The Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division heads to the Philippines next month for its part in U.S. Army Pacific’s annual Operation Pathways training engagements with that nation’s armed forces.

Just don’t call them “exercises.”

“I will emphasize: We won’t call these exercises,” Col. Aidan Shattock, the division’s deputy commander for interoperability, said by phone Tuesday.

“The Philippines look at these activities as rehearsals,” he said. “We are rehearsing how they will defend their homeland and their territories.”

That distinction reflects the evolution of Operation Pathways, which started in 2014 as Pacific Pathways, and the changing security environment in Southeast Asia.

The initial Pathways rotated small Army units into the Indo-Pacific region for a few months at a time by moving through a series of established multinational exercises west of the International Date Line.

Its redesignation as Operation Pathways in 2023 marked the initiative’s shift into an Army campaign.

“Now we’re focused on … rehearsing,” Shattock said. “That creates the most amount of deterrence.”

That deterrence is primarily directed toward China, which maintains expansive but disputed claims to most of the South China Sea, including islands and atolls claimed by the Philippines.

Over the past two years, Philippine crews have captured video of Chinese coast guard vessels harassing Philippine boats with water cannons and unsafe maneuvers.

Tension between Manila and Beijing over the South China Sea is an “existential issue for the Philippines,” Adm. Ronnie Gil Gavan, commandant of the Philippine coast guard, told reporters in Honolulu in January.

Operation Pathways kicks off in March with Salaknib, which has in the past included live-fire drills, logistics operations and air-assault training.

Salaknib has primarily been an army-to-army engagement between the two nations, but it is apparently expanding this year.

Philippine media reported this fall that the Japan Self-Defense Force and the Australian army will join Salaknib for the first time.

Balikatan, the largest annual engagement between U.S. armed forces and the Philippine army, begins in April.

Key activities typically include live-fire maritime strikes, amphibious assaults, cyber defense, coastal defense and disaster relief operations.

Japan, Australia and New Zealand have regularly participated in Balikatan.

Canada, however, is expected to be the third largest participant in Balikatan after signing a status of visiting forces agreement last year with the Philippines, according to reports by Philippine media.

In May, U.S. Army Pacific’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center will deploy to the Philippines for the third year.

It employs monitors, video and other digital information to provide real-time feedback on combat to 25th ID and Philippine soldiers on the ground.

“We will conduct that with our largest footprint to date,” Shattock said.

In June, the 25th is scheduled for Operation Maneuver, a massive movement of joint troops and equipment by air, sea and land.

During a similar operation last year, 25th ID soldiers joined troops from the 5th and 7th Philippine infantry divisions for maneuvers on the northern portion of Luzon, the nation’s largest and most populous island.

“We are now developing that path to include the 9th Infantry Division, which is south of Manila, so that we can build in more exposure to the Philippine army forces,” Shattock said.

The 25th will also continue throughout spring and summer with its transformation of several brigades into lighter, more mobile units using drones, the HIMARS rocket system and the new infantry squad vehicles, Shattock said.

Stars and Stripes · Wyatt Olson · February 5, 2026

4. How China’s Crypto Seizures Are Quietly Powering Its Digital Asset Reserves

​Summary:

China is growing strategic digital asset reserves through law enforcement seizures, expanding influence over the global crypto ecosystem beyond mining and holding, despite its domestic ban. The article argues custody, not liquidation, is the key difference: unlike the United States’ historic preference to auction seized crypto, China has quietly accumulated large holdings and can selectively sell, including through Hong Kong licensed exchanges and local government channels. It cites Kazakhstan as a fast follower using seizures and mining to seed reserve funds. It also claims China’s holdings are massive, driven by the 2019 PlusToken recovery, and notes debate inside China on treating Bitcoin as a reserve asset. 

Excerpts:

Conclusion

By seizing, custodying, and selectively liquidating large cryptocurrency holdings, China has pioneered a model in which law enforcement activity such as seizures feeds directly into state-controlled digital treasuries. As a result, digital asset holdings can be leveraged for financial and political gain. 

Kazakhstan’s adoption of crypto as a reserve asset and the U.S.’ creation of a strategic crypto stockpile show how other governments are also utilizing similar practices. As this trend continues to gain traction around the world, states that control large on-chain reserves will gain increasing abilities to influence markets and shape the next global financial order.  

Comment: Gives new meaning to "follow the money" ...er... I mean crypto.

How China’s Crypto Seizures Are Quietly Powering Its Digital Asset Reserves

by Hugh Harsono

|

02.06.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/06/how-chinas-crypto-seizures-are-quietly-powering-its-digital-asset-reserves/

China’s increasing growth of its strategic digital asset reserves via law enforcement seizures is enabling it to yield more direct influence over the global digital asset ecosystem beyond just mining and holding cryptocurrencies. Despite an existing ban on cryptocurrency activities, China maintains its status as the world’s largest crypto miner, while in parallel, Chinese citizens comprise a significant portion of global crypto users. 

In many cases, these seized digital assets originate from illicit activities, whether this be from criminal networks or from unlicensed financial platforms. While the concept of keeping seized assets to build a country’s own reserve is not unprecedented, the continued custody of digital assets to establish a sovereign digital asset treasury is a relatively new notion, with countries like the U.S. typically preferring to sell off seized cryptocurrencies. Therefore, countries like Kazakhstan and the United States are newer in their crypto stockpile efforts, in contrast to China’s relatively quieter and earlier accumulation of assets. With this in mind, China has a clear head start in growing its influence in shaping the global digital asset economy.  

As more and more nations leverage seized digital assets into their own national reserves, the competition over who owns and controls blockchain-based treasuries will increasingly hold weight over global market dynamics and cryptocurrency norms. 

How Kazakhstan Demonstrates the Power of Digital Asset Seizures for Mid-Sized Economies

Kazakhstan is an excellent example of a country that has been quick to utilize crypto seizures to help bolster its domestic treasury holdings.  

On November 30, 2025, Kazakhstan’s central bank announced that it would invest up to $300m in crypto from its foreign exchange reserves. Just several weeks prior, on November 7, 2025, Kazakhstan announced that it would be establishing a crypto reserve fund worth up to $1b, with funding coming from a mixture of seized assets and the country’s own cryptocurrency mining activities, with some of this funding undoubtedly coming from Kazakhstan’s seizure of nearly $17m in digital assets from 130 illegal cryptocurrency exchanges.  

The ability to leverage law enforcement seizures and transition these assets into a formal crypto reserve is enabling Kazakhstan to position itself as an early adopter of digital asset reserves.  

How China Has Applied Digital Asset Seizures On A Larger Scale

China has gone even further in utilizing seized crypto, with Beijing’s actions enabling it to quietly build a significant position in a variety of different digital assets.  

China’s digital asset war chest is massive, with some reports marking China as the world’s second-largest Bitcoin holder behind the U.S., with estimates of at least 194,000 BTC alone. A large portion of these seized holdings have come from the digital assets recovered from the PlusToken ponzi scheme in mid-2019 which resulted in the recovery of 194,775 BTC, 833,083 ETH, 1.4 million LTC, 27.6 million EOS, 74,167 DASH, 487 million XRP, 6 billion DOGE, 79,581 BCH, and 213,724 USDT.  

While these assets have not been officially labeled a “strategic reserve,” the very holding of them gives China the access and placement to utilize these funds as a formal digital asset treasury. This would enable Beijing to influence global markets in support of its own fiscal and policy goals. In fact, Renmin University’s International Monetary Institute, a government affiliated think tank, called Bitcoin a strategic reserve asset in May 2025, signaling an active debate inside China’s policy circles over treating seized digital assets as reserve holdings. 

 Therefore, the influence that China wields in terms of its digital asset holdings is clearly significant, with its massive holdings being able to establish a strategic digital reserve for the country. However, in light of publicly announcing such an initiative, the Chinese government has been able to reap the benefits of its digital asset holdings through limited and selective liquidation. Beijing’s Municipal Public Security Bureau authority revealed that they would sell off confiscated cryptocurrencies via licensed exchanges based in Hong Kong. Local governments have pursued similar initiatives, with these entities previously liquidating over $420m of seized digital assets via private companies, who have much more leeway to dispose of these holdings on behalf of said local governmental entities.  

These actions highlight how China leverages seized digital assets as a strategic tool that can support Beijing’s priorities, enhancing China’s financial resilience and increasing its influence in global capital markets.  

Seized Assets for America’s National Reserves In the Realm of Strategic Competition 

While China has quietly pioneered the use of leveraging seized assets to build its crypto reserve, America has only recently pursued a similar path, with President Trump announcing the establishment of a strategic cryptocurrency reserve predominately funded from assets seized by the U.S. Treasury Department in March 2025. Previously, the U.S. Department of Justice auctioned off its seized cryptocurrencies, with a July 2025 report detailing how the U.S. Marshals Service holds less than 29,000 BTC, a number far less than expected by industry analysts.  

In fact, just recently in November 2025, China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC), a cybersecurity watchdog, released a report claiming that the U.S. Department of Justice unjustly seized BTC that was originally stolen in a 2020 hack targeting the LuBian mining pool. This demonstrates how cross-border seizure operations could serve as flashpoints in the realm of strategic competition. 

This new model converts what had previously been fragmented, agency-level holdings and converts them into a coherent national stockpile. This explicitly links digital assets and their control to American economic security and technological competition. 

Conclusion

By seizing, custodying, and selectively liquidating large cryptocurrency holdings, China has pioneered a model in which law enforcement activity such as seizures feeds directly into state-controlled digital treasuries. As a result, digital asset holdings can be leveraged for financial and political gain. 

Kazakhstan’s adoption of crypto as a reserve asset and the U.S.’ creation of a strategic crypto stockpile show how other governments are also utilizing similar practices. As this trend continues to gain traction around the world, states that control large on-chain reserves will gain increasing abilities to influence markets and shape the next global financial order.  

Tags: China, crypto-currency, digital assets, treasury

About The Author

• 
  
• Hugh Harsono
• Hugh Harsono's research interests focus on emerging technologies’ impact on international security, technology policy, and strategic competition. Hugh received his graduate and undergraduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

5. Korean War vet to get Medal of Honor for longest dogfight in US military history

​Summary:

U.S. Navy Capt. E. Royce Williams, 100, is set to receive the Medal of Honor for his 1952 Korean War actions. Flying an F9F-5 Panther, Williams was separated from his section and engaged seven MiG-15s alone for 35 minutes, downing four in the longest dogfight in U.S. military history. His feat remained classified for more than 50 years, blocking Medal of Honor review, though his Silver Star was upgraded to the Navy Cross in 2023. Rep. Darrell Issa backed a 2025 “Valor Has No Expiration Act” to ease limits tied to classified cases, and POTUS called Williams with the news.

Comment: Where do we find such incredible Americans and human beings? And we finally get to right bureaucratic wrongs.

As an aside, I think about this differently now. Why did we classify this heroic action for 50 years? Was it to conceal the fact there were direct US-Soviet combat engagements? We obviously were considering the messaging and influence effects during the Cold War. Could this action have been exploited for positive messaging effects at the time? Or did we conceal this simply out of fear of provoking the USSR. Did we believe that unacknowledgement would prevent escalation to direct US-USSR conflict? Would we be able to conceal such an action today? 

Korean War vet to get Medal of Honor for longest dogfight in US military history

By Claire Barrett

 Feb 5, 2026, 12:49 PM

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/02/05/korean-war-vet-to-get-medal-of-honor-for-longest-dogfight-in-us-military-history/?utm

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. E. Royce Williams pictured in 2023 while receiving the Navy Cross. (Office of the Secretary of the Navy)

Naval aviator Capt. Royce Williams, 100, is set to be awarded the Medal of Honor for his 1952 actions during the Korean War, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., announced on Wednesday.

Issa has played a significant role in Williams’ recognition, introducing the “Valor Has No Expiration Act” in 2025 to extend and expand upon the 1996 National Defense Authorization Act. Introduced last June, the act was instrumental in highlighting Williams’ Korean War record.

According to Issa’s press release, the NDAA waived the five-year limitation for Medal of Honor consideration — but only for actions occurring between 1940 and 1990 and only for classified “intelligence activities.”

The Valor Has No Expiration Act seeks to remove such arbitrary timelines and expand the criteria to include classified acts or those withheld from the public record.

In 2023, Williams received the Navy Cross — an upgrade from the Silver Star Medal he previously received on May 7, 1953.

In 1952, flying a F9F-5 Panther fighter, Williams found himself alone, outmanned and piloting what was considered an inferior aircraft, when he was swarmed by seven MiG-15 aircraft. Despite initially flying with two other VF-781 pilots, Williams soon found himself unaccompanied.

“In the moment I was a fighter pilot doing my job. … I was only shooting what I had,” Williams said in a previous account of the fight. “They had me cold on maneuverability and acceleration. … The only thing I could do was out-turn them.”

For 35 minutes, Williams engaged with the enemy, shooting down four of the planes in what is considered the longest dogfight in U.S. military history.

According to the U.S. Naval Institute, no other American fighter pilot has ever shot down four MiG-15s in one fight. Williams’ action, however, was kept classified for more than 50 years, making the pilot ineligible for the Medal of Honor.

That all changed on Wednesday, however, when President Donald Trump called the 100-year-old to notify him that he was to receive the nation’s highest award for valor.

“What Royce did is — still to this day — the most unique U.S.-Soviet aerial combat dogfight in the history of the Cold War, and one in which Royce Williams demonstrated indomitable courage of the highest skill under incalculable duress,” Issa said in a press release.

“It is my honor to have fought all these years for Royce to gain a recognition that he has not sought, but so richly deserves.”

About Claire Barrett

Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.

6. The Tech Policy Toolkit | Data Tools for Economic Statecraft and National Security

​Comment: These appear to be valuable resources.

The Tech Policy Toolkit | Data Tools for Economic Statecraft and National Security

by SWJ Staff

|

02.05.2026 at 02:39pm

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/05/tech-policy-tools-economic-security-toolkit/

Technology policy now sits at the center of economic and national security decision-making. Policymakers need tools that translate abstract strategy into concrete analysis and action. The sources below function as applied tools for technology policy and economic statecraft. Analysts use them to scope authorities, assess leverage, track outcomes, and inform real-world policy choices.

CSET Core Tool Stack. The Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University provides data-driven frameworks and analytic tools that policymakers use to assess strategic technologies, global competition, and policy tradeoffs across the full technology lifecycle.

CSET tools include:

– PATHWISE maps workforce and education metrics for emerging technology talent across U.S. regions.

– Scout is a discovery tool for Chinese-language writing on science and technology.

– Map of Science organizes global research literature into a powerful web-based explorer, revealing trends and hotspots in science and technology research.

– AGORA is a living collection of AI-relevant laws, regulations, standards, and other governance documents from the U.S. and around the world.

– Supply Chain Explorer is a guide to the vast, complex, and critical supply chain for advanced computer chips.

– Research Almanac provides high-level trends in global emerging technology research on topics in AI, biotechnology, chips, and cybersecurity.

– Country Activity Tracker provides data on global AI research, patenting, and investment in a user-friendly dashboard.

Bureau of Industry and Security – Interactive Commerce Control List. The Interactive Commerce Control List lets users explore how specific technologies map to export control categories in U.S. law for licensing and jurisdictional work.

Global Sanctions Database. The Global Sanctions Database allows users to filter and analyze sanctions by country, sector, instrument, and dates to inform sanctions design and policy evaluation.

PRISM – Investment Screening Mechanisms. Princeton University’s PRISM Project provides an interactive portal to compare global investment screening mechanisms, including design choices and authority structures.

Global Capital Allocation Project – Geoeconomic Monitor. The Geoeconomic Monitor offers visual dashboards tracking state interventions, capital restrictions, and strategic investment trends across global markets.

Convergent Research – Fundamental Development Gap Map. The Fundamental Development Gap Map identifies unmet scientific and technological needs to guide federal R&D prioritization.

Atlantic Council – Russia Sanctions Database. The Russia Sanctions Database from the Atlantic Council provides a searchable and interactive tracker of sanctioned entities and enforcement developments.

Tags: Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), CFIUS, economic security, Economic Statecraft, export controls, Industrial Policy, investment screening, IT Supply Chains, sanctions, tech policy

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• SWJ Staff searches the internet daily for articles and posts that we think are of great interests to our readers.

7. A brief history of the US military's presence in Greenland

​Summary:

U.S. forces have been tied to Greenland since 1941, when an agreement with Danish envoy Henrik Kauffmann enabled U.S. bases as World War II weather stations supported Atlantic shipping and helped plan operations, including timing for Normandy. After Denmark rejected a 1946 U.S. purchase offer, a 1951 agreement expanded American access, and the island became a Cold War hub with numerous bases and thousands of troops. Greenland anchored NATO efforts to monitor Soviet activity, including undersea detection along the Greenland–Iceland–UK gap. Ties strained after a 1968 nuclear-armed B-52 crash revealed policy violations, but the U.S. stayed. Today the lone installation, Pituffik Space Base, provides early warning radar crucial for detecting Russian missile launches, a role seen as growing as Russia and China press into the Arctic.

Comment: I recall from the movies that Greenland would be threatened as a punishment tour. (But our good friend and mentor, the late Warlord, COL John Collins served there in 1962 and he did not consider it punishment).

A brief history of the US military's presence in Greenland

taskandpurpose.com · Jeff Schogol

U.S. troops have been based in Greenland for decades, starting in World War II, when weather stations on the island provided vital intelligence to the Allies.

Jeff Schogol

Published Feb 5, 2026 9:53 AM EST

https://taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics/us-military-greenland-history/?utm

U.S. troops have long been based in Greenland, a self-autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark that is strategically located between North America and Europe.

During World War II, weather stations on the island helped the Allies determine the best time to launch the D-Day landings in Normandy, France. The island later played an important role in NATO efforts to monitor Soviet forces, and it currently hosts a Space Force Base that is critical in detecting any ballistic missiles launched from Russia.

Greenland’s importance to U.S. national security was underscored by President Donald Trump’s recent efforts to acquire the island, which resulted in a “framework” of an agreement with NATO, few details of which have been publicly released.

With both Russia and China looking to increase their presence in the Arctic, Greenland will continue to be a vital location for the U.S. military’s early warning systems, said Iris A. Ferguson, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience.

“Greenland has been central to U.S. national security for decades because of its geography,” said Ferguson, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, D.C. “During the Cold War, it became a cornerstone of early warning and missile defense for the U.S. homeland, and that role hasn’t gone away. If anything, Greenland, along with Alaska, are becoming more important.”

‘A strategic lifeline’

The U.S. military’s modern relationship with Greenland began in April 1941, when the American government signed an agreement with Danish Ambassador to the United States Henrik Kauffmann that allowed the U.S. military to establish bases on the island.

Because Greenland is the “breeding ground” for storms that hit Western Europe, it was vital for the Allies to set up weather stations on the island, according to the Arctic Institute think tank in Washington, D.C. That also prompted the United States and Greenland’s local government to establish a unit tasked with locating any German weather bases on the island.

“In World War II, Greenland wasn’t an ordinary battlefield; it was a strategic lifeline,” said Anthony Heron, of the Arctic Institute.“Its weather stations let the Allies protect shipping and plan operations with Arctic intelligence no one else had, allowed safer and shorter transatlantic routes, and vitally supported the overall Allied logistics.”

The U.S. military’s presence on Greenland also prevented any hostile power from being able to establish itself in the Western Hemisphere, a role that remained important after the war, Heron told Task & Purpose.

A radar dome belonging to the 23rd Space Operations Squadron Detachment 1 at Pituffik Space Base, Greenland, April 4, 2023. Space Force photo by Senior Airman Kaitlin Castillo.

An agreement, then a crash

It wasn’t long after Germany was defeated in 1945 that Greenland became a front on the new Cold War. After Denmark rejected a U.S. offer in 1946 to buy Greenland for $100 million, both countries struck an agreement in 1951 that granted the U.S. military access to the Island.

At one point, the U.S. military had more than a dozen bases in Greenland along with thousands of troops.

One of the island’s most important roles was serving as an anchor for a string of seafloor hydrophones meant to detect Soviet ballistic submarines that passed through a naval chokepoint known as the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap to come within striking distance of the United States.

Relations between Denmark and the United States became strained in 1968, when an American B-52 bomber armed with four nuclear weapons crashed in Greenland, spreading radioactive debris. The crash also revealed that the United States had been violating Denmark’s 1957 policy against having any nuclear weapons in the country or its territories.

Despite this rough patch, U.S. troops stayed in Greenland through the remainder of the Cold War.

Tracking Russian missiles

The United States currently has one remaining military installation in Greenland: Pituffik Space Base. The early warning radar at the base is vital to the U.S. military’s ability to keep an eye on Russia’s nuclear forces, said Erin D. Dumbacher, with the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, based in New York City.

“That could mean, especially, watching for incoming ballistic missiles,” Dumbacher told Task & Purpose. “It could also mean just having a better sense for what might be launched from the sea. The geography is such that U.S. eyes and ears, if you will, are very well served by having that strategic outpost in Greenland.”

This capability is becoming especially relevant with the end of the last remaining strategic nuclear weapons treaty between Russia and the United States, which expired on Thursday, Dumbacher said. The New START Treaty allowed both countries to use technologies such as satellites to monitor the other’s nuclear forces, she noted.

“We’re not going to have the mutual commitment anymore — maybe informally, but not formally — to not interfere with one another’s early warning systems,” Dumbacher said. “So, this would not be the time for the United States to lose access to or vital information from one of our most critical early warning radars in Greenland.”

For more, check out our YouTube channel, where Task & Purpose’s video producer Kyle Gunn explains the island’s role in U.S. national security.

Task & Purpose Video

Each week on Tuesdays and Fridays our team will bring you analysis of military tech, tactics, and doctrine.

Watch Here

Jeff Schogol

Senior Pentagon Reporter

Jeff Schogol is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for nearly 20 years. Email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com or direct message @JSchogol73030 on Twitter.

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8. Musk Shuts Down Russian Army Starlink Terminals in Ukraine, Kremlin Forces Lose Internet

​Summary:

Elon Musk ordered Starlink changes that reportedly disabled gray and black market terminals operating in Ukraine, cutting Russian units off from secure data transfer along a 1,000 km front and also disrupting some Ukrainian units using unregistered terminals. Ukrainian EW expert Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov said Russian command and control “collapsed” in places, while Ukrainian outlets reported slowed or halted assaults in some sectors. The AFU General Staff reported reduced intensity but continued fighting, and Russian glide bomb tempo stayed about the same. Russian sources described reverting to paper maps and couriers. Ukrainian officials are urging units to submit terminal data so friendly sets can be whitelisted, framing this as necessary to prevent Starlink controlled drones from striking civilians.

Comment: My question: What took him so long?  

Musk Shuts Down Russian Army Starlink Terminals in Ukraine, Kremlin Forces Lose Internet

kyivpost.com · Stefan Korshak · February 5, 2026

by Stefan Korshak | Feb. 5, 2026, 3:38 pm

Russia’s 800,000-man army invading Ukraine lost its main means of exchanging digital data overnight, but so did a lot of Ukrainian units operating gray market Starlink terminals.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/69509

(FILES) (COMBO) This combination of pictures created on October 10, 2023, shows (L) SpaceX, X and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Paris, on June 16, 2023 and (R) the new Twitter logo rebranded as X, pictured on a screen in Paris on July 24, 2023.(Photo by Alain JOCARD / AFP)

A recent Elon Musk decision to shut down Russian military-operated Starlink terminals in Ukraine has hammered Kremlin forces with internet access denial across a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) fighting front that has left commanders without means of communication and combat units unable to attack, Ukrainian mainstream news reports and milbloggers reported on Thursday.

Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov, a high-profile Ukrainian electronic warfare expert, in Wednesday evening comments published on his personal Telegram channel, said practically all frontline Russian combat units dependent on the US-developed Starlink satellite system for digital communications no longer are able to transfer data via secure internet, while Russian sources said some formations had had to revert to paper maps and couriers carrying memory sticks between units.

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In late January, Beskrestnov, a private industry electronic warfare expert recently appointed as senior technical advisor to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, flagged new Russian use of Starlink receivers in kamikaze drones used to attack Ukrainian homes and businesses, allowing real-time control by Russian pilots of attack aircraft, across Ukraine, with practically no risk of jamming.

In one of the most rapid responses by any Western company assisting the Ukrainian military of the entire Russo-Ukrainian War, Musk agreed with Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Federov that Starlink should impose a “whitelist” additional layer of access to Starlink terminals in Ukrainian territory, allowing only registered, verified, and authorized Starlink terminals to operate. Starlink engineers, in less than 48 hours, implemented soft- and hardware changes shutting down all gray and black market Starlink terminals operating in Ukraine, Musk told media on Feb. 1.

Other Topics of Interest

Ukraine Under Fire: Is NATO Support Enough?| Stefan Korshak

Stefan Korshak, Senior Defense Correspondent at Kyiv Post, explains why Russian strikes continue and why Ukraine remains heavily dependent on US air defense systems.

Federov, in an X post, praised Musk for delivering “real results,” calling the South African-born businessman “a true champion of freedom and a true friend of the Ukrainian people.”

Beskrestnov’s report that Starlink terminals had in fact been massively disabled across Kremlin forces in Ukraine was one of the earliest, most authoritative, and emphatic confirmations from the fighting front that the Musk-ordered changes targeting Starlink terminals in Russian military hands were operational and effective.

“The enemy doesn’t just have a problem on the fronts; the enemy has a disaster. All command of [Russian] troops has collapsed. [Russian] assault operations have been stopped in many areas,” Beskrestnov said.

The mainstream Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, in a Telegram post on Thursday, citing its own sources, confirmed Russian offensive operations had slowed down or even halted in some sectors, reporting in part: “Russian troop command and control has effectively collapsed, and assaults have been halted in a number of areas. Meanwhile, the Swamp Troops [Ukrainian: болотные войска – a derisive term for Russian Federation armed forces] are spewing vitriol at Musk. But it won’t help them anymore.”

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in its Thursday morning last-24-hours situation update reported reduced fighting intensity across the front but assaults still taking place, particularly in the southern Hulyaipole and eastern Pokrovsk sectors.

Quantities of Russian glide bombs dropped (233 on Wednesday) were effectively unchanged from Russian Air Force strike tempos in past weeks, army data showed.

Communications networks based on Musk’s Starlink data network and SpaceX satellite constellation are heavily used by both the Russian and Ukrainian armies, particularly ground forces operating on front lines where the power grid and civilian mobile phones don’t work. In forward positions, Starlink and its usually reliable rapid internet access is often the only way for a unit commander to update maps, track units, update and organize targeting, and understand enemy locations and movements. The Starlink network is also widely used by both sides as a navigation tool for long-range drones.

The AFU operates both white market Starlink terminals bought by the Ukrainian military or Western allied states and gray market terminals usually bought for individual units by domestic donors. Estimates of the total number of terminals operated by the AFU range from at least 50,000 constantly in use and as many as 200,000 acquired and used in the field at some time since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Starlink sales in Russia are banned, and theoretically, Starlink terminals in Russian hands should not work across Russia’s territory and in Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. The Kremlin has evaded the ban by purchasing terminals on the black market or in third party states and bringing them to Ukrainian territory illicitly.

The independent Russian news agency Astra, in a Wednesday evening report, confirmed Russian army-operated Starlink terminals had stopped functioning across the force. Russian military unit Telegram feeds monitored by Kyiv Post reported that some commanders unable to transmit data digitally were falling back on paper documents and runners carrying memory sticks, but that could not be confirmed independently.

The pro-Moscow blogger, Belarusskiy Silovik (450,000 followers), a claimed retired Russian special forces officer blogging on the war since 2014, reported on Wednesday: “I confirm, they’ve shut down Starlink, it already happened once [in the past] but that was for a short time. Now we will see for how long, but considering how SpaceX and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry are cooperating, it could be for a long time. [But] in the AFU there have been shootdowns as well.”

The widely read Russian milblogger Dva Mayora (1.2 million followers, operated by the Russian brother-sister propagandist team Dmitry and Ekaterina Korzina) reported on Wednesday: “We are receiving reports that Starlink terminals have been turned off across the front. The enemy [AFU] also is reporting similar problems in his channels.”

Failures of gray market Starlink terminals acquired by Ukrainian units were widely reported, with the shutdowns possibly most common in National Guard and Territorial Defense units, as well as civilian volunteer groups more dependent on domestic donors for equipment. AFU regular army brigades and smaller special operations units usually have top priority for government-purchased kit.

Beskrestnov, in a Thursday statement, said that the AFU and Defense Ministry are aware that the shutdown targeting Russian Starlink terminals had made gray market terminals operated by friendly forces inoperable as well. Users with switched-off terminals should send registration data by secure link to his office which, along with Starlink technicians, would update access codes and re-link the terminals and return internet access to those frontline users.

“Brothers from all units, I ask you to speed up the provision of data on personal and volunteer Starlinks that you use through Delta [the pan-AFU secure data-sharing network]. I give you my word that this data is needed only for the register of terminals that will operate in the country. No one will later take Starlinks from you or put them on the balance of another unit,” Beskrestnov said in a Thursday message to Ukrainian gray market Starlink terminal users.

“We are ready to include [non-functional Starlink terminals into] white lists at any time, so we are very much waiting for information from you. We understand that all this seems like unnecessary trouble and hassle for the military and civilians, but this is the only way we can protect our country from the dangers of [Russian] Starlink-controlled [unmanned aerial vehicles] UAVs,” Beskrestnov said. “We apologize for the inconvenience with registration, but there is no other option. We are primarily thinking about protecting the civilian population of the country and hope for your understanding.”

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Stefan Korshak

Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas, is a Yalie and since the mid-1990s has worked as correspondent/photographer for newswire, newspapers, television and radio. He has reported from five wars but most enjoys doing articles on wildlife and nature. You can read his weekly blog on the Russo-Ukraine War on Facebook, Substack and Medium. His new book on the 2022 Siege of Mariupol is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US.

9.What Are the Pros and Cons of Data Centers?

​Summary:

The article argues the AI driven data center boom brings real benefits but imposes heavy local costs. On the plus side, data centers attract huge capital investment, generate major tax revenue, create large numbers of construction jobs, and can drive upgrades to grids, substations, and fiber networks. They also underpin core digital services and domestic AI infrastructure seen as strategically important. On the downside, they are massive electricity loads that strain power systems and may raise consumer rates, they consume large volumes of water for cooling, and they burden nearby communities with land use impacts, continuous noise, diesel generator testing, and growing e waste from rapid hardware turnover.

Comment: We have one just completing construction about a mile from our home. I heard a recent discussion and I know there have been some press reports about the idea of building data centers on military installations. We should do a pros and cons analysis of that. I think there is a potential win-win there. We could also build small nuclear reactors on military installations to provide sustained stand alone power to both the data center and the installation. This would build resilience into our military installations for both data and military operations.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Data Centers?

Published 

February 5, 2026

Written by

Aminu Abdullahi

The AI data center boom is reshaping economies while straining power grids, water supplies, and communities. Here’s the real cost behind AI’s rise.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-ai-data-center-boom-costs-benefits/?utm

Image: Generated via Google’s Nano Banana

When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, I watched something remarkable happen.

Within two months, it hit 100 million users, a growth rate that sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley. Today, it has over 800 million weekly active users. That launch sparked an explosion in AI development that has fundamentally changed how we build and operate the infrastructure powering our digital world.

That all happens in data centers… and lots of them. Data centers are economic engines and technical marvels, but they also come with real costs that communities are only beginning to feel.

Let me walk you through the three major pros and cons of today’s data center boom and what they mean for our future.

The pros of data centers: Why communities are rolling out the red carpet

1. They’re an economic catalyst (especially for rural areas)

I’ll start with what gets politicians and economic development officials excited: the money. And there’s a lot of it.

In 2025 alone, data center deals hit a record $61 billion globally, with the majority happening in the United States. We’re not talking about small investments. Meta is pouring $27 billion into its Hyperion data center in Louisiana after teaming up with Blue Owl Capital, expanding what it initially described as a $10 billion project. Google announced a $25 billion investment in AI infrastructure in Pennsylvania. The numbers are staggering when you step back and look at them.

According to recent economic analysis by S&P Global, data center and related high-tech spending accounted for 80% of the increase in US economic demand in the first half of 2025. That’s not a typo; these facilities are literally driving the US economy forward.

Take Texas, for example. In 2024, data centers paid an estimated $3.2 billion in taxes to state and local governments. Or look at Loudoun County, Virginia, where officials expected real and property tax revenues from data centers to hit $895 million in fiscal year 2025, almost as much as the county’s entire operating budget of $940 million.

For states and municipalities competing for these projects, the appeal is obvious. Companies bringing in significant capital investment and substantial tax revenue that can fund schools, roads, and public services. It’s why Virginia, Texas, and now more than 20 other states offer tax breaks to attract data centers to their regions.

2. They (mostly) create jobs

The promise of jobs is a powerful lure.

When Meta first announced its “Hyperion” data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, state officials projected 500 permanent “direct new jobs” and over 5,000 temporary construction jobs at peak build.

OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate Project touts the potential for 100,000 jobs across construction and operations. While the permanent operational staff for a highly automated data center is often smaller than people hope — sometimes as few as 20 to 150 for a large facility — the construction boom is very real.

It creates demand for electricians, HVAC technicians, and engineers, a fact underscored by Microsoft President Brad Smith’s estimate that the US will need “half a million new electricians” in the next decade to meet this demand.

3. They can force infrastructure improvements (for better or worse)

A new hyperscale data center can use as much power as a small city.

To support it, utilities and developers often have to invest in local power grids, new substations, and fiber-optic networks. In theory, this upgraded infrastructure can benefit the broader community and make the area more attractive for other businesses.

There’s also a geopolitical angle here. The US government, under both the current and previous administrations, has made it clear that leading in AI is a national priority.

The Trump administration’s “America’s AI Action Plan” explicitly calls for building a vast AI infrastructure to maintain competitiveness. Having this critical infrastructure on domestic soil is seen as vital to national security and economic sovereignty, helping prevent over-reliance on foreign data processing hubs.

Love it or hate it, our digital world runs on these facilities.

Every AI query, streamed movie, cloud backup, and smart device interaction touches a data center. They enable the services that have become integral to business, education, and communication. Without the massive scale of data centers, the generative AI toolsnow weaving into everything from drug discovery to customer service simply wouldn’t exist.

More about data centers

• Stargate Norway: OpenAI’s First AI Data Center in Europe
• AI Data Centers’ Soaring Energy Use: Who Pays for Higher Utilities Costs?
• China’s Submerged AI Data Center Could ‘Influence Global Sustainable Computing’
• Google to Power Data Centers With Nuclear Energy by 2030 in First-Of-A-Kind’ Agreement

The cons of data centers: The staggering, not-so-hidden costs of AI factories

1. They are voracious, grid-straining energy hogs

This is the big one.

As early as 2024, the International Energy Agency noted that the US already accounted for 45% of global data center electricity use. And AI is changing the math entirely. A traditional cloud data center might draw power equivalent to 25,000 homes. A new AI hyperscale facility can demand as much as 100,000 homes or more.

Meta’s Hyperion center in Louisiana is expected to draw more than twice the power of the entire city of New Orleans, according to reports.

The strain is real and present. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that “the speed at which large load facilities are being built adds stress” on the grid due to this demand. The result? Everyone pays more.

A June 2024 study from Carnegie Mellon and North Carolina State University projected US electricity rates could rise 8% on average by 2030 due to data center demand, with hotspots like Northern Virginia facing potential increases of over 25%.

2. They consume water at an alarming rate

If the power demand doesn’t shock you, the water usage will. Data centers are incredibly thirsty. For cooling, these facilities suck in millions of gallons daily.

A medium-sized facility can consume 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling, equivalent to about 1,000 households, while the larger ones can consume up to 5 million gallons per day.

In 2023, Google’s data centers alone withdrew 6.1 billion gallons of water globally. Their Council Bluffs, Iowa, facilities — just two data centers — pulled 1.4 billion gallons from the local water supply.

Texas, for example, could see AI data centers consuming up to 161 billion gallons annually by 2030, nearly 3% of the state’s water usage, a serious concern given recurring drought conditions. In regions where water is scarce, this can affect agriculture, municipal supply planning, and local ecosystems.

3. They impose heavy burdens on local communities

The impact isn’t just resource-deep.

These are massive, often windowless complexes covering hundreds of acres of former farmland or forest. They bring noise pollution from 24/7 cooling systems and periodic testing of hundreds of diesel backup generators, each the size of a railcar.

Imagine living next to a heavy metal concert that never ends. That’s the reality for some folks. A data center’s cooling fans can crank out 92 to 96 dB(A).

Data centers are constantly updating hardware. Old servers and networking equipment become obsolete quickly due to rapid advances in chip performance, especially for AI workloads.

This creates significant quantities of electronic waste (e-waste), which often contains toxic materials and requires careful handling. This e-waste challenge spans global technology infrastructure and raises questions about long-term material sustainability.

Final thoughts

From where I stand, data centers are the infrastructure backbone of the AI era, transformative, necessary, and inevitable. But they aren’t free of trade-offs.

As we move forward, I believe we need much more transparency about the true costs of these facilities, not just the tax revenue they’ll generate, but the water they’ll consume, the electricity they’ll demand, the emissions they’ll produce, and the lasting impacts on the communities that host them.

The companies that power our future must be accountable for the full footprint they leave today.

Also read: Enterprise leaders are scaling faster than their guardrails, and AI adoption trends show why governance and upskilling now determine who wins.

Aminu Abdullahi

Aminu Abdullahi is an experienced B2B technology and finance writer. He has written for various publications, including TechRepublic, eWEEK, Enterprise Networking Planet, eSecurity Planet, CIO Insight, Enterprise Storage Forum, IT Business Edge, Webopedia, Software Pundit, Geekflare and more.

10. Xi’s military purges will make him wary of invading Taiwan

​Summary:

Phil Saunders argues Xi’s purge of top PLA leaders, including CMC Vice-Chair Zhang Youxia and Joint Staff chief Liu Zhenli, signals that corruption had undermined both combat readiness and Party control. Xi selected six CMC members in November 2022 and has now purged five, suggesting a crisis of trust in the system meant to police itself. Unlike the 2013–15 cleanout, the current wave reaches the entire senior leadership, implying Xi judged trusted monitors complicit. Saunders assesses the operational fallout will be immediate: investigations and leadership turnover will disrupt training and, because Taiwan planning depends on tight coordination between the Eastern Theatre Command and the Joint Staff Department, the turmoil reduces near-term readiness and makes Xi less willing to gamble on an invasion.

Comment: Will this have long lasting effects- positive or negative?

If corruption and purchased promotions degraded “political ecology” (that is a new phrase for me) and combat effectiveness, how can Xi obtain honest readiness assessments when fear of dissent is now higher? Can there ever be honest readiness assessment in an authoritarian regime that is ruled by terror and causes subordinates to tell the dictator what they think he wants to hear so they can survive? 

If a Taiwan campaign requires seamless Eastern Theatre Command and Joint Staff integration, what is the minimum level of leadership stability and rehearsals needed before Beijing can credibly execute such a plan?

Does purging five of six handpicked CMC members restore Party control, or does it reveal a monitoring model that systematically fails under pressure and incentives?

And most importantly, how can we exploit these events and conditions?

Xi’s military purges will make him wary of invading Taiwan | Lowy Institute

lowyinstitute.org · Phillip C. Saunders

Phillip C. Saunders

The removal of Xi’s most trusted military ally suggests

corruption undermined combat readiness and political control.

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/xi-s-military-purges-will-make-him-wary-invading-taiwan

On 25 January, China’s People’s Liberation Army announced that Central Military Commission Vice-Chair Zhang Youxia and Chief of the Joint Staff Department General Liu Zhenli were under investigation for “suspected serious violations of discipline and law”. The removal of China’s top general – thought to be Xi Jinping’s most trusted ally inside the Chinese military – and the PLA’s senior operational commander is shocking. Xi Jinping personally selected six CMC members in November 2022. He has now purged five of them.

Five specific accusations have been listed against Zhang and Liu, including that they had betrayed the trust placed in them by the party, undermined Xi’s authority as CMC Chair, and fostered political and corruption problems that undermined the Party’s absolute leadership over the military. Zhang and Liu are said to have “caused immense damage to the military’s political building, political ecology, and combat effectiveness, and had an extremely negative impact on the Party, the country, and the military”.

The removal of Zhang and Liu follows earlier military purges. The first wave in 2023 came after investigations of equipment problems in the PLA Rocket Force (which operates China’s nuclear missiles) resulted in removal of its top leaders. The second wave in 2025 targeted the leadership of the PLA political work system and the second ranking PLA officer, CMC Vice-Chair General He Weidong.

What explains Xi Jinping’s decision to purge the senior PLA leadership? What does this reveal about the party-army relationship? What impact will it have on military readiness and the potential for a conflict over Taiwan?

The current purges differ from Xi’s efforts to clean house in the PLA in 2013-15. In addition to targeting rampant corruption, those purges sought to remove generals loyal to Xi’s political rivals, assert control over the PLA, and reduce resistance to ambitious military reform plans.

Yet there were limits on how far Xi could go. Those purges left most senior PLA leaders and operational commanders in place, despite their complicity in corruption. The PLA kept much of its autonomy over military issues and maintained the existing political work system, meaning that the PLA was essentially monitoring itself.

Xi used 2016 military reforms to strengthen political work inside the PLA to ensure military loyalty to the party and created new monitoring mechanisms to deter corruption. Yet the reformed system still relied on PLA officers to monitor their peers, counting on political commissars to place party loyalty above else.

While Xi insisted on the final word on major military decisions, in practice he relied on trusted allies for day-to-day supervision of PLA affairs. Zhang was the most important of these allies; Xi promoted him to CMC Vice-Chair in 2017 and kept him on after retirement age by reappointing him in 2022.

Xi’s ability to purge the entire PLA senior leadership shows his political strength but will have significant political and operational consequences.

Some have speculated that Zhang and Xi may have disagreed about modernisation priorities or that Zhang may have been becoming too powerful and posed a threat to Xi. However, the most likely explanation is that Xi was disappointed in Zhang’s performance in fighting corruption and producing a PLA capable of fighting and winning wars, including being ready for a potential invasion of Taiwan. The core issue is whether Xi could rely on Zhang to manage the PLA and ensure its political reliability. Commentary in PLA Daily following the purges has described success in the battle against corruption as necessary for achieving the PLA’s modernisation goals and called for obedience to the centre “in thought, politics, and action”.

The PLA has made considerable progress in modernisation, but the Rocket Force procurement scandals showed that corruption was rampant in the PLA and was affecting the performance of advanced weapon systems, including nuclear systems. Reports that senior officers had paid for their promotions also undermined Xi’s authority and party control. The scandals almost certainly prompted Xi to take a hard look at why the PLA’s top leaders and political work system recommended officers who proved so untrustworthy. He likely discovered that the officers he trusted to monitor their peers had become complicit in their corruption.

This may have led Xi to lose confidence in Zhang and other senior officers and conclude they all had to go. The decision to purge others first was a tactical choice; there is evidence that Zhang was under investigation by September 2023.

Xi’s ability to purge the entire PLA senior leadership shows his political strength but will have significant political and operational consequences. The loss of experienced generals and continuing investigations in the theatres and services will make it hard for the PLA to focus on operational training.

Executing a Taiwan campaign plan would require close cooperation between the Eastern Theatre Command (which has primary responsibility for the invasion) and the Joint Staff Department (which would control critical national-level assets and coordinate supporting actions by other theatres). Those generals are gone. Their replacements will have less experience and will need to learn their new responsibilities and build relationships with their counterparts. The turmoil will have a negative near-term effect on PLA combat readiness.

The purges will also aggravate existing strains in party-army relations. Xi’s confidence in the less experienced leaders running the PLA will be limited, and he is well aware that his generals may be reluctant to offer honest assessments of PLA readiness for war. These factors decrease the likelihood that Xi will be willing to roll the dice on a Taiwan invasion.

lowyinstitute.org · Phillip C. Saunders

11. Thinking Like Beijing: Why Xi’s Purge Matters More Than It Looks

​Summary:

Mark Haselton argues US analysts should read Beijing through patterns, not announcements, and sees the January 2026 removal of Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli as the culmination of a long, visible attrition of senior PLA leaders. He frames it as the biggest senior military shake-up since 1989, aimed less at professional reform than at enforcing absolute loyalty, even against “princeling” elites. He rejects the George C. Marshall analogy: Marshall purged to build adaptability and truth-telling, while Xi purges to enforce compliance and party supremacy. The result may be a PLA that is more obedient yet more brittle, which complicates deterrence by denial and punishment around Taiwan by weakening honest risk assessment and restraint.

Comment: An excellent analogy with Marshall. If Beijing prizes obedience over professional skepticism, how does deterrence work when the adversary may not process risk signals as intended?

If gray zone actions become a career pathway inside a loyalty system, what tripwires most plausibly turn routine harassment into rapid escalation around Taiwan?

If Xi is signaling coherence to Washington while accepting internal disruption, which indicators best separate real operational readiness from political theater?

​And again, how can we split these actions and conditions?

Thinking Like Beijing

substack.com · The Old and BoldFeb 05, 2026

Why Xi’s Purge Matters More Than It Looks

The Old and Bold

Feb 05, 2026

https://vaberet.substack.com/p/thinking-like-beijing?isFreemail=

A part of my professional life was spent inside what we used to call the “China problem set.” In the late 1990s and early 2000s, first as a staff officer on the Joint Staff and later as a contractor supporting the Pentagon and a strategic assessment team in the Intelligence Community, my job was to think like Beijing. I was paid to red-team China, to examine its choices, incentives, and constraints, and to ask a simple but uncomfortable question: If I were them, what would I do next?

That was never easy. The Chinese system was opaque then and remains opaque today. Even so, signals were always there if you knew where to look. The problem was not a lack of indicators, but how we interpreted them. At the time, we largely treated China as an aspirational threat. It was ambitious and rising, but not yet capable of translating intent into sustained military power. China mattered, but it did not yet dominate the threat landscape.

What we did understand, even then, was that China takes a long view of strategy, competition, and geopolitics. It plans in decades, not news cycles. That habit of cumulative action, rather than dramatic breaks, is precisely why the recent purge inside the People’s Liberation Army caught my attention in a way routine authoritarian crackdowns do not.

For years, observers have watched a steady attrition of senior PLA officers. Some were retired “for health reasons.” Others were reassigned into obscurity or investigated for corruption. Each case, taken alone, could be explained away as routine discipline inside a closed system. Taken together, they pointed to something larger unfolding beneath the surface of the PLA. This is how China typically signals change: not with announcements, but with patterns.

That slow-motion process reached its apex in January 2026 with the removal of General Zhang Youxia and General Liu Zhenli, China’s top uniformed officer and chief of staff. This was not routine turnover. It was the most dramatic shake-up of China’s senior military leadership since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Their removal effectively annihilated the PLA’s top leadership cohort that had been in place since 2022, leaving the Central Military Commission in disarray and exposing an unprecedented internal crisis within the PLA.

While nearly as consequential as Tiananmen, the nature of this moment is fundamentally different. The 1989 crackdown was a systemic, societal, and geopolitical rupture that reshaped the Chinese state and its relationship with the world. The purge of Zhang and Liu, by contrast, is a highly concentrated exercise of power aimed squarely at the uppermost echelons of the military. Its purpose is narrower but no less significant: to enforce absolute loyalty and remove any remaining ambiguity about who ultimately controls the PLA.

What really stands out in this purge is not just the rank or seniority of the officers involved, but their pedigree. Both men were princelings, members of the same revolutionary elite as Xi Jinping himself. They were neither expendable nor peripheral figures. Their removal signals that whatever informal constraints once limited Xi’s reach into the military no longer exist. This was not the opening act of a purge. It was its culmination. And that is a signal we should pay close attention to.

Understanding why this matters requires stepping back to the broader arc of China’s rise. After 9/11, like many of us, my professional focus shifted to the Middle East. I remained interested in China, but I did not fully appreciate how quickly the ground was shifting. In hindsight, the real inflection point did not come in the mid-1990s, when China began its long military modernization. It came between 2008 and the early 2010s.

The global financial crisis rattled Chinese confidence in American competence and durability. Beijing emerged from it more assertive and more convinced that U.S. primacy was neither permanent nor inevitable. By the middle of the next decade, China was building advanced warships at a pace the world had never seen, fielding modern air defenses, anti-ship missiles, cyber capabilities, and emerging technologies designed explicitly to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities. Somewhere in that window, China crossed a line. It stopped being a rising power and became a genuine peer competitor.

Once that threshold was crossed, the internal logic of Xi’s consolidation changed with it.

In examining Xi’s purge of the officer corps, some observers (myself included) began reaching for historical analogies, most commonly the purge conducted by George C. Marshall before World War II. On the surface, the comparison is appealing. Marshall cleared out a generation of senior U.S. Army officers he believed were unfit for the war he saw coming. He accepted disruption in the present to avoid catastrophe later. In both cases, a leader saw a military that looked formidable on paper but was deeply flawed.

But this is where the analogy breaks down.

Marshall’s purge was driven by professional judgment, not political dominance. He sought adaptability, initiative, and honest feedback. He decentralized authority and promoted officers precisely because they would challenge assumptions and speak hard truths upward. His purge strengthened institutional resilience.

Xi’s purge is doing the opposite.

To understand it, you have to return to 2012, when Xi took power and immediately launched the most expansive anti-corruption campaign in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. From the beginning, the campaign was about more than graft. It was about discipline, control, and regime survival. Once China possessed credible military, economic, and technological strength, extending that campaign fully into the officer corps was inevitable.

Xi’s purge of the PLA is not a professional housecleaning. It is a political act designed to reinforce personal authority and party supremacy. Corruption matters, and it undermines readiness. But corruption alone does not explain the targeting of revolutionary elites Xi once elevated and protected. The deeper purpose is to demonstrate that no lineage, faction, or prior loyalty confers independence from his will.

Internally, the message is unmistakable and unforgiving. Loyalty now outweighs pedigree, patronage, and professional pride. The elevation of discipline officials such as Zhang Shengmin, the only remaining uniformed member of the Central Military Commission besides Xi himself, signals a decisive shift in what the regime values. Political reliability has been elevated above operational experience. The officers replacing the old guard are not being chosen primarily to fight wars better, but to enforce Xi’s Chairman Responsibility System and ensure that orders flow downward without hesitation, interpretation, or resistance. The PLA is being reshaped less as a professional military institution than as a tightly controlled political instrument.

Externally, the message is just as deliberate but aimed in the opposite direction. Xi wants Washington to see a PLA stripped of factionalism, purged of divided loyalties, and capable of executing orders with speed and discipline. The signal is meant to convey resolve and coherence: whatever turmoil the purge has created internally, the Chinese military that emerges will be loyal, controllable, and prepared to act. In short, Xi is telling the United States that he would rather accept short-term disruption than tolerate a military whose loyalty or responsiveness might be in doubt.

However, Xi’s actions create several risks.

Unlike Marshall’s Army, which emerged more adaptable and professionally confident, Xi’s PLA may become more brittle even as it becomes more obedient. Younger generals are not only promoted because they are untainted by old corruption networks, but also because they lack the institutional confidence to push back when political leaders edge toward disaster.

In a system where advancement depends on demonstrating zeal and loyalty, caution becomes suspect. Hesitation can look like disobedience. Prudence can look like weakness.

All of this comes to a head around Taiwan, where deterrence is no longer an abstract concept but a daily, operational reality.

For years, U.S. planning has rested on some combination of deterrence by denial and deterrence by punishment. Denial aims to convince Beijing that it cannot achieve its objectives at an acceptable cost. Punishment aims to convince it that even if it succeeds tactically, the consequences will be strategically devastating. Both approaches assume a degree of restraint, judgment, and professional skepticism inside the opposing command structure. The purge of senior officers will now test that assumption in an unforgiving environment.

A PLA reshaped by political purges may be more loyal and more responsive to Xi’s directives, but it may also be less capable of absorbing the signals on which deterrence depends. Denial requires an adversary that can accurately assess risk and recognize when a military option is unlikely to work. Punishment requires an adversary that believes escalation will be controlled and proportional rather than cascading and existential. A command culture trained to prioritize obedience and zeal over judgment risks misreading both.

In practical terms, this means denial may be tested more aggressively at the tactical level. Gray-zone actions, air and maritime harassment, missile signaling, and coercive demonstrations become tools not just of strategy, but of career advancement. At the same time, punishment becomes harder to calibrate. Leaders who equate restraint with disloyalty may discount warnings, dismiss off-ramps, or assume that resolve alone can overcome material disadvantage.

The danger is not that Xi has decided to go to war tomorrow. The danger is that he has built a military that is structurally less capable of stopping itself once events begin to move. In that environment, deterrence depends less on dramatic threats and more on clarity, consistency, and credibility at every rung of escalation.

Marshall purged to create an army that could think, adapt, and speak hard truths before catastrophe struck. Xi is purging to ensure compliance when decisions are made. For Taiwan, and for U.S. deterrence strategy, that difference matters profoundly. Denial and punishment still matter, but they now operate against a force that may be increasingly confident, increasingly political, and increasingly prone to mistaking obedience for wisdom at precisely the moment when restraint is most needed.

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substack.com · The Old and BoldFeb 05, 2026

12. Xi, Trump and why their talks are stoking unease in Taiwan

​Summary: 

Taiwan is uneasy after Xi told POTUS in a February 5 call that Taiwan is the “most important” issue in US China ties and urged “extreme caution” on US arms sales, while POTUS posted that he valued Beijing’s concerns and would keep communications to stabilize relations. The anxiety is sharpened by the January 23 US National Defense Strategy, which did not mention Taiwan. William Lai said ties with Washington remain rock solid and the US one China policy has not changed, but opposition figures argue Taiwan is becoming a bargaining chip priced in weapons spending and semiconductor moves. Analysts see Xi drawing an early red line before an expected April meeting.

Comment: Danger, Will Robinson??? (said the B9 model robot)

If Taiwan is absent from the NDS, what concrete signals will Taipei treat as proof of priority, not rhetoric? 

If Xi is setting an arms sales red line directly with POTUS, what leverage does Beijing think it has, and what is Washington willing to trade? 

If Taiwan is becoming “transactional,” what is Taipei’s Plan B for deterrence and resilience if arms transfers are slowed or delayed?

Xi, Trump and why their talks are stoking unease in Taiwan

William Lai says the island’s ties with Washington remain rock solid but others are seeing a clear shift

Lawrence Chungin Taipei

Published: 8:00pm, 5 Feb 2026

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3342534/xi-trump-and-why-their-talks-are-stoking-unease-taiwan?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

Lawrence Chungin Taipei

Published: 8:00pm, 5 Feb 2026

Talks between the US and Chinese presidents on Taiwan and arms sales have fanned fears on the island that it is slipping down the ladder of Washington’s strategic priorities in an era of great-power bargaining.

The concern compounded unease raised by the release last month of the US’ National Defence Strategy, which made no mention of Taiwan.

In a phone call on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his American counterpart Donald Trump that Taiwan was the “most important” question in China-US relations. He stressed that Taiwan was Chinese territory and that Beijing would never allow it to be separated.

Urging Washington to handle arms sales to Taiwan with “extreme caution”, Xi said Beijing must safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Trump said on social media that he valued Beijing’s concerns over Taiwan and was willing to maintain communication with Beijing to keep bilateral ties stable.

Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te sought to dispel anxieties on the island on Thursday, saying the call had not altered the fundamentals of relations between Taiwan, Washington and Beijing.

“[Washington] remains committed to maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific through collective defence with allies,” Lai said, insisting that the island’s relations with Washington remained “rock solid”, with cooperation continuing as before.

A White House official said the US “one-China policy” had not changed, according to Taiwan’s semi-official Central News Agency.

But Chen Binhua, a spokesman for the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said Xi had made clear that Taiwan was the “most important issue” in China-US relations and that US arms sales crossed a “red line” in Beijing’s core interests.

Chen said Washington must strictly adhere to the one-China principle and the three joint communiques. He also accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of fuelling instability by “seeking independence through foreign support”.

On Taiwan’s opposition benches, scepticism about Washington’s intentions ran deep.

The main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) accused Lai of ignoring what it described as a “clear strategic shift” under the Trump administration away from confrontation with mainland China.

It said Xi’s call with Trump underscored Washington’s willingness to deepen cooperation and advance ties with Beijing.

The KMT warned that Lai’s continued emphasis on “rock-solid” Taiwan-US relations amounted to “self-delusion” that risked “turning Taiwan into a bargaining chip in US-China deal-making”.

Huang Kuo-chang, chairman of the smaller opposition Taiwan People’s Party, said Trump’s dealings with Taiwan had never centred on democratic values, but on “price”.

He said Trump focused on how much Taiwan spent on weapons and how much semiconductor capacity it moved to the United States. “I don’t think Trump cares that much about Taiwan,” Huang said.

Huang also pointed to the absence of Taiwan from the US National Defence Strategy released on January 23. He said this contrasted with the previous version, which referred to Taiwan multiple times.

He argued the omission appeared “deliberate” and was meant to “lay the groundwork for a future Trump-Xi meeting” expected in April.

Taiwan, he warned, must ensure its interests were not sacrificed in great-power negotiations.

The DPP rejected such claims.

Chung Chia-pin, the party’s legislative caucus whip, urged caution in interpreting Beijing’s statements about the call, saying those involving foreign leaders required “careful scrutiny in context”.

“Trump has frequently expressed shifting views on social media, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions from any single remark,” Chung said.

Trump downplays Taiwan dispute in China talks

Analysts said the optics and timing of the call warranted close attention.

Political commentator and former DPP legislator Shen Fu-hsiung said Xi’s decision to raise arms sales directly with Trump, rather than waiting for a meeting in April, suggested urgency.

He described the call as a “pre-meeting” aimed at “personally drawing a red line and reining in hawkish voices in the US Congress pushing for expanded arms sales to Taiwan”.

Former national security chief Lee Shying-jow had a bleaker assessment. He said the call showed Washington and Beijing were “now discussing how to coexist, rather than how to protect Taiwan”.

“[Taiwan is] shifting from being a strategic bargaining chip to a transactional item in US-China relations,” Lee said.

He criticised Lai for continuing to stress “rock-solid” ties with Washington, arguing the government should level with the public about “unprecedented uncertainty and prepare for worst-case scenarios”.

Huang Kwei-bo, a diplomacy professor at Taipei-based National Chengchi University, said Xi’s explicit focus on arms sales departed from past boilerplate language on Taiwan.

“It reflects Beijing’s concern that a new round of US arms transfers could significantly strengthen Taiwan’s coastal deterrence,” Huang said.

He warned that Taiwan lacked control over arms procurement decisions and must factor in the risk that sales could be adjusted or delayed as US-China negotiations evolved.

Beijing, which sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary, has intensified military pressure on the island since Lai took office in 2024.

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

Lawrence Chung

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

13. The Marine Corps presence in Okinawa is critical to deterring China and North Korea

​Summary:

The authors argue the Marine Corps presence on Okinawa is central to deterrence against China and north Korea because it anchors stand in forces inside the First Island Chain with rapid response and crisis utility. They warn the 2002 to 2006 DPRI plan to shift 5,000 Marines and 1,300 dependents to Guam has moved slowly but, if fully implemented, would pull key forces 1,500 miles away and weaken deterrence at a moment of rising China pressure on Taiwan. They contend today’s context warrants revisiting DPRI through economic incentives for Okinawa, renewed US reassurance to Japan, and a revised basing laydown. They also urge keeping MCAS Futenma and using it jointly, and suggest expanding rotations to islands like Yonaguni.

Comment: I have not heard Futenma in the news lately but that is a perennial friction point in relations with the people of Okinawa. 

If stand in forces are meant to deter by being inside missile range, what is the right balance between survivability and forward presence on Okinawa? 

If Okinawa is the political constraint, what incentives and burden sharing mechanisms would make deterrence sustainable without eroding alliance legitimacy? 

If DPRI relocation continues, what specific missions become impossible or slower in the first 72 hours of a Taiwan or north Korea contingency?

And in terms of deterrence, defense, and power project we cannot forget the airpower that is at Kadena Air base (and then there is a small Special Forces unit at Torii Station - 1-1 SFG as well as the strategic Army communications and logistics capabilities that support the entire theater, as well the US Navy's facility at White Beach that is also designated as a United Nations Command base)

The Marine Corps presence in Okinawa is critical to deterring China and North Korea

atlanticcouncil.org · dhojnacki · February 3, 2026

By Caleb Eames and Amy Cowley February 3, 2026 1:41 p.m. ET

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/the-marine-corps-presence-in-okinawa-is-critical-to-deterring-china-and-north-korea/

Bottom lines up front

The US-Japan Defense Policy Review Initiative (DPRI), initiated in 2002 and signed in 2006, was designed to reduce the number of US servicemembers stationed on Okinawa for political reasons dating back thirty years or more. The plan now calls for shifting 5,000 Marines and 1,300 dependents from Okinawa to Guam, as well as a lesser number to other Pacific locations, and for building associated infrastructure over the next decade. But the United States only began moving the first tranche of one hundred Marines forces from Okinawa to Guam in December 2024. This move comes at a time when China is accelerating its bid for dominance in the Western Pacific and pressing its claim on Taiwan, which Beijing calls a “core interest.” This realignment undermines deterrence by pulling critical rapid-response forces from the First Island Chain, the first line of major islands running north to south along Asia. Now is the time to revisit the DPRI by providing Okinawa with economic incentives, reaffirming US commitments to its allies and the region, and restructuring the US plan for the Marines’ future force posture in Japan and across the Pacific.

Tension in the Western Pacific remains unabated, as China continues its bid for dominance over the East and South China seas. The People’s Liberation Army Navy controls several key islands and atolls, projecting influence over critical sea lanes. The Chinese Communist Party has clearly stated its intention to reunify Taiwan with the mainland, with Chinese President Xi Jinping tying unification to China’s “national rejuvenation” by 2049. These developments raise pressing questions about the United States’ ability to deter aggression in the near term.

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The importance of Okinawa

Since the end of World War II, the US armed services have maintained a stable and secure network of military bases, stations, and training areas in what would be the most critical area of influence in the event of a future military operation near Taiwan. The US military forces stationed in the First Island Chain, specifically in Japan, extending to Okinawa, are the bulwark of Western power in the Pacific—daily countering malign Chinese influence and deterring potential aggressors such as North Korea. Stand-in forces—small, lethal, mobile units that can operate within contested areas—need to be present there to allow for an effective response in the event of a conflict. If war breaks out, Chinese military planners will need to contend with the risk of intervention from nearby forces from bases and stations such as the Marine Corps camps Foster, Hansen, and Schwab, as well as Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

US forces in Okinawa are known for rapid-response capabilities, demonstrated in major missions such as Operation Tomodachi and typhoon relief efforts in the Philippines and elsewhere. The III Marine Expeditionary Force and its new Marine Littoral Regiments are designed to operate within Chinese missile threat zones and emplace survivable expeditionary advanced bases through dispersion, concealment, and signature management to ensure they can’t be detected. They could delay enemy advances and buy time for US reinforcements as key elements of the stand-in force by holding combatant ships and maneuver elements at risk as the rest of the US military moves into place. Chinese military planners would seek every method to deny or otherwise distance these Marine Corps littoral forces from the immediate vicinity prior to any military operation. Unfortunately, if fully implemented, the DPRI would give Chinese military planners exactly what they want—a removal of US forces from the locations where they would be most essential in a First Island Chain conflict.

The background

The DPRI was put into place in very different political and security environments. Earlier phases of the plan resulted in significant construction of new infrastructure on and off Okinawa to facilitate consolidating, moving, and removing forces to alleviate the perceived burden of hosting elements of the US military. Over the long term, this plan will move certain key US Marine Corps forces from Okinawa to Guam, about 1,500 miles away, or a three-day uncontested ship transit. Today’s political and military context, with an emboldened China, North Korea remaining a threat (albeit quiet for the moment), and improved US-Okinawa relations, demands a reassessment of this plan. US military crime rates on Okinawa are now far lower than in decades past, a trend that runs counter to some of the original arguments for relocating US forces. Moving stand-in forces away from the First Island Chain now risks undermining their strategic deterrence at a critical juncture.

A resolution to this dilemma will not be easy. This is mostly due to the long-term commitment to the original DPRI tenets over the past twenty years by both the Japanese and US governments. But the time has come to rework this agreement. With the Pentagon’s willingness to make dramatic changes to long-standing programs and policies, along with the leverage now in place with the Trump administration’s tariff policies, Washington has a window of opportunity to rework old DPRI agreements in a new, substantial way. Both the United States and Japan share an interest in pushing back against Chinese influence in spaces that should be open for international commerce—in accordance with the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration—and ensuring geographic proximity to any potential Chinese move on Taiwan. A solution will likely revolve around three main areas: enhancing incentives for Okinawa, renegotiating new terms with the Japanese government, and reorganizing the Japanese and US military footprint within Okinawa itself.

Renegotiating the DRPI

First, any renegotiation will need to adequately incentivize the people of Okinawa to continue to support the thousands of military servicemembers and their families that they have already supported for decades. Economic incentives will be important, as Okinawa is generally the most economically disadvantaged prefecture in all of Japan. A special dispensation by the US and Japanese governments could recognize Okinawa as a unique status location—which would exempt it from US tariffs—to boost Okinawa’s economic viability nationally and regionally. A reduced-tariff designation could strengthen Okinawa’s tourism sector, which buoys much of the prefecture’s economy. The 2024 Okinawa Prefectural Assembly elections show that economic issues are forefront on the minds of its citizens, as the “All Okinawa” faction, which is traditionally opposed to the US military bases, lost its legislative majority. Additionally, US bases should relax regulations to make it easier for Japanese businesses to operate on base. Making the facilities shared by both the United States and Japan would be one way to accomplish this, as Japanese-owned businesses could operate on a shared facility.

Second, building a foundation to renegotiate terms with the government of Japan will be essential. Academics have shared growing concern within the Japanese government over the United States’ commitment to shared defense, especially nuclear security. US President Donald Trump’s visit to Japan in October was a good start. Now, additional public statements by senior US officials reiterating that Washington is committed to the defense of Japan, including the US nuclear umbrella, and extended deterrence if Japan continues to increase defense spending, could help lay the foundation for a renegotiation of the DPRI. The Japanese government understands the need to continue to bolster defenses in the First Island Chain. In 2024, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force scrambled its jets 464 times in response to Chinese incursions, mostly around southern islands, underlining a clear need for enhanced military response capability.

Third, if done right, reworking the overall laydown of forces in Okinawa could result in more efficient and advantageous basing options for both the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the United States. The US Army may be able to use some of the facilities that were built on Guam for the Marines—the Army has been pushing more presence in the Pacific. It may make sense for the larger, heavier army units to position themselves in the vicinity of the Marianas, which are outside the range of many Chinese missile systems but close enough to push forward at the right time, adding backstop deterrence. While some argue that keeping Marines in the First Island Chain leaves them vulnerable to missile threat, the truth is that maintaining a rapidly disbursable, low-signature force-in-readiness inside Chinese missile range is the exact intent of having a Stand-In Force—to deter adversaries, defend US and allied bases and territory, retain forward staging locations, and give political leaders decision space. Additionally, China must then consider what a strike on bases within Japanese territory would do to galvanize an opposing alliance.

What about Futenma?

Next, the decision to close the still-active Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, based on past crimes committed by US troops and noise concerns, deserves reassessment. Futenma is a superbly capable, safe United Nations-designated airfield with an almost three-thousand-foot runway sixty meters above sea level, and the replacement ocean-front runway under construction at Camp Schwab isn’t nearly as long or capable. All US fixed wing basing operations at Futenma were moved to Iwakuni more than a decade ago during previous DPRI iterations, which means that Futenma is currently a safer, quieter, and underutilized location prime for use in the defense of the First Island Chain. Washington and Tokyo should keep both Futenma and the replacement facility in Schwab, and use Futenma for both US and Japanese forces. Keeping both Futenma and Schwab open would maximize operational flexibility and preserve a vital logistics hub for responses to regional crises. The new nearby US Naval Hospital and University of the Ryukyus medical facility makes Futenma an ideal disaster response hub, as well.

Finally, if some Marines still must be moved from the main island of Okinawa, the US military could work with Japan’s Western Army to increase their presence in other locations in the First Island Chain through exercises or training. One such place might be Yonaguni Island, where a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force base was established in 2016. Yonaguni is the westernmost Japanese island, and on a clear day one can see Taiwan from there. In 2015, island residents voted for a referendum supporting Japanese troops being stationed there. Making Yonaguni part of the special tariff-free zone, along with increased economic benefits from the additional personnel living there, may increase the appeal. Sending Marines to Yonaguni even on a rotational or temporary basis would send an undeniable message of support for Japan, push back against China’s intentions in the South China Sea, and clearly demonstrate US resolve in the region.

The way forward

The current administrations in Tokyo and Washington now have an opportunity to resolve a long-standing challenge in a manner that benefits the United States, Japan, and Okinawa. History will always serve as a guide but should not tie allies’ hands when the security environment has changed so dramatically. Successfully renegotiating the DPRI along these suggested lines would send a strong message of renewed US commitment to Japan and the entire region. With enhanced incentives for Okinawan economic development, a reenergized deterrence policy covering Japan, and a new force laydown across the region, a renegotiated DPRI could contribute to deterrence rather than undermine it.

atlanticcouncil.org · dhojnacki · February 3, 2026

14. Trump signs bill allocating more than US$1.4bn to Taiwan security

​Summary:

POTUS signed a defense appropriations measure that includes more than US$1.4 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan. The bill directs US$1 billion to reinforce cooperation and US$150 million to replace and upgrade defense articles provided to Taiwan, and it requires at least US$300 million for Taiwan under foreign military financing with State and Defense prioritizing delivery of defense articles and related services. It also mandates at least US$4 million for the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, a Taiwan US platform established in 2015 and overseen by AIT, with members including Australia, Canada, and Japan. The Consolidated Appropriation Act totals US$1.2 trillion, passed Jan. 23 by the House and approved by the Senate last week, ending a four day partial shutdown. Funds for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative are available through Sept. 30 next year and cover areas including medical support, training, and joint uncrewed systems development. The act also bars using these funds to produce or display maps that incorrectly depict Taiwan’s territory or systems.

Excerpt:

The legislation also states that none of the allocated funds can be used to produce, procure or display any map that incorrectly depicts Taiwan’s territory or social and economic systems of islands.

Comment: If prioritizing delivery is mandated, what practical bottlenecks still slow Taiwan relevant articles and services, and who owns clearing them? If funding also governs how Taiwan is depicted on maps, what does that signal about the contest over legitimacy and narrative as part of security cooperation?

Fri, Feb 06, 2026 

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2026/02/06/2003851894

Trump signs bill allocating more than US$1.4bn to Taiwan security

• By Hollie Younger / Staff writer, with CNA
• 
  
• US President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed into law a defense appropriations bill that includes more than US$1.4 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan.
• The bill allocates US$1 billion to reinforce security cooperation with Taiwan and an additional US$150 million to replace and upgrade defense articles provided to Taiwan.
• It also ensures that at least US$300 million would be allocated to Taiwan under foreign military financing, with the US secretaries of state and defense prioritizing delivery of defense articles and related services.
• 
  

The US, left, and Taiwanese flags are pictured in Taipei in an undated photograph.

• Photo: Cheng I-hwa, Bloomberg
• The bill further specifies that at least US$4 million must be allocated to the Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF), a platform jointly established by Taiwan and the US in 2015 and overseen by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT).
• The Consolidated Appropriation Act is a joint package that comprises five bills and covers a total of US$1.2 trillion in spending. It was passed by the US House of Representatives on Jan. 23 and approved by the US Senate on Friday last week.
• The signing of the act ended a four-day partial government shutdown in Washington.
• The legislation would allocate US$1 billion to the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative (TSCI) from funds appropriated to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
• The funds would be available for use through Sept. 30 next year.
• The TSCI is designed to bolster Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities and provide funding for areas such as medical support, training and joint development of uncrewed systems with the US, a news release from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York said.
• Meanwhile, funding for the GCTF would enable it to continue its work with global partners to co-organize a series of international workshops, training events and exchanges, which facilitate knowledge-sharing and build global capacity to address critical challenges, the AIT said.
• GCTF members include Australia, Canada and Japan.
• The legislation also states that none of the allocated funds can be used to produce, procure or display any map that incorrectly depicts Taiwan’s territory or social and economic systems of islands.
• 
  

15. Russian General With Key Intelligence Role Is Shot in Moscow

​Summary:

Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, deputy head of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, was shot multiple times early Friday at an apartment building in Moscow and was reported in critical condition as investigators searched for an unknown attacker who fled. The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin was being kept informed. Alekseyev, a decorated officer in the GRU leadership since 2011, helped plan operations in Syria and Ukraine and intervened during the June 2023 Wagner mutiny, later being detained and released amid scrutiny tied to Wagner links. The report situates the attack in a wider pattern of targeted killings of senior Russian military figures since the Ukraine war began.

Comment: If attacks on senior officers are persisting inside Moscow, what does that reveal about Russia’s internal security and elite cohesion during wartime?

Russian General With Key Intelligence Role Is Shot in Moscow

WSJ

The attack on Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev follows a series of killings of top military officials inside Russia

By Matthew Luxmoore

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Feb. 6, 2026 5:32 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russian-general-with-key-intelligence-role-is-shot-in-moscow-574c8a14?mod=hp_lead_pos8

The shooting happened at a residential building in Moscow. Anastasia Barashkova/Reuters

A Russian general with a crucial role in the country’s intelligence services is in a hospital after being shot by an unknown assailant at an apartment block in Moscow, the country’s investigative committee said, in the latest example of a targeted attack against a top-ranking military official inside Russia.

Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev was shot several times early on Friday, authorities said, adding that his attacker fled the scene. Telegram channels close to Russia’s security services said Alekseyev was shot in the back. State-run television channel RT said he was in critical condition. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin is being kept informed of the investigation.

Alekseyev is a highly decorated officer who since 2011 has served as the deputy head of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency that Western officials accuse of orchestrating a campaign of attempted killings and sabotage attacks abroad. His boss, Igor Kostyukov, has been actively involved in peace talks over the war in Ukraine that have yielded few concrete results in recent weeks.

Alekseyev, who was born in Ukraine, played a key role in planning Russia’s military operations in Syria and Ukraine and has at times helped shore up Putin’s power. When rogue paramilitary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a march on the Kremlin with thousands of armed fighters from his Wagner Group in June 2023, Alekseyev made an appeal for Wagner to stop so that Russia would avoid civil war.

He was later sent to the southern city of Rostov to negotiate with Prigozhin inside the city’s military headquarters, which Prigozhin had taken over. But in a moment captured on video, Alekseyev quipped that Prigozhin was welcome to take Russia’s then-minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of its general staff, Valery Gerasimov, whom Prigozhin held responsible for military failures.

Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev Russian Defense Ministry/Reuters

Alekseyev, who had longtime links with Wagner, was detained after the mutiny and later released. People familiar with the matter said he was suspended from duty and was placed under observation. He wasn’t selected to take part in the continuing peace talks with U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

The attack on Alekseyev follows a series of assassination attempts, many of them successful, against senior members of Russia’s military command since the start of the war in Ukraine.

In December, a Russian general was killed when a bomb fitted to the underside of his vehicle exploded, in an attack that officials in Moscow blamed on Ukraine. Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov had just begun his commute to work at around 7 a.m. local time when a bomb attached to his Kia Sorento detonated.

In December 2024, Ukraine’s SBU security service claimed responsibility for an attack that killed Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the commander of a Russian unit designed to protect troops from chemical, radiological and biological attack. Kirillov died when a scooter blew up beside him on the snowy streets of Moscow.

Ukraine is also suspected of being behind the assassinations of a top Russian missile scientist, a pro-Moscow former Ukrainian lawmaker and a prominent nationalist war blogger. In 2022, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Kyiv was responsible for the killing of Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent far-right Russian ideologue.

“It’s obvious that military commanders and highly qualified specialists are under threat at a time of war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

Kyiv has sought to use targeted attacks against Russian military commanders and prominent pro-war figures to gain an edge in war against a superior Russian military buoyed by greater reserves of manpower and equipment. But in the case of Alekseyev, whose links to Wagner made him a suspect in probes following Prigozhin’s failed mutiny, some analysts said Friday’s attack could have been a case of delayed retribution.

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Matthew Luxmoore is a foreign correspondent covering Russia, Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, with a particular focus on Russia’s defense, national security and the role of its military on the world stage.

In his previous role as Moscow Correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, he traveled the length and breadth of Russia, visiting dying towns in the Arctic, driving across frozen rivers in Siberia, covering protests in Russia’s Far East, and traversing the restive republics of the North Caucasus.

Matthew was a 2022 finalist for the Livingston Award and a 2018 winner of New York University's Reporting Award. He grew up in Poland and holds a master’s degree from the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow.

WSJ

​16. Five Questions for a General: Admiral Harry Harris

​Comment: Listen to one of our warrior/diplomats provide strategic insight on the Asia-Indo-Pacific.

Five Questions for a General: Admiral Harry Harris - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · Charles Faint · February 5, 2026

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/five-questions-for-a-general-admiral-harry-harris/

Welcome back to Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern War Institute at West Point. This series features specially selected cadet hosts who are given an incredible professional development opportunity—to sit down with senior military officers and ask carefully crafted questions about everything from leadership to their unique experiences while serving, to their expectations about the future of war.

In this episode, Cadet Nathan Unks sits down with retired Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., former commander of US Pacific Command and former US ambassador to South Korea, for a conversation focused on national security, leadership, and perseverance. Admiral Harris reflects on his personal journey—from growing up in the American South as the son of a Navy chief petty officer and a Japanese war survivor to finding opportunity through Navy JROTC and the Naval Academy—and shares candid lessons on resilience, failure, risk management, and teamwork.

The discussion also explores the evolving strategic challenges of the Indo-Pacific, with Admiral Harris identifying China as the most significant long-term threat to global security and emphasizing the importance of alliances, diplomacy, and rebuilding America’s industrial base. Drawing on his experience leading joint and interagency organizations throughout his forty-year Navy career as well as his time serving as ambassador, he underscores the value of understanding institutional cultures and leading diverse teams under pressure. Admiral Harris closes with advice for future leaders: Focus on excelling in the job at hand, learn from setbacks, and commit to service with humility and purpose.

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mwi.westpoint.edu · Charles Faint · February 5, 2026

17. Is the Age of Drones Really the Age of Poor Maneuver?

​Summary:

Salinas and LeVay argue drones are lethal and psychologically constant, but their apparent dominance may not signal a true revolution in military affairs. Drawing on historians like Jeremy Black, they warn against technological determinism and suggest drones, like medieval cavalry, can rise when institutions and maneuver culture fail. They contend Ukraine’s drone heavy battlefield reflects constrained maneuver, contested airspace, and weak combined arms integration, especially in Russia’s centralized, brittle command system that struggled to synchronize infantry, armor, fires, logistics, and airpower. Drones thrive in static positional warfare and compensate for absent functions, but against a competent combined arms force they would be dangerous yet less decisive. The real revolution, they argue, is institutional adaptation, not the weapon itself, and drones are especially risky for irregular warfare.

Comment: Hmmm... fascinating thesis and analysis. I had not viewed the situation from this perspective. 

If drones are a symptom of institutional weakness, what indicators show a force has restored maneuver and combined arms competence under pervasive surveillance? 

If Western forces design around Ukraine’s static conditions, how do we avoid building a future army optimized for stalemate rather than decision?

Is the Age of Drones Really the Age of Poor Maneuver?

warontherocks.com ·  February 6, 2026

Antonio Salinas and Jason P. LeVay

February 6, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/is-the-age-of-drones-really-the-age-of-poor-maneuver/

On today’s battlefields, drones are undeniably lethal. They kill with precision, shape movement across the battlespace, and impose a constant psychological presence. Their hum has become synonymous with modern combat, and combat footage from Ukraine appears to suggest that their sound is a defining feature of 21st-century war. Analysts and policymakers increasingly speak of drones as transformational weapons as they appear to have fundamentally altered the character of ground combat

But history urges caution.

In Rethinking Military History, Jeremy Black cautions against technological determinism, suggesting to us that “the age of cavalry was really the age of bad infantry — a political, not a technological, phenomenon.” According to historians like Black and Stephen Morillo, cavalry did not dominate medieval battlefields because it was inherently superior. It dominated because the Roman institutions that once produced disciplined mass infantry had collapsed.

The question we face today is not whether drones matter — they clearly do. We seek here to recognize the genuine innovation of modern unmanned systems — their rapid iteration, accessibility, and integration into kill chains once reserved for states now exists at the squad level. However, innovation does not necessarily constitute a revolution. And in making this argument, we are revising some of our earlier views. The real question is whether their apparent dominance signals a true revolution in military affairs or if it simply exposes more familiar issues: institutional failure, fragile maneuver culture, and the lack of combined arms.

History suggests that when armies falter, new weapons often rise to compensate: not because they transform war, but rather because they expose the weaknesses of those fighting it.

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Why did Cavalry Dominate in Medieval Europe?

Why cavalry appeared to dominate European warfare from the late Roman period through the Middle Ages has long tempted technological explanations. Older historiography pointed to the stirrup, arguing that it transformed the horse into a stable weapons platform and unified rider and mount into a shock force capable of decisive action with the couched lance. In this telling, cavalry rose because technology made it superior.

Modern scholarship is far less convinced.

While the stirrup did enhance rider stability and facilitated certain fighting techniques, it explains remarkably little about the broader ascent of cavalry over infantry. The stirrup appeared in Europe sometime between the sixth and 10th centuries, but its presence alone cannot account for battlefield outcomes. Well-trained infantry repeatedly defeated stirrup-equipped cavalry. Swiss pikemen, using formations and tactics fundamentally similar to the Macedonian phalanx, shattered mounted elites across Europe. Anglo-Norman knights themselves often dismounted to fight. Technology, in short, was not decisive.

Cavalry’s real advantages lay elsewhere. It excelled in pursuit, exploitation, and the management of retreat, which were critical in pre-modern warfare. More importantly, cavalry was a profoundly psychological weapon. Its success depended less on physical destruction than on fear. Infantry that broke formation, lost cohesion, or panicked soon became vulnerable, as scattered soldiers could be ridden down and killed with ease.

For infantry to withstand a cavalry charge, it had to be more than just armed. It needed to be dense, disciplined, and psychologically resilient. That required trust, drill, cohesion, and confidence in comrades to hold the line. Such qualities could not be improvised on the battlefield. Instead, they were the result of sustained training and institutional support.

And this is where medieval infantry faltered.

Drill and discipline can only be imposed by a central authority strong enough to assemble large bodies of men and wealthy enough to maintain them once trained. The breakdown of the Western Roman Empire destroyed precisely that capacity. As Vegetius lamented even before Rome’s fall, infantry training had already decayed. Without regular pay, standardized instruction, or logistical depth, the infantry lost its offensive capability and became unreliable even in defense.

Cavalry forces and knights did not dominate because they were inherently superior. They dominated because the infantry became worse.

Feudal societies could sustain small numbers of well-equipped mounted warriors bound by personal obligation, but they could not generate or maintain the mass disciplined infantry formations that once anchored Roman power. The age of cavalry was therefore not a technological revolution, but an institutional regression. Cavalry rose to prominence because it filled the vacuum left by the collapse of systems that once made infantry decisive.

When capable infantry institutions re-emerged, most notably in the Swiss cantons, the balance shifted again. Dense, disciplined infantry formations restored battlefield dominance without any technological breakthrough. What changed was not the weapon, but the institution behind it.

The Fall of the Roman Legions: Institutional Collapse, not Tactical Innovation

The Roman defeat at Adrianople in 378 C.E. is often remembered as a dramatic battlefield loss to Gothic forces. But its deeper significance lies not in tactics, terrain, or technology. Adrianople symbolized the erosion of a system. The defeat exposed how far Roman military effectiveness had already decayed before the battle was joined. The catastrophe was not sudden, but the culmination of long-term institutional hollowing.

The Roman legions were more than just groups of soldiers. They reflected a complex governmental system that oversaw taxation, logistics, standardized training, discipline, and command. When that system weakened, the legions didn’t just lose battles: They disappeared. The legions relied on bureaucracy as much as courage, and when the machinery of the state faltered, tactical unity naturally faded. What vanished wasn’t Roman courage but Roman capacity.

As imperial authority fractured in the West, Rome lost its capacity to create large, disciplined field armies. Recruitment became localized and informal. Supply systems deteriorated and training standards declined. What followed was a transition that reflected the political and institutional realities of the age. Military service increasingly reflected the influence of regional power brokers rather than the centralized state. Armies became patchworks of units rather than a unified instrument of state power.

European warfare adapted to what was available. In the absence of state-sponsored mass infantry, violence was organized around feudal relationships. A small number of highly trained mounted fighters — knights and men-at-arms — became decisive. They did not dominate because cavalry was a superior arm, but because they faced opponents lacking cohesion, protection, and training. Feudal systems could support elite warriors bound by personal obligation, but not the mass discipline needed for infantry dominance. The battlefield increasingly rewarded quality over quantity because it could no longer be organized effectively.

The so-called “age of cavalry” emerged not from innovation, but from absence. Cavalry filled a vacuum left by the collapse of institutions that once made infantry dominant. This distinction matters. Weapons rose to compensate for weakness, not to redefine war itself. The prominence of cavalry was therefore a symptom, not a cause, of transformation. It marked what states could no longer do, rather than what technology suddenly allowed them to achieve.

Power Without Trust: The Limits of the Russian Way of War

Russia’s modern military experience illustrates this pattern with particular clarity. For decades, Soviet and Russian leaders have understood the importance of technological change and have repeatedly sought to modernize their forces in response to perceived revolutions in military affairs. The lessons of the 1991 Gulf War were not lost on Moscow. Precision strike, rapid maneuver, joint integration, and information dominance were recognized as decisive features of modern combat.

What Russia struggled to internalize was that these capabilities rest on more than platforms and firepower. They require institutions that cultivate trust, initiative, and decentralized decision-making under stress.

Modern warfare amplifies these weaknesses. Precision fires, pervasive sensors, and contested airspace punish hesitation and reward initiative. Units that cannot disperse, adapt, and synchronize in real time become targets. Technology can enhance combat power, but it cannot substitute for trust between echelons or compensate for brittle command cultures.

This gap between technological aspiration and institutional capacity helps explain why Russia entered the war in Ukraine with modern equipment, ambitious plans, and a theory of victory, yet struggled to translate any of them into sustained operational victories.

Russian War Culture Since 1945: Endurance Without Elegance

Russia’s modern military history fits this pattern uncomfortably well. Since World War II, Soviet and later Russian forces have demonstrated a persistent capacity to absorb punishment and continue fighting — but often through methods that emphasize mass, firepower, and endurance over flexibility, initiative, and integrated maneuver. Tactical competence exists at the margins, but institutional adaptability has remained uneven.

Afghanistan revealed the limits of Soviet operational art outside a traditional European setting. Soviet forces depended heavily on artillery, airpower, and search-and-destroy missions, but struggled to combine intelligence, maneuver, and control in complex human terrain. Adaptation primarily occurred among airborne and special forces units, but it was slow, fragmented, and insufficient to address weak civil-military cooperation and rigid command structures.

Chechnya revealed similar flaws at a sharper intensity. Russian forces entered Grozny with poor reconnaissance, inadequate coordination between infantry and armor, and fragile command-and-control, resulting in high losses in urban combat. While Moscow eventually imposed control through overwhelming firepower and coercion, victory came at the cost of massive destruction, high casualties, and limited institutional learning beyond the narrow context of counterinsurgency through attrition.

Georgia in 2008 demonstrated Russia’s willingness to use force rapidly, but also highlighted enduring structural weaknesses. Tactical successes were enabled by numerical advantage and Georgian unpreparedness rather than by refined joint or combined arms operations. After-action assessments revealed poor inter-service coordination, outdated communications, and limited real-time command integration. These problems were acknowledged within Russian military reform efforts.

Crimea in 2014 appeared to mark a qualitative shift. Russian forces employed deniability, information operations, and rapid seizure of key nodes with discipline and restraint, achieving political objectives at minimal cost. Yet Crimea was a permissive operation against a paralyzed state, requiring little sustained maneuver, contested logistics, or high-tempo combined arms coordination. It demonstrated Russia’s skill at exploiting ambiguity — not its ability to fight a modern, resisting opponent.

That test came in 2022.

The Collapse of Russian Maneuver

Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine exposed deep institutional failures. The advance on Kyiv was operationally incoherent. Units outran logistics, infantry failed to protect armor, and fires were poorly synchronized. It appeared that Russian command structures proved brittle and centralized.

Additionally, Russian airpower failed to provide sustained close support to ground maneuver. Despite possessing numerical and qualitative advantages in the air, Russia proved unable to integrate aviation into advancing formations or to suppress Ukrainian defenses at scale. The result was an army advancing largely without the air umbrella modern maneuver warfare assumes.

The Russian push toward Kyiv revealed a lack of coordination. It was speed separate from combined arms tactics. While the Russian Federation attempted a bold airborne operation to seize Hostomel Airport, its ambition did not match its capability. Its failures stemmed from its inability to effectively integrate follow-on ground maneuver and logistics into a coherent system. On the ground advance, Russian forces reached the city limits of Kyiv, but the burned-out remnants of armored vehicles along its edges exposed fragile command structures, weak cohesion, and an inability to adapt once the initial attack stalled. After the forward armored units were destroyed, a force experienced in modern ground warfare would have changed its tactics, dismounting infantry to clear urban approaches and regain momentum before sending in armor again. Russian forces did not do this. Anti-tank guided missiles have been around since the Arab–Israeli wars, and they did not mark the end of the tank era. Still, anti-tank missiles such as the Javelin are particularly effective against armies that lack institutional competence. The wrecks outside Kyiv are not fossils predicting the death of the tank, but rather serve as the tombstones for an army that did not know how to fight in the 21st-century battlefield.

This was not simply poor execution. It reflected a deeper problem: Russia lacked the institutional capacity to synchronize infantry, armor, fires, engineers, logistics, and airpower at scale. The result was paralysis. When Russia failed to achieve a decisive victory, it resorted to attrition.

Staying Power Without Operational Excellence

Russia’s endurance should not be underestimated. It continues to generate manpower, firepower, and hold ground. But endurance is not operational excellence. However, since the failure of its early offensives, Russia has demonstrated little capacity to conduct large-scale combined arms maneuver. Breakthroughs are rare, localized, and costly. Instead, Russian forces have chosen positional warfare: digging in, fortifying, and trading space for time.

This choice reflects not strategy but limitation. Russia fights below the expected standard of a modern great power. Its inability to maneuver effectively has forced it into a defensive stance even when nominally on the offensive. It is within this static, attritional environment that drones have flourished.

However, as modern military thinkers continue to reflect on the ever-emerging lessons from this ongoing conflict, we should always use caution before cementing assessments, as the ash from this volcanic explosion of warfare has yet to settle. In the West, we should take care about declaring what doing well in combat even means. It is possible that Western analysts, including us, may have been too quick to judge Russia’s performance through a maneuver-centric, casualty-phobic lens. There might be, in fact, a possibility that high casualties and drone-enabled attrition and endurance, rather than elegance, may come to increasingly define the character of modern combat.

Static Battlefields and the Drone’s Advantage

Drones thrive where maneuver is limited, and airspace is contested unevenly. Russia’s failure to maneuver and to establish air superiority has created a permissive environment for unmanned systems. The drones on the battlefields of Ukraine have been lethal. However, without effective integration with doctrine and culture, they appear to have contributed to a stalemate rather than introducing a fundamentally new way of war.

Without a sustained air campaign and ground maneuver to displace drone operators, Russian units remain exposed. Fixed positions become targetable and logistics nodes become vulnerable.

Ukrainian drones exploit these conditions ruthlessly by scouting and striking at will. But they do so because Russian forces cannot move, suppress, or integrate the air domain.

Against an army capable of maneuver and employing traditional airpower, drones would likely remain dangerous but limited. They would supplement combat power rather than replace missing functions. Their effectiveness would depend on integration rather than substitution.

If future forces lose the ability to maneuver under fire, drones will appear decisive there as well: not because the technology changed, but because the institutions did.

The Counterfactual: When Lethality Meets Competence

If drones are thriving primarily because they compensate for poor maneuver and institutional weakness, then their effects should look markedly different when employed against a force that retains strong combined arms integration, decentralized command, and adaptive troops. Against such a force, drones would remain lethal but far less decisive. Their targeting windows would shrink, their survivability would decline, and their operational effects would become episodic rather than systemic.

History suggests this pattern is not new. The English longbow demonstrated its lethality against French cavalry at Crécy in 1346, yet decades later, mounted assaults at Agincourt were again slaughtered under arrow fire. These defeats did not end cavalry as a battlefield arm: They ended its repeated misuse. Longbowmen required specific conditions — open ground, prepared positions, and time to set up — that disciplined opponents could deny through dislocation and rapid maneuver. It is never wise to attempt to stick one’s arm into the wood chipper in hopes of stopping it, regardless of how strong a belligerent believes that arm is.

The character of drone combat is somewhat similar: dangerous and persistent, but reliant on secure launch sites, control nodes, and sanctuaries. The world has witnessed the influence of first-person-view drones in static trench warfare. However, there has not yet been a drone-enabled meeting engagement in which opposing large-scale combat elements make contact prior to the establishment of fixed defensive positions.

A force capable of sustained rapid maneuvering would likely displace drone operators, disable launch and control nodes, integrate traditional airpower to challenge the air domain, and disrupt drone operator support zones. Drones would still boost reconnaissance and firepower, but they would no longer replace missing institutional functions. Against a modern, well-trained, and well-led maneuver force, drones would likely not appear revolutionary but would continue to serve as deadly nuisances.

Drones as Symptoms, Not Causes

It is beyond question that drones are of the utmost and lethal importance on the battlefield of today. However, it appears that drones are slowly and incrementally transforming combat, further reinforcing the point that — as military history has demonstrated — it is institutional adaptation, not the arrival of technologically novel weapons, that determines revolutionary change on the battlefield. The temptation is to view drones as the driver of this new battlefield reality. But the evidence suggests otherwise. Drones are thriving because they compensate for institutional weakness. They substitute for absent airpower, inadequate maneuver, and brittle command structures. Their effectiveness is magnified not by novelty alone, but by the absence of systems that would normally constrain and integrate them.

This mirrors earlier historical moments. Cavalry once filled the gap left by vanished legions. Drones appear to provide a means of decision-making when ground forces falter. In each case, technology advanced while institutions retreated.

The lesson is not that drones are unimportant. It is that their prominence may tell us more about failure than transformation. What appears revolutionary may, on closer inspection, be diagnostic.

Western thinkers should also be wary of treating drone-enabled combat in Ukraine as a universal truth. The character, constraints, and grammar of combat on this display reflect those of this conflict. The applicable lesson observed may not apply to all future wars.

The Stakes: Time, Institutions, and Modern Ground Combat

New weapons take time to matter — not only to build and field them, but to transition from tactical novelties into instruments of decision. The Russo-Ukrainian war has demonstrated that capable drone technology has already arrived. However, what remains unresolved is whether modern military institutions can effectively absorb them and deploy them effectively in the art of modern combined arms maneuver warfare. Handgonnes and early cannon appeared on European battlefields in the mid-14th century, yet they did not immediately transform warfare. Only after decades of experimentation and centuries of institutional adaptation — culminating in formations like the Spanish tercio and later Dutch battalions — did firearms reshape how armies fought. Weapons arrive with instruction manuals, not with doctrine or the institutional habits required to use them decisively.

Drones may represent a similar moment. Their lethality should send tremors through modern military thought, but tremors are not earthquakes. Adaptation today will proceed faster than the long transition from arquebuses to linear warfare, but it will still take time for unmanned systems to be integrated into the deeper grammar of maneuver, command, and combined arms. Treating drones as a finished revolution risks freezing force design around premature conclusions. The age of drone-enabled large-scale combat maneuver may come, but it has not yet arrived.

Western militaries should continue to study, train with, and use drones aggressively — but not lose sight of the fundamentals of land, sea, and air combat. Drone-delivered munitions have proven deadly against individual soldiers, vehicles, and small units, but they are not yet capable of destroying brigades, divisions, or corps. What can do so are integrated combined arms formations built around infantry, armor, fires, airpower, and — perhaps most importantly — well-led, motivated, and disciplined soldiers. Drones may hum overhead, but decisive 21st-century modern ground combat is still decided in blood, steel, and maneuver — and institutions that forget that rarely get a second lesson.

Beyond the arena of conventional combat, the affordability, portability, and concealability of drones make them especially dangerous tools for irregular warfare. Unlike traditional heavy weapons, drones can be cached, dispersed, and reassembled in urban neighborhoods or remote rural terrain, allowing guerrilla forces to harass, surveil, and strike occupying armies at low cost and persistent risk. In this context, drones threaten not decisive battlefield victory but endurance — complicating control, undermining security, and stretching forces tasked with stabilization and governance. Western militaries should therefore invest in doctrine, training, and imagination for drone-enabled irregular warfare as well.

Changing Our Mind

Our views on the character of drone warfare have changed over the past year, from seeing drones as the forefront of a military revolution to viewing them as part of a more cautious, institutional development. In 2025, we made bold arguments in these pages and elsewhere. Like many military thinkers, we were influenced by the shocking casualty numbers linked to drones and by the constant stream of combat footage that made drone employment appear ever-present and transformative. As veterans of ground combat, the idea of hunting, stalking, and fearless machines layered onto an already deadly battlefield felt new, deadly, and revolutionary.

What changed our thinking was not the character of the Ukrainian conflict itself but an understanding of the factors that may have amplified the use of drones within it. While preparing for his doctoral comprehensive exams at Georgetown — immersing himself in the breadth, depth, and context of military history over the past 2500 years — one of us (Antonio) encountered a constant truth, if such a thing exists in the annals of military history. While weapons definitely matter — whether made of stone, steel, rifles, tanks, or drones — history repeatedly shows that what matters most is who wields them, how they are trained, how they are led, and whether supportive institutions exist to sustain them and integrate their unleashed violence into coordinated action. The war in Ukraine underscores this lesson. Drones seem most vital when maneuvering breaks down, combined arms tactics fail, and institutions cannot adapt. The real danger in war isn’t new weapons but the misguided belief that they can replace institutions and the soldiers they shape.

The Danger of Misreading History

The rise of drones in Ukraine should give us pause: not because it heralds a clean break with the past, but because it fits an old pattern. When institutions fail, weapons rise to compensate.

Drones have not yet fundamentally changed the character of war. Instead, perhaps they have revealed the costs of poor maneuver culture, weak infantry institutions, and the absence of combined arms. They have exposed what happens when armies cannot move, integrate, or adapt.

If history teaches us anything, it is that revolutions in warfare are institutional before they are technological. The danger lies not in drones themselves, but in mistaking symptoms for causes.

The age of drones may yet arrive. But today’s battlefield suggests something more familiar: the hum above a hollow army.

BECOME A MEMBER

Antonio Salinas is an active duty U.S. Army officer, professor of strategic intelligence at the National Intelligence University, and a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Georgetown University. Salinas has twenty-seven years of military service in the U.S. Marine Corps and Army as an infantry officer, an assistant professor in the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy, and a strategic intelligence officer, with operational experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of Siren’s Song: The Allure of War, Boot Camp: The Making of a United States Marine, and Leaving War: From Afghanistan’s Pech Valley to Hadrian’s Wall.

Jason P. LeVay teaches joint doctrine at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and is a doctoral student in the Security Studies program at Kansas State University. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and holds graduate degrees from Yale University and the National Intelligence University.

The views and opinions presented here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

Image: ArmyInform via Wikimedia Commons

warontherocks.com · February 6, 2026

18. Trump Told Iranian Protesters Help Was on the Way. What Happened?

​Summary:

The article says POTUS drew a public red line on January 2, warning Iran not to shoot protesters, yet a week later the regime carried out a massive crackdown that human rights monitors estimate may have killed more than 30,000, without a US strike following. It argues the key constraint is missile defense capacity after last June’s 12 day Israel Iran war, when the US reportedly expended large numbers of interceptors, including a sizable share of its THAAD stockpile, with replenishment taking time. With Iran rebuilding missile stocks, the piece portrays Oman nuclear talks as a delaying move while the US surges naval assets with missile defense and seeks regional overflight permissions, keeping strikes as an option while trying to avoid an unmanageable retaliation.

Comment: I did not expect the article to include this issue based on the headline. This is another example of the importance of the Army's high demand low density resources - Air and Missile defense.

If missile defense inventory is the binding constraint, how should US leaders define credible red lines before they are tested in public? 

If talks are used as operational pacing for force protection, how do we prevent diplomacy from signaling that mass repression can be traded for nuclear concessions?

Trump Told Iranian Protesters Help Was on the Way. What Happened?

thefp.com

Officials say that one big reason why Trump has not enforced his redline in Iran is practical: The missile defense cupboard is bare.

By Eli Lake

02.05.26 —

U.S. Politics

https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-told-iranian-protesters-help

It’s been five weeks since President Donald Trump first drew his redline on the Iranian uprising. On January 2, he posted on Truth Social that if Iran shot the protesters flooding the streets of its cities and towns, “we are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

The warning did not prevent a bloodbath. A week later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s goons massacred protesters in the most violent crackdown since the regime took power. Today human rights groups who have monitored the state-backed carnage estimate the dead could number more than 30,000. But no U.S. strike followed. Now, the president’s top envoys will meet their Iranian interlocutors in Oman on Friday. The talks are not about the terms of Khamenei’s surrender or the fate of Iranian demonstrators. Rather, the negotiations are about the regime’s nuclear program and support for terror in the Middle East.

Has Trump pulled a Barack Obama, warning a Middle Eastern despot not to attack civilians, only to flinch and reverse course?

Families of the perished have had to search for their loved ones in unmarked body bags. What happened to the help that was on the way?

To understand what’s going on, it’s important to go back to the 12-day war between Israel and Iran last June. Israel, with the help of the U.S., devastated Iran’s nuclear program and decapitated the regime’s military leadership. Iran’s air defenses were destroyed. Khamenei was forced to hide in a bunker. Iran was on the ropes.

The war was a decisive victory for Israel, but it nonetheless revealed a fundamental weakness in American and Israeli military strategy. Tehran has more ballistic missiles than Israel and America has interceptors needed to shoot them down. That is exactly what happened in the final days of the war. Most of Iran’s missiles were shot down but a few got through and hit targets inside Israel. “It’s a basic math problem,” one former senior Pentagon official told me. “They can make more missiles more cheaply than we can make the interceptors to defend our bases.”

Officials told me that one big reason why Trump has not enforced his redline in Iran is practical: The missile defense cupboard is bare. “When the president first threatened Iran, the region was not prepared. We were not prepared,” one U.S. defense official told me. “That’s why we scrambled to send all the ships to the Gulf.”

The Jewish Institute for National Security of America published an analysis of the missile defense gap in August, and the results were alarming. It found that the U.S. used more than 150 “Talon” interceptors and 80 SM-3 interceptors during the 12-day war. These interceptors, which were part of America’s state-of-the-art Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system, represented 25 percent of the U.S. stockpile for the THAAD system. “Replenishing these could take 1.5 years,” the report said.

To be sure, Israel did knock out a number of Iran’s missile launchers during the 12-day war. But Iran has ramped up its efforts to replenish its stocks of ballistic missiles and launchers. In November, Iran’s foreign minister boasted that his country’s missile power exceeded its capabilities during the war last summer.

All of this has presented a major problem for Trump. On the one hand, he does not want to risk an Iranian missile retaliation that America and its allies are not prepared to shoot down. On the other hand, he understands that he and the republic will lose face if he does not follow through on his earlier threats.

So the president has had to walk a fine line. In recent days he has said, for example, that he would like to reach a deal with the regime that has just slaughtered its own citizens. At the same time, he has not ruled out military strikes.

Meanwhile, an armada that includes the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, along with a fleet of destroyers, has sailed to the Persian Gulf. It’s significant that this armada includes Aegis cruisers that have sophisticated missile defense capabilities. On Tuesday, the carrier strike group shot down an Iranian drone in the Arabian Sea.

The Iranians would be wise not to further test the president. Trump, unlike his Republican and Democratic predecessors, has used lethal military force against Iran before. Last June he launched Operation Midnight Hammer, where U.S. stealth bombers dropped earth-penetrating bombs on three key Iranian enrichment facilities. He also authorized the missile strike that killed Iran’s legendary General Qasem Soleimani in 2020 during his first presidency.

So one way of understanding the diplomacy in Oman is that it’s a stalling tactic for Trump to maneuver the missile defense assets necessary to defend against a likely Iranian missile barrage once the bombing commences. Indeed, two administration officials told me that the White House has also sent officials to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar to negotiate the rights for Israel and the U.S. to fly bombers and jets through their sovereign airspace.

It’s highly unlikely Khamenei will agree to the U.S. demands that Iran end uranium enrichment on its soil and reduce the range of its ballistic missiles considerably. Khamenei has insisted for years that his regime has a sovereign right to enrich uranium on its own territory, a condition that Obama accepted during the nuclear negotiations in his second term. What’s more, the ballistic missiles are the only deterrent Khamenei’s regime has left now that most of its terrorist proxies have been severely wounded by Israel since October 7, 2023.

Khamenei crossed Trump’s redline last month. Trump has yet to make the supreme leader pay for that decision. But it would be foolish to assume that the consequences are off the table. As Trump himself warned on Wednesday, the supreme leader “should be very worried.”

thefp.com

19. Trump’s Voters Will Back an Iran Strike

​Summary:

The piece argues MAGA elites who claim the American right has turned firmly noninterventionist misread their own voters. Citing a Politico poll fielded shortly after POTUS told Iranian protesters “help is on its way,” it says about half of Trump voters supported “military action” in Iran and 61 percent of “MAGA Republicans” backed armed intervention, with 65 percent supporting action in at least one country and Iran as the top choice. The author explains this as mood driven, not ideological: voters respond to events and presidential cues, and US right-of-center opinion has historically swung between restraint and intervention. Recent limited strikes, described as swift and successful, reinforce willingness to support another Iran strike.

Comment: I do not mean to stray into partisan policies and I am not defending one side or the other but war is an extension of politics - politics by other means (and to our adversary politics is also war by other means) and we must understand the influence of domestic politics on national security and decisions to use military force .This provides analysis we should objectively consider and understand. 

Trump’s Voters Will Back an Iran Strike

thefp.com

MAGA ideologues want a consistent noninterventionist policy. Voters don’t.

By Aaron MacLean

02.05.26 —

U.S. Politics

https://www.thefp.com/p/trumps-voters-will-back-an-iran-strike

There is an old joke about the weather in New England: If you don’t like it, just wait a few minutes. The same could be said about American attitudes toward foreign intervention.

This variability tends to embarrass ideologues. MAGA leaders and commentators confidently promote the claim that the era of “endless wars” in the Middle East is behind us, and that “knowing what time it is” requires us to acknowledge that the American right is no longer a friendly place for interventionism. That kind of thing, say the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Steve Bannons and Tucker Carlsons of the world, is for zombie Reaganites and neocon Bushies.

Well, MAGA voters feel differently. A Politico poll, which went into the field only a few days after the president told protesters in Iran that “help is on its way,” found that half of Trump voters supported “military action” in Iran, with 61 percent of “MAGA Republicans” backing armed intervention. Even more Trump voters (65 percent) supported military action in at least one country, with Iran being their favorite option.

What gives? Were MAGA leaders with noninterventionist views, especially regarding the Middle East, wrong about their base? Have a majority of non-elite MAGA Republicans been covert hawks all along, passing around old John McCain speeches and awaiting their moment to bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran?

No, of course not. The general principle revealed by these numbers is that voters care more about immediate world events and the message coming directly from the president than about consistency on any principle of foreign policy. Is the American right isolationist? Yes! Is it interventionist? Also, yes! The answer always depends on what is happening in the world, how voters perceive that as affecting their own security and well-being, and what the leaders they support say.

The popular mood on foreign entanglements varies in broad cycles. Isolationism, “realist” contempt for beleaguered Britain, and old-fashioned antisemitism—all of which came together in the America First Committee—were powerful forces on the American right up until Pearl Harbor and Adolf Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war on the United States in 1941. As soon as the Axis was defeated, the pendulum of right-wing opinion swung back as isolationists like Robert Taft opposed the creation of NATO and criticized the Truman administration for ignoring Asia because of its preoccupation with European alliances. (Few things are ever really new in American politics.)

Then events—big events, like Soviet belligerence in Berlin and the communist invasion of South Korea—again made noninterventionism less politically viable on the right, and the internationalist Dwight Eisenhower defeated Taft for the GOP nomination in 1952. Significant elements of the right retained their isolationist tendencies throughout the Cold War, but their situation was complicated by the fact that the main driver of U.S. intervention abroad was the war against communism.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the pendulum swung back again. The 1990s on the right were the years of Pat Buchanan’s peak influence. While internationalists retained control of the GOP, opposition to the Clinton administration’s liberal internationalism and interventions in places like Somalia and the Balkans was a significant factor. Awareness of these sensitivities was no doubt part of the reason why George W. Bush ran in 2000 as a candidate opposed to nation-building.

To invoke Harold Macmillan, a British prime minister and Winston Churchill protégé, Bush’s campaign pledges soon fell afoul of “events, dear boy, events.” Wildly ambitious strategic projects were the fashion in the years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, in part because when Americans wage a war that’s going to have real costs, they tend to want to see it as a crusade. The American public is more willing to support a grand struggle for good over evil, or a fight for all the marbles of the human future—and ideally one that resolves with swift triumph—than a protracted war with merely regional stakes.

That’s why when Iraq and Afghanistan proved not to be rapid vindications of perfect justice, but rather something dirtier and more complicated, the cycle began anew. By 2016, the stage was set for a noninterventionist-sounding Donald Trump to defeat the legacy of George W. Bush, along with rival candidate Jeb Bush, who defended his brother’s hawkish approach.

Of course, it is now quite evident that Trump will never be the ideologically consistent noninterventionist some of his backers wanted. He intervenes prolifically. And we are back in a will-he-or-won’t-he moment with regard to military action in Iran, just as we were last June, when he very much did.

That intervention was swift (a single night), with no American lives lost, and successful in its clearly defined goal of meaningfully degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities. It gave the lie to isolationists like Carlson for whom every use of force in the Middle East will inevitably lead to a repeat of the Iraq war. Trump again rolled the iron dice in Venezuela with highly limited and focused action, and again came out well on his own terms. Success no doubt contributes to the support for more military action among the MAGA base. Failure, we can expect, would have the opposite effect.

thefp.com

20. Beyond simple analogies: Japan, Poland, and the challenge of Taiwan deterrence

​Summary:

The piece uses Poland’s role as NATO’s logistics hub for Ukraine to test a “Japan as second Poland” analogy for Taiwan. Poland’s hub worked because of land access, early investment, public consensus, and NATO’s Article 5 backstop, despite rail gauge gaps and border bottlenecks that required major upgrades. Japan faces harder physics and higher risk: Taiwan is an island, logistics would rely on vulnerable air and sea routes, and a Taiwan fight could bring strikes on US bases and potentially Japanese territory, while gray zone disruption could stay below alliance triggers. Beijing already retaliates against Japan’s Taiwan statements. The authors argue for incremental capacity building, shared logistics across regional partners, deterrence by denial, and fixing Taiwan’s food, energy, and stockpile vulnerabilities before betting on a hub model.

Comment: Japan –  the largest ISB for the US (intermediate staging base)? 

If visible hub preparations can provoke Beijing, what is the right balance between democratic transparency and operational concealment in Japan’s Taiwan planning? 

If Taiwan’s food and energy dependence is a known weakness, should allied effort prioritize resilience ashore before high-end logistics architecture offshore?

PacNet

The Pilot #3 – Beyond simple analogies: Japan, Poland, and the challenge of Taiwan deterrence

pacforum.org · February 4, 2026

Stephen R. Nagy

Professor of Politics and International Studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo

Paweł Behrendt

Boym Institute

https://pacforum.org/publications/the-pilot-3-beyond-simple-analogies-japan-poland-and-the-challenge-of-taiwan-deterrence/

In the early 1990s, President Lech Wałęsa envisioned Poland becoming a “second Japan”—an advanced economy with cutting-edge technology. Today, Polish observers note with irony that Japan may instead become a “second Poland.” Poland has emerged as NATO’s primary logistics hub supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression. Under this framework Japan would assume a parallel role for Taiwan—a prospect that raises profound questions about alliance strategy, burden-sharing, and the realities of deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.

Poland’s evolution into a logistics hub began in late 2021, before Russia’s full-scale invasion. What started as modest military deliveries rapidly expanded into comprehensive support encompassing weapons, humanitarian aid, refugee assistance, equipment maintenance, medical care, and military training. This transformation required substantial infrastructure investment. The conflict exposed critical vulnerabilities: rail gauge incompatibility between Polish (1435mm) and Ukrainian (1520mm) systems, border-crossing bottlenecks at Medyka and Dorohusk, and capacity constraints throughout the logistics chain.

With support from the United States, NATO, and the European Union, Warsaw invested heavily in infrastructure upgrades—expanding rail capacity, streamlining customs procedures, and developing the physical infrastructure necessary to sustain high-volume military transport. The political economy proved favorable. Polish public opinion views Russia as an existential threat, and local communities and businesses eagerly participated in defense spending programs worth billions.

Japan faces fundamentally different challenges in attempting to replicate Poland’s role for Taiwan. Taiwan is an island separated from Japan by over 100 kilometers of water at the nearest point. Unlike Poland’s land border with Ukraine, any logistics operation would depend entirely on maritime and air transport—both highly vulnerable to interdiction.

Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s Nov. 7, 2025 statement that a Taiwan contingency would constitute an “existential crisis” (生存危機, seizon kiki) for Japan signals recognition of these stakes. Beijing’s response—including tourism restrictions, student exchange suspensions, and rejection of trilateral summit proposals—demonstrates how even declaratory statements regarding Taiwan provoke Chinese retaliation. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s January 2026 criticism of “certain political forces in Japan” for “reversing history” during parliamentary discussions of Taiwan contingencies illustrates Beijing’s strategy of reframing security debates as historical grievances to fragment democratic alignment.

To function as an effective logistics hub, Japan would need to dramatically expand port facilities, airports, and storage across not just the Nansei Islands closest to Taiwan, but throughout the country. Before distributing aid, Japan must receive and store deliveries from Australia, Europe, and the United States. This requires massive infrastructure investment in an already congested system.

If Russia wished to interrupt aid to Ukraine at its source, it would need to attack Poland—triggering Article 5 and war with NATO. Japan faces a more dangerous prospect: a Taiwan invasion scenario likely includes simultaneous strikes on US bases across the Western Pacific, potentially including Japanese territory. Even in a blockade scenario short of full invasion, Beijing possesses extensive “gray zone” capabilities to interrupt maritime and air transport without triggering automatic alliance responses.

As Oriana Skyler Mastro and Brandon Yoder note in their recent Foreign Affairs analysis, deterrence presents an inherent paradox: “Do too little, and Beijing may gamble it can seize Taiwan before Washington is able to respond. Do too much, and Chinese leaders may conclude that force is the only remaining path to unification.” Japan’s potential role as a logistics hub sits squarely within this dilemma—visible preparations might provoke precisely what they aim to deter. However, their recommendation that “military upgrades should be concealed or downplayed until they are fielded” conflicts with the transparency required for democratic legitimacy and the visible commitment necessary to reassure Taiwan.

Taiwan’s own vulnerabilities compound these challenges. Research by Morgado and Hosoda examining Taiwan’s resilience identifies fundamental weaknesses: food self-sufficiency at only 30.7%, energy import dependency at 96.85%, and inadequate stockpiling systems for critical materials including rare earth elements. Taiwan’s merchant fleet has shrunk dramatically, with only 13% of Taiwanese-owned vessels flying the ROC flag—the remainder registered as flags of convenience and potentially unavailable during crisis. Their analysis concludes that while Taiwanese authorities have implemented some resilience measures, “policies for securing energy, resources, and food are not designed for the worst-case scenario of a complete blockade of Taiwan.”

Domestic political constraints in Japan mirror those identified in Taiwan. Japanese customs infrastructure would strain under massive increases in military cargo. Local governments and communities in a country with strong pacifist traditions would face unprecedented pressures. Unlike Poland, where anti-Russian sentiment creates broad consensus, Japanese public opinion on China remains complex. China is Japan’s second-largest trading partner and its primary security concern—a tension absent in Poland’s relationship with Russia.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy reveals an emerging view that most US allies no longer meet critical security requirements amid renewed great-power competition. The strategy emphasizes “burden-sharing and burden-shifting,” with the Hague Commitment pledging NATO countries to spend 5% of GDP on defense. Washington increasingly distinguishes between allies requiring constant support and those capable of assuming primary regional security responsibilities.

Israel appears as the model—competent and capable of managing regional security challenges, particularly regarding Iran. Poland aims to become NATO’s first member reaching the 5% defense spending threshold. Reportedly, the undisclosed NSS version lists Warsaw among European states meriting closer Washington ties.

Yet, Israel manages Iran, where regime change remains plausible. Poland faces Russia—a formidable challenge. Japan confronts not only North Korea but China, a peer competitor of entirely different magnitude. If Washington is genuinely preparing for major power conflict fought not through broad coalitions but with select trusted allies, the equation changes fundamentally. Poland and Japan would function less as logistics hubs and more as forward partners or bulwarks managing Russia and China.

This role transformation would carry several implications. Burden-sharing demands would intensify beyond current levels. Japan would face pressure for defense spending exceeding even its recent increases toward 2% of GDP. The nature of support would shift from passive logistics to active defense integration, requiring not just expanded storage facilities but integrated command and control, advanced ISR capabilities, and potentially forward-deployed US systems requiring explicit Japanese political support.

Rather than expecting Japan to become a “second Poland,” Washington should pursue incremental capacity-building focusing on gradual, sustainable infrastructure improvements to avoid both Chinese provocation and domestic backlash. Minilateral distribution of logistics responsibilities across Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines would reduce political exposure for any single country while improving overall resilience. Prioritizing deterrence by denial—making Taiwan difficult to conquer rather than focusing on sustained conflict logistics—addresses the immediate invasion threat more effectively.

Addressing Taiwan’s fundamental vulnerabilities in food security, energy resilience, and critical minerals stockpiling must precede extensive Japanese logistics infrastructure development. Japan supporting Taiwan makes limited strategic sense if Taiwan cannot maintain basic societal function under pressure. Finally, maintaining selective economic interdependence with China preserves deterrent leverage. As Mastro and Yoder argue, “sustaining economic interdependence, especially the asymmetric sort that currently exists, gives the United States enormous leverage over China by allowing it to threaten heavier sanctions in the event of war.” Complete decoupling eliminates this leverage while potentially accelerating Chinese timelines for military action.

Former Vice-Foreign Minister Nakayama Yasuhide’s recent analysis emphasizes that decisions from the 1970s regarding Taiwan’s status now confront us as present realities. The decisions we make today about alliance roles, burden-sharing, and deterrence strategy will similarly define options available to future generations. Those decisions deserve more careful thought than simple analogies can provide.

The real question is not whether Japan can become a “second Poland” but whether the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies can develop a framework for Taiwan’s security accounting for the region’s unique characteristics while avoiding both abandonment and provocation. That framework must balance military preparation with diplomatic restraint, capability development with strategic consideration of Chinese redlines, and burden-sharing with recognition that not all burdens can or should be shared equally. The Indo-Pacific requires its own model, informed by but not imitative of European experience.

Dr. Stephen R. Nagy ([email protected]) is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Senior Fellow and China Project Lead at the Macdonald Laurier Institute (MLI)), and Director of Policy Studies at YCAPS.

Dr. Paweł Behrendt, PhD ([email protected]) is a University of Vienna alumni, whose major areas of interest include the foreign and defence policy of Japan and China, international relations and security in East Asia, and conflicts in Asia. Author of the books Chińczycy grają w go (The Chinese Play Go) and Korzenie niemieckich sukcesów w Azji (The roots of German success in Asia) and several dozens of articles on history and security issues in Asia and Europe published in Poland and abroad.

Main image: Alamy

The Pilot commentaries and responses represent the views of the respective authors. Alternative viewpoints are always welcomed and encouraged. Please write to [email protected] for more information on how to contribute.

pacforum.org · February 4, 2026

21. Takaichi’s Long Trip From Heavy-Metal Drummer to Japan’s Political Heavyweight

​Summary:

The profile traces Sanae Takaichi’s unlikely rise from a heavy-metal drummer and factory worker’s daughter to Japan’s prime minister and a dominant political figure. Lacking pedigree or money, she forged a path through elite training, Washington experience, and decades of persistence. Now she stakes her leadership on an election that could expand her mandate to rebuild Japan’s military, revive industry, and deepen ties with Donald Trump, even as tariffs, China pressure, and fiscal risks mount. Popular with younger voters for decisiveness, she blends nationalism, defense expansion, and aggressive investment while betting that strength and alignment with Washington best secure Japan’s future.

Comment: The new Japanese foreign policy and national security strategy is described this way:  "Get your motor runnin', / Head out on the highway / Lookin' for adventure / And whatever comes our way... I like smoke and lightnin' /Heavy metal thunder" because the Prime Minister is "Born to Be Wild."

i wonder how this is going over with Xi.

Takaichi’s Long Trip From Heavy-Metal Drummer to Japan’s Political Heavyweight

WSJ

The conservative prime minister bet her seat in a snap election Sunday she hopes will cement her power—and move Japan closer to the U.S.

By Jason Douglas

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 and Junko Fukutome

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Feb. 5, 2026 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/japan-election-takaichi-trump-cd505dd6?mod=hp_lead_pos9

TOKYO—Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi wore a black-leather jacket and rode a motorcycle to her admissions interview at an elite training academy for aspiring leaders four decades ago.

The 20-something daughter of a factory worker, who played drums in a heavy-metal band, wore a crisp suit under her biker jacket. In her interview, she declared with beaming confidence a goal of entering politics, a field still dominated in Japan by wealthy sons of famous dynasties.

“I got the impression that she was someone who would carve out her own destiny,” recalled Masato Homma, who sat in on Takaichi’s interview when he was a senior at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management.

Now, after carving a path to the summit of Japanese politics, Takaichi is wagering her prime minister’s seat in an election Sunday she hopes will cement her power and help fulfill her vision of building a stronger Japan that is an indispensable ally to the U.S.

Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s prime minister, speaking last month at a news conference. Rodrigo Reyes Marin/Bloomberg News/Zuma Press

Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s prime minister, speaking last month at a news conference. Rodrigo Reyes Marin/Bloomberg News/Zuma Press

Takaichi says she will quit as prime minister if her ruling coalition loses its majority. The latest polls show her on course to win not just a bigger majority for her coalition, but possibly an outright majority for her Liberal Democratic Party alone.

Takaichi wants to rebuild Japan’s military and use aggressive fiscal spending to drag her country out of decades of economic torpor. The 64-year-old leader plans to funnel investment into domestic industries, with an aim to sharpen Japan’s technological edge in products with worldwide demand, such as semiconductors, chipmaking equipment, precision machinery and next-generation batteries.

While other countries retreat from the U.S., recoiling from President Trump’s tariffs and demands, Takaichi is doubling down on Japan’s ties to America. In her view, the relationship can’t weaken given Japan’s substantial financial interests in the U.S. as well as growing economic and security threats from China, according to Japanese diplomats, people familiar with her thinking and Takaichi’s speeches. China in recent months has unleashed a barrage of economic measures aimed at pressuring Japan over remarks Takaichi made about the risk of Japan getting dragged into any conflict over Taiwan.

Much like her political mentor, the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi has invested in building rapport with Trump. In October, she addressed cheering U.S. troops alongside the president aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, docked near Tokyo. Takaichi suggested to Trump that he use the occasion to announce a major investment in the U.S. by Japanese car giant Toyota, according to a person familiar with their discussions.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi cheering alongside President Trump aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi cheering alongside President Trump aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images

She is pushing a Japanese pledge to invest a total of $550 billion in the U.S. over the remainder of Trump’s presidency, part of a deal for him to lower tariffs. Initial projects under consideration include power generation for data centers, oil-storage facilities and a plant that makes synthetic diamonds for industrial use, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Takaichi “has already proven to be a strong, powerful and wise Leader,” Trump posted in an endorsement Thursday on Truth Social, wishing her luck in the election. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Keeping Trump happy will be tougher than it was when Abe wooed the president with the gift of a gold-plated golf club in 2016. Trump in his second term has tested longstanding alliances in ways that sow doubts among leaders in Asia about America’s commitment to the region’s security.

Takaichi’s ambitions to revitalize Japan’s economy are restrained by an aging workforce and China’s manufacturing dominance. Her goal of making Japan’s industries essential to the American economy rubs against Trump’s demands that manufacturing move to the U.S.

The prime minister plans new tax breaks alongside stepped-up defense and industrial spending, all adding to Japan’s colossal debt. Opposition parties say her fiscal plans will worsen inflation.

Markets also are wary. Long-term interest rates in Japan shot higher late last month after Takaichi set out her tax-and-spending plans, reflecting investor worries about new borrowing. The yen had weakened sharply this year, too—until the U.S. and Japanese authorities signaled their willingness to prop up the currency. Nonetheless, the Japanese yen has fallen more than 3% against the dollar since Takaichi took office in late October.

Yet, Takaichi, like her political idol, former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is known for being unbowed. She enjoys personal popularity that regularly puts her cabinet’s approval rating at between 60% and 70%. She is especially popular with younger voters who say they are drawn to her decisiveness, easygoing public persona and the fact that she is a woman at the top of the Japanese government.

Sanae Takaichi delivering a campaign speech Tuesday, and some of her welcoming crowd. Yoshio Tsunoda/AFLO/Zuma Press(top),

“I had no political base, no name recognition, no campaign funds,” Takaichi said at a rally last month, recalling her first steps in politics. People told her to give up, she said.

“I really gritted my teeth and persevered for 30 years before finally becoming prime minister,” Takaichi said. “I’ve reached a position where I might be able to accomplish things I couldn’t have before.”

Takaichi, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

Iron maiden

Takaichi grew up in the Japanese prefecture of Nara, a mountainous region and home to an ancient capital where sacred deer roam parks and temples. Her father worked in a car parts factory and her mother was an administrator in the police department.

By working part-time jobs, Takaichi scraped together the money to attend Kobe University, where she studied business administration and played in a heavy-metal band. Even today, she asks schoolchildren if they have heard of Deep Purple, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, which she still counts among her favorite bands.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung before a performance after their meeting last month in Japan. Yonhap News Agency/Reuters

After graduation, Takaichi applied to the Matsushita Institute. The austere institution southwest of Tokyo was set up by the founder of consumer-electronics giant Panasonic to nurture future leaders who, like Takaichi, didn’t have the privileged background typical of Japanese politicians.

Matsushita students lived in dormitories and woke at 6 a.m. to clean the school top to bottom, said Hiroto Abe, who attended the institute and overlapped with Takaichi in the early 1980s. Classes included economics and English, as well as meditation, calligraphy and kendo, a martial art.

Students sold Panasonic products door-to-door as part of their coursework, reflecting the founder’s philosophy that running a country wasn’t much different from running a business. Takaichi offered to change batteries and lightbulbs of potential customers to get her foot in the door, using her wits to blast through her sales targets, said Satoshi Shima, another Matsushita graduate.

Takaichi spurned the chance for an apprenticeship at a Japanese conglomerate to instead take a job in Washington, D.C. She worked nine months for Rep. Patricia Schroeder, a Colorado Democrat who championed women’s rights and toyed with a run for presidency.

Sanae Takaichi, far left, and then-Rep. Pat Schroeder, far right, at the Capitol in 1988. Bert Ramlow

Sanae Takaichi pictured in 1989. Bert Ramlow

Bert Ramlow, who was Schroeder’s administrative assistant, recalled Takaichi as a hard worker. Takaichi made cookies and origami animals for the office staff, said Ramlow, who keeps two paper cranes Takaichi made and hangs them on a Christmas tree every year.

Takaichi arrived in Washington in 1988 with only a few hundred dollars and lived so frugally—she slept on cardboard boxes until her landlady lent her a blanket—that her stories served for years as a warning to Matsushita students thinking of traveling abroad, said Shima, her former classmate.

“She aimed for the prime minister’s seat from the very beginning,” Shima said. “You don’t go to Washington with 100,000 yen unless that’s your goal.”

Defensive measures

Takaichi, who is married to a former politician, stays up late at home reading policy documents, forgoing the drinks and dinners that typically bond Japanese lawmakers.

She is a Japanese nationalist and conservative who opposes same-sex marriage and has been critical of statements from past prime ministers expressing remorse for Japan’s brutal conduct in the years leading to its defeat in World War II. In the past, she has defended Japan’s wartime actions as a matter of survival and questioned whether such apologies have helped bring reconciliation with Japan’s neighbors.

Such views aren’t unusual in Japanese politics, but they repel some of the electorate. When Takaichi won the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in October—her third attempt at seizing the top spot—the Komeito party, the LDP’s partner in government for a quarter of a century, quit the coalition, in part because of Takaichi’s conservative views.

Sanae Takaichi, center right, bowing after being picked as the new leader of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party during the party's leadership election. KYODO NEWS/AP

Sanae Takaichi, center right, bowing after being picked as the new leader of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party during the party’s leadership election. KYODO NEWS/AP

She quickly recovered the loss by securing a new coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party, a free-market group more in sync with her conservative politics.

In calling Sunday’s snap election, Takaichi is gambling that her personal popularity will give the LDP-led coalition a bigger majority in the lower house of the Japanese parliament and a freer hand to pursue her agenda.

Takaichi is the kind of leader more in line with Washington. She said she would raise Japanese spending on defense to 2% of gross domestic product by the end of the current fiscal year—money for missiles, ships and a drone-based defense system to protect Japan’s far-flung islands.

Trump has called on allies to spend as much as 5% of GDP on defense, and analysts expect Japan is likely to come under pressure to increase spending. Takaichi has signaled she is open to further increases.

“She wants to do what Trump wants Japan to do: Spend more money on defense,” said David Boling, principal at the Asia Group, a strategic advisory firm. “Japan has to be able to show it’s taking its own defense seriously in order for the U.S. to have confidence in Japan.”

New world

Japan and other Asian countries have been disoriented by Trump’s second-term actions, including steep tariffs on allies, the president’s pursuit of Greenland and the military capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Even more confusing has been Trump’s whipsaw dealings with China. The president initially raised tariffs aggressively, but he has since reached a truce with Chinese leader Xi Jinping ahead of an expected summit in April.

On one hand, Trump has loosened restrictions on sales of certain high-tech chips to China, yet he also authorized new arms sales to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province to be brought to heel, by force if necessary.

The U.S. seeks a balance of power with China in Asia, with American forces and beefed-up allies deterring Beijing “through strength, not confrontation,” according to the 2026 National Defense Strategy, a policy that broadly aligns with Takaichi’s priorities.

President Trump greeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in October during a meeting in Busan, South Korea. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Even so, there remains some anxiety in Tokyo and other Asia capitals that Trump might consider ceding U.S. influence in Asia to Xi and sideline the interests of countries such as Japan in return for a grand bargain on trade.

“Japan must face the reality that the U.S. is steadily moving closer to China,” said Seiko Mimaki, professor of international relations and political science at Japan’s Doshisha University.

The Wall Street Journal reported in November that Trump in a phone call advised Takaichi not to provoke Xi over Taiwan. She had angered Beijing by suggesting Japan might be drawn into a military conflict over the self-ruled island democracy. The Japanese government denied that Trump told her not to provoke Xi.

Takaichi has refused to take back her remarks, despite China squeezing access to Chinese rare-earth metals and magnets needed by Japanese companies. Her opponents say Takaichi’s comments reveal her inexperience and a measure of recklessness.

Many voters, though, are impressed by her willingness to stand up for Japan.

“I thought this was the true image of a leader of our country—being able to say no, not just yes,” said 46-year-old Yukari Shitamura at a rally for Takaichi. “That’s incredibly cool and invigorating.”

WSJ

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

https://apstrategy.org/

Executive Director, Korea Regional Review

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

Editor-at-large, Small Wars Journal

https://smallwarsjournal.com/

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com