Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

– Samuel Beckett

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."

– Aldous Huxley

"Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going."

– Sam Levenson

1. Congress Must Stop USASOC Cuts

2. The Army’s cuts, force structure changes put it on the right path

3. ANTISEMITISM IS NOT FOR JEWS ONLY - Doc Emet Productions

4. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, February 29, 2024

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 29, 2024

6. “Crippled At The Starting Gate” America’s Achilles Heel In Future Conflict

7. Russians intensify anti-Ukrainian propaganda around the world and plan to inflict defeat on the eastern direction in early summer - intelligence

8. Hamas is blackmailing the West into submission

9. Nato allies rule out sending troops to Ukraine

10. The Real Culture Wars – How Art Shapes the Contest Between Democracy and Autocracy

11. The Perilous Coming Age of AI Warfare

12. French president raised the prospect of Western troops in Ukraine. What was he thinking?

13. U.S. Limits Sales of Americans’ Personal Data to China, Other Adversaries

14. Why More American Weapons Will Soon Be Made Outside America

15. Americans fractured along party lines on Ukraine military funding: Survey

16. Senate confirms Paparo as new INDO-PACOM commander

17. In South Korea, Del Toro courts major shipbuilders to set up shop in US

18. How to Respond to China’s Global Security Initiative

19. Positioning, Training, and Integration: A Vision of Transformation in Contact for the US Army in the Pacific

20. In a Crisis, Could China Coerce Taiwan Through Cyberspace?

21. Xi’s One-Man Rule Over China’s Economy Is Spurring Unrest

22. Naval Academy Names Special Warfare Officer as 90th Commandant of Midshipmen

23. Anduril, Hanwha team up to bid for Army’s light payload robot

24. Opinion | Three island nations show how America is failing to stand up to China

25. Opinion | How can one suicide protest be heroic and another crazy?

26. USING ALTERNATIVE HISTORY TO THINK THROUGH CURRENT AND FUTURE PROBLEMS

27. My Son’s Example in Fighting for Ukraine

1. Congress Must Stop USASOC Cuts

Does anyone know if they are actually cutting real people or only spaces that have been unfilled? (and are unlikely to be filled based on the effects of recruiting problems both for the general military as well as for special operations?) Does anyone know the ground truth?

I have been told that no personnel are being cut, only spaces. But I do not know that for a fact.

The SOAA letter is here: https://soaa.org/wp-content/uploads/SOAA-Letter-to-Congress-re-USASOC-Cuts-V2.pdf

SOF, and in particular Special Forces, was often at its best when it was under-resourced and ostracized by the services. Its officers and NCOs became very creative, agile, and adaptable. I certainly do not wish to return to those lean years but I would like us to adopt the same mindset that made SOF strong in spite of (or because of) the challenges. And we should remember Churchill's admonition.

“Now that we have run out of money we have to think.”

― Winston Churchill

Of course in this case it is now that we have run out of soldiers and can no longer man the force.

Congress Must Stop USASOC Cuts

Post published:February 29, 2024

We recently sent a congressional letter, pleading for them to reject the Department of Defense’s proposed reduction to USASOC personnel. The Army has now publicly announced it is moving forward with slashing its total force by about 24,000 troops, 3000 of which will come from Army Special Operations Forces (SOF). Once again, we appeal to Congress to intervene by reversing the Army’s decision to cut SOF personnel to ensure our military remains effective and lethal.

The tenuous geopolitical landscape presents numerous challenges that demand our military’s full and careful attention. Ongoing conflicts, such as the situation in Ukraine and the escalation of tensions in the Middle East, underscore the need for a robust defense and intelligence apparatus. Coups in Africa and simmering tensions in Asia further highlight the volatile nature of our world. In light of these threats, reducing USASOC’s capabilities would severely hamper our ability to respond effectively.

USASOC wields significant influence internationally, playing a pivotal role in training and supporting allies worldwide. Especially in volatile regions, USASOC acts as a bulwark against governmental collapses and enemy incursions. Their proficiency in languages, cultures, and diplomacy enables effective collaboration in complex environments. It is, therefore, imperative that USASOC receives the necessary resources to maintain operational effectiveness and continue safeguarding our interests at home and abroad.

Members of Congress – we strongly urge you to respond swiftly to preserve our SOF ranks. It will prove detrimental to national, and indeed, global security to weaken our preeminent forces amidst the complexity and uncertainty of these times. Your response will reflect your commitment to our nation’s security.

2. The Army’s cuts, force structure changes put it on the right path

The Army’s cuts, force structure changes put it on the right path - Breaking Defense

breakingdefense.com · by John Ferrari · February 29, 2024

The Army’s cuts, force structure changes put it on the right path

on February 29, 2024 at 10:33 AM

Gen. Randy George, Army Chief of Staff, in a ceremony on Joint Base San Antonio – Fort Sam Houston Jan 25. (DVDS)

Coming on the heels of the Army’s headline-making decision to ditch its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), the service has made another tectonic shift: trimming the size of the force down by several thousand positions and investing more in high-tech, agile units. In the op-ed below, former Army Maj. Gen. and acquisition expert John Ferrari argues his former employer is on the right track.

On Tuesday, following on the Army’s recent decision to terminate the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, the new Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Randy George, along with Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, made a second hard call that affects the whole service in cutting force structure.

The cuts are designed to solve a problem: the Army had “spaces” for 494,000 soldiers but coming into this year only has the authority from Congress to have 445,000 “faces,” which represents a 10 percent hollowness of the force.

To cut thousands of positions was a tough call but the right one to make and shows that the new Army chief and the secretary are forming a cohesive and productive working relationship to address the myriad of problems for the Army. Along with the FARA decision, which I also supported in these pages, it’s evidence that Army leadership is focused on preparing the force for war in this decade. They are investing money, equipment, and structure to do this, and America’s adversaries should take notice.

The Army has traditionally not wanted to cut structure, causing it to historically generate unready troops from Task Force Smith, to the famous hollow force of the 1970s, to the March to Baghdad in 2003. There is a belief in the Army that once structure is cut, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy that it cannot be formed back when needed.

The Army leadership team should be praised for creating new units suited for drone warfare. The recent deaths in Jordan showed how unprepared the Army had become. These new units, with names such as Multi-Domain Task Forces, Indirect Fire Protection Capabilities, Counter-UAS, and Short-Range Air Defense show that the Army is willing and capable of pivoting to the threat that exists today. That the Army is investing in them by cutting cavalry squadrons, weapons units, and positions within security force assistance units is the right call from a military operations perspective because it reverses misapplied lessons learned from the 1990 Gulf War. Gone are the days where combat maneuver forces can operate without threat from rockets and drones. This is a very large first step in correcting this operational and tactical shortcoming that has been decades in the making.

These structure cuts, however, are but probably the first round of several rounds of cuts that the Army needs to make. The net reduction only closes about 50 percent of the hollowness gap, leaving the Army with another 25,000 cuts in structure needed to align with its 445,000 actual soldiers.

It is highly likely that these additional cuts will require the elimination of entire brigades, from security force brigades to ground and aviation brigades. This will take time and negotiations within the Pentagon.

In its press release, the Army references investments it is making in transforming its recruiting force. Some have already proven successful, such as the Future Soldier Prep Course, while others remain speculative, such as aiming to recruit beyond the high school market. To recruit those with some college experience, the Army is likely going to have to significantly increase the pay for the junior enlisted force — a bill that the Army, within its current topline of funding cannot afford.

Even working in concert with Wormuth, George cannot change the Army by himself and his partnership with the Army Secretary is a great first start. However, it will take concerted efforts by the Pentagon leadership, the White House, and the Congress to make the Army ready for war by 2027. From the Pentagon, the Army needs to not be viewed as the billpayer for other programs such as nuclear modernization, space or shipbuilding. Additionally, the Army has to be released from the strictures of the divest-to-invest policy, enabling the Army to reduce spending on science and technology, as well as cut additional programs in development in order to immediately procure upgrades for existing weapons and munitions.

From the administration, the Army, and for that matter the rest of the military departments, should not be held to the one percent topline increase for fiscal year 2025 as my colleague Mackenzie Eaglen so adequately explains. Despite that funding level being approved within the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the president can and should submit the defense budget that a minimum covers inflation and the pay raise, which is probably about a five percent increase. At one percent, the Army only gets weaker and less ready.

Lastly, the Congress has yet to approve the 2024 budget or the emergency supplemental. With six months gone, the delay in funding is directly leading to munitions not being produced, construction projects not starting, and weapons production being stunted. Together, as Elaine McCusker, the former Acting Comptroller describes, every day of delay makes our military weaker and our adversaries know this.

In the next few weeks, George will have an opportunity to provide his posture statement to the Congress, where he has promised to provide his best professional military judgement, even if it is not aligned with the administration’s position.

Previous military leaders have testified that their budgets were sufficient. With war raging in Europe, the Middle East, and an aggressive China in the Pacific, each of the new members of the Joint Chiefs should take this time before the Congress to lay out their case. There is only one chance to make a first impression and they should look at these ten questions as a guide.

Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, US Army (ret.), is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and is the former director of program analysis and evaluation for the US Army.

ANTISEMITISM IS NOT FOR JEWS ONLY - Doc Emet Productions

docemetproductions.com · by Juliana Geran Pilon, PhD · February 25, 2024

https://docemetproductions.com/antisemitism-is-not-for-jews-only/

“Antisemitism” as Ideology

“To Combat Antisemitism, Understand Its Variety,” urges Gary Saul Morson on the pages of the Wall Street Journal in a January 17, 2024 article. The Dostoyevsky scholar fully appreciates that words are weapons, and “antisemitism,” whose ubiquity far exceeds its clarity, is among the deadliest. Ample media coverage corroborates surveys which indicate that globally, “antisemitic rhetoric has become significantly more ‘in vogue’ since the October 7 attacks.” Significant indeed: from September to October 2023, it rose a staggering 1800%. Most troubling, the findings also indicate a “sharp rise in antisemitism that goes beyond rhetoric.”

Morson focuses his lens on the most virulent strand of this bacillus, which he calls “ideological antisemitism.” His definition is simple, while its effects lethal:

“An ‘intersectionality’ doctrine that divides people into good and evil: racists and antiracists, victimizers and victims, colonizer and colonized. Once such thinking becomes routine, it is almost inevitable that opponents in any new conflict will be pigeonholed. And so Jews become colonizers and Palestinians, represented by Hamas, become their hapless victims. Since one side is entirely evil, anything done to them is justified. One must prevail ‘by any means necessary.'”

Yet the dizzying speed of its march through America’s institutions, to echo revolutionary theorist Antonio Gramsci, obscures its far older origins. They are worth revisiting to gain a clearer understanding of the true magnitude of the danger it poses—not only to Israelis and Jews everywhere, obviously its principal target, but to the West and democracy itself, as well.

The hatred preceded the words that have since been coined to capture its various nuances. Studies distinguishing Jew-hatred, anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism, along with a few less obvious euphemisms, such as Soviet- and Nazi-era “rootless anti-cosmopolitanism,” fill libraries. But aside from hostility to the alien mores of the Jews, it was Judaism, the religion, that was viewed by non-Jews as a threat to their beliefs and safety—whether Christians, Muslims, polytheists, or worshippers of the State.

Most are familiar with the catastrophic expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. But Jew-hatred was hardly restricted to the Catholic clerisy; Protestants soon followed suit. Germany’s Martin Luther (1483-1546) prevailed, against tough competition, as the most effective antisemite. His early sympathy for Jews, whom he had hoped to convert, exploded; its radioactive fallout infecting his countrymen centuries later.

In “On the Jews and Their Lies,” Luther accused Jews of being “nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury.” Luther then offers “sincere advice” to his followers:

“First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them… Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues… Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them… If this does not help, we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices and thus merit God’s wrath and be damned with them.”

In the 19th century, Luther’s ideas were reinforced with added ideological sophistication. “Antisemitism” would be coined as a means of rebranding raw hatred of Jews, coating it with a pseudo-intellectual veneer by turning it into an ism, an ideology. It proved exceptionally effective in targeting anyone suspected or accused of sharing whatever “Jewish” traits were deemed Satanic. Jews became the antichrist du jour.

The near-instant adoption of the catchy neologism all but obscured the inconvenient, albeit obvious fact that “Semitism” as such doesn’t exist. True, German linguist and biblical scholar Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827) had designated related languages, notably Hebrew and Arabic, as “Semitic.” So when Lebanese-born activist Ralph Nader and the founder of the Arab American Institute James Zogby denounce “the other antisemitism” – i.e., against Arabs – they have a point. So, when Nader attacks “AIPAC Democrats,” he is recalling its true pedigree. But a language group is not an “ism.” The notion that all people speaking semitic languages share any sort of ideology would have struck him as absurd. Which it is—unless you know how to weaponize it.

And weaponized it has been to great success. Today, antisemitism is routinely assumed to be the province of rightwing bigots even though Antisemitismus actually “had its origins on the German Left.” So wrote the premier scholar of antisemitism, Robert S. Wistrich in his magnum opus A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism—From Antiquity to the Global Jihad (2010). As “[p]art of an increasingly prevalent “critique of laissez-faire capitalist society,” explains Wistrich, the word reflected a new version of Jew-bashing which had a [racist, “modern positivist strand … often inspired by socialists such as Eugen Duhring [1833-1859] or atheists such as Wilhelm Marr [1819-1904].”

Marr would later be joined by the German publicist Otto Glagau, who blamed liberalism and the Jews for rapacious capitalism. Among the most prominent and effective German antisemites, Glagau “specifically identified the ‘Jewish Question’ with the ‘social question,’” wrote Wistrich in another seminal study about the difficult relationship between Jews and leftism. In Glagau’s “pamphleteering works about the stock-exchange swindles of the era … the identification of Jewish merchants and bankers with Homo capitalistus is palpable.” The Jews had the money; ergo, they used it to exploit the have-nots.

Marr and Glagau were both following in the infamous footsteps of their compatriot philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. A defender of the French Revolution’s right to overthrow the monarchy, in 1793 Fichte accused the Jews of constituting “a powerful state . . . continually at war with all the others, and that in certain places terribly oppresses the citizens.” All three had been typical of antisemitic German philosophers for whom “Judaism,” writes Wistrich, “simultaneously stood for a religious community, an ethnic group, a nation, and represented an abstract symbol for the mercantile or capitalist spirit.” The aim of the philosophers was to differentiate Jew-hatred based on elite racist political ideology from the plebeian kind.

Credited with coining the term, Marr further popularized it with the “The League of Antisemites,” which called for a “war against the Jews” of Europe and the world. Many of its members and later sympathizers were distinguished academics, which added prestige to the term and the ideology.

In his 1879 rant Victory of Jewry over Germandom, Marr denounced the Jews’ “eighteen-hundred-year war” as a racial conspiracy. His claim that it was the Jews, not their enemies, who had been the real racists. This would be neither the last nor the most preposterous claim of its kind. We see it repeated today, as Israel is tried before the International Court of Justice for committing “genocide,” in an Orwellian blame-the-victim travesty of justice.

Tragically, many antisemites, then as now, were themselves Jewish. Among them was the radical journalist Ludwig Börne, whose assault on the semitic “money-devil” had stoked the rising tide of “progressive” Jew-hatred in Germany as early as 1808. So too was first German socialist, Moses Hess, writing in 1843, who identified “the Jewish Jehovah-Moloch” and the Christian God with human sacrifice, capitalistic cannibalism, and social parasitism. Scholarly research reveals “that anti-Jewish resentments were widespread among many rank-and-file socialists.”

Karl Marx Conflates Capitalism and Judaism

But Karl Marx surpassed them all, building his entire revolutionary dialectical materialism on antisemitism. “Marx’s form of antisemitism,” wrote British historian Paul Johnson, “was a dress rehearsal for Marxism itself,” nothing less. The future implications cannot be underestimated.

Marx’s ire is astonishing, especially for a man whose ancestors belonged to a long line of highly distinguished rabbis. How could he write these words?

“What, in itself, was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it. The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.”

Marx then delivers the final coup:

“Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished. The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”

Johnson, who refers to this as “almost a classic anti-Semitic tract,” argues that it “contains, in embryonic form, the essence of his theory of human regeneration: by abolishing private property society would transform human relationships and thus the human personality.” In his later writings, Marx “retained the fundamental fallacy that the making of money through trade and finance is essentially a parasitical activity, but he now placed it, not on a basis of race or religion, but of class.” The distinction seems to be one without a difference. He set out to change human nature, which meant abolishing egoism and spirituality. His was a crusade to create homo post-religiosus, at once selfless and soulless.

Wistrich similarly denounces Marx’s notion that the God of the Jew is money as an “ugly and baseless libel,” a severe case of Jewish self-loathing. Not even the antisemitic sociologist Werner Sombart, who a century later would hold Jews responsible “for the entire development of modern financial capitalism—especially its less appealing features,” went as far as to demonize an entire people. He recognized the admirable tradition of learning, discipline, sobriety, and varied talents of the Jews. Marx never did; his psychopathological delusion amounted to intellectual murder-suicide.

The illness spread fast. By the 1880s, even the more moderate German Social Democratic Party (SPD) had become thoroughly imbued with antisemitism. Most SPD members of all faiths believed that the Jews deserved the contempt of the German masses as payback for the “murderous role” their usury had played under feudalism when they allegedly mercilessly abused the peasants. Ironically, the SPD was more worried about philosemites, whose sympathy for Jews protected the ruling class and hence undermined the ideology of anticapitalism, than about antisemites.

They argued that philosemitism was the last ideological disguise of exploiting capitalism. So long as antisemitism could serve a politically unifying role to precipitate an anti-bourgeois uprising, the ugly prejudice could serve as a welcome catalyst to the great Marxist upheaval. In the long run, therefore, being despised could be beneficial to Jews eager to be liberated alongside humanity. The idea was that swallowing a small amount of poison would heal, not kill. The upshot was that many socialist Jews abstained from criticizing antisemites and attacked their own friends instead. But this game of Russian roulette had always been rigged; it was hard to tell where wishful thinking ended, and masochism began.

Not to be outdone, France had its own anticapitalist antisemites, their zealotry rivaling that of their German counterparts. The same Charles Fourier (1772-1837) who had inspired the New England Transcendentalists similarly identified capitalism with the new Jewish elite. So too did his follower Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885). He penned what “can be considered the first proposal of a socialized economy based on the expropriation of wealth and the redistribution of the capital of Jewish families,” writes University of Piza historian of Michele Battini in The Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern AntiSemitism (2016).

This led journalist Edouard Drumont (1844-1917), founder of the Antisemitic League of France in 1889, to consider Toussenel his “inspired precursor.” Drumond was joined by the socialist writer Auguste Chirac (1838-1910), who argued that all capitalists can be considered Jews without being Jewish, because usury, thievery, social parasitism, and capitalist exploitation are all Jewish practices. Explains Battini:

“All capitalists can therefore be legitimately defined as “juifs” [Jews] and treated accordingly: discriminated against, persecuted. The process of generalization and abstraction transforms the juifs, as real men, into a symbol of exploitation: le juif, and usury at the same time, becomes the figure of speech of all the types of exploitation.”

The German-born historian and Holocaust survivor Walter Zwi Bacharach notes that the so-called Jewish question

“… Was a modern phenomenon that became widespread after the 1842 publication of Bruno Bauer’s brochure Die Judenfrage. It was no longer attributed to a particular nation or state but now reflected a world problem, as Alex Bein has postulated in Die Judenfrage: Biographie eines Weltproblems. Antisemitism and the Judenfrage became one in modern times. Antisemitism underwent a process of universalization.”

Luther issued his murderous diatribe against the Jews in 1543. In an eerie coincidence, it was three centuries later, almost to the day, in 1843, that Marx would demand the abolition of the Jews’ “empirical essence.” A century later, Hitler would credit this descendant of rabbis with revealing to him the solution to the world’s ills, as he explained in Mein Kampf.

In his largely incoherent but revealing tome, Hitler wrote that he had originally started to gather information about Marxism “with a view to studying the principles of the movement. The fact that I attained my object sooner than I could have anticipated was due to the deeper insight into the Jewish question which I then gained, my knowledge of this question being hitherto rather superficial.” Hitler thereby discloses that his newly gained understanding of “the Jewish question” provided the key to those principles.

Hitler continues by lavishing high praise on Marx’s ability to diagnose the cause of the current malaise: “In reality what distinguished Karl Marx from the millions who were affected in the same way was that, in a world already in a state of gradual decomposition, he used his keen powers of prognosis to detect the essential poisons, so as to extract them and concentrate them,” and then proceed, with the sly dissembling to be expected from a filthy Jew, to recommend, “with the art of a necromancer,… a solution which would bring about the rapid destruction of the independent nations on the globe,” namely, the proletarian revolution.

But Hitler wasn’t going to be fooled – he knew how to distinguish between diagnosis and treatment. Immensely satisfied with his own acuity, he then makes an extraordinary confession: “This knowledge was the occasion of the greatest inner revolution that I had yet experienced. From being a soft-hearted cosmopolitan, I became an out and out anti-Semite.”

Eberhard Jackel credits Hitler with adding to traditional antisemitism “a new universal-missionary element,” which became central to his foreign policy. Considering the enormity of the Apocalypse he was about to unleash upon the world, nothing less than self-divinization would suffice. He may also have believed it. “International Jewish domination [was] substituted for religious Messianism,” observes Bachrach.

Hitler’s racist ideas were welcomed by German academics with shameful and unworthy enthusiasm. The first Nazi rector of the University of Berlin, Eugen Fischer, for example, proclaimed that the Führer, “for the first time in the history of mankind, translated the recognition of the biological foundation of a race-nation, heredity, and natural selection into deeds…. German science placed the tools in the politician’s hands.”

From a witches’ brew that consisted of Marxist anti-capitalist determinism, the pseudo-scientific racism of the academics, the romantic ideal of the Volk, and the Christian dream of mankind’s redemption from the satanic Jew, antisemitism provided Hitler with the perfect narrative to mobilize his various constituents. None of these components taken alone provided quite sufficient justification for genocide – nor, indeed, did they when taken together. Admittedly, Hitler needed no excuses; like all would-be messiahs, he considered himself the very embodiment of morality. But he did grasp the power of the Volkish vision to mobilize the masses.

Marx’s Progressive Followers in Denial

Wistrich’s assessment that antisemitism had its origins on the German Left, from which its migrated to anti-capitalist radicals in France, Russia, and elsewhere in Europe and beyond, is impossible to deny considering all the evidence. And yet it is routinely denied by Western academics who refuse to accept it. In his anthology Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Antisemitism, and Gender, for example, City University of New York professor Jack Jacobs argues that Marx “never devoted sustained attention to the ‘Jewish question’ after he wrote the discussions of [Bruno] Bauer’s work” on the subject, in 1844.

Similarly, Robert Fine, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Warwick, and Philip Spencer, a professor at Kingston University and the University of London, turn the accusation on its head: “Marx’s famous essays ‘On the Jewish Question’ were in substance a critique of the very idea of the Jewish question”! “In substance” as opposed to what, style? Or his actual words?

They claim rather that “Marx reaffirmed the right of Jews to be citizens, to be Jews.” This reading, however, conveniently ignores Marx’s outright rejection of citizenship as such, along with political rights and particular nations. Since communism will abolish all distinctions of property, along with religion, the family, and all those vestiges of particularism – Jewish or otherwise – political rights will become meaningless.

The conflation of fascism/Nazism with capitalism “underlies all Marxist interpretations of fascism,” writes Luciano Pellicani. After all, the ghoulish horror elicited by the skeletons rescued from extermination camps and the gas chambers had been too enormous, too universal, for it not to be appropriated and weaponized. A narrative was duly manufactured, the Lie sufficiently Big and audacious to work wonders.

The version of that narrative, articulated by the German-born Jewish philosopher Herbert Marcuse as early as 1934, goes as follows: “[I]t is liberalism itself that generates the totalitarian and authoritarian state, which is the perfection of the liberal state in an advanced stage of its development.” He cites no statistics or any other sort of evidence, merely asserting as fact the existence of a historically predetermined “line of development that marks the transition from the commercial and industrial society, based on the free competition between autonomous individual entrepreneurs, to the modern monopolistic state, in which changed productive relations demand a strong state equipped with all the instruments of power.” In brief, capitalism evolves into totalitarianism, a.k.a fascism. The line from Adam Smith to Adolf Eichmann is straight.

This was echoed by Michael Lerner, a student of Marcuse at the University of California, Berkeley. He had chaired the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and led the far-left Peace and Freedom Party. Lerner also developed an alliance with the radical antisemitic Black Panther Party (BPP). In his 1992 pamphlet The Socialism of Fools: Anti-semitism On the Left, Lerner declared that

“The main danger to the Jewish people is not now, nor has it ever been, from the Left. The Right is always the main threat.” Because “to the extent that the Jewish people continue to tell their own liberation story…. the message must always remain a challenge to those who seek to justify class injustice.”

Lerner concedes, however, that Jews

“… Often have the ‘opportunity’ to serve ruling classes by being placed in an intermediary position between the ruling interests by being placed in an intermediary position between the oppressed and the oppressors… [which] then leads to the frequently actualized possibility that when the masses become angry at oppression, they direct that anger at Jews instead of at the ruling classes. This is what August Bebel called ‘the socialism of fools.’”

Not exactly. Bebel hated myopic socialists, who merely hated Jews while forgetting they were supposed to be fighting Judaic capitalism, while Bebel himself failed to see the foolishness of socialism itself.

After the horrific Hamas attacks, Lerner issued a statement through Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), the U.S. affiliate of the Jerusalem-based anti-Israel Christian organization, placing blame squarely on the Jewish state: “The world’s failure to challenge Israel’s ongoing occupation, apartheid, and unbridled violence by settlers and soldiers in the West Bank provides the context for what is happening now. The recent Israeli government’s escalation of violence, encroachment of Al Aqsa Mosque, and its 16-year siege of Gaza has led to the current explosion.” He seems to have forgotten that Israel left Gaza in 2005.

Lerner’s selective memory is unsurprising. A radical socialist, he was no fool. Alongside another Marcuse protégé, Angela Davis—recipient of the 1979 Lenin Peace Prize and ideologically groomed in the German Democratic Republic—Lerner embraced the narrative of American imperialism and racism. The power of its resonance throughout the culture cannot be underestimated.

By the late 1960s, “BPP rhetoric and slogans resounded throughout the black ghettos, other nonwhite communities, and college and university campuses,” writes the radical journalist Franziska Meister. Their success was due in part to an ability to “forge alliances and coalitions and direct the political onslaught against the U.S. government … [as they] framed their struggle for racial social justice.” Seeking coalitions across ethnic boundaries, they capitalized on “the conceptual perspective provided by the colonial analogy.” This allowed their influence to reach “even beyond the confines of the United States: in the struggle of subjugated nonwhites of the world against the United States as a worldwide white supremacy system.”

Not long after his release from jail for burglary, rape, and attempted murder in 1968, BPP Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver “resurfaced in Algiers in 1969 [and] … immediately began to establish ties with peoples and movements from Africa and Asia engaged in anticolonial struggles, including the North Vietnamese and the North Koreans, and started to build a center of revolutionary forces in Algiers.”

That same year, Tabitha Petran wrote in the November 19, 1969 issue of Fire—published by a faction of the SDS—that collaboration with “organized Jewry… remained the very cornerstone of [the Nazis’] Jewish policy.” She went on to claim that “hundreds of Zionist leaders were permitted to escape to Palestine” during World War II because they collaborated with the Nazis by withholding “from the masses in Eastern Europe the fact that they were marked for shipment to death camps.”

Few understood the implications of this Big Lie better than Harvard sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, whose New York Times article, published on January 3, 1971, was titled “’The Socialism of Fools’: The New Left calls it ‘anti-Zionism,’ but …” Evidently by then, anti-Zionism as a form of racism—synonymous with Nazism, fascism, imperialism, white supremacy, etc.—was already operational.

Lipset observed that “[t]he most overt expressions of anti-Semitism have come generally from the most militant of the black organizations, the ones with closest ties to sections of the white New and Old Lefts, the self-described Marxist-Leninist Black Panther party. The party goes out of its way to identify as Jews those in the Establishment who oppose it and who happen to be Jews…. Though opposed to all capitalists, the Panthers single out Jewish businessmen for attack.” Distressed like all Jews, liberal and conservative alike, Lipset knew that “only those who are unaware of the considerable literature on ante-Semitism in the socialist and other leftist movements” could have been surprised.

Indeed, “[i]n expressing directly or indirectly a disdain for Jewishness, the young New Leftists are following in a classic tradition set by a number of prominent Marxists of Jewish origins, who could find it in their hearts to be concerned about many national groups, but not the Jews.” Fast forward half a century, and instead of improving, the situation has deteriorated exponentially.

Citing a recent Harvard/Harris monthly survey of public opinion, Jewish News Syndicate editor Jonathan S. Tobin observed that that two thirds of participants ages 18 to 24 responded that Jews are “oppressors,” and that the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 were “justified by the grievances of the Palestinians.” The neo-Marxist template has become entrenched in the mindset of America’s next generation.

That so many of these youngsters are Jewish is especially tragic, but unsurprising, given what they learn from their own – even Jewish – professors. Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky and historian Gil Troy, who call them today’s un-Jews, charge that for years,

“…[e]choing social justice talk, dozens of Jewish and Israel studies scholars defined Zionism as ‘a diverse set of linked ethnonationalist ideologies …shaped by settler colonial paradigms … that assumed a hierarchy of civilizations’ and ‘contributed to unjust, enduring, and unsustainable systems of Jewish supremacy,’ while the CUNY Jewish Law Students’ Association more concisely demanded “a Palestinian right to return, a free and just Palestine from the river to the sea, and an end to the ongoing Nakba.’ This language effectively denied the need for a Jewish state, thereby declaring war not just on Israel’s existence but on modern Judaism as we know it.”

Unwittingly or not, un-Jews “make war on Israel the same way that the Soviet communists made war on Jewish peoplehood and its institutions.” And to what end? Is it possible that they do not know that antizionism, as a form of antisemitism, is semantic window-dressing for genocide? Maybe such Jews “who embrace [this narrative] on social media, college campuses, on the street, in the entertainment and sports worlds, and elsewhere,” speculates Alvin H. Rosenfeld, director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, “probably believe that those they hate and are dedicated to hurting won’t hurt them back. That may have been true when Jews were set upon in the past.” Until it wasn’t.

Truth alone will not suffice. For shouts of “Israelis are Nazis,” “Hitler was right,” and “Gas the Jews” heard in Jew-hating protests throughout the world are the repurposed manifestation of an older ideology, best defined as “a religion in the most mystic and profound sense of the word.” These are the words of Joseph Goebbels. They are explained by historian Adriano Tilgher, who in 1935 already saw that Nazism “presents itself as a religion, which in fact it is, since Race is for it not a scientific concept, not a philosophical abstraction, but an experience lived out on the level of religious adoration.” The object of adoration is the Leader and his State.

It is set in context by Robert Wistrich, who further cites Hermann Rauschning’s record of his conversations with his friend the Führer: “Hitler raised antisemitism to a new level of either-or totalitarian politics. The war against the Jews now became an existential issue of ‘victory or downfall’ (Sieg oder Untergang), a vengeful, apocalyptic reckoning to determine the future of civilization. It was a bellicose call to the Last Judgment. … Hitler believed that “by physically destroying the ‘satanic Jews,’ the road would finally be paved for the liberation of mankind.”

It would be Adolf Eichmann who would carry out the logistics, but the mastermind had been the deranged, if charismatic, Führer. So too did his erstwhile Soviet allies, whose partnership in the Molotov-Ribbbentrop Pact sparked World War II. Write Sharansky and Troy:

“As Soviet communism turned more repressive after the Bolshevik Revolution, it naturally recruited un-Jews to torment their former co-religionists…. Believing their traditional communities to be as burdensome to them in much the same way that woke Jews feel Israel is burdensome to them today, these Jewish communists destroyed the synagogues and cheders they had been raised in to advance the Jewish idea of social justice which they first encountered in those spaces.”

Woke “social justice” is neither.

Not for Jews Only

Though it would quickly become banal, the word’s ideological seed had been genocidal from the outset. Marr, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and their Islamist progenies raised antisemitism to a new level of either-or totalitarian politics. All scapegoated Jews alongside everyone else who was considered anathema, were relegated to the evil class. It is for this reason that today’s anti-Zionists, a.k.a. anti-racists, pro-oppressed classes make common cause with the “militant Palestinians” (including Hamas and other Iranian terrorist proxies). This is the reason “why Hamas’s brutality can be accepted, even praised” by otherwise well-meaning Americans. writes Morson. “People who think this way believe they aren’t antisemitic because they didn’t start with some preconceived hatred. Rather, they applied a familiar, widely approved framework. Today the evil party is Israel; tomorrow another great Satan may be designated.”

But why tomorrow? It is already here. The real Great Satan has been designated long ago. On November 5, 1979, one day after fifty-two Americans were taken hostage, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that while Israel was Little Satan, “In this revolution, the Great Satan is America that gathers around other devils blatantly.”

This fanatical cleric considered the destruction of America alongside the entire liberal order a religious duty, as it still is for his sinister followers today. It is held as no less sacred than was Hitler’s crusade for “purity” and Marx’s clarion call for the violent inauguration of an egalitarian utopia. Eventually, Lenin’s dictatorship of the “proletariat” turned out to be a self-decimating clique.

Was Harvard’s ex-president Claudine Gay right to claim that whether “death to the Jews” is antisemitic must be understood in “context”? Only insofar as the slogan leaves out the rest of the picture – which is hardly what she had in mind. That picture is becoming clear to Jews even in America. Long-time activist David Bernstein, president of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, writes in The Jewish Journal on January 26:

If October 7th has taught us anything, however, it’s that seemingly expedient compromises with illiberal and antisemitic forces will only come back to haunt us. For too long, we put up with and reconciled ourselves to radical identity politics and extremists preaching about “decolonialism.” We convinced ourselves that we had to play in “the only game in town.” Many Jews now understand that a progressive ideology fueled antisemitism.

What starts with the Jews does not end with the Jews, now perhaps more than ever. Jonathan Tobin, editor-in-chief of Jewish News Syndicate, warns that recent survey results “about young Americans believing in antisemitic tropes about Jewish oppressors are just a hint at what’s to come if the task of defeating the intersectional left isn’t prioritized. It is a reminder that the litmus test indicating whether someone is willing to stand up against antisemitism is now their attitude towards woke ideology.”

He is right. That would be a start. The next step would be to return to common sense, shun academese, and believe your own eyes. A person who tortures children, then brags and laughs about it, has human genes but surely no human soul. The rest of us, each following our own paths to salvation or damnation, must try to love actual individual human beings, not slogans. Because life is precious, short, and beautiful.

Dr. Juliana Geran Pilon is a Senior Fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Her books include The Utopian Conceit and the War on Freedom, The Art of Peace: Engaging a Complex World, Soulmates: Resurrecting Eve, Why America is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice, The Bloody Flag: Post-Communist Nationalism in Eastern Europe — Spotlight on Romania, Notes From the Other Side of Night, and three anthologies. She has published over two hundred articles and reviews on international affairs, human rights, literature, and philosophy, and has made frequent appearances on radio and television.

docemetproductions.com · by Juliana Geran Pilon, PhD · February 25, 2024

4. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, February 29, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-february-29-2024

Key Takeaways:

Iraq: Iranian-backed Iraqi militia attacks targeting US forces has impeded the US-led international campaign to defeat ISIS in recent months, according to the Lead Inspector General’s quarterly report.
Northern Gaza Strip: The IDF 162nd Division continued to conduct clearing operations in Zaytoun neighborhood, southeastern Gaza City. Hamas fighters resumed contact with their command and returned from areas of fighting to report several attacks targeting Israeli forces in Zaytoun.
Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in western and eastern Khan Younis.
Political Negotiations: Dozens of individuals died in a crowd near a humanitarian aid convoy in the northern Gaza Strip. The incident may disrupt negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters at least seven times in the West Bank.
Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: US officials are increasingly concerned that Israel will launch a ground incursion into Lebanon in early spring or summer 2024, according to unnamed Biden administration officials.
Syria: Israeli airstrike hit a Lebanese Hezbollah truck on the Lebanon-Syria border, according to Reuters, killing one Hezbollah fighter.
Yemen: Houthi-controlled media claimed that the United States and United Kingdom conducted airstrikes on four sites in Hudayduh Governorate, Yemen.
Iran: Iran and Russia are continuing to deepen security and economic cooperation.
The United Kingdom sanctioned three Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force units, two Houthi members, and the IRGC Quds Force deputy commander.

IRAN UPDATE, FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Feb 29, 2024 - ISW Press

Iran Update, February 29, 2024

Johanna Moore, Ashka Jhaveri, Alexandra Braverman, Annika Ganzeveld, Andie Parry, Kathryn Tyson, Rachel Friedman, Ahmad Omid Arman, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET

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

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

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

Iranian-backed Iraqi militia attacks targeting US forces has impeded the US-led international campaign to defeat ISIS in recent months, according to the Lead Inspector General’s quarterly report.[1] US advisory forces are deployed to Iraq under Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) at the request of the Iraqi federal government to advise and assist partner forces to “independently maintain the enduring defeat of ISIS.”[2] The Iranian-backed attack campaign targeting US forces has required OIR to divert resources from supporting Iraqi partners to instead address “increased” and “immediate” threats.[3] OIR reported that the redirected resources “hindered momentum” in pursuing OIR’s objectives.[4] The previous OIR quarterly report at the end of 2023 said that Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) already faces deficiencies in fire support, intelligence, logistics, and planning that prevent it from defeating ISIS alone.[5]

The escalation cycle fueled by Iranian-backed Iraqi militia attacks negatively affected the relationship between US advisers and their Iraqi partners, according to the report.[6] The increased security threat from militia attacks to US forces required OIR to “cancel or delay engagements” with Iraqi officials.[7] The United States also evacuated and redeployed personnel that then reduced base operations and equipment and facility maintenance.[8] OIR reported that it has furthermore “scaled back Coalition engagements” and logistical support for NATO Mission-Iraq and other supporting entities.[9]

Key Takeaways:

Iraq: Iranian-backed Iraqi militia attacks targeting US forces has impeded the US-led international campaign to defeat ISIS in recent months, according to the Lead Inspector General’s quarterly report.
Northern Gaza Strip: The IDF 162nd Division continued to conduct clearing operations in Zaytoun neighborhood, southeastern Gaza City. Hamas fighters resumed contact with their command and returned from areas of fighting to report several attacks targeting Israeli forces in Zaytoun.
Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in western and eastern Khan Younis.
Political Negotiations: Dozens of individuals died in a crowd near a humanitarian aid convoy in the northern Gaza Strip. The incident may disrupt negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters at least seven times in the West Bank.
Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: US officials are increasingly concerned that Israel will launch a ground incursion into Lebanon in early spring or summer 2024, according to unnamed Biden administration officials.
Syria: Israeli airstrike hit a Lebanese Hezbollah truck on the Lebanon-Syria border, according to Reuters, killing one Hezbollah fighter.
Yemen: Houthi-controlled media claimed that the United States and United Kingdom conducted airstrikes on four sites in Hudayduh Governorate, Yemen.
Iran: Iran and Russia are continuing to deepen security and economic cooperation.
The United Kingdom sanctioned three Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force units, two Houthi members, and the IRGC Quds Force deputy commander.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported that it has killed over 450 Palestinian fighters in the past 10 days across the Gaza Strip.[10] Israeli forces have concentrated their clearing operations around Zaytoun in the northern Gaza Strip as well as around western and eastern Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.[11] The IDF added that it has killed over 13,000 Palestinian fighters since the beginning of fighting in the Gaza Strip.[12] Hamas’ military force had approximately 40,000 members prior to the war—not including the forces of other Palestinian militias aligned with Hamas in the war.[13]

The IDF 162nd Division continued to conduct clearing operations in Zaytoun neighborhood, southeastern Gaza City, on February 29.[14] The IDF Nahal Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division) located a small arms lathe and weapons storage facility in Zaytoun.[15] Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published footage of its fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) targeting Israeli armor and special operations forces in Zaytoun.[16] The footage also shows Palestinian fighters detonating a house-borne improvised explosive device (HBIED).

Hamas fighters resumed contact with their command and returned from areas of fighting to report several attacks targeting Israeli forces in Zaytoun.[17] The Hamas fighters reported that they had detonated an HBIED and two explosive-rigged tunnels targeting Israeli forces. Hamas also fired an anti-tank RPG and detonated an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) targeting an IDF tank south of Zaytoun. A Palestinian activist reported on February 28 that Israeli vehicles operated in Mughraqa, south of Zaytoun, amid sounds of artillery fire.[18] These fighters' inability to communicate with higher headquarters until returning to rear areas indicates a breakdown of command and control and probably means that Hamas commanders cannot transmit orders to some of their fighters presently engaged with the IDF.

Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in western and eastern Khan Younis on February 29. The IDF 7th Brigade (assigned to the 36th Division) killed four Palestinian fighters who attempted to plant a roadside IED in western Khan Younis.[19] The IDF Givati Brigade (assigned to the 162nd Division), which is operating in eastern Khan Younis, directed an airstrike to kill five Palestinian fighters.[20] PIJ fighters mortared an Israeli supply line in eastern Khan Younis.[21] Israeli forces expanded clearing operations in eastern Khan Younis on February 21, where CTP-ISW assesses that Israeli forces have not yet cleared agricultural and suburban terrain.[22] PIJ and another Palestinian militia aligned with Hamas in the war claimed that their fighters clashed with Israeli forces in eastern Khan Younis on February 29.[23]

Several Palestinian factions, including Fatah, met in Moscow on February 29 to discuss the formation of a new Palestinian government.[24] Hamas’ political wing published a statement confirming the meeting and emphasized that the various factions agree on the need to form a Palestinian state.[25] Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov said during the opening remarks that violence will continue in the region until certain things are addressed, namely the issue of creating a Palestinian state.[26] Lavrov claimed that Russia has repeatedly advocated for the resumption of direct dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Lavrov's statement is consistent with how Russia has framed itself as a possible mediator between Israel and Hamas throughout the war.

The Israeli security establishment believes that the spokesperson for the Hamas police left the Gaza Strip with Egypt’s permission.[27] Unspecified Palestinian sources within the strip reported that the spokesperson’s name was on a list of people set to evacuate through the Rafah crossing.[28] The IDF claimed that Egypt never forwarded his name to Israel as part of the list.[29] The IDF has targeted Hamas’ police and internal security apparatus to disrupt Hamas’ attempts to rebuild its governing authority in the strip.[30] The Civil Police and the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry's Internal Security Forces in the Gaza Strip both employ fighters from the Hamas military wing.[31]

Dozens of individuals died in a crowd near a humanitarian aid convoy in the northern Gaza Strip on February 28.[32] The IDF reported that thousands of Palestinians swarmed 30 aid trucks south of Gaza City.[33] An eyewitness reported that the trucks attempted to escape the area and accidentally rammed people, causing deaths and injuries.[34] The Hamas-run Health Ministry reported that 104 people died and hundreds were injured after Israeli forces opened fire on them.[35] The IDF said that its forces did not fire at the crowd approaching the primary aid convoy.[36] Israeli forces did, however, fire at Palestinians who moved toward Israeli soldiers and a tank, as the Israeli forces concluded that they were “endangering [their] soldiers.”[37] The United States has warned Israel that a “total breakdown of law and order” is exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the strip.[38] Aid officials have reported several incidents of unspecified personnel looting aid trucks.[39]

The humanitarian aid convoy incident in the northern Gaza Strip may disrupt negotiations between Israel and Hamas. US President Joe Biden stated that the humanitarian aid incident will likely complicate the hostage release deal and talks on a temporary truce.[40] Hamas released a statement warning that it could stop participating in negotiations following the incident.[41]

The Popular Resistance Committees, a Palestinian militia aligned with Hamas in the war, fired rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel in response to the humanitarian aid convoy incident.[42]

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

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters at least seven times in the West Bank on February 29.[43]

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

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, have conducted at least nine attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on February 28.[44]

US officials are increasingly concerned that Israel will launch a ground incursion into Lebanon in early spring or summer 2024, according to unnamed Biden administration officials.[45] One senior US official said that an Israeli campaign in Lebanon is a “distinct possibility” in the next several months. The New York Times previously reported in December 2023 that the United States held talks with Israel, Lebanon, and intermediaries for Lebanese Hezbollah to “reduce tensions” on the Israel-Lebanon border.[46]

Israeli airstrike hit a Lebanese Hezbollah truck on the Lebanon-Syria border on February 29, according to Reuters, killing one Hezbollah fighter.[47] Pro-Syrian regime media reported that the airstrike occurred around al Nahariyya, which is on the outskirts of Qusayr.[48] The IDF Air force has increased its strikes into Syria since December 2023 to disrupt the IRGC Quds Force and Hezbollah’s efforts to bring personnel and weapons into Lebanon from Syria[49] previously reported that the Israeli airstrikes are responding to Iranian efforts to accelerate the supply of military equipment to Lebanese Hezbollah.[50]

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

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

The IDF Air Force likely conducted a series of airstrikes targeting three Iranian-affiliated targets in the Sayyidah Zainab area of southern Damascus on February 28.[51] Iranian and Iranian-backed forces maintain a headquarters in Sayyidah Zainab and use it to manage Iranian operations throughout Syria.[52]

Houthi-controlled media claimed that the United States and United Kingdom conducted airstrikes on four sites in Hudayduh Governorate, Yemen, on February 29.[53] Al Masirah stated the strikes targeted Ras Issa and al Kuwayzi areas of coastal Yemen. Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom have confirmed the strikes at the time of this writing.

Houthi Supreme Leader Abdulmalik al Houthi claimed the Houthis have attacked 54 vessels since the start of their anti-shipping campaign in November 2023.[54] Abdulmalik said that Houthi forces have used 384 drones and missiles in those attacks. CTP-ISW has recorded at least 97 instances of the Houthis threatening ships around the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in this timeframe, however. The Houthi military spokesperson has only issued statements about Houthi attacks on approximately 36 vessels.[55]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war during a meeting with Omani Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Khalifa al Harthi in Tehran on February 28.[56] Abdollahian thanked the Omani government for supporting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.[57]

The United Kingdom sanctioned three Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force units, two Houthi members, and the IRGC Quds Force deputy commander on February 27.[58] The sanctions targeted individuals and groups that support, enable, or contribute to the Houthis monetarily or militarily. The United Kingdom designated:

Ali Hussein Badr al Din al Houthi (the undersecretary in the Houthi-controlled Interior Ministry and the commander of the security and police forces)
IRGC Quds Force Units 190, 6000, and 340;
Sa’id al-Jamal (An Iran-based Houthi financier whom the United States previously sanctioned in January 2023); and[59]
Mohammad Reza Fallah Zadeh (the IRGC Quds Force deputy commander whom the United States similarly sanctioned on February 27).[60]

Iran and Russia are continuing to deepen security and economic cooperation. Russia launched the Iranian Pars-1 satellite into a low earth orbit using a Soyuz rocket on February 29.[61] Iranian state media reported that the Pars-1 satellite has three cameras and will scan Iran’s topography from an orbit of 500 kilometers.[62] Iranian Communications and Information Technology Minister Issa Zareh Pour claimed on February 29 that the Pars-1 satellite’s launch into orbit marks Iran’s 12th satellite launch in the past 25 months.[63] The Russian launch of this Iranian satellite is part of a larger trend in which Moscow has increasingly supported the Iranian space program. Russia previously launched a Kanopus-V satellite—alternatively referred to as the Khayyam in Iran—into orbit in August 2022 on Iran’s behalf.[64] Iran can use satellites capable of collecting imagery to improve its targeting for attacks abroad.[65] IRGC-affiliated media reported in July 2020 that the IRGC used its satellites to collect intelligence on US military positions in the Middle East.[66]

Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji separately announced on February 28 that Iranian and Russian officials signed 11 memorandums of understanding during the 17th annual Iran-Russia Joint Commission for Economic Cooperation in Tehran between February 26-28.[67] The agreements cover business, energy, political, and transportation cooperation. Owji stated that Iranian and Russian officials also discussed “peaceful space and nuclear cooperation,” banking and financial cooperation, the Rasht-Astara and Garmsar-Incheh Borun railways, and the Sirik Power Plant during the economic conference.[68]

Iranian Assembly of Experts member Mahmoud Mohammadi Eraghi claimed that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei opposes hereditary succession during an interview with state-affiliated media on February 29.[69] The Assembly of Experts is an Iranian regime entity constitutionally responsible for monitoring the supreme leader and selecting his successor.[70] Eraghi’s statement is noteworthy because Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is considered a top contender to become the next supreme leader. Eraghi has served as the head of the supreme leader’s office in Qom since 2019.[71] He represents Kermanshah Province in the Assembly of Experts and is also a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, which is an advisory entity for the supreme leader.[72] Eraghi served as the supreme leader’s representative to the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq War, after which he served as the head of the Islamic Propaganda Organization, the head of the Islamic Culture and Communications Organization, and a member of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council.[73]

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 29, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-29-2024

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian officials are reportedly concerned about the possibility of significant Russian territorial gains in Summer 2024 in the event of continued delays in Western security assistance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used his February 29 address to the Federal Assembly to attempt to convince the Russian public that his next term as president will be defined by Russian military success in Ukraine but not at the expense of stagnating or decreased social and economic welfare.
Putin used tired rhetoric about negotiations and nuclear saber rattling during his Federal Assembly speech likely to seize on Western attention to the speech to promote ongoing Kremlin information operations.
Putin emphasized the Kremlin’s domestic focus on 2024 as the “Year of the Family” to address Russia’s ongoing demographic crisis during his Federal Assembly address.
Putin did not respond to the February 28 request from the Congress of Deputies from pro-Russian Moldovan breakaway region Transnistria, but this lack of response still affords the Kremlin several possible courses of action (COA) at a later time.
Ukrainian forces downed three more Su-34 fighter aircraft in eastern Ukraine on February 28 and 29.
The Kremlin continues to assert its self-arrogated right to enforce Russian federal law on citizens of NATO member and former Soviet states over actions taken within the territory of their own countries.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is a threat to Armenian security as Russian officials refused to acknowledge Armenia’s reduced participation in the CSTO.
The Kremlin has reportedly established high-level positions in all federal bodies to promote patriotism and history within each body, likely aimed at strengthening informational and ideological control over federal employees.
Russian forces made confirmed advances near Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements along the frontline on February 29.
Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec Head Sergei Chemezov stated on February 29 that Rostec plans to produce A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft on an unspecified schedule because Russian forces require more A-50 aircraft.
Occupation officials continue to support Kremlin efforts to gain further control over religious groups in occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Feb 29, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 29, 2024

Riley Bailey, Nicole Wolkov, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan

February 29, 2024, 8:15pm ET

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

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:30pm ET on February 29. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the March 1 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian officials are reportedly concerned about the possibility of significant Russian territorial gains in summer 2024 in the event of continued delays in Western security assistance. Bloomberg reported that internal Ukrainian assessments state that Russian advances along the frontline could gain significant momentum by summer 2024 unless Ukraine’s partners increase provisions of artillery ammunition.[1] Bloomberg reported that sources close to Ukrainian leadership stated that Ukraine expects Russian forces to decide between continuing their current focus on gradual tactical advances and preparing for a larger breakthrough attempt in summer 2024 depending on the results of current Russian offensive operations.[2] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on February 25 that Russian forces are preparing for a new offensive effort that will start in late May or summer 2024.[3] Russian forces are currently trying to exploit tactical opportunities offered by the Russian seizure of Avdiivka and are attempting to push as far as possible in the area before Ukrainian forces establish harder-to-penetrate defensive lines.[4] Russian forces may determine to adjust future offensive operations based on the level of success they have in attacking subsequent Ukrainian defensive lines west and northwest of Avdiivka, and Ukrainian defenses in the Avdiivka area may impact Russian perceptions of the wider state of Ukraine’s defense along the frontline. Russian forces are also conducting a multi-axis offensive operation along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line but have not made any recent significant gains in the area, and the relative success or failure of that effort could similarly influence how the Russian military command views Russian prospects for operationally significant advances.[5] The Russian ability to make operationally significant advances is still largely dependent on the level of Western support for Ukraine, however, as well-provisioned Ukrainian forces have proven that they can prevent Russian forces from making even marginal gains during large-scale Russian offensive efforts.[6]

Bloomberg also reported that Ukrainian intelligence assessments stated that Russian Vladimir Putin has not given up his original goal of seizing major Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv and Odesa.[7] Putin has recently falsely claimed that Odesa is a “Russian city” and other Russian officials have also applied that expression to Dnipro, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Kyiv cities.[8] The Kremlin has resumed expansionist rhetoric in recent months that explicitly calls for the occupation and annexation of additional Ukrainian territory.[9] The Kremlin has intentionally framed this rhetoric to avoid setting limits for further Russian expansion in Ukraine, and this rhetoric may aim to allow Putin to introduce new objectives for conquest in Ukraine when he sees fit.[10]

Russian President Vladimir Putin used his February 29 address to the Federal Assembly to attempt to convince the Russian public that his next term as president will be defined by Russian military success in Ukraine but not at the expense of stagnating or decreased social and economic welfare. Putin stated that Russian combat capabilities have increased “many times over” and that Russian forces “firmly hold the initiative, confidently advance in a number of operational areas” and capture “more territory.”[11] Putin’s characterization of Russian offensive operations in Ukraine is notably more confident than his December 14, 2023, Direct Line statement that Russian forces were in “the active stage of action.”[12] Putin’s willingness to publicly portray his apparent confidence in Russian offensive operations likely stems from Russia’s recent seizure of Avdiivka and prolonged US debates about military aid to Ukraine. Putin spent most of the speech not focusing on the war but instead detailing the specifics of economic policies and social programs he plans to launch.[13] Russia has increased defense spending to record levels in 2024, and Putin is likely stressing his plans for economic and social policies to assuage persisting domestic concerns about the ramifications of Putin’s war in Ukraine for ordinary Russians.[14] Putin attempted to further address these concerns by claiming that the West is attempting to draw Russia into an arms race as the West successfully did with the Soviet Union in the 1980s to the detriment of the Soviet Union’s economy. Putin emphasized, however, that the Russian government is taking measures to develop the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) while increasing social and economic spending, likely in an effort to demonstrate to the Russian public that Russia has measures in place to avoid ballooned defense spending reminiscent of the Soviet Union before its collapse. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov stated that Putin’s Federal Assembly speech was largely his election program for the March 2024 presidential elections.[15] Putin’s apparent growing confidence in discussing the war publicly has not generated any notable inflections in his overall framing of the war in Ukraine, and Putin continues to issue the same justifications and maximalist goals for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine as he has offered all along.

Putin used tired rhetoric about negotiations and nuclear saber rattling during his Federal Assembly speech, likely to seize on Western attention to the speech to promote ongoing Kremlin information operations. Putin reiterated his feigned readiness for dialogue with the United States on issues of “strategic stability” and continued to place the onus for a lack of negotiations on the United States.[16] Putin asserted that if the United States wants to discuss important issues of security, then it is necessary to consider Russia’s national interests.[17] Putin continues to pursue maximalist objectives in Ukraine that amount to full Ukrainian capitulation and aims to weaken and dismantle NATO, objectives that he most certainly views as integral parts of Russian national interests.[18] The Kremlin is currently conducting an information operation feigning interest in negotiations to prompt preemptive Western concessions regarding Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.[19] Putin also emphasized that Russia possesses weapons that can strike Western countries and claimed that Western escalation is threatening a possible nuclear conflict that could destroy civilization.[20] Putin and Russian officials frequently invoke nuclear threats to instill fear in Western audiences and weaken Western support for Ukraine.[21] The Kremlin has not engaged in any significant escalations in response to the provision of new Western systems to Ukraine, and ISW continues to assess that Russian nuclear use in Ukraine and beyond is highly unlikely.[22]

Putin emphasized the Kremlin’s domestic focus on 2024 as the “Year of the Family” to address Russia’s ongoing demographic crisis during his Federal Assembly address. Putin claimed that the main purpose of a family is to have children, a more overt acknowledgement of Russia’s ongoing demographic crisis than he made in his December 31, 2023, New Year’s address.[23] Putin stated on February 29 that all levels of Russian government, civil society, and religious leaders should contribute to the societal, economic, cultural, and educational efforts to promote Russian birth rates. Putin announced a new Russian government project called “Family” to provide social support to families with children and increase the Russian birth rate. The initiatives include expanding and increasing existing social benefits, including providing maternity capital payments to mothers, giving preferential mortgage rates to families with children, and giving tax deductions to children to families with more than one child. The Kremlin’s focus on 2024 as the “Year of the Family” is likely meant to provide an ideological basis for efforts aimed at increasing Russian birth rates and remedying Russian demographic issues through appeals to Russian “traditional values.” ISW continues to assess that Russia’s war in Ukraine has impacted some aspects of Russian demographics, although Russia has been experiencing a demographic crisis for decades.[24]

Putin did not respond to the February 28 request from the Congress of Deputies from pro-Russian Moldovan breakaway region Transnistria, but this lack of response still affords the Kremlin several possible courses of action (COA) at a later time. The Transnistrian Congress of Deputies adopted seven decisions that provide the Kremlin with justifications for a large range of possible escalatory actions against Moldova that the Kremlin can choose to pursue in the near or long term, and many of these possible COAs are not mutually exclusive.[25] Putin’s lack of response during his February 29 address is either consistent with or does not rule out all five possible Russian COAs that ISW outlined in its February 28 assessment, including the assessed most likely COA (MLCOA) of intensifying hybrid operations to destabilize Moldova and the assessed most dangerous COA (MDCOA) of formally annexing Transnistria in the future to justify military action against Moldova in the long term.[26]

Ukrainian forces downed three more Su-34 fighter aircraft in eastern Ukraine on February 28 and 29. Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk reported on February 29 that Ukrainian forces destroyed two Su-34 aircraft on the night of February 28 to 29 and another Su-34 on the morning of February 29 in the Mariupol and Avdiivka directions.[27] Pavlyuk noted that the aircraft were conducting glide bomb strikes against Ukrainian infantry in eastern Ukraine when Ukrainian forces downed the aircraft.[28] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated that Russian forces have deployed an unspecified large number of aircraft to conduct glide bomb strikes in the Avdiivka direction.[29] The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that Ukrainian forces have downed 13 Russian aircraft since February 17.[30] The International Institute for Strategic Studies previously estimated that Russia has roughly 300 various Sukhoi fighter aircraft, suggesting that the impact of losing 13 aircraft in almost as many days, and possibly some of their highly trained pilots, is not negligible for the Russian military.[31] Ukrainian forces have also downed two A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft in 2024 so far.[32]

The Kremlin continues to assert its self-arrogated right to enforce Russian federal law on citizens of NATO member and former Soviet states over actions taken within the territory of their own countries. The Russian Investigative Committee announced on February 28 that a Russian court convicted a Latvian citizen in absentia for fighting as a volunteer with the Ukrainian military against Russia and for desecrating a Soviet memorial in Latvia.[33] The Investigative Committee claimed that the Latvian citizen acted out of “political and ideological hatred of Russia,” and the court sentenced the man to 10 years in prison in absentia.[34] The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) previously placed several dozen government officials from NATO countries on Russia’s wanted list because of alleged violations of Russian federal law committed outside the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.[35] Russia, however, does not have the legal authority to prosecute foreign citizens for allegedly violating Russian laws in foreign states. ISW previously assessed that Russian criminal accusations against European officials and citizens may be part of an ongoing Russian effort to set informational conditions justifying possible Russian escalations against NATO states in the future.[36]

Russian officials and Kremlin mouthpieces also accused Latvian authorities of “intimidating” Russian citizens voting in the Russian presidential election in Latvia on February 29. Latvian Minister of Justice Inese Libina-Egnere stated on February 27 that Latvian authorities cannot prevent Russian citizens from voting at the Russian embassy, but noted that Latvia’s Criminal Code considers the “justification of war” (in this case Russia’s war in Ukraine) to be criminally liable.[37] Russian sources seized on Libina-Egnere's statements on February 29 and falsely claimed that Latvian authorities may criminally prosecute Russian citizens for voting in the presidential election.[38]

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is a threat to Armenian security as Russian officials refused to acknowledge Armenia’s reduced participation in the CSTO. Pashinyan stated on February 28 that the CSTO is creating security problems instead of fulfilling its obligations to Armenia and that the CSTO’s “lack of an answer” regarding its responsibilities to Armenia “creates a threat” to Armenia’s “security and territorial integrity.”[39] Pashinyan previously stated that Armenia has “essentially” frozen its participation in the CSTO because the organization “failed to fulfill its obligations in the field of security” to Armenia, particularly in 2021 and 2022.[40] Pashinyan noted on February 28 that Armenia has not had a permanent representative to the CSTO in the past year and that Armenian officials and forces have not participated in CSTO events and exercises in “a long time.”[41] ISW previously observed that Armenia appeared to be effectively abstaining from participation in the CSTO after Pashinyan and other Armenian representatives did not attend several consecutive CSTO events in mid to late 2023.[42] Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated on February 28 that Russia “does not accept” Armenia’s non-compliance with the CSTO agreement.[43]

The Kremlin has reportedly established high-level positions in all federal bodies to promote patriotism and history within each body, likely aimed at strengthening informational and ideological control over federal employees. Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported on February 29 that leaked Russian government documents indicate that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in February 2023 establishing a “deputy head of social and political work” in each Russian federal body and that the presidential administration must approve each appointment for the position.[44] Meduza reported that the Russian Environmental Management Agency has published guidelines for conducting socio-political work including strengthening Russian patriotism and civic identity and ensuring understanding and support for Russia’s domestic and international policies.[45] The Russian Environmental Management Agency identified methods to educate federal employees about the military and political situations both in Russia and in the world as well as Russian history, including the development stages of Russian international policy, the history of wars and military conflicts, and the formation of Russian statehood. Meduza reported that the leaked documents indicate that these measures are considered necessary to counter the “deliberately distorted ideological intervention” from media allegedly funded by unfriendly states and that the Russian Ministry of Education has outlined similar proposals to tighten control over Russian universities.[46] These measures are likely part of a longstanding Kremlin effort to consolidate control over the broader Russian informational and cultural sphere beginning with employees in federal governmental bodies. Russian news outlet Kommersant reported in April 2022 that the Kremlin began considering the idea of creating these deputy heads of information and political work sometime in 2021 and began moving forward on the effort in 2022 after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted the Kremlin to prioritize the effort.[47]

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian officials are reportedly concerned about the possibility of significant Russian territorial gains in Summer 2024 in the event of continued delays in Western security assistance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used his February 29 address to the Federal Assembly to attempt to convince the Russian public that his next term as president will be defined by Russian military success in Ukraine but not at the expense of stagnating or decreased social and economic welfare.
Putin used tired rhetoric about negotiations and nuclear saber rattling during his Federal Assembly speech likely to seize on Western attention to the speech to promote ongoing Kremlin information operations.
Putin emphasized the Kremlin’s domestic focus on 2024 as the “Year of the Family” to address Russia’s ongoing demographic crisis during his Federal Assembly address.
Putin did not respond to the February 28 request from the Congress of Deputies from pro-Russian Moldovan breakaway region Transnistria, but this lack of response still affords the Kremlin several possible courses of action (COA) at a later time.
Ukrainian forces downed three more Su-34 fighter aircraft in eastern Ukraine on February 28 and 29.
The Kremlin continues to assert its self-arrogated right to enforce Russian federal law on citizens of NATO member and former Soviet states over actions taken within the territory of their own countries.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is a threat to Armenian security as Russian officials refused to acknowledge Armenia’s reduced participation in the CSTO.
The Kremlin has reportedly established high-level positions in all federal bodies to promote patriotism and history within each body, likely aimed at strengthening informational and ideological control over federal employees.
Russian forces made confirmed advances near Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements along the frontline on February 29.
Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec Head Sergei Chemezov stated on February 29 that Rostec plans to produce A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft on an unspecified schedule because Russian forces require more A-50 aircraft.
Occupation officials continue to support Kremlin efforts to gain further control over religious groups in occupied Ukraine.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Positional engagements continued along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on February 29, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. Positional engagements continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka and Petropavlivka; southeast of Kupyansk near Tabaivka; west of Kreminna near Terny and Yampolivka; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka.[48] Ukrainian Khortytsia Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces began to use light mobile vehicles to transport personnel in the Kupyansk direction to traverse swamp-like terrain and avoid Ukrainian drone strikes.[49] Yevlash stated that Russian forces are heavily committing artillery and reserves to the Terny area and are constantly conducting assaults with aviation and artillery support.[50] The spokesperson for a Ukrainian brigade operating in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions stated that Russian forces have been conducting 10 to 15 glide bomb strikes per day for the past several months. Elements of the Russian 7th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People's Republic [LNR] Army Corps) reportedly continue operating near Bilohorivka.[51]

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

Note: ISW is restructuring its coverage of the Donetsk Oblast axis to include activity in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area. During the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, ISW assessed that Ukrainian activity in the border area was a supporting and related effort to Ukrainian activity in the south. As Russian forces have seized the battlefield initiative following the end of the counteroffensive, Russian troops appear to be trying to drive southwest of Donetsk City while simultaneously driving northeast from the Velyka Novosilka area on the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border. This Russian effort appears to include settlements along the O0532 Marinka-Pobieda-Vuhledar route. ISW will further restructure the Donetsk Oblast axis if Russian operational objectives in this area appear to change in the future.

Russian forces reportedly advanced west of Bakhmut amid continued positional fighting in the area on February 29. Ukrainian Khortytsia Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated on February 29 that fighting is ongoing within both Bohdanivka (northwest of Bakhmut) and Ivanivske (west of Bakhmut).[52] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced further in Ivanivske and now control half or most of the settlement, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[53] Another milblogger initially claimed that Russian forces had completely captured Ivanivske but later walked back the claim as false reporting.[54] Positional fighting continued northeast of Bakhmut near Berestove; southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka, Andriivka, and Kurdyumivka; and south of Bakhmut near Pivdenne and Niu York.[55] Elements of the Russian 11th Airborne (VDV) Brigade and of the 68th Tank Regiment and 102nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (both of the 150th Motorized Rifle Division, 8th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly fighting in Ivanivske.[56]

Russian forces advanced west of Avdiivka and reportedly captured several settlements in the area on February 29. Geolocated footage published on February 28 and 29 shows that Russian forces advanced into fields south and southwest of Stepove (northwest of Avdiivka) as well as northwest of Lastochkyne (west of Avdiivka).[57] Russian milbloggers largely claimed on February 29 that Russian forces captured Berdychi (northwest of Avdiivka) and Tonenke (west of Avdiivka) on February 28 and most or all of Orlivka (west of Avdiivka) amid continued heavy fighting on February 29, though ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these Russian claims.[58] Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi acknowledged that Russian forces briefly gained a foothold on the outskirts of Orlivka before Ukrainian forces ousted Russian forces from the settlement, and Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Dmytro Lykhovyi denied reports that Russian forces captured Berdychi.[59] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also advanced southwest of Avdiivka near Nevelske.[60] Positional fighting also continued northwest of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske.[61] Elements of the 15th Guards and 21st Guards motorized rifle brigades (both of the 2nd CAA, Central Military District [CMD]) are reportedly fighting near Berdychi, and elements of the 110th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps) reportedly operate near Nevelske.[62] Lykhovyi stated that Russian forces are generally attacking in waves using groups of one to one and a half companies of infantry and sometimes up to a battalion tactical group.[63] Lykhovyi indicated that Russian forces are still significantly limiting the number of armored vehicles fielded in these attacks, however.

Russian forces reportedly advanced west of Donetsk City amid continued positional fighting west and southwest of Donetsk City on February 29. Russian milbloggers claimed on February 28 and 29 that Russian forces advanced into Krasnohorivka (west of Donetsk City), but a Ukrainian brigade operating in the area reported on February 28 that Ukrainian forces pushed Russian forces from Krasonohorivka several hours after entering the settlement.[64] Positional fighting continued west of Donetsk City near Krasnohorivka and Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka and Pobieda.[65] Elements of the Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade (Pacific Fleet) reportedly continue operating near Novomykhailivka.[66]

Positional fighting continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on February 29, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Positional fighting continued southwest of Velyka Novosilka near Pryyutne and south of Velyka Novosilka near Urozhaine.[67] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported that elements of the Russian 394th Motorized Rifle Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division, 5th CAA, Eastern Military District [EMD]), 1461st Motorized Rifle Regiment (reportedly assigned to the 36th CAA, EMD), and 14th Spetsnaz Brigade (Russian General Staff Main Directorate [GRU]) are operating near Staromayorske, and elements of the 114th Motorized Rifle Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division) are operating near Stepanivka.[68]

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

Positional engagements continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on February 29. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces seized several unspecified Ukrainian positions near Robotyne.[69] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional fighting continued near Robotyne and northwest of Verbove (east of Robotyne).[70] Elements of the Russian 70th and 71st motorized rifle regiments (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating south and west of Robotyne, and elements of the Russian “Osman” Spetsnaz formation are reportedly operating near Robotyne.[71] Elements of the 247th Airborne (VDV) Regiment (7th VDV Division) and the 104th VDV Regiment (76th VDV Division) are reportedly operating west of Verbove.[72]

Ukrainian forces continue to maintain limited positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast amid continued positional fighting in the area on February 29. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Krynky and in the dacha area near the Antonivsky roadway bridge.[73] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated that elements of the Russian 26th Motorized Rifle Regiment (70th Motorized Rifle Division, 18th CAA, SMD) recently attacked Ukrainian positions in Krynky.[74] Mashovets stated that elements of the Russian 18th CAA, the 104th VDV Division, and the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet) continue to operate between Kozachi Laheri and Korsunka along the left bank.[75] Ukrainian and Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), acknowledged that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attempt to land on the Tendrivska Spit, a thin sandbar just south of the Kinburn Peninsula.[76]

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

Nothing significant to report.

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

Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec Head Sergei Chemezov stated on February 29 that Rostec plans to produce A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft on an unspecified schedule because Russian forces require more A-50 aircraft.[77] Ukrainian forces have shot down two Russian A-50 aircraft so far in 2024, and Ukrainian officials have reported that Russian forces only have six A-50 aircraft remaining.[78] Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) will not be able to produce new A-50 aircraft quickly since many of the A-50’s component parts are not readily available.[79]

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

Nothing significant to report.

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

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Lieutenant General Ivan Havrylyuk stated on February 29 that 46 weapons and equipment samples produced by Ukrainian manufacturers have entered service with Ukrainian forces since the beginning of 2024. Havrylyuk stated that Ukrainian manufacturers continue to produce new types of drones, electronic warfare (EW) systems, and small arms weapons.[80]

A Russian source amplified footage on February 29 of Ukrainian forces using new first-person view (FPV) drones against Russian forces in an undisclosed location in Ukraine.[81] The footage purportedly shows the Ukrainian FPV drones detonating overhead of Russian infantry and spreading shrapnel over a wide radius.[82]

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

Occupation officials continue to support Kremlin efforts to gain further control over religious groups in occupied Ukraine. Occupation Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea and Sevastopol (DUMKS) executive secretary Ayder Adzhimambetov stated on February 29 that Russian law requires local Muslim communities in occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts to re-register under the authority of the DUMKS.[83]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Spokesperson Andriy Yusov stated Russia is purchasing and creating Telegram channels at a “mass-scale” to support the ongoing Russian information campaign to demoralize Ukrainian society called “Maidan-3.”[84] Yusov stated that Russia is purchasing Telegram channels and other social network pages and attempting to attract unspecified influential individuals to spread information that delegitimizes Ukrainian government decisions. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) reported on February 27 that Russia has already spent a total of $1.5 billion on this information campaign (including $250 million on information operations on the Telegram messaging app alone) and noted that this spending is on par with Russia’s spending on conventional military activities.[85]

The Kremlin is reportedly conducting an information campaign in Latin America attempting to frame Latin American support for Russia as a fight against US hegemony. A Russian insider source claimed that Russian First Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Sergei Kiriyenko’s team plans to create non-profit organizations in Latin America aimed at working with media and holding events to promote pro-Russian narratives.[86] The purported plan also intends to recruit Latin American news correspondents to cover the war in Ukraine from a pro-Russian perspective. The Russian information campaign reportedly emphasizes targeting Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina.[87]

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

Nothing significant to report.

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

6. “Crippled At The Starting Gate” America’s Achilles Heel In Future Conflict

Tue, 02/27/2024 - 8:41am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/crippled-starting-gate-americas-achilles-heel-future-conflict

“Crippled At The Starting Gate”

America’s Achilles Heel In Future Conflict

By Martin Stanton

INTRODUCTION

I recently finished Kurt Schlicter’s excellent book THE ATTACK which is written as a retrospective on a massed October 7th style terrorist attack on the United States that occurs in the late summer of 2024. Schlicter’s book is a page turner, both easy to read and compelling. The premise of THE ATTACK is simple: Large numbers of terrorists’ infiltrate across our open southern border (past our distracted, improperly focused, and politically hamstrung law enforcement and intelligence agencies) amidst the current flood of illegal aliens. They assume hiding positions within the US and wait for the “GO” order. Their attacks happen over several days and cause mass casualties and crippling economic damage. THE ATTACK captures the savagery of Oct 7, 2023, and transfers it to an American setting on a far broader scale. Schlicter’s descriptions of the atrocities committed by the attackers are not for the faint of heart but are basically taken directly from both testimony of Israelis who survived the Hamas attack on October 7 and the captured Hamas footage of what happened to those who did not. The balance of the book is about the various reactions to the attack across America.

Schlicter makes no secret of his political leanings, but no one can deny the plausibility of his scenario. THE ATTACK is a well written and thought-provoking book. It certainly caused me to freshly consider my own community and how it would react to such an event. It also got me thinking about how vulnerable the US is; not just to non-state actor “terrorist” attacks, but to attacks by conventional and special operations forces of enemy nations in the event of hostilities with the US.

IT NOT WW2 ANYMORE – THE OCEANS NO LONGER PROTECT US

The United States has almost no living memory of an attack by the forces of an enemy nation on our mainland. The closest we have left are the few 90–100-year-olds, who can recall the handful of Japanese submarine gun attacks on the Pacific coast and the ferocious U-boat campaign off our Atlantic shores in early 1942. The last time we faced an enemy capable of stopping our maritime traffic and projecting power into the continental United States was in the war of 1812. None of our modern enemies in the 20th century had the capability to conventionally attack military targets on the US mainland in any meaningful way. America was too far and their ability to project power too limited.

In the 21st century this is no longer the case. We have long lived under the “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) deterrent when it comes to nuclear threats to the US; but MAD has no counterpart in conventional war. There’s no “Cosmic Law” against conventionally attacking the continental United States. In almost every plausible major war scenario the US faces today WE will be bombing potential enemies on their respective mainland’s. It’s only reasonable to assume they will look at ways to respond (or to pre-empt). The combined impacts of vastly improved and expanded international transportation, massive amounts of commerce that defy comprehensive inspection, the miniaturization of weapons, emergent military drone technologies, cruise and ballistic missile proliferation and launch system diversification, unchecked mass migration and open borders makes the US vulnerable in ways we have not previously seen in our history. Our adversaries are starting to wake up to this.

AMERICA’S POWER LIES IN ITS ABILITY TO PROJECT ITS FORCES

Excluding its considerable arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, what makes America powerful is not only it’s highly trained conventional forces but its ability to project those forces rapidly (relatively speaking – more quickly than our adversaries) anywhere in the world. We maintain some forces in certain theaters (CENTCOM, EUCOM, PACOM) but even there, were war to break out these would have to be reinforced by considerable forces from the Continental United States (CONUS). All the ground forces will deploy from a relative handful of Ports Of Embarkation (Air and Sea -APOE and SPOE) on either coast. The air forces are more flexible but depend heavily on static air bases and the tanker fleet for quick strategic mobility. Naval forces too rely on a small number of large bases on each coast.

Putting my “Red Team” hat on, if you’re going to fight America, attacking our ability to project forces and sustainment is job # 1. This will especially be true in scenarios such as Taiwan or Korea where even a delay of a few days or weeks in America’s force flow can tip the scales in the outcome of a campaign.

A SMORGASBORD OF POSSIBILITIES FOR OUR ENEMIES

An enemy nation that wishes to attack our power projection capabilities and facilities in the continental US can avail themselves of an embarrassingly diverse set of options when it comes to striking us. We’re vulnerable to just about anything. To keep this essay small, I will focus merely on kinetic options and not include the dazzling array of cyber and information operations options available to our enemies. Here’s a few of the bigger ones.

Direct Special Operations attack against key facilities/ assets:

Kurt Schlicter’s book THE ATTACK outlines in agonizing detail how our open borders and inadequate immigration and customs enforcement made the US vulnerable to a massed Oct 7th terrorist attack. This same open border and lack of immigration enforcement / accountability makes us extremely vulnerable to the infiltration of special operations teams from other countries. Unlike the terrorists described in Schlicter’s book they wouldn’t have to come in huge numbers. A high three digit or low four-digit number broken into smaller teams with specific assignments is all they’d really need. These special operations soldiers would join the millions of illegal aliens that have flooded across our border since early 2021 – perhaps they’re already here. They would live as individuals and keep a low profile but would assemble and arm at the appropriate signal (being careful to don the uniform of their country and mark their vehicles appropriately) and conduct attacks designated targets.

Those targets would be the primary APOEs and SPOEs in our deployment infrastructure as well as key assets such as airlift (C5’s and C-17s) Air refuelers (Tankers) and fast sealift ships. Platoon sized groups could easily defeat the gate guards at most installations in early morning attacks (likely through some Trojan horse subterfuge – I.E a mini-van weaving up to the gate at 2 AM with its music blasting like a drunk driver). If they can secure the gate and the barrier system without raising the alarm, other vehicles can be quickly called forward. Within a few minutes they’ll be destroying aircraft on the flightline or sabotaging key facilities before any additional security forces could likely react. Then, having accomplished their various missions, they could simply surrender. This is the big difference between enemy nation soldiers and terrorists. Except for those special operations teams with missions to assassinate key leaders or attack Command and Control (C2) facilities, the number of casualties they inflict is incidental to the mission. Unlike terrorists they’re not out to cause civilian mass casualties. They are instead uniformed soldiers who have used a valid ruse of war to attack legitimate military targets. They’re squeaky clean as legal combatants under the Geneva Convention and will be repatriated to their country at the end of hostilities. In the meantime, we’re down critical force projection assets that cannot be replaced during the conflict (KC-135s, C-17s, Key sealift ships) or have suffered debilitating damage to key installations.

Drone Attacks

It gets even worse. With many targets – particularly key aircraft on a flightline-there isn’t even a need to penetrate the perimeter of an installation. As both the Ukraine war and the ongoing conflict with the Houthis in Yemen have shown us, drone technology is revolutionizing warfare. Look at any of the aircraft parked closely on the flight line at any AFB. A commercial drone carrying an incendiary device (like a thermite grenade) landing near the wing root would be sufficient to either outright destroy the aircraft or make it non mission capable (NMC) for an extended period. Middle of the night drone attacks at the outset of hostilities could cost us whole squadrons of critical aircraft.

Nor do drone attacks have to be short range commercial drones flown from relative proximity to their targets. The Houthis have shown the world that they can strike Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE from Yemen with drones. The Russians are using the same drones for long-range strikes in Ukraine. The Iranian model drones they use are low tech, easily assembled and pretty accurate. A dozen disassembled drones of this nature could easily fit in a shipping container. When you take the range fans of the Houthi drone strikes on Israel and superimpose them on the West Coast you find that pretty much every APOE and SPOE on the west coast is within range of the Sonoran Desert in Mexico. Smuggling shipping containers into Mexico is easily doable. Northern Mexico is effectively a Narco-state where Chinese money already wields significant influence. Many parts of it are sparsely populated and no one asks questions if they know what’s good for them. It’s one big launch basket.

Cruise and Ballistic Missile attacks

US bases in the Pacific as far as Guam are within range of conventionally armed ballistic missiles launched from China and North Korea. The Chinese and North Koreans also possess submarines that can fire ballistic missiles that can attack Hawaii or CONUS. The sub launched ballistic missile threat is not huge because it would require retrofitting a primary nuclear deliver system for a conventional attack, but it is possible. Of course, they could always just shoot the nukes at us. But that makes it a different kind of war.

The cruise missile threat, however, is huge. Unlike ballistic missiles, almost any seagoing vessel can be outfitted to launch cruise missiles. Cruise missiles launch cannisters can fit easily into modified shipping containers and it is not hard to envision a massive containership leaving a Chinese port with the entire top level of containers carrying cruise missiles in a new and devastating twist on the old WW2 Q-Ship/armed merchant cruiser theme. Cruise missiles can also be launched from modified commercial aircraft. At the outset of hostilities, a strike of several hundred cruise missiles on key US facilities could eliminate a good portion of our already too small Navy as well as have devastating consequences for our ability to project power. In terms of impact on our war effort the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 would pale in comparison. This threat will only get worse over time as cruise missile technology further extends range and increases accuracy. Intercontinental cruise missiles will likely become a thing.

Naval Special Operations Threat

If the Ukraine war and the Houthis in Yemen have shown us anything in the past year its that you don’t need a Navy to project power in littoral warfare. Their successful use of drone attack boats is re-writing tactical doctrine for the Navy in real time. These attack drones are small, long-range, easily transported and pack a ship disabling wallop. Imagine dozens being launched from a mother ship (or a beach in Mexico) hundreds of miles from a US port or naval base. These drones have been successful against warships at sea defending themselves. Their probability of hitting the target during a surprise attack in port will be much higher. Add to this the old stand-by of block-ships (merchantmen deliberately scuttled to impede traffic in key channels) and naval special operators who have infiltrated the US attaching limpet mines to vessels in ports and it’s easy to conclude the threat to the maritime aspect of US power projection is as bad (or worse) than that enjoyed by the air components.

THE IMPACT OF SUCH AN ATTACK

An initiation of hostilities that began with attacks on US installations and organizations in CONUS using some or all, of the methods described here would have a major impact on a short duration campaign (less than 6 months) such as Taiwan and Korea and a significant one on a longer war. Every Tanker, C-17, C5 or maritime deployment platform destroyed or badly damaged would not be replaced during the duration of the conflict. This isn’t the 1940’s anymore, our Air Force transports, and sealift platforms aren’t as replaceable as C-47s and Liberty Ships. Neither are our Naval vessels, fighters, or bombers for that matter. Gone are the shipyards and factories that churned out the mass that gave us victory 80 years ago. In fact, an enemy envisioning a long war with the US (vice one to establish a quick “fait-accompli” on the ground) would probably attack our few key production facilities as well as our SPOEs, APOEs and existing deployment assets.

SO, WHAT CAN WE DO?

The only good news in this essay is that, as late as it is, we still have time to fix or mitigate quite a few of these vulnerabilities. It will take political will though and shifting priorities. Here are a few things we can be doing.

Recognize that illegal immigration is a Strategic Threat to US security: No nation can long survive with a border situation such as the one that exists today in the US. Unfortunately, the failure of our political leadership has moved us past the point where this issue can be resolved easily. Fixing this is going to be ugly but its got to be done. The solution has two broad components:

Illegal Immigration - Plug the leaks: Our nation needs to build a border wall with Mexico that looks like the one between Gaza and Egypt. It needs to man the border with soldiers until this is accomplished. Zero people come in through anything that is not an authorized point of entry. Next build something less draconian but just as effective on the Canadian border (less volume there). Adequately resource and staff border patrol customs and immigration officials. Make provisions to reinforce with federal Marshals and federal troops as required.
Illegal immigration – Bail the boat: Deporting the millions of illegal aliens that have poured across our border since 2021 will be a massive undertaking, but it must be done. Declare a national state of emergency and suspend immigration law that pertains to asylum or allows illegal aliens to remain in-country. Task the military to set up deportation camps and control the logistics of deportation. Use federal law enforcement to roundup illegal aliens and prosecute anyone who employs them. Deny federal funding to states or municipalities who declare themselves “sanctuaries” and defund / prosecute NGO that facilitate illegal immigration. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War citing national emergency; such extreme measures are equally warranted here to combat the illegal alien invasion and the potential deadly threat they pose from both a terrorist and a conventional war perspective.

Refocus the Intelligence Community and Federal Law Enforcement: The Intelligence Community and Federal law enforcement need to re-focus their internal security priorities towards terrorist and foreign agent infiltration amongst the millions of illegal aliens who have crossed our border. We have wasted too much time and too many assets chasing cos-play white supremacists and other politically correct bugbears while real threats pass unnoticed under our nose. We have no idea who has entered our country. We need to start getting a handle on it. Start with the immediate environs (30-mile radius) of priority bases and installations – working closely with military counterintelligence.

Similarly, we need to refocus intelligence collection on the areas immediately outside our borders and on the shipping lanes that come within strike proximity of our key bases and installations. In particular, we need to recognize that northern Mexico is essentially an ungoverned space where anyone with money and imagination can operate freely. This refocusing of collection priorities is going to mean hard choices at the national level in the dedication of ISR assets until more assets can be acquired.

It also means that there needs to be a quick clearing house for the cross leveling of information and reports and algorithms for data analysis so that no key report is lost in the volume. Much of the Homeland Security apparatus will have to be repurposed and many of its performative (but expensive) functions – such as TSA will have to be either discontinued or significantly downsized to pay for the necessary changes.

Establish defenses at key SPOEs, APOEs and high value target installations: The massive coastal artillery forts of the Endicott Period of 1890-1920 (whose ruins still overlook key harbors in CONUS) and the Nike Hercules Batteries around major installations and population centers from the late 1950s to the early 1970s never fired a shot in anger. I doubt we will be so fortunate in the future. The US needs to establish defenses at our key installations in CONUS.

What’s a key installation? This is a hard question because virtually everything in the US is vulnerable to the threats I’ve described. Currently we exist in a topsy turvy situation where the first things we should protect are installations and assets that have direct OPERATIONAL impact on the execution of an overseas campaign – APOEs, SPOEs, Air and Maritime mobility assets as well as major naval and air combatants that cannot be replaced. STRATEGIC ASSETS (production facilities, refineries, key internal transportation nodes...etc.) will have to be a secondary priority. If we can’t get the forces we have to theater without disruption, in most cases what we can produce for a long conflict won’t matter – because it won’t be a long conflict.

Force structure and acquisition implications: The force structure of the Army in WW2 gives a hint as to the scope of the issue. While most popular histories dwell on the expanded number of maneuver divisions in the Army, what’s often neglected is the role the Army units played in defending key SPOEs in CONUS and bases along the Lines of Communication (LOCs) as well as Sea Ports Of Debarkation (SPODs) in theater. The unit and manpower intensive defense of Antwerp as an SPOD from German cruise missiles (V-1s) in the fall-winter of 1944/45 is a good example of how costly this kind of effort can be. The potential for attack against our CONUS Bases/SPOE/APOE, Theater Service Area, Communications Zone (COMZ),LOCs and SPODs is even greater now than it was in WW2 and in potential conflict against peer competitors / regional threats we won’t have the luxury of years to build the necessary force structure (the units that defended Antwerp in 1944 didn’t exist in 1942).

We will have to build a military now that can fulfill its role in defending our power projection from day-1 of any conflict. For the Army this means developing hybrid air defense units that can protect assets across the spectrum of air threat from small drones to ballistic missiles. For the Air Force it means increasing base security and developing hardened dispersal sites to avoid the close parked “Wheeler-Field-1941” syndrome so prevalent on many of today’s Air Force Bases. For the Naval forces and Coast Guard it means re-evaluating naval bases and SPOEs for updated Naval Special operations threats and acquiring/ configuring their defenses accordingly. This is going to be a big bill. It’s an uncomfortable thought to consider having to defend places like San Diego SPOE and Travis AFB in California or Hickam AFB in Hawaii from conventional enemy cruise/ballistic missile, drone, or UW attacks over three dimensions (land, sea and air), but that’s the world we live in now.

SUMMARY

Due to the decisions of our elected leadership America of 2024 is more vulnerable to outside conventional and unconventional attack than it has been in over 200 years. We’re also in a position where the possibility of conflict with nations who can conventionally and unconventionally attack us grows greater with each passing year. Our open borders, inattention to the illegal alien invasion and inability to monitor our own Western Hemisphere neighbors effectively could cost us hugely, both as open highway for terrorists to attack us and an open flank for enemy nations to exploit. We (the US) need to fix this, fast.

About the Author(s)

Martin Stanton

Martin Stanton is a retired Army officer currently residing in Florida. The opinions expressed are his own and do not reflect any official DOD or USG position.

7. Russians intensify anti-Ukrainian propaganda around the world and plan to inflict defeat on the eastern direction in early summer - intelligence

Recognize the Russia political warfare strategy, understand it, EXPOSE it (to inoculate the population), and attack the strategy with a superior political warfare strategy.

Excerpt:

The statement clarifies that the methodology of the campaign is traditional for Russian special services: "to question the legitimacy of government decisions made in Ukraine after 20 May, to spread panic and disbelief, to artificially oppose civilians and the military, to quarrel us with our allies, and to spread all sorts of 'conspiracy theories' in society."

Also, as stated in the text of the statement, Russia, through its own agents of influence in Ukraine and around the world, will rely on organising various protest actions and deliberately discredit the process of prisoner of war exchange.

"As planned by the enemy, the situation in our country will be shaken in the first half of June, and then, taking advantage of this, Ukraine will suffer a military defeat in the east, which is the key idea of their operation," the committee's statement concludes.

In this regard, the Intelligence Committee under the President of Ukraine calls on Ukrainian society, international partners and allies to "strengthen joint resistance and comprehensive security measures, especially in the information space, to effectively counter global threats and challenges of the new global hybrid war".

Russians intensify anti-Ukrainian propaganda around the world and plan to inflict defeat on the eastern direction in early summer - intelligence

The main goals are to disrupt Ukrainian mobilisation, spread disinformation about Ukraine's inability to win, and spread fakes about "fatigue from Ukraine"

Цей матеріал також доступний українською

2702VIEWS

27 FEBRUARY 2024, 20:50

mind.ua · by Nadiya Palyvoda

In the coming weeks, the enemy will spread narratives destructive to global security to the maximum extent possible, and in the first half of June 2024, it plans to take advantage of the shaken situation and inflict a military defeat in the east.

Source. This was stated by the Intelligence Committee under the President of Ukraine, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

"In the context of a deliberate distraction of world public attention from the long and bloody Russian-Ukrainian war, the leadership of the aggressor country has resorted to a plan of planned sabotage, information operations and outright provocations," the committee said in a statement posted on the SBU's telegram channel.

The statement notes that the main directions and goals of the enemy are to disrupt Ukrainian mobilisation, spread disinformation about Ukraine's inability to win, create and spread fakes about "fatigue from Ukraine" among partners and allies in the world.

"The global international goal of the Russians is to reduce the support for our country from the pro-Ukrainian coalition in the world," the statement said.

According to the statement, the goal of the Russians inside Ukraine is "to demoralise Ukrainians, sow panic among the population, drive a wedge between the military and civilians, and set everyone at odds with everyone, including representatives of the country's political leadership and civil society".

The statement notes that Russian special services have extensive experience in hybrid warfare and spend no less on information attacks against Ukraine than on conventional warfare.

In particular, according to the committee, in November last year, as part of the Maidan-3 special operation, Russia spent almost $250 million on spreading anti-Ukrainian sentiment on Telegram alone.

"The Maidan-3 special operation will culminate in March-May 2024, and in the coming weeks the enemy will make every effort to spread narratives destructive to global security and attempts to foment conflicts – both inside Ukraine and in other parts of the world where there is effective support for Ukraine," the statement said.

The statement clarifies that the methodology of the campaign is traditional for Russian special services: "to question the legitimacy of government decisions made in Ukraine after 20 May, to spread panic and disbelief, to artificially oppose civilians and the military, to quarrel us with our allies, and to spread all sorts of 'conspiracy theories' in society."

Also, as stated in the text of the statement, Russia, through its own agents of influence in Ukraine and around the world, will rely on organising various protest actions and deliberately discredit the process of prisoner of war exchange.

"As planned by the enemy, the situation in our country will be shaken in the first half of June, and then, taking advantage of this, Ukraine will suffer a military defeat in the east, which is the key idea of their operation," the committee's statement concludes.

In this regard, the Intelligence Committee under the President of Ukraine calls on Ukrainian society, international partners and allies to "strengthen joint resistance and comprehensive security measures, especially in the information space, to effectively counter global threats and challenges of the new global hybrid war".

mind.ua · by Nadiya Palyvoda

8. Hamas is blackmailing the West into submission

Excerpts:

It is remarkable that those campaigning in support of Hamas fail to grasp the full extent of the movement’s total commitment to resorting to acts of extreme violence to achieve its ends.

The Palestinian convicts whose release Hamas is demanding from Israeli prisons in return for a ceasefire, for example, are not political prisoners of conscience like Russian activist Alexei Navalny, who was jailed, and subsequently died, because of his non-violent campaign to oust Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Many of them are calculating killers similar to those who carried out the October 7 attacks, who think nothing of murdering innocent women and children.

If Biden’s ceasefire deal results in their release, then Hamas will truly believe it has triumphed over adversity.

Hamas is blackmailing the West into submission

The Telegraph · by Con Coughlin Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor 29 February 2024 • 6:00am

Comment

Joe Biden has displayed shocking naivety, to the extent that the terrorists now think they can survive

Nato allies rule out sending troops to Ukraine

thenews.com.pk

World

French President Emmanuel Macron had said on Monday that Western allies should exclude no options in seeking to avert a Russian victory in Ukraine

By REUTERS

February 28, 2024

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a press conference. — AFP/File

BERLIN/MOSCOW: The United States and key European allies said on Tuesday they had no plans to send ground troops to Ukraine, after France hinted at the possibility, and the Kremlin warned that any such move would inevitably lead to conflict between Russia and Nato.

French President Emmanuel Macron had said on Monday that Western allies should exclude no options in seeking to avert a Russian victory in Ukraine, though he stressed there was no consensus at this stage.

His comments, made at a hastily convened meeting of European leaders in Paris on ways to boost flagging support for Kyiv, come amid battlefield gains by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces in eastern Ukraine as well as growing shortages of ammunition and manpower on the Ukrainian side.

However, Germany, Britain, Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic distanced themselves from any suggestion they might commit ground troops to the Ukraine war, now in its third year.

“...There will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European countries or NATO states,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius was equally adamant.

“Boots on the ground is not an option for Germany,” Pistorius told reporters during a visit to Vienna.

The White House later reiterated that it too had no plan to send ground troops, instead urging US lawmakers to approve a stalled security aid bill that would ensure Ukrainian troops got the weapons and ammunition needed to continue their fight.Seeking to clarify Macron’s remarks, French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said on Tuesday the president had in mind sending troops for specific tasks such as helping on mine clearance, production of weapons on site, and cyberdefence.

“(This) could require a (military) presence on Ukrainian territory, without crossing the threshold of fighting,” Sejourne told French lawmakers.

Scholz did say that European leaders now appeared willing after Monday’s talks to procure weapons from countries outside Europe as a way of speeding up military aid to Ukraine.

Germany has become the second biggest supplier of military aid to Kyiv since Russia launched its full-blown invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, but is extremely wary of steps that would draw the Nato alliance into direct conflict with Russia.The Kremlin issued a swift warning about what was at stake.

“The very fact of discussing the possibility of sending certain contingents to Ukraine from Nato countries is a very important new element,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, commenting on Macron’s remarks.

Asked about the risks if Nato members did deploy troops to fight in Ukraine, Peskov said: “In that case, we would need to talk not about the probability, but about the inevitability (of a direct conflict).”

10. The Real Culture Wars – How Art Shapes the Contest Between Democracy and Autocracy

Excerpts;

Western governments should recognize that culture creators are part of the infantry of antiauthoritarianism. U.S. embassy personnel should make a point of developing relationships with key cultural figures, understanding their needs and considering how the United States might usefully support their work without tainting or endangering them. Artists and intellectuals in repressive environments crave opportunities to share their work, see it distributed in translation, attend conferences and convenings internationally, and gain greater visibility at home and abroad through publications, interviews, events, and appearances. Such support can offer professional and creative sustenance as well as elevate the public profiles of cultural figures as a potential shield against persecution. Western governments and institutions seeking to push back against authoritarianism can make small investments in individuals with stature and vision that can pay significant dividends in terms of fostering resistance.

The aim of such efforts should be to lift and celebrate authentic creative thinkers and works rather than to shape what those thinkers say or produce. Such an approach avoids the pitfalls of advancing propaganda or a Western-centric worldview. It also steers clear of adopting the authoritarian approach of trying to commandeer outlets to propagate a message dictated from on high.

Culture may seem like a sideshow in a world riven by multiple wars, economic competition, and political confrontation. But traditional tactics to shore up democracy through elections and institution-building have fallen short for decades, with barometers of global freedom in free fall. The lack of progress speaks to the need to activate new forces and tactics. Innovative strategies are needed to penetrate more deeply into vulnerable polities, shaping citizens’ hopes, perceptions, sense of what is possible, and desire to effect change. Authors, filmmakers, artists, and musicians are in the business of tapping into deep-seated fears, beliefs, and aspirations. To survive and thrive, democracy depends on the popular will. That will cannot be manufactured nor stoked from the outside. But it can be sparked and cultivated from within by those who know a society best—its cultural creators.

The Real Culture Wars

How Art Shapes the Contest Between Democracy and Autocracy

By Suzanne Nossel

February 29, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All · February 29, 2024

Authoritarians know that controlling their societies takes more than the heavy hand of the police or the courts; it also requires shaping how their populations think and see the world, and how the world sees them. In 2020, China imposed a new national security law on Hong Kong in a bid to further tie the territory to the Chinese mainland. Alongside the law’s prohibitions on “secession” and “subversion” came tightened controls on museums and art institutions. Hong Kong’s Beijing-appointed chief executives warned cultural leaders to police the line between “artistic expression” and works “really meant to incite hatred or destroy relations between two places and undermine national security.” On the mainland, the Chinese Communist Party has increasingly shut out foreign movies, investing in the production of domestic films that reinforce preferred themes and storylines; several recent blockbusters, for instance, feature brave Chinese heroes fending off Western villains. Autocracies elsewhere also seek to control culture to preserve their hold on power. Cuba has imprisoned Latin Grammy–winning singer Maykel Castillo Pérez for his activism. In April 2023, leaked documents revealed that Iran had established a secret committee to blacklist and target artists for backing street protests. In 2020, Hungary adopted a new school curriculum stressing national pride, whitewashing the country’s wartime defeats. Budapest has also advised theater directors that plays must hew to government-approved plotlines.

Democracies and autocracies are waging a global battle, principally through military, political, economic, and diplomatic means. Yet the outcome of this contest will hinge significantly on culture. How people in democracies and autocracies see the world is shaped by the music they listen to, the books they read, the films and television they watch, the art they admire, the museums they visit, and the textbooks they must study. That makes culture not a sideshow to geopolitics but rather a central arena with sweeping implications for international relations.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, agencies of powerful governments were principal actors in contests over culture; they promoted their countries’ ways of life and showcased shining examples of national achievement. Today, autocracies are engaged in technologically enabled top-down efforts to impose their narratives and ideologies on their own populations in order to spread their views abroad. Their most effective opponents won’t be Western cultural attachés but rather authors, artists, and curators who carry out their work on the very battlegrounds at stake around the world. In places such as Ukraine and Uganda, the cultural actors with the potential to counter autocracy are indigenous to these contested societies, able to evoke traditions, stories, histories, and ideas integral to national identities. By supporting these culture keepers and creators, opponents of authoritarianism can foster a potent force for freedom.

THE ART OF THE STATE

Dictators have long known that the output of artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors, playwrights, and scholars can be pressed into the service of those in power. Totalitarianism demands control over a society’s vanguard, its most inventive, independent-minded, and potentially subversive minds. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, among other repressive regimes, strictly regulated and even dictated the bounds of allowable art, music, and literature. During the Cold War, the overlords of the Eastern bloc used art to portray an idealized communist life.

For its part, the U.S. government promoted art that burnished its image as a free and prosperous country, hoping to motivate people behind the Iron Curtain to reject communism. Founded in West Berlin in 1950 with CIA support, the Congress for Cultural Freedom supported anticommunist magazines, conferences, and journals and provided direct support to artists and writers with the aim of shaping global opinion. The radio network Voice of America sought to counter communist propaganda and contrast life in the totalitarian Soviet Union with the freedoms of the West. Under the aegis of the U.S. Information Agency, founded in 1953, Washington sent American jazz legends on tour around the world and mounted exhibitions in Europe featuring abstract expressionist and surrealist art.

But Americans gradually grew leery of state intervention in cultural affairs. The Red Scare and McCarthy era—when U.S. officials attacked artists, writers, and filmmakers tarred as communist sympathizers—exposed the dangers of government intruding into the realms of art and creativity. The makers of both culture and policy began to worry that government attempts to shape art, scholarship, and creativity borrowed from an authoritarian playbook. The notion of centrally orchestrated propaganda seemed to contradict the essence of what the United States was seeking to promote: namely, liberal institutions, creative liberties, cultural heterogeneity, and unfettered freedom of thought. Since the 1970s, official U.S. cultural outreach efforts have centered on scholarly and artistic exchanges, educational programs, and tours that foster ties and showcase culture without overtly trying to tilt the geopolitical table.

DISCIPLINE AND PUBLISH

Authoritarians today regard culture as an indispensable tool that would fall into enemy hands were they not to maintain tight control over it. The sweep of current efforts to dictate culture is particularly stark when it comes to the writing and presentation of history. In crafting a governing ideology in Russia, President Vladimir Putin has sought to rehabilitate the strongman legacy of Stalin while suppressing efforts to unearth the atrocities and abuses of the Soviet past. Russia’s war on Ukraine has culture as both motivation and means. Putin’s invasion aimed to make real his claim that a distinct Ukrainian nation and identity have never existed. Russia has imposed the use of Russian schoolbooks in occupied territories and targeted Ukrainian museums, libraries, and monuments.

The Chinese Communist Party’s latest official account of its history, published in 2021 and covering a century, devotes more than a quarter of its 531 pages to its leader Xi Jinping’s first nine years in power. This account, which shapes school curricula, exhibitions, books, and films, aims to shore up Xi’s image as the personification of China’s manifest destiny. Xi’s China has also used cultural tools to burnish its global image. Beijing has set up CCP-controlled Confucius Institutes to promote an idealized version of the country’s culture at foreign universities, deepened partnerships among Chinese academic institutions and counterparts abroad, and sought to control media and civic life among Chinese diaspora communities.

In backsliding democracies, too, demagogues have pushed aggressively into the cultural realm. Since becoming prime minister of Hungary in 2010, Viktor Orban has subjected previously independent arts institutions and universities to government oversight, clamped down on foreign funding for nongovernmental organizations, and effectively expelled the Central European University due to its ties to philanthropist George Soros. Prior to its defeat in elections in late 2023, Poland’s populist government had fired historians and museum curators for failing to sufficiently propagate patriotism and shuttered archives to block independent research into the country’s complicity in the Holocaust. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invested in building new cultural institutions—including a national showpiece in New Delhi that, when completed, may be the world’s largest museum—that champion a cohesive, Hindu-centric national identity in keeping with the ideology of the ruling party. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used monuments and television shows to extol the country’s Ottoman past and gild his own rule.

Even in the United States, culture is swept up in political agendas. Several Republican-controlled states have imposed thousands of book bans and proposed and enacted hundreds of legislative restrictions on teaching and learning in schools and universities. Authoritarian in impulse, these measures target narratives and histories focused on racial and sexual minorities, casting such accounts as threatening, corrupting of children, contrary to acceptable social values, and damaging to national pride.

THE RESISTANCE

But no matter its power, the state rarely has the last word when it comes to culture. Even in the Soviet Union, dissidents spread their ideas and art through samizdat, with clandestine networks copying and distributing censored and subversive works. Stories, artwork, poetry, and other forms of expression can serve as antibodies against authoritarianism. They raise questions, puncture pieties, encourage empathy, and offer alternative visions for the future.

Today, in both autocracies and teetering democracies, scholars, writers, activists, and artists continue to push back against the narratives of the state. In places where protests and outright political challenges to the regime are not tolerated, dissent can find voice through music, poetry, art, fiction, television, and the writing of history. In polities where dissidents are jailed and persecuted, it is sometimes celebrities or popular musicians, such as Bobi Wine in Uganda, who can win a mass following to challenge an entrenched regime. In 2017, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stripped the citizenship of his leading political rival, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. But what Poroshenko did not see coming was Volodymyr Zelensky—a television star with no experience in politics. Although he was first written off as a joke candidate, Zelensky’s popular following propelled him to the presidency and now, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the annals of history.

Culture has helped turn back the authoritarian tide in a few countries. Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland’s prizewinning 2023 film, Green Border, released shortly before the country’s October 2023 elections, met fierce government opposition for its depiction of Polish authorities and border guards brutalizing migrants. It irked Polish President Andrzej Duda, who rebuked the film in a September television interview, invoking a World War II–era slogan used to deride Poles who went to the movies during Nazi occupation: “Only pigs sit in the cinema.” The government forced the film to air with a warning, insisting that it contained “untruths and distortions.” But the film became the country’s second-largest box office release of the year, and as the election neared, Holland argued that “the film was needed. That the people didn’t want to be lost in the narrative that everything is fine.” Just weeks after the release of the acclaimed film, Poles voted and ousted Duda’s Law and Justice Party, ending its eight-year rule.

The state rarely has the last word when it comes to culture.

Similarly, in Brazil, artists and other cultural creators helped challenge the rule of populist President Jair Bolsonaro. The Bolsonaro government repeatedly delayed the release of a groundbreaking 2019 film about the leftist politician and guerilla Carlos Marighella. The obstruction spurred a defiant backlash, making the film the country’s most watched in 2021; when lights came up in the cinemas after screenings, theatergoers often broke into anti-Bolsonaro chants. During the same period, major novels were released that addressed the country’s history of Black enslavement, long a taboo subject confined mostly to academic journals. The bestsellers put Afro Brazilian narratives squarely in the mainstream. Two octogenarian musicians, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil,spurned retirement to campaign against Bolsonaro ahead of the 2022 election, as did the pop superstar Anitta. Her smash hit “Girl from Rio,” a send-up of the world famous “Girl from Ipanema,” celebrated Rio de Janeiro’s racial diversity and complexity in its rejection of the whitewashed image of Brazil promoted by Bolsonaro. She then dove directly into politics, becoming an adviser to Bolsonaro’s challenger and eventual vanquisher, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

In Ukraine, culture has been a wellspring of unity and resilience in fending off Russian aggression. Ukrainian writers, filmmakers, and artists have convened readings, mounted exhibitions, and promoted their works locally and globally. Ukrainian artists and writers have hit the road, traveling internationally to rally support and put a human face on their country’s struggle.

Even in places where authoritarianism is most entrenched, culture makers can play a long game. In Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and the Battle for the Future, the journalist Ian Johnson argues persuasively that writers, filmmakers, and artists countering state-dictated histories may hold the keys to an eventual future beyond the CCP. These independent thinkers often use digital technologies to evade surveillance. They have preserved the embers of free thought that may eventually catch fire.

THE INFANTRY OF DEMOCRACY

The United States and its allies can harness the power of culture as a bulwark against authoritarianism without resorting to the heavy-handed and sometimes shadowy tactics of eras past. U.S. public diplomacy already seeks to promote familiarity and positive associations with American culture through tours, exchanges, and educational programs. Tech companies and Hollywood movies, among other popular American cultural exports, also help spread the country’s influence.

Unlike during the eras of World War II or the Cold War, the United States should not seek to spread American culture to counter the work of autocracies; that would only spark backlash. Instead, the U.S. government, its allies, and civil society actors should strengthen the hands of independent thinkers and creators working within their own countries. Approaches will differ depending upon the setting. Direct foreign funding for artists and intellectuals in China or Hong Kong, for instance, would only imperil its recipients. By contrast, Ukrainian artists and other cultural creators could very much benefit from such material backing. For example, the U.S. government and the World Monuments Fund have devoted resources to the rebuilding of Ukrainian cultural sites destroyed in the war. But just as important as Ukraine’s cultural past is its present and future. For a fairly low cost, the United States embassy or the U.S. Agency for International Development could supply books, art supplies, and instruments to Ukrainian scholars, musicians, artists, and writers, helping them continue to produce and distribute work in wartime. Funds could underwrite the translation of works into English and other languages and allow Ukrainian culture makers to travel globally, helping to rally international support for Kyiv’s cause. Backing for musical events, exhibitions, and book festivals could help raise the country’s spirits and strengthen its cohesion as the war drags on.

The United States and other nations could take steps to fortify and better enforce global protections for artistic freedom. Artists and writers who become targets of repressive governments need accessible, robust channels of financial assistance, advice, and support. More funding is needed for existing global networks that protect artists in the real and online worlds, fend off lawfare used against them, sustain them when government repression dries up their income, and secure foreign visas for them when exile becomes their only viable option. Democracies should throw their weight behind efforts at the United Nations to adapt and extend to artists, writers, intellectuals, and culture makers the kinds of international norms and regimes that world bodies, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, have put in place to safeguard journalists and human rights defenders. The UN has detailed some of the types of assistance needed—for instance, training for defense attorneys and prosecutors handling creative freedom cases and resources for documenting and publicizing infringements on cultural rights through regular reports, site visits, and media outreach.

Traditional tactics to shore up democracy have fallen short.

Western governments should recognize that culture creators are part of the infantry of antiauthoritarianism. U.S. embassy personnel should make a point of developing relationships with key cultural figures, understanding their needs and considering how the United States might usefully support their work without tainting or endangering them. Artists and intellectuals in repressive environments crave opportunities to share their work, see it distributed in translation, attend conferences and convenings internationally, and gain greater visibility at home and abroad through publications, interviews, events, and appearances. Such support can offer professional and creative sustenance as well as elevate the public profiles of cultural figures as a potential shield against persecution. Western governments and institutions seeking to push back against authoritarianism can make small investments in individuals with stature and vision that can pay significant dividends in terms of fostering resistance.

The aim of such efforts should be to lift and celebrate authentic creative thinkers and works rather than to shape what those thinkers say or produce. Such an approach avoids the pitfalls of advancing propaganda or a Western-centric worldview. It also steers clear of adopting the authoritarian approach of trying to commandeer outlets to propagate a message dictated from on high.

Culture may seem like a sideshow in a world riven by multiple wars, economic competition, and political confrontation. But traditional tactics to shore up democracy through elections and institution-building have fallen short for decades, with barometers of global freedom in free fall. The lack of progress speaks to the need to activate new forces and tactics. Innovative strategies are needed to penetrate more deeply into vulnerable polities, shaping citizens’ hopes, perceptions, sense of what is possible, and desire to effect change. Authors, filmmakers, artists, and musicians are in the business of tapping into deep-seated fears, beliefs, and aspirations. To survive and thrive, democracy depends on the popular will. That will cannot be manufactured nor stoked from the outside. But it can be sparked and cultivated from within by those who know a society best—its cultural creators.

SUZANNE NOSSEL is CEO of the PEN America Center and the author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All.

Foreign Affairs · by Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All · February 29, 2024

11. The Perilous Coming Age of AI Warfare

Excerpts:

Autonomous weapons are coming. Attempts to ban them entirely, although well meaning, are likely futile. Their military value is simply too great. Yet countries have a choice about how autonomous weapons will be used. Without effective restrictions, autonomous weapons will reduce human control over warfare, pose increased danger to civilians and combatants, and undermine international stability. Steps must be urgently taken to address these weapons’ worst dangers. Doing so will require moving beyond the current simplistic and misleading choice between a ban on all autonomous weapons and no restrictions at all.

Autonomous weapons are an early test of humanity’s ability to deal with weaponized AI, more dangerous forms of which are coming. Cutting-edge AI systems have demonstrated the ability to aid in the development of cyberweapons and chemical and biological weapons. Global cooperation is urgently needed to govern their improvement, limit their proliferation, and guard against their potential use. Reaching international agreement on autonomous weapons is critical for addressing their harms and laying the foundation for collaboration on future, even more consequential AI dangers.

The Perilous Coming Age of AI Warfare

How to Limit the Threat of Autonomous Weapons

By Paul Scharre

February 29, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence · February 29, 2024

Last year, the Ukrainian drone company Saker claimed it had fielded a fully autonomous weapon, the Saker Scout, which uses artificial intelligence to make its own decisions about who to kill on the battlefield. The drone, Saker officials declared, had carried out autonomous attacks on a small scale. Although this has not been independently verified, the technology necessary to create such a weapon certainly exists. It is a small technical step—but a consequential moral, legal, and ethical one—to then produce fully autonomous weapons that are capable of searching out and selecting targets on their own.

The deployment of Saker’s drone shows that the window to regulate autonomous weapons is closing fast. Countries have been discussing what to do about autonomous weapons for a decade, but they have been unable to agree on regulations to limit the weapons’ harms. Yet there is an urgent need for international agreement. The unconstrained development of autonomous weapons could lead to wars that expand beyond human control, with fewer protections for both combatants and civilians. Even if a wholesale ban is not realistic, there are many practical regulations that governments can adopt to mitigate autonomous weapons’ worst dangers. Without limits, humanity risks barreling towards a future of dangerous, machine-driven warfare.

NEARLY THERE

Militaries have used partially autonomous weapons in limited, defensive circumstances since the 1980s. Today, at least 30 countries operate air and missile defense systems, or antirocket protection systems for ground vehicles, that have autonomous modes. Once activated, these defensive systems can automatically sense incoming rockets, artillery, mortars, missiles, or aircraft and intercept them. However, humans supervise their operation and can intervene if something goes wrong.

Militaries have been slow to adopt AI technology developed in the commercial sector, in part because of cumbersome procurement processes. The war in Ukraine accelerated innovation on both sides, especially with commercial technologies such as small drones. Both Moscow and Kyiv have used drones extensively for reconnaissance and attacks on ground forces. These drone deployments have in turn led to the development of new countermeasures, including electronic warfare systems that jam drones’ communications links or pinpoint the location of the operators on the ground, who can then be attacked. This focus on the operator is strategically sound: most drones are remotely piloted, making the human operator essential—and a critical target. Without human operators, remotely controlled drones become useless. That is why autonomous drones are so valuable: they do not rely on vulnerable communications links. To counter them, the drones themselves must be found and destroyed.

The specific form that autonomous weapons take will depend on the needs of a conflict. In Ukraine, Moscow and Kyiv have used small aerial drones to target personnel and attack vehicles. Larger, medium-altitude drones have been used to reach deeper behind enemy lines to target radars and installations. Ukraine has even used drone boats to attack the Russian Black Sea Fleet. All of these drones, which are currently remotely controlled, could be upgraded to become autonomous, allowing continued operation if the communications link was jammed.

Other conflicts could lead to the development of different autonomous weapons. Several countries—including China, France, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—are currently working on stealth combat drones. Future wars could see these drones autonomously targeting air defenses or mobile missile launchers. Ground robots have lagged behind their air and sea counterparts, but future wars could see autonomous weapons deployed on robots or fixed gun emplacements. The changes will likely not stop there. Swarms of drones could autonomously coordinate their behavior, reacting to changes on the battlefield at a speed beyond human capabilities. Autonomous reactions at machine speed could drive a faster tempo of operations, accelerating the pace of battle. This in turn could create even more pressure to eliminate humans from decision cycles. The consequences of this shift to a new era of machine-driven warfare will be profound.

AUTONOMOUS PERIL

Leading AI scientists, including the University of California professor Stuart Russell and the Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, have warned of the dangers of autonomous weapons. A consortium of over 250 nongovernmental organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Nobel Women’s Initiative, have formed the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, calling for a preemptive, legally binding treaty to ban autonomous weapons. These warnings and campaigns are motivated by concern that autonomous weapons could increase civilian casualties in war. Although autonomous weapons could conceivably reduce civilian casualties by precisely targeting combatants, in the hands of a state that cares little about civilian casualties—or wants to punish a civilian population—they could be used to commit devastating atrocities. Massive hordes of autonomous weapons could be deployed to target and kill thousands at a time, making today’s smart bombs seem clumsy by comparison.

One of the most extreme risks comes from integrating AI and autonomy into nuclear weapons. In 2022, the United States declared that it would always retain a “human ‘in the loop’” for decisions to use nuclear weapons. The United Kingdom adopted a similar policy in 2022. Yet Russia and China have not. Human control over nuclear weapons seems like an easy starting point for international agreement, but Moscow has shown a disturbing willingness to integrate risky automation into its nuclear operations. This is nothing new: after the Cold War ended, former Soviet officials explained that the Soviet Union had built a semiautomated retaliatory nuclear strike system called “Perimeter.” Once activated, it would use a series of automated sensors to detect a nuclear attack on Soviet soil. If one was detected and there was no response from the country’s leaders—presumably because they had been killed in the attack—the system would automatically transfer nuclear launch authority to a relatively junior officer in a secure bunker. Russian officials stated in 2018 that the system is still operational and has even been upgraded. More recently, Moscow has begun to develop a nuclear-armed autonomous underwater drone. Nuclear-armed drones at sea or in the air could be sent on patrol, risking accidents or losing control of a nuclear weapon.

Widely deployed autonomous weapons integrated with other aspects of military AI could result in a new era of machine-driven warfare. Military AI applications can accelerate information processing and decision-making. Decision cycles will shorten as countries adopt AI and automation to reduce the time to find, identify, and strike enemy targets. In theory, this could allow for more time for humans to make thoughtful, deliberate decisions. In practice, competitors will feel forced to respond in kind, using automation to speed up their own operations to keep pace. The result will be an escalating spiral of greater automation and less human control.

The end state of this competition will likely be war executed at machine speed and beyond human control. In finance, the widespread use of algorithms in high-frequency trading has led to stocks being traded autonomously at superhuman speeds. The Chinese military scholar Chen Hanghui of the People’s Liberation Army’s Army Command College has hypothesized about a “singularity” on the battlefield, a point wherein the pace of machine-driven warfare will similarly outstrip the speed of human decision-making. This tipping point would force humans to cede control to machines for both tactical decisions and operational-level war strategies. Machines would not only select individual targets but also plan and execute whole campaigns. The role of humans would be reduced to switching on the machines and sitting on the sidelines, with little ability to control or even end wars.

STUCK IN THE WEEDS

International regulations, if carefully crafted and successfully implemented, could help mitigate some of the worst harms of autonomous weapons. Around 30 countries and a consortium of humanitarian organizations have called for a preemptive, legally binding treaty to ban autonomous weapons before they can be deployed. Governments have had relative success banning chemical and biological weapons, cluster munitions, and the use of the environment as a weapon. But similar progress on regulating autonomous weapons has proved challenging. An all-out ban, in particular, is unlikely. Because autonomous weapons have not yet been fully developed, both their potential harms and their military value are unknown. Governments are, therefore, reluctant to give up a potentially valuable weapon because of uncertain claims about potential future harms.

Discussions about how to regulate autonomous weapons are taking place in many forums. On an international level, governments have been discussing autonomous weapons at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) since 2014. The CCW is an international forum for regulating weapons that are deemed to be excessively harmful to combatants or civilians, such as land mines and blinding lasers. It includes 126 countries, and agreement requires the support of all participating governments, which is a recipe for dysfunction. Russia and the United States, in particular, have staunchly opposed a treaty banning autonomous weapons, arguing that existing rules in the law of war are sufficient to address any potential harms. Moscow’s and Washington’s opposition is fatal, as a ban on autonomous weapons is meaningless if it does not include the world’s major military powers. Recognizing the lack of progress, in 2023, proponents of a ban took the issue to the UN General Assembly, which does not require consensus. The First Committee of the General Assembly voted in November 2023 to task the UN secretary-general with preparing a report on autonomous weapons, which advocates of a ban hope will be the first step toward a mandate for negotiating a treaty.

The United States, meanwhile, has proposed an alternative approach to an outright ban, and in late 2023, it led over 40 countries in endorsing a political declaration on the need for the responsible use of military AI. As of February 2024, over 50 governments had joined the effort. Although the declaration does not ban autonomous weapons, it does provide general guidelines for using them, such as ensuring adequate testing to reduce the risk of accidents. Although it espouses valuable principles, the declaration lacks meaningful restrictions on the most dangerous forms of autonomous weapons, such as antipersonnel autonomous weapons and autonomy in nuclear operations.

BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

Instead of these stalled approaches, there are five complementary initiatives that countries could pursue to reduce the threat of autonomous weapons. First, governments could adopt a broad principle that establishes the minimum necessary human involvement in lethal decision-making. Such a principle could be adopted as a legally binding rule, either through the CCW or the General Assembly, or it could be a politically binding declaration. This standard should require that a human decision-maker has specific and sufficient information about the intended target, the weapon, the environment, and the context for the attack to determine whether an attack is lawful before it can be authorized. Countries could also agree that in order for human control to be meaningful, any use of autonomous weapons must be limited in geography, time, and the targets being attacked. Although such a principle would not ban all autonomous weapons—in fact, it would legitimize their use when following these rules—it would provide guardrails around how countries use autonomous weapons and ensure human involvement in the most critical decisions for authorizing attacks.

Second, governments could ban autonomous weapons that target people. In a world in which many combatants do not wear uniforms, even humans often struggle to accurately distinguish civilians from soldiers. Algorithms would have a much harder time concluding whether a person holding a rifle is a combatant or a farmer protecting his land. A machine is also less likely to be able to accurately and reliably recognize whether a soldier is genuinely trying to surrender or is only feigning surrender. As a consequence, antipersonnel autonomous weapons pose greater risks than those that target only vehicles or equipment, and the harm that these weapons could inflict far exceeds their military value. States could choose to ban them before their use becomes widespread.

Third, countries could promulgate best practices for testing military AI and autonomous systems to avoid accidents. A key aim of the 2023 U.S.-led political declaration is to ensure that military AI systems are safe by improving testing. Washington should go further, sharing with other countries the best practices for testing AI systems to improve their safety. This could be done in a way similar to how the United States shares information on its process for conducting legal weapons reviews, without releasing the content of specific reviews.

States could choose to ban antipersonnel autonomous weapons before their use becomes widespread.

Fourth, the United States should partner with the United Kingdom to persuade other nuclear powers to pursue an agreement ensuring strict human control over nuclear weapons. London is the right partner for this effort because of its policy of maintaining human control over its nuclear arsenal. Securing similar unilateral statements from other nuclear powers or, ideally, a multilateral agreement will be an important step toward ensuring that humanity’s most dangerous weapons remain in the control of humans. An agreement among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council would be a powerful statement. Washington should also press Beijing on this issue in the new U.S.-Chinese bilateral AI talks.

Finally, states could adopt uniform rules of the road for autonomous drones to reduce the risk of accidents. As countries field more drones in the air and at sea—and as these drones become increasingly autonomous—the chance that an accident or miscalculation could trigger an international incident becomes more likely. In 2019, for example, Iranian air defenses shot down a U.S. Global Hawk drone over the Strait of Hormuz. In March 2023, a Russian fighter jet interfered with a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone in the Black Sea, causing the drone to crash. Because these drones were controlled remotely, a human decided how to respond. But future air and sea drones could be autonomous. This would mean that if similar situations were to occur, the drone would autonomously take the actions it had been programmed to do. If it had been programmed to fire back, it would do so, potentially escalating an international incident without any deliberate human decision to do so. Governments must ensure that any autonomous behaviors are consistent with human intent. The 1972 U.S.-Soviet Incidents at Sea Agreement helped reduce the number of unplanned incidents between the U.S. and Soviet navies during the Cold War. A similar autonomous incidents agreement would help countries navigate the risks of dueling autonomous systems deployed in contested areas and avoid unplanned and unwanted incidents.

These initiatives to deal with the risks of autonomous weapons could be pursued together or separately, through different channels and over different timelines. The CCW, the General Assembly, the U.S.-led political declaration initiative, the Security Council, U.S.-Chinese bilateral dialogue, and other multilateral forums are all spaces for global cooperation that should be considered. Washington’s collaboration with Beijing will be particularly important. Agreement between the United States and China, as the world’s leading military, economic, and technological superpowers, will be a difficult yet critical step forward in managing the risks of autonomous weapons.

WATCH OUT

Autonomous weapons are coming. Attempts to ban them entirely, although well meaning, are likely futile. Their military value is simply too great. Yet countries have a choice about how autonomous weapons will be used. Without effective restrictions, autonomous weapons will reduce human control over warfare, pose increased danger to civilians and combatants, and undermine international stability. Steps must be urgently taken to address these weapons’ worst dangers. Doing so will require moving beyond the current simplistic and misleading choice between a ban on all autonomous weapons and no restrictions at all.

Autonomous weapons are an early test of humanity’s ability to deal with weaponized AI, more dangerous forms of which are coming. Cutting-edge AI systems have demonstrated the ability to aid in the development of cyberweapons and chemical and biological weapons. Global cooperation is urgently needed to govern their improvement, limit their proliferation, and guard against their potential use. Reaching international agreement on autonomous weapons is critical for addressing their harms and laying the foundation for collaboration on future, even more consequential AI dangers.

PAUL SCHARRE is Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security and the author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
MORE BY PAUL SCHARRE

Foreign Affairs · by Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence · February 29, 2024

12. French president raised the prospect of Western troops in Ukraine. What was he thinking?

French president raised the prospect of Western troops in Ukraine. What was he thinking?

BY SYLVIE CORBET

Updated 12:04 AM EST, March 1, 2024

AP · March 1, 2024

threatened to shoot down

SYLVIE CORBET

Corbet is an Associated Press reporter based in Paris. She covers French politics, diplomacy and defense as well as gender issues and breaking news.

twitter

AP · March 1, 2024

13. U.S. Limits Sales of Americans’ Personal Data to China, Other Adversaries

U.S. Limits Sales of Americans’ Personal Data to China, Other Adversaries

Biden signs an executive order aimed at restricting data brokers’ ability to sell sensitive information overseas

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-to-limit-sales-of-americans-personal-data-to-china-other-adversaries-e82a3ca5?mod=Searchresults_pos2&page=1

By Dustin Volz

and Lingling Wei

Updated Feb. 28, 2024 7:48 pm ET

President Biden’s executive order bars classes of Americans’ data from being sold to ‘countries of concern.’ PHOTO: BONNIE CASH/PRESS POOL

WASHINGTON—President Biden limited sales of some categories of sensitive U.S. data to China and other adversarial countries in a bid to stymie the covert flow of rich streams of Americans’ personal information overseas.

Wednesday’s action, administration officials said, is designed to counter a growing national security risk posed by the often-revealing data generated by mobile apps, smartwatches, car sensors and other ubiquitous digital devices. That data can be repurposed and weaponized as a means of intelligence collection by foreign spy agencies. In some cases, adversaries including China and Russia are leveraging these data sets to support hacking missions, espionage and blackmail, the officials said.

“Even as the U.S. government blocks illicit backchannel activity like computer hacking, our current policies and laws leave open access to vast amounts of Americans’ sensitive personal data,” a senior administration official said during a press briefing Tuesday. “Buying data through data brokers is currently legal in the United States, and that reflects a gap in our national security tool kit that we’re working to fill.”

Under a new executive order, specific classes of Americans’ sensitive data, including genomic, biometric, personal health, geolocation, financial and certain types of personal identifiers, will generally be barred from being sold or transferred in vast tranches to “countries of concern” or vendors known to supply data to them. The countries of concern are China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, and have a record of misusing data on Americans, an official said.

Those countries can also use personal and government-related data to intimidate people such as activists and marginalized communities, Biden’s executive order says. Additionally, it says, countries of concern can use the data ”to develop AI capabilities and algorithms…to the detriment of United States national security.’’

Specifically, the order tasks the Justice Department with issuing regulations creating protections for Americans’ personal data and establishing greater restrictions on certain government-related data such as geolocation indicators on sensitive government facilities or military members. It directs other agencies to ensure contracts aren’t awarded to companies that could transfer data to the countries of concern.

With the executive order, some analysts say, Washington is trying to play catch-up to Beijing, which in recent years has put in place a complex web of laws and regulations restricting data from flowing out of China’s borders.

Last year, the U.S. intelligence community issued a groundbreaking report acknowledging that the vast amount of Americans’ personal data available for sale, which are often bought and repackaged by data brokers and then resold through a labyrinthine ecosystem of vendors and resellers, has provided a valuable stream of intelligence for the U.S. government and adversaries alike. The report, commissioned by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, admitted that such streams created significant threats to privacy, and had rapidly grown in scale such that they had begun to replicate the results of intrusive surveillance techniques, such as hacking, that are typically more targeted.

A report commissioned by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines found that Americans’ personal data provided intelligence for the U.S. government and its adversaries. PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The executive order is notably silent on the purchasing of commercially available data sets by the U.S. government, despite the issue attracting some bipartisan scrutiny in Congress. Asked about the omission, an administration official said the order was focused on “inappropriate access and use from foreign governments” while preserving legitimate cross-border data flows.

“I would not compare the way that our government uses data to the way that countries of concern are using data,” the official said.

Many U.S. companies operating in China have had to comply with the country’s ever-more-stringent policy on data security. For instance,

Tesla must retain all digital records gathered from local customers inside the country, and the company must ask authorities for approval before updating certain software on cars in China. Biden’s executive order isn’t intended to force companies to keep data within the U.S., an administration official said.Now, with foreign capital fleeing amid a broad economic downturn, Beijing is realizing it might have gone too far in restricting data flows and is trying to take some steps to make it easier for foreign companies to transfer data out of the country, analysts said. However, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s emphasis on national security means that the overall data-security regime is unlikely to change in a meaningful way.

The Biden administration is seeking to tread more lightly. Officials said that several carve-outs within the order exist to ensure that it doesn’t trigger broader trade or economic issues, and acknowledged an extensive, legalistic process for determining the exact contours of what activity would be prohibited completely or limited.

Still, a leading technology industry group expressed concern. Aaron Cooper, senior vice president of

BSA, which represents tech firms such as Microsoft and IBM, praised the focus on national security risks but said the order could ensnare legitimate commercial and research activity and “may produce significant unintended consequences” inhibiting cross-border data exchange.“Policymakers worldwide should exercise caution before introducing restrictions that could have a wide-ranging impact across different industries,” he said.

It would likely be difficult for the U.S. government to strictly enforce prohibitions laid out in the order, in part because of the abundance of personal data, according to data security lawyers and experts. Administration officials said the efforts to police sales will largely be voluntary and include advisory opinions and guidance, but that deliberate or egregious violations can be subject to punitive responses, likening it to efforts to enforce sanctions.

Write to Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com and Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 29, 2024, print edition as 'Biden Acts to Shield Data From Foreign Adversaries'.

14. Why More American Weapons Will Soon Be Made Outside America

What does this say about the US defense industrial base?

Excerpts:

So while the Pentagon waits for changes to Cold War-era laws that prioritize protecting — not sharing — military technology, and as the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts push U.S. factories to their limits, officials are leading a worldwide campaign to make more American weapons with friendly nations.

Poland, Japan and India are a few of the countries in various phases of production partnerships. But Australia, the closest of U.S. allies, having fought alongside Americans in every conflict since World War I, has gone further and faster with the Defense Department and U.S. contractors like Lockheed Martin.

Together, they are testing a more collective approach that demands greater trust, investments in the billions of dollars, and cross-continental sharing of sensitive technology for American weapons systems, along with complex production and testing methods.

...

In the Pentagon and Australian vision of the future, Australia and other U.S. partners will soon be the nodes of a global supply chain, producing interchangeable weapons with greater ramp-up capacity in more places where extra firepower could be needed.

Why More American Weapons Will Soon Be Made Outside America

With the wars in Ukraine and Gaza straining U.S. arsenals, Washington is seeking to expand production with global partners like Australia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/world/australia/us-weapons-production.html

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Ammunition being made at the Benalla munitions factory in rural Australia.CreditCredit...By Matthew Abbott

By Damien Cave

Reporting from Mulwala, Benalla and Orchard Hills, Australia

March 1, 2024, 5:03 a.m. ET

On the grassy plains of Australia’s vast interior, an industrial evolution in the American war machine is gathering momentum. In munitions factories with room to grow, Australia is on the verge of producing heaps of artillery shells and thousands of guided missiles in partnership with American companies.

Made to Pentagon specifications, the weapons will be no different from those built in the United States, and only some of what rolls off the line will stay in Australia. The rest are intended to help replenish U.S. stockpiles or be sold to American partners in an era of grinding ground wars and threats from major powers.

It is all part of an Australian push to essentially become the 51st state for defense production, an ambitious vision that is now taking shape with a giant yellow mixer for explosives and a lightning-protected workshop for assembling missiles known as GMLRS — or “gimmlers.”

“We’re not buying a commodity, we’re investing in an enterprise, said Brig. Andrew Langford, the Australian director general responsible for domestic manufacturing of guided weapons and explosives. “And that’s where it’s really novel.”

Image

The Benalla munitions factory makes a variety of ordnance, including artillery shells and large bombs.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

The embrace of joint production reflects a wider awakening in Washington and other capitals: The United States by itself cannot make enough of the weapons needed for protracted warfare and deterrence. Vulnerable partners like Taiwan are already facing delayed orders for American equipment even as China’s military capabilities continue to grow.

So while the Pentagon waits for changes to Cold War-era laws that prioritize protecting — not sharing — military technology, and as the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts push U.S. factories to their limits, officials are leading a worldwide campaign to make more American weapons with friendly nations.

Poland, Japan and India are a few of the countries in various phases of production partnerships. But Australia, the closest of U.S. allies, having fought alongside Americans in every conflict since World War I, has gone further and faster with the Defense Department and U.S. contractors like Lockheed Martin.

Together, they are testing a more collective approach that demands greater trust, investments in the billions of dollars, and cross-continental sharing of sensitive technology for American weapons systems, along with complex production and testing methods.

The Benalla munitions factory is set on the grassy plains of Australia’s vast interior, with room to grow.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

“We’re really pleased at the momentum and speed we’re generating with Australia,” said Bill LaPlante, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. “Efforts like these act as a kind of blueprint for additional U.S. co-development, co-production and co-sustainment agreements around the world.”For Australia, a distant island of 26 million people, going first adds opportunity and stress.

More on U.S. Armed Forces

A Strategic Change: The U.S. Army is cutting 24,000 positions as the Pentagon continues to shift its priority to countering Chinese and Russian military might after two decades of focusing on the fight against terrorism.
Lloyd Austin’s Health: The Pentagon’s internal review faulted no one for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to tell President Biden and other senior leaders about his hospitalization in January for prostate cancer surgery complications.
A Simple Honor: More than a century ago, 110 Black soldiers were wrongfully convicted of murder and mutiny, and 19 were hanged. Now, 17 of the executed servicemen are being honored with new headstones.
A New U.S. Satellite Push: The Pentagon is in the early stages of a program to put constellations of satellites into orbit to counter space-based threats from Russia and China.

At a time when China’s military keeps leaping forward, with seemingly endless production lines for warships and missiles, Australia’s push into joint production could make the country more of a “porcupine,” with sharper defenses that would deter China or another adversary. It could also create a much bigger weapons export industry with a U.S. stamp of approval — Australian officials have been lobbying for a broad exemption to military export laws, a status only Canada has now.

“We are there to supplement, not supplant, the American industrial base,” said Pat Conroy, Australia’s minister for defense industry, who recently returned from a trip to Washington. “They should see this as an opportunity for us to be a second supply line.”

The risk is that the United States loses interest. Some Australian officials worry that their costly bet on American cooperation — which accelerated in 2021 with plans for nuclear-propelled submarines — could be endangered by another isolationist Trump presidency, or simply by an objection from a member of Congress who sees foreign factories as a threat to American jobs.

Imag

Bombs for the Australian Air Force are also made at the Benalla munitions factory.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

Image

Factory staff are not allowed to carry phones or other electronics into sensitive areas.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

Analysts argue that weapons co-production will deliver the benefit of greater deterrence only if the manufacturing process advances with alacrity in Australia and around the region.

“There is strength in numbers,” said Charles Edel, the Australia chair and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “but only if those numbers materialize rapidly and in sufficient quantity to give Beijing pause.”

Sign up for the Australia Letter Newsletter Conversation starters about Australia and insight on the global stories that matter most, sent weekly by the Times’s Australia bureau. Plus: heaps of local recommendations. Get it sent to your inbox.

Mr. LaPlante stressed that joint production agreements signaled a long-term commitment, with multiyear contracts for munitions. In Australia, it’s something of a revival: During World War II, the island hosted American troops and served as a military supply center.

That legacy can still be found at a factory in Mulwala, a small town a few hundred miles from Australia’s eastern coast where the United States shipped over the machinery for making weapons propellants in the 1940s to support Allied operations in the Pacific.

Cartridges from Benalla go to the Australian military and other defense forces in the region.CreditCredit...By Matthew Abbott

One of the original buildings, with the musty smell of a museum, has photos on the walls from that era, but the rest of the complex points to the future.

Mulwala is a hub of Australia’s public-private explosives industry. It’s where the volatile materials that fill artillery, bombs and rifle rounds are made in heavy concrete buildings set far apart from each other and protected with hair-trigger alarms and wet floors to minimize static electricity.

Most of the 2,500-acre site is managed by Thales, a multinational defense contractor, which also oversees munition production at a second location nearby in Benalla. Both sit on government land with a large pastoral buffer that could allow for expansion during what Australian officials described as the “crawl, walk, run” process of collaborative manufacturing.

First, the United States and Australia are finalizing joint production of unguided 155-millimeter artillery shells, which Pentagon officials described as “an early win.”

Next, in the coming months, Lockheed Martin will start assembling GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) with American components at a location where other missiles are maintained, ramping up from a few units to a few hundred.

Image

Thick concrete and natural barriers are standard at Australia’s munitions factories.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

Image

Emergency slides are attached to many of the buildings that contain heavy explosives.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

And as walking turns to running, Australia expects to be producing around 3,000 GMLRS per year with at least some local parts — most likely those that rely on “energetics,” a term that includes the explosives that are used to fly a missile and blow up its target.

“The intellectual knowledge is here,” said Col. Tony Watson, who is leading a program to upgrade government factories at Mulwala and Benalla. “So it’s easy to grow and expand.”

Production, by all accounts, will increase with caution. James Heading, director of programs for Lockheed Martin Australia’s missiles and fire control division, said that coordinating safety procedures for dangerous liquids, differences in voltage and other issues had already required considerable back and forth.

He added, however, that Pentagon approvals for Australia no often take weeks rather than months or years — and that the hurdles are worth overcoming primarily because the end products are in demand.

Video

Making explosives involves mixing, drying and packing volatile chemicals. Much of the production is done remotely from control rooms to minimize danger.CreditCredit...By Matthew Abbott

GMLRS are launched from tubes on trucks known as HIMARS, and they can hit targets 50 miles away with 200 pounds of explosives using GPS for precise strikes.

Last year, the United States supplied Ukraine with at least 20 HIMARS systems, along with GMLRS, and they rapidly shifted momentum in the conflict.

Taiwan has ordered at least 29 HIMARS launchers since 2020, adding another potential customer for Australia. Israel makes its own rocket systems, but American and Australian officials have discussed potential sales to allies in Europe.

GMLRS, an established, relatively straightforward product, wo be what the Australians call a “pipe cleaner” — it will help clear out problems with joint production, paving the way for more missile and munition manufacturing.

In the Pentagon and Australian vision of the future, Australia and other U.S. partners will soon be the nodes of a global supply chain, producing interchangeable weapons with greater ramp-up capacity in more places where extra firepower could be needed.

Image

New explosives mixers will soon be installed at the Mulwala explosives factory, with a goal of doubling capacity for missiles co-production.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

The weapons would be at least partly American. They just won’t have all come from America — and that may make avoiding a war or fighting one a lot easier.

“The West has a great opportunity to harness its collective industrial base, to ensure we maintain a rules-based global order,” said Air Marshal Leon Phillips, Australia’s most senior military official in charge of guided weapons and explosive ordnance. “We’re moving toward a just-in-case model, and away from just-in-time.”

Damien Cave is an international correspondent for The Times, covering the Indo-Pacific region. He is based in Sydney, Australia. More about Damien Cave

15. Americans fractured along party lines on Ukraine military funding: Survey

A measure of effectiveness for Russia propaganda/disinformation/active measures?

Americans fractured along party lines on Ukraine military funding: Survey

BY LAUREN SFORZA - 02/29/24 9:26 AM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4497062-americans-fractured-along-party-lines-on-ukraine-aid-survey/?utm

Americans are split along party lines on whether they support additional funding for Ukraine, as Congress remains in a standstill over the issue, according to a poll released Thursday.

The survey, published by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that overall, 37 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is spending too much money on aid to Ukraine. Roughly 33 percent said the amount of aid was “about right,” and 27 percent said it was too little.

As Republican lawmakers continue to push back on approving more aid to Ukraine, arguing that U.S. border security must come first, the partisan divide has seemingly become wider.

Fifty-five percent of Republicans said the U.S. was sending too much aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia, which recently surpassed the two-year mark. Just under 30 percent of Republicans said the aid is about right, and 14 percent said it was too little.

Democrats were more likely to support continued aid, with 44 percent saying the U.S. has sent too little. Roughly 38 percent said It was about right, and 17 percent said It was too much, per the survey.

The poll also found that Democrats were more likely to see it as a priority for the U.S. to help stop Russia from gaining more territory in Ukraine and to help regain what has already been lost.

Fifty-eight percent of Democrats said it was extremely or very important for the U.S. to provide military aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, while just 24 percent of Republicans said the same. Thirty-six percent of Republicans said it was not too important or not important at all that the U.S. provide assistance.

The top four congressional leaders met with President Biden on Tuesday to discuss Ukraine aid. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) each characterized the meeting as “intense.”

Schumer and the White House have been urging Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to allow the Ukraine aid bill — passed in a predawn vote in the Senate earlier this month — to receive a vote on the House floor. Johnson has pushed back on the package because it does not include border security provisions.

A bipartisan Senate border security deal, which included aid for Ukraine and Israel, was blocked by Senate Republicans and ultimately collapsed in early February, after Johnson said it was “dead on arrival” in the House. Now, lawmakers and the White House are scrambling to figure out how to send more aid to Ukraine.

The AP-NORC poll was conducted Feb. 13-18 among 1,161 adults and has a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.

16. Senate confirms Paparo as new INDO-PACOM commander

But we have not heard anything about Korea. WIll General LaCamera be extended?

Senate confirms Paparo as new INDO-PACOM commander

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · February 29, 2024

Senators on Wednesday confirmed Adm. Samuel Paparo as the next leader of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, putting the longtime naval officer in charge of American military strategy and operations for the West Pacific combatant command.

Paparo’s confirmation was advanced by a voice vote without any objections late Wednesday evening, alongside 25 other senior military promotions. The chamber also confirmed Aprille Joy Ericsson as assistant secretary of defense within the Department of Defense’s research office in a voice vote.

Paparo will replace Adm. John Aquilino, who has served in the INDOPACOM role since April 2021. Paparo currently serves as commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, and was nominated for the new role last August.

How Adm. Paparo will lead the US military in the Indo-Pacific

While the Pentagon suggested Paparo as the Navy's next chief of operations, tapping him for combatant command will keep his skill sets in the West Pacific.

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 1, Paparo listed China, Russia and North Korea as the most pressing threats to U.S. military interests in the Pacific.

“If confirmed, I will ensure that we maintain the overmatch that preserves stability today, tomorrow, next week and for the decades to come,” he said.

Paparo is the son of an enlisted Marine and the grandson of an enlisted sailor who fought in World War II, according to his command biography. The Pennsylvania native has served in a variety of leadership roles during his 37-year military career.

A TOPGUN graduate, Paparo has logged more than 6,000 hours flying the F-14 Tomcat, the F-15 Eagle and the F/A-18 Super Hornet and has 1,100 carrier landings under his belt. As a fighter pilot, he took out a surface-to-air missile site in Kandahar during the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

He was one of hundreds of military leaders whose promotions and confirmations were held up for months last year after Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., staged a protest over the Defense Department’s abortion access policies.

Tuberville dropped those holds in December, but Paparo’s confirmation took several more weeks because of lingering background work by the Senate committee.

INDOPACOM oversees more than 380,000 American servicemembers stationed overseas and is responsible for all U.S. military activities in 36 nations.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

17. In South Korea, Del Toro courts major shipbuilders to set up shop in US

In South Korea, Del Toro courts major shipbuilders to set up shop in US - Breaking Defense

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro in public has frequently referenced potential subsidies for foreign shipbuilders who establish stateside operations.

breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · February 29, 2024

US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro walks with officials from HD Hyundai Heavy Industries. (Photo courtesy of US Navy.)

WASHINGTON — During a recent trip to South Korea, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro pitched two of the country’s major shipbuilders to potentially set up shop stateside, according to statement from Del Toro’s office.

“In each of these engagements, I brought to the table a simple, yet profound opportunity: invest in America. I was enormously gratified by the strong interest expressed by the leaders of each of these world-class shipbuilders in establishing U.S. subsidiaries and investing in shipyards in the United States,” Del Toro said in a statement published Wednesday night.

During the trip, the secretary met with executives from and toured the shipyards of Hanwha Ocean and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries. The discussions “centered on attracting Korean investment in integrated commercial and naval shipbuilding facilities in the United States,” according to the statement.

The visit is part of an initiative the secretary launched in September, which he calls “a new maritime statecraft,” part of which focuses on attracting shipbuilders from allied countries to invest in the United States’ defense industrial base by establishing shipyards stateside.

In recent public remarks at events such as Surface Navy Association and West, Del Toro has referenced rarely-used authorities that he and the secretary of transportation hold that allow them to subsidize certain shipbuilders if a vessel has dual-use as a commercial and military vessel.

“If a ship, a commercial vessel that has dual military use or purpose, costs $100 million here in the US, but it costs $80 million overseas, then we could subsidize that shipbuilder here in the US with an additional $20 million and allow them to build that ship here in the US as opposed to overseas,” he told reporters at SNA.

The new statement from Del Toro refers to those authorities again, citing numerous vacant, but intact shipyards scattered throughout the US, which he called “ripe” for “redevelopment as dual-use construction facilities.”

Both Hanwha and HD Hyundai, two of South Korea’s biggest shipbuilders, have previously expressed interest in expanding to North America. Representatives from the companies joined South Korean government officials in November 2023 on a trip to several major US yards, Naval News reported.

In a brief post on LinkedIn reacting to news reports of Del Toro’s visit, a page associated with HD Hyundai wrote, “We would become a shipbuilder that contributes not only to the development of the RoK Navy and the Philippine Navy, but also to the advancement of the U.S. Navy fleet.”

Although the US has several dozen shipbuilders of varying sizes scattered throughout the country, the Navy heavily relies on a handful of the biggest primes to build its fleet. Notably, two of those builders, Austal USA and Fincantieri Marinette Marine, are subsidiaries themselves of foreign-owned companies based in Australia and Italy, respectively.

“As I saw firsthand during my shipyard visits in Korea this week, Hanwha and Hyundai set the global industry standard,” Del Toro said in his statement. “I could not be more excited at the prospect of these companies bringing their expertise, their technology, and their cutting-edge best practices to American shores. As world class leaders in the global shipbuilding business, they are poised to energize the U.S. shipbuilding marketplace with fresh competition, renowned innovation and unrivaled industrial capacity.”

breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · February 29, 2024

18. How to Respond to China’s Global Security Initiative

Conclusion:

Even casual observers are likely familiar with the triumphalism of Chinese politics in the Xi era. The glorification of Xi and China’s mixed record during his tenure is increasingly out of step with the experiences of many ordinary Chinese citizens. Nevertheless, it cannot be assumed that Xi will abandon his ambitious foreign policy due to domestic challenges. Long-time China-watcher Bill Bishop noted that the recent Foreign Affairs Work Conference conveys the impression that the current leadership is “very confident” in the trajectory of Chinese diplomacy with little consideration of the risks involved. One such danger is that China, in cooperation with Russia and a host of like-minded authoritarian partners in the Global South, will prove strong enough to weaken the U.S.-led international security order, but not powerful enough to replace it with a viable alternative. Consequently, China’s drive for a “community with a shared future for mankind” is likely to lead not to the harmonious future conjured up by Xi, but to the very entrenchment of bloc politics that Beijing so often rails against.

As Washington becomes increasingly concerned with Beijing’s efforts to overhaul the international order, the United States may be tempted to re-orient its foreign policy to focus on countering China in the Global South. Such a move, however, would play into Beijing’s depiction of a capricious but fading hegemon guided by an anachronistic “Cold War mentality.” But Washington can still strike a balance to engage effectively. This means recognizing that even though the currency of its value-based diplomacy in the Global South is significantly degraded, many countries remain interested in practical cooperation with the United States to address specific challenges.

How to Respond to China’s Global Security Initiative - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by John S. Van Oudenaren · March 1, 2024

Chinese leader Xi Jinping closed his annual New Year’s address with a pledge to build a “community with a shared future for mankind” and “make the world a better place for all.” A great deal hinges on whether countries in the Global South believe him.

Xi’s language might be dismissed as a rhetorical flourish at the end of a speech noted for reiterating Beijing’s longstanding insistence that Taiwan will “surely be reunified” with China. However, the concept of a “community with a shared future for mankind” (人类命运共同体) is central to Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, the “fundamental guideline” for China’s foreign policy. In the Chinese system, the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on everything from “Ecological Civilization” to “Strengthening the Military” derives from Xi’s status as core leader and narrator of the “China story.” Consequently, Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, with its promise of a harmonious Sinocentric future, is held out as a lodestar for the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese nation to navigate the current period of global upheaval characterized by “changes unseen in a century.” In practice, this involves realizing a post-American international order in which China, in its capacity as self-appointed champion of the Global South, plays a central role. In his U.N. General Assembly address last September, Vice President Han Zheng emphasized that “China is a natural member of the Global South” and “as the largest developing country, it breathes the same breath with other developing countries and shares the same future with them.”

Become a Member

As Beijing grapples with lean economic times and a strategic environment in which the United States retains enduring advantages, Chinese diplomacy increasingly caters to the worldviews of illiberal states in the developing world. This follows the thinking of leading Chinese international relations scholar Yan Xuetong, who posits that a weaker rising power can overtake a stronger established power if it delineates a moral worldview with greater currency in the international community. In its efforts to cast itself as a force for global good, Beijing consistently juxtaposes its commitment to “true multilateralism” with the “selective multilateralism” it ascribes to the United States and its allies. The implicit goal is not multilateralism per se but rolling back what China (and Russia) view as undue American “hegemony” to advance a multipolar world.

In addition to boosting China’s say in the United Nations and other established international bodies, Beijing promotes an ever-expanding array of global and regional “initiatives.” The largest of these efforts are the Belt and Road Initiative and the “Three Major [Global] initiatives” (三大倡议) announced by Xi from late 2021 through early 2023, comprised of the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative. The effort to establish China as a global security leader is where Beijing’s formula of high-intensity diplomatic engagement, Sinocentric multilateralism, and appealing to the values of likeminded states in the Global South will be most tested.

While Washington is increasingly concerned with the China challenge, the Biden administration has hitherto avoided the temptation to replicate its focus on competition with China in the Indo-Pacific region to the Global South at large. Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink recently stressed that the U.S. approach to the Global South is not predicated on countering China but based on advancing the vision of “a world where rules, norms and institutions prevail over outdated and dangerous concepts of might making right.”

As many countries are leery of being compelled to “choose sides” in the ongoing U.S.-Chinese geostrategic rivalry, Washington is correct to focus on developing relationships with states in the Global South in their own right. Indeed, many states in Africa, Asia, and the Americas continue to derive immense value from cooperating with the United States to address shared challenges. However, Washington should also grapple with the reality that many countries in the Global South are deeply suspicious of what they see as America’s selective application of the “rules-based international order.” For many such countries, China’s approach connotes greater respect for cultural diversity and collective, versus individual, advancement. Consequently, efforts by Washington to highlight China’s various international initiatives as “Trojan horses” for Chinese influence risk backfiring by playing into Beijing’s depiction of the United States as a decaying imperial power wedded to sustaining its purported “military hegemony” (美国军事霸权) at all costs. In order to avoid this, Washington should modulate its approach towards the Global South, focusing more on specific areas of mutually beneficial cooperation.

Xi Stays the Course

Under Xi, the Chinese Communist Party has committed itself to building “China into a great modern socialist country” that leads the world in “composite national strength and international influence” by mid-century. Enduring asymmetries between the United States and China in key areas, however, present a major roadblock to achieving this goal. While China has made major military modernization progress, these efforts are largely concentrated on developing the capacity to fight and win “informationized local wars” on China’s periphery rather than advancing the People’s Liberation Army’s nascent global power-projection capability. The economic discrepancy also remains sizeable. In late January, the gap between the respective valuations of the U.S. and Chinese stock markets hit $38 trillion, an all-time record. As the Chinese tax system relies on investment-driven growth, this further strains the central government’s already limited fiscal capacity. Nevertheless, a key indicator that Xi is determined to resource his ambitious international agenda in a constrained fiscal situation is that, thus far, tradeoffs have come at the expense of domestic rather than foreign policy budgets. In China’s 2023 central government budget, spending flatlined or was cut in many areas, from rural and urban development to energy and environment, but outlays for defense and diplomacy increased by 7.2 and 12 percent, respectively.

Xi is likely to proceed with renewed confidence in the international arena this year. Following purges of the foreign ministry and military, the core leader will turn to new field commanders to marshal the civilian and military envoys he has called on to forge a “diplomatic iron army.” In late December, former Navy chief Dong Jun was appointed defense minister, a rank-and-file Central Military Commission role whose primary responsibility is liaising with foreign militaries. A new foreign minister, likely Liu Jianchao, currently director of the International Liaison Department, will be officially appointed early this year.

Nebulous by Design

The U.S. Department of Defense’s annual report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China assesses that Chinese officials have “yet to clearly define how [the Global Security Initiative] would actually advance the vague security goals it espouses, such as safeguarding ‘comprehensive’ security and protecting territorial integrity” and notes that international receptivity to both Global Development Initiative and Global Security Initiative has been “mixed.” The report states that while “[Global Development Initiative’s] links to [the Belt and Road Initiative] have made the initiative more attractive to developing countries,” the Global Security Initiative has gained less traction due to its “vagueness and implicit criticisms of the United States.” However, at this early stage, the nebulousness of the Global Security Initiative may be more of a feature than a bug. The initiative’s loose, non-binding structure facilitates engagement with a Chinese-led security framework with no commitment and minimal cost to the involved countries. Indeed, immediately after Xi announced the Global Security Initiative in April 2022, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed that China “welcomes all countries” to participate. Chinese public diplomacy has sought to contrast the “true multilateralism” practiced by Beijing with Washington’s “Cold War mentality” (冷战思维) that drives the United Statesto organize exclusive “small cliques” (小圈子) such as the Quad and AUKUS in an effort to contain China.

China is promoting its Global Security Initiative as an alternative to U.S. security leadership based on confidence in its greater “moral appeal” to like-minded states in the Global South. The initiative is intended to signal China’s willingness to strengthen cooperation with other nations to manage a tumultuous international security environment and propagate the notion that solutions to pressing global challenges run through Beijing rather than Washington. The State Council Information Office’s recent white paper, “A Global Community of Shared Future: China’s Proposal and Actions,” states that as a “responsible major country,” China seeks to address flashpoints such as the Korean Peninsula, the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and Afghanistan. The paper cites China’s role in facilitating the normalization of relations between long-time rivals in the Middle East, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as a major early success in these efforts.

Chinese analysts generally assume that Western countries are suspicious of the Global Security Initiative. For example, in an article on “Global Security Initiative in the Eyes of Others and their Implications for China,” Li Yan, deputy director of the Institute of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (a think tank within the Ministry of State Security), notes the “skepticism” of Western analysts towards the initiative. Li ascribes this suspicion to “anti-China forces” that cast the initiative as a tool by which China seeks to “subvert the international order.” Andrey Kortunov, director general of the state-sponsored Russian International Affairs Council, noted in a recent editorial that the Global Security Initiative was predictably “brushed off by the Western political mainstream as yet another manifestation of the Chinese ‘charm offensive’ in the Global South with very little substance.”

But it is this lack of substance, including the lack of a clear membership structure and veiled yet evident indictment of Pax Americana, that actually facilitates engagement. The initiative’s loose, non-binding structure allows states in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to become involved in a parallel Chinese security framework with minimal trade-offs. Countries that have expressed positive sentiments toward the Global Security Initiative include several authoritarian or semi-authoritarian states such as Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. All of these states have significant interests in sustaining security cooperation with the United States, but are more ideologically simpatico with China. As the Global Security Initiative is a key element of Chinese diplomacy that is important to Beijing, but generally not regarded as particularly significant by Washington, these countries are able to bolster their ties to China without running afoul of the United States. In essence, the initiative facilitates the predilection of states to hedge on U.S.-Chinese strategic competition.

In a press conference on the Global Security Initiative’s one-year anniversary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin stated that over 80 countries “have expressed appreciation and support” for the initiative, reflecting the vaguely positive but non-committal responses of many states. For example, during a bilateral between Central Military Commission Chairman Zhang Youxia and Mongolian Minister of Defense Gursed Saikhanbayar, the Mongolian side stated it “resolutely supports” the Global Security Initiative. In their joint communiqué issued at the Third Belt and Road Forum last October, China and Thailand agreed to “explore possible cooperation” through the Three Initiatives. During Xi’s mid-December state visit to Hanoi, Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong stressed that Vietnam is eager to “work with China to build a community with a shared future” and affirmed support for the global initiatives introduced by Xi. In its December 2022 joint statement with China, Saudi Arabia expressed support for the Global Development Initiative, while stating its (more non-committal) “appreciation” for Global Security Initiative.

The willingness of U.S. allies and partners to lend rhetorical backing to the Global Security Initiative highlights a paradox. Many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that rely on U.S. support to address pressing security challenges are also more receptive to China’s framework for global politics predicated on each state’s right to “choose its own development path” (including illiberal ones) than America’s current “democracy versus autocracy” approach. As a result, the Global Security Initiative challenges Washington to formulate a response to the emergence of an alternative, albeit still largely aspirational, China-led international security model centered in the Global South.

America’s Dilemma

The stresses that success in strategic competition with China, Russia and other revisionist powers necessitates leveraging an “unparalleled and unprecedented network of alliances and partnerships” with “many common values and a common interest in defending the stable and open international system.” However, China’s effort to promote itself as an international security leader is also based on appealing to the values of countries in the Global South, particularly those that have strained relations with Washington. In his April 2022 Boao Forum speech introducing the Global Security Initiative, Xi laid out “six commitments” (六个坚持) including, “respecting the sovereignty, territorial integrity of all countries, upholding non-interference and respecting the independent choices of development paths and social systems made by people in different countries,” and “taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously, including upholding the indivisible security principle.” In practice, this means stronger powers are entitled to regional spheres of influence, as any move by a neighbor to strengthen ties with an external power could be seen as harming the larger state’s “legitimate security concerns” This can be seen in Russia’s interpretation of the indivisible security principle also invoked by Xi as a core value of the Global Security Initiative. Nevertheless, the notion that stronger states should be afforded a degree of deference in their immediate neighborhoods may appeal to partners, especially middle powers in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, who see U.S. democracy promotion, human rights advocacy, and even military intervention as threats.

State media consistently contrasts China’s self-portrayed inclusive security approach with America’s “hegemonic playbook,” particularly on issues where Washington is at odds with a majority of global opinion like the Gaza conflict. As a result, calling out the Global Security Initiative as a Trojan horse for China to enhance its power and influence could backfire by reinforcing Beijing’s efforts to cast the United States as a decaying hegemon mired in a “zero-sum game” approach to international politics. However, Washington would also be misguided to dismiss the initiative as mere propaganda. Indeed, many countries’ wait-and-see attitudes may stem more from concerns about China’s limited staying power rather than from any great attachment to U.S. global leadership. As the People’s Liberation Army’s expeditionary capabilities improve and its overseas presence expands, China’s ability to act as a credible security provider through the Global Security Initiative may also improve.

Conclusion

Even casual observers are likely familiar with the triumphalism of Chinese politics in the Xi era. The glorification of Xi and China’s mixed record during his tenure is increasingly out of step with the experiences of many ordinary Chinese citizens. Nevertheless, it cannot be assumed that Xi will abandon his ambitious foreign policy due to domestic challenges. Long-time China-watcher Bill Bishop noted that the recent Foreign Affairs Work Conference conveys the impression that the current leadership is “very confident” in the trajectory of Chinese diplomacy with little consideration of the risks involved. One such danger is that China, in cooperation with Russia and a host of like-minded authoritarian partners in the Global South, will prove strong enough to weaken the U.S.-led international security order, but not powerful enough to replace it with a viable alternative. Consequently, China’s drive for a “community with a shared future for mankind” is likely to lead not to the harmonious future conjured up by Xi, but to the very entrenchment of bloc politics that Beijing so often rails against.

As Washington becomes increasingly concerned with Beijing’s efforts to overhaul the international order, the United States may be tempted to re-orient its foreign policy to focus on countering China in the Global South. Such a move, however, would play into Beijing’s depiction of a capricious but fading hegemon guided by an anachronistic “Cold War mentality.” But Washington can still strike a balance to engage effectively. This means recognizing that even though the currency of its value-based diplomacy in the Global South is significantly degraded, many countries remain interested in practical cooperation with the United States to address specific challenges.

[wotr_membes_button]

John S. Van Oudenaren is an independent analyst. He was previously editor of China Brief at the Jamestown Foundation and has also held positions at the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Asia Society Policy Institute, and the U.S. National Defense University.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by John S. Van Oudenaren · March 1, 2024

19. Positioning, Training, and Integration: A Vision of Transformation in Contact for the US Army in the Pacific

Excerpts:

Building the network in the Pacific is no easy feat—the vast distances, environments that range from tropical to arctic, and remote nodes create significant difficulties for communication. Furthermore, for Pacific exercises, the previous Army paradigm was for units to spend months planning, preparing, and establishing command-and-control capabilities. This timeline is simply not feasible in a crisis. Additionally, any contributions these events might have made toward building the network were often lost at the conclusion of the exercises. More recently, efforts by US Army Pacific to build network capability have expanded to cover multiple exercises incorporating a more significant number of partners. These efforts have revealed new methods for using unclassified tools to complete tasks typically requiring access to classified data with the ability to enhance shared understanding and awareness of PLA insidious activities across domains. Operating on a single, always-on network creates a persistent training environment through which the Army can train, experiment, and rehearse on the same network on which they will fight and allows us to incrementally tackle the difficult network problem set that the Pacific presents.

Preventing Future Shrines

Those who celebrate MacArthur’s historic landing in Leyte Gulf often forget that this came after nearly three years of Japanese occupation of the Philippines and a bloody fight to regain territory once held. Within hours of the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor came a series of aerial attacks on Philippine air bases, followed by ground troop landings on northern Luzon. The subsequent quick defeat of US forces and ceding of territory culminated in the forcible transfer of nearly eighty thousand Filipino and American soldiers over roughly sixty-five miles. Today, the Capas National Shrine marks the endpoint of the Bataan Death March and serves as a “reminder of America’s unpreparedness before the outbreak of World War II.” The Pacific remains a priority for US national defense. To avoid retelling the story of loss and sacrifice, we must focus on what makes the Pacific fight so challenging and work deliberately, ahead of any future conflict in the region, to overcome those challenges and keep pace with the most prescient threat to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Positioning, Training, and Integration: A Vision of Transformation in Contact for the US Army in the Pacific - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Ben Blane · March 1, 2024

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“The history of failure in war can almost always be summed up in two words: ‘Too late.’ Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in realizing the mortal danger; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance.”

General Douglas MacArthur’s words, spoken in 1940, quickly became the reality for the United States on December 7, 1941. While the United States did have combat forces forward before the onset of World War II, these forces were wholly unprepared for the combat activities that would follow and quickly ceded ground to the rapidly advancing Japanese forces in the Philippines. The subsequent movement of troops across the Pacific battlefield after December 7 was a significant undertaking for US forces. Unfortunately, that combat power projection from the continental United States into the first island chain came at a tremendous cost for the nation—costs that were borne before they even got into the fight. More than eight decades on, crossing those large distances remains one of the critical problem sets associated with the Pacific region and one we must focus on before it is “too late.”

Decisions in the Pacific: Distance and Inevitability

The distances of the Pacific are apparent, but their implications are often not truly considered until forward in the environment. The first problem is the distance one must overcome to get to the fight. The land victory in Operation Desert Storm relied on the United States’ ability to rapidly generate and project a dominant combat force into an uncontested environment. The generation of F-15 and F-16 sorties, the massing of artillery divisions, and the movement of tank columns were possible because no one was trying to stop these capabilities as they moved from locations across the globe onto the battlefield. China’s antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities—a robust network of all-domain intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance paired with offensive and defensive strike capabilities—are designed specifically to prevent the United States from projecting power into the theater.

Once on the battlefield, the clear asymmetric advantage of land forces (soldiers, Marines, and special operations forces) in the Pacific is their ability to disperse and survive in mobile formations away from existing air and naval bases. The limited terrain in the Pacific could mean that a platoon leader is operating hundreds of kilometers away from her company commander, separated by vast bodies of water, working alongside joint and multinational formations outside her standard task organization, and in contact with a potential adversary. For veterans of previous wars, a “troops in contact” situation had a distinct definition—US and enemy forces kinetically engaged with the enemy—with a resulting need for action. In today’s multidomain environment, US land forces operate under constant surveillance and in constant contact with potential adversaries. Distance, in all cases, will drive the decision on both when and if leaders will respond to an adversary’s action.

While many will rightfully dispute the inevitability of conflict in the region, China has clearly messaged competition activities that, if undeterred, present global implications. Over the past decade, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has undergone the most extensive modernization program in its history. While the Chinese Communist Party’s stated goal for this effort has been to transform the PLA into a “world-class” force on par with the US military by 2049, ongoing efforts have indicated an acceleration in this timeline. More recently, this has included regular deployment of forces and deterrence efforts across all domains. These efforts, coupled with what China describes as the “historical inevitability” of the reunification of Taiwan to the mainland, indicate much more than an isolated or even regionally contained threat. If uncontested, this threat will quickly expand to neighboring regions and challenge access to the global commons.

Countering these obstacles and preparing for the future fight must be done with a clear sense of purpose and urgency. China’s modernization efforts are not limited to materiel solutions but focus across all categories on the DOTMLPF-P spectrum (doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy). Keeping pace with this threat and remaining relevant to the joint fight requires transformational change for the Army. Driving this transformation requires changes in how land forces position, train, and integrate for the future fight.

The Environment: Live in It, Train in It

Given the distances and resources associated with even getting into the Pacific, there’s a low likelihood that assets not already forward when a crisis emerges will deploy fast enough to play a meaningful role. This is especially true for Army formations, which often rely on joint assets for force projection. However, simultaneously, China’s A2/AD system is primarily built to identify and destroy large, fast-moving ships and aircraft, not to counter mobile, survivable land formations. This means that land-based capabilities placed persistently near the adversary and capable of surviving an initial adversary onslaught can assist in bringing air and maritime power back into the fight. For the Army to achieve this, a robust exercise, rotation, and stationing strategy is required to place critical formations forward in theater, ahead of the time of need. In essence, the Army must cheat the TPFDD (time-phased force deployment data) to be relevant for this fight.

In support of this concept, the Army contributes to the joint force with new “combat credible” formations and capabilities, designed to enhance or close joint kill webs, integrated into upcoming Pacific exercises and operations. In recent years, the Army’s top modernization priorities have focused on those capabilities that can appropriately deter, disrupt, and (if necessary) respond to pacing-threat aggression. Ranging from long-range fires with maritime-strike capability, high-altitude platforms that can operate deeper and more persistently on the battlefield, and AI-enabled intelligence fusion nodes that link deep sensing to long-range fires and effects across all domains, we have recognized it’s vital not only to train where we may fight but to experiment there, too.

When forces are forward, they also benefit from the perfect training environment for everything from identifying potential firing points and prepositioning classes of supply to conducting route reconnaissance and exercising various joint and multinational activities. Exercising forward helps ensure the entire force is well rehearsed at echelon in the positions they will fight. Beyond that, it also forces us to validate planning assumptions, which for the Army, as a landpower service, are often based on European scenarios and invalid in the Pacific fight. Theater army soldiers do this today through Operation Pathways and Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) efforts. Operation Pathways allows the Army to campaign in the first island chain while establishing the interior lines necessary for the theater army to contribute to the joint fight. JPMRC further enhances Pathways exercises with the most realistic training environment for units—replicating the complexity inherent in military operations in the Pacific and allowing training alongside the partners with which the units will fight—an environment that cannot be fully replicated in any existing Army combat training center.

Collectively, these events serve as rehearsals in an optimal learning environment. Validating and refining processes in the contact layer enables the Army to transform while simultaneously forming partnerships and securing positions of advantage for the future fight. Just as China’s modernization efforts are not limited to materiel solutions, these formations and capabilities operating in the contact layer help drive requirements all across the DOTMLPF-P spectrum.

Integrate to Fight

While land forces in the Pacific must leverage their ability to disperse across significant distances to survive, these capabilities must, too, integrate to fight. In the future fight, there are no separate intelligence, command-and-control, and fires networks. There is only the network, the current number one priority for transformation in the Army, that connects units and modernization efforts from the tactical edge to the enterprise level.

Building the network in the Pacific is no easy feat—the vast distances, environments that range from tropical to arctic, and remote nodes create significant difficulties for communication. Furthermore, for Pacific exercises, the previous Army paradigm was for units to spend months planning, preparing, and establishing command-and-control capabilities. This timeline is simply not feasible in a crisis. Additionally, any contributions these events might have made toward building the network were often lost at the conclusion of the exercises. More recently, efforts by US Army Pacific to build network capability have expanded to cover multiple exercises incorporating a more significant number of partners. These efforts have revealed new methods for using unclassified tools to complete tasks typically requiring access to classified data with the ability to enhance shared understanding and awareness of PLA insidious activities across domains. Operating on a single, always-on network creates a persistent training environment through which the Army can train, experiment, and rehearse on the same network on which they will fight and allows us to incrementally tackle the difficult network problem set that the Pacific presents.

Preventing Future Shrines

Those who celebrate MacArthur’s historic landing in Leyte Gulf often forget that this came after nearly three years of Japanese occupation of the Philippines and a bloody fight to regain territory once held. Within hours of the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor came a series of aerial attacks on Philippine air bases, followed by ground troop landings on northern Luzon. The subsequent quick defeat of US forces and ceding of territory culminated in the forcible transfer of nearly eighty thousand Filipino and American soldiers over roughly sixty-five miles. Today, the Capas National Shrine marks the endpoint of the Bataan Death March and serves as a “reminder of America’s unpreparedness before the outbreak of World War II.” The Pacific remains a priority for US national defense. To avoid retelling the story of loss and sacrifice, we must focus on what makes the Pacific fight so challenging and work deliberately, ahead of any future conflict in the region, to overcome those challenges and keep pace with the most prescient threat to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Lieutenant Colonel Ben Blane is a field artillery officer and commands the Army’s first long-range fires battalion as part of the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. He holds an undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy and graduate degrees from Columbia University and John Jay College. He has multiple deployments and experience throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

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

Image credit: Command Sgt. Maj. LeBaron Gordon, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Ben Blane · March 1, 2024

20. In a Crisis, Could China Coerce Taiwan Through Cyberspace?

Excerpts;

It must be noted, however, that Chinese cyber espionage and cyber-enabled influence operations lie outside the scope of traditional coercion literature, meaning that both have the potential to facilitate Chinese cyber coercion of Taiwan. Both will demand increasing attention from Taipei in the years to come, but while network intrusions are addressed in the portfolio of Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs, influence operations are not.

Policymakers should approach Taiwan’s cybersecurity with the goal of denying China the leverage it seeks during crises, in addition to the traditional goals of protecting data and developing wartime resilience. While China is unlikely to successfully coerce Taipei through cyberspace in the next Taiwan Strait crisis, it is incumbent on policymakers to ensure that this remains the case. If Chinese cyber force maturation continues to outstrip Taiwanese defensive efforts, Taiwan may yet find itself increasingly vulnerable to a major attack that changes the course of its political future.

In a Crisis, Could China Coerce Taiwan Through Cyberspace?

thediplomat.com

It’s important to understand China’s approach to offensive cyber operations in a potential Taiwan Strait crisis falling below the threshold of war.

By Seamus Boyle

February 29, 2024

Credit: Depositphotos

On January 31, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that China’s cyber actors are positioning to “wreak havoc” against U.S. critical infrastructure, likely to prevent the United States from aiding Taiwan in the event of conflict. Security analysts suggest that in a “short, sharp war” against Taiwan, China’s cyber forces would decapitate command and control systems, target Taiwanese morale with influence operations, and establish information dominance over the Taiwanese military.

However, policymakers must also remember that cross-strait flashpoints are more likely to manifest as coercive crises below the threshold of war. By understanding China’s approach to cyber coercion in such crises, the United States and Taiwan can avoid surrendering leverage to Beijing both in standalone crises and in the buildup to a potential live conflict.

Chinese cyber actors leveraged offensive cyber operations (OCOs) in the “Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis,” following then-U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taipei. In addition to its public threats, military exercises, and sanctions, China defaced public screens and launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Taiwanese military networks. Taiwan experiences millions of cyberattacks every day, most notably for data theft and espionage purposes, and Chinese cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns will only become more disruptive as Beijing grows more anxious about Taiwan’s political trajectory.

Given the asymmetry in resources and numbers between Chinese attackers and Taiwanese defenders, many assume China could easily coerce Taiwan through cyberspace in a crisis. In reality, however, several operational and strategic factors currently prevent Beijing from successfully doing so. By understanding the forces undermining Chinese cyber coercion, policymakers can help ensure Taiwan remains resilient to coercion during crises.

China’s Approach to Coercion in Cyberspace

During the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996 and the aftermath of the Belgrade embassy bombing in 1999, China found the threat of its military insufficient and the threat of its nuclear arsenal non-credible. To compensate, Beijing pursued cyber forces to overcome its leverage deficits in crisis bargaining with the United States. Since 2004, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) texts have argued that cyberattacks on communications infrastructure would allow China to destroy military and civilian morale, and “achieve the goal of winning without fighting.”

Under Xi Jinping, Beijing has adopted a controlled escalation cyber force posture to protect its increasingly digital society from unintended cyber escalation, and to protect the Chinese Communist Party from threats to its rule. China’s cyber forces are tightly controlled and rarely conduct major effects-based operations (operations with immediate impacts on the availability or integrity of systems and hardware). During a future Taiwan Strait crisis, Chinese authorities will again task their cyber forces with providing a powerful but carefully limited complement to the economic and military coercion of recent cross-strait flashpoints.

Why Cyberspace Will Play a Larger Role in Cross-Strait Crises

Beijing is likely to increasingly favor OCOs against Taiwan for three reasons. First, cyberattacks have the ability to bypass militaries and target civilians directly, making them a powerful option for punishment should Beijing perceive the island as moving toward de jure independence. Second, a major cyberattack that punishes civilians could put new pressure on Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which Chinese influence operations failed to unseat in the January 2024 presidential election.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, China has every major advantage over Taiwan’s cyber defenders. Taiwan’s military cyber force, the Information Communication Electronic Force Command (ICEF), is still struggling to stand on its own. Several of the Western firms supporting Ukraine’s cyber resilience may be more hesitant to support Taiwan’s cyber defenses for fear of losing access to the Chinese market.

Most concerningly, the most labor-intensive steps of an offensive cyber campaign – exploitation and maintaining persistence in enemy systems – are already complete in Taiwan. China is a preeminent force in cyber espionage, and likely has access to many major Taiwanese networks. Drawing on China’s considerable human intelligence assets in Taiwan, the Ministry of State Security or the PLA Strategic Support Force could position a debilitating attack on a critical network while allowing Beijing to hide behind the plausible deniability endemic to attacks in cyberspace.

A major attack on critical infrastructure could punish civilians and erode confidence in Taiwan’s government and military in a way PLA exercises and sanctions cannot. However, even after decades of searching for leverage in cyberspace, it is still unknown if China’s OCO capabilities have the ability to help further Beijing’s coercive efforts in a crisis.

Can China Actually Coerce Taiwan Through Cyberspace?

While Chinese defense scholars have placed faith in the theoretical coercive power of cyberattacks for decades, empirical data suggests OCOs are poorer tools for coercion than the PLA believes. Chinese cyber forces, constrained by a lack of operational experience, the innate limits of effects operations, and their own force posture, will likely continue to fail to coerce Taiwan during future crises.

Daniel Moore noted that while Chinese cyber actors are preeminent leaders in espionage, they lack “discernable offensive experience.” The effects operations that China has launched have often been powerful (such as its massive 2015 DDoS attack against GitHub) and their OCO capabilities are undeniably improving, but Chinese OCOs have not yet shown the operational sophistication and bespoke malware of Russian or U.S. effects operations, which have degraded or destroyed physical infrastructure on multiple occasions. China also reportedly faces a shortage of experienced cyber personnel, meaning that Chinese cyber forces lack institutional knowledge and a diverse offensive toolkit.

Most importantly, China will likely struggle to do enough damage with cyberattacks to affect Taiwan’s political decision making. In 2015, Russian hacking group Sandworm’s sophisticated and then-unprecedented hack of Ukraine’s power grid only affected around 0.5 percent of Ukraine for between one and six hours. Even after Russia’s 2022 invasion, Russian OCOs have failed to do major damage to Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Taiwanese defenders are also highly aware of the cyber threat to critical infrastructure and are devoting resources to hardening vital networks. While China may be hiding the capability for more devastating attacks (or even preparing the operational environment for such attacks), the friction inherent to cyberattacks means that China can never be certain of its ability to affect Taiwan’s critical infrastructure on demand.

Should Beijing take issue with the incoming Lai Ching-te government in Taipei and order a campaign of coercive punishment against his government or supporters, there is a sizable chance that a Chinese commander could give the order to execute malware in Taiwanese critical infrastructure and that nothing would happen. Critically, issues with detection and attribution endemic to highly secretive OCOs mean that even a successful attack would be difficult to immediately understand and easy for Taipei to overlook in their crisis policymaking. Given the importance of signaling and timeliness in crisis response, the unreliable nature of OCOs fundamentally limits their use during transient crises like the one witnessed in 2022.

Finally, launching an attack devastating enough to affect Taiwanese decision-making in a crisis scenario short of war contravenes China’s controlled escalation cyber force posture. This posture avoids major effects operations of the magnitude required for coercion in order to “smother the risk of autonomous escalation.” Under controlled escalation, cyber coercion is more likely to be a series of small attacks of growing intensity than a barrage of devastating ones all at once, allowing Taiwan and its partners time to respond.

Every OCO exists in tension with espionage interests, and while China’s cyber actors are certainly lurking in Taiwanese systems for an eventual “time to strike,” a conservative Beijing may hesitate to sacrifice access to critical networks for any crisis below the threshold of war. For now, cyberattacks remain too insufficient, too unreliable, and (to Beijing) too volatile a tool to effectively coerce Taiwan during a crisis.

Toward Preventing Cross-Strait Cyber Coercion

While Chinese cyber actors undoubtedly pose a grave threat to Taiwanese networks, coercive offensive cyber operations will continue to fail to affect policymaking in Taipei during crises. Thanks to the confounding variables of inexperience, unreliability, and posture, China’s offensive cyber capabilities will likely remain in the shadow of levers like brinkmanship and economic threats during crises.

It must be noted, however, that Chinese cyber espionage and cyber-enabled influence operations lie outside the scope of traditional coercion literature, meaning that both have the potential to facilitate Chinese cyber coercion of Taiwan. Both will demand increasing attention from Taipei in the years to come, but while network intrusions are addressed in the portfolio of Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs, influence operations are not.

Policymakers should approach Taiwan’s cybersecurity with the goal of denying China the leverage it seeks during crises, in addition to the traditional goals of protecting data and developing wartime resilience. While China is unlikely to successfully coerce Taipei through cyberspace in the next Taiwan Strait crisis, it is incumbent on policymakers to ensure that this remains the case. If Chinese cyber force maturation continues to outstrip Taiwanese defensive efforts, Taiwan may yet find itself increasingly vulnerable to a major attack that changes the course of its political future.

Authors

Guest Author

Seamus Boyle

Seamus Boyle is a Master’s in International Affairs candidate and program assistant for International Security Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

thediplomat.com

21. Xi’s One-Man Rule Over China’s Economy Is Spurring Unrest

Xi’s One-Man Rule Over China’s Economy Is Spurring Unrest

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-29/xi-s-one-man-rule-over-china-s-economy-is-spurring-unrest?sref=hhjZtX76

Chinese leader’s consolidation of power makes him bigger target as economic slowdown that’s hit household wealth sees protests rise

By Rebecca Choong Wilkins and Josh Xiao

February 29, 2024 at 5:00 PM EST

Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power has cleared the path for him to break China’s cycle of debt-driven growth and put the economy on a more sustainable footing. But there’s a big problem: He’s failing to convince the nation that’s a good idea.

As the world’s second-biggest economy undergoes a prolonged slowdown, Xi’s move to shun the old playbook of unleashing broad stimulus is spurring discontent. The China Dissent Monitor, a project of US-based Freedom House that collects information on protests, says economic demonstrations have remained elevated since August, with many focused on labor disputes and a real estate crisis that’s cutting into household wealth.

Thousands of angry retail investors last month flooded the US Embassy’s Weibo page with criticism of the government’s handling of the economy in the midst of a $7 trillion stock rout. Elsewhere on the platform some even insinuated that only a change in the top leadership would spur markets — comments that managed to skirt censors before they were eventually taken down.

Economic Protests Have Been Higher Since August

Demonstrations focused on labor and real estate issues

Source: China Dissent Monitor, Bloomberg

Compounding the problems is a broad drop in wages among civil servants who have seen bonuses slashed in recent years as indebted local governments struggle to earn enough revenue. That risks disenfranchising the vast bureaucracy charged with implementing Xi’s vision on the ground.

“As long as my income was decent, I didn’t complain,” said Zhou, a mid-level policeman in a southwestern city who asked to be identified by only his surname, adding that cuts have reduced his bonus by 30% from before the pandemic. “But now the economy is in bad shape, the leadership needs to show us some hope.”

While the growing angst doesn’t pose an immediate threat to Xi, who has amassed more power than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, broader discontent threatens to exacerbate weakened confidence as consumer prices drop at the fastest pace since the global financial crisis. The domestic strife comes as foreign investors turn away from China, with direct overseas investment in 2023 slumping to a 30-year low.

At the same time, there are fewer checks on Xi’s policymaking. The Chinese leader has upended Communist Party norms since consolidating power and installing a coterie of loyalists in 2022, marking a shift from the more collective decision-making that helped propel China’s economic rise. That is also making Xi more of a target as his push to deleverage the property sector leads to a slowdown that’s starting to impact the wider population.What China's Slowdown Means for Us AllPlay

Play

9:54

WATCH: The slowdown means Chinese consumers, once the engine of world growth, are spending less. That has ramifications for business, the future of the global economy — and for Xi.

Xi Is Mentioning 'High-Quality Development' More Often

The Chinese leader's use of the slogan surged in 2023 from past years

Source: Bloomberg analysis of Xi Jinping's speeches, written articles, and meeting readouts

Note: Each readout is counted as a single event, though Xi sometimes uses the phrase more than once during each occasion.

New growth drivers such as electric vehicles, batteries and renewable energy alone, however, are unlikely to fill the void left by property, which at its peak drove about a quarter of China’s GDP. While bolstering strategic sectors can help shield China from the fallout of its rivalry with the US, overcapacity in these areas also threatens to inflame already tense geopolitical relations.

Xi’s unexplained decision to delay the third plenum, where top officials meet every five years to map out the country’s long-term policy direction, has added to the opacity. That confab of the party’s Central Committee is now delayed by the most in over three decades, as the Chinese leader continues to disrupt norms.

Official rhetoric putting a positive spin on things hasn’t helped. An article in the Communist Party’s mouthpiece headlined “There is an atmosphere of optimism throughout the country” was ridiculed by Chinese social media users last month, as they sarcastically contrasted the People’s Daily piece with their own finances.

“Everyone in society, and in government, seems to know there’s a problem,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “But there’s not been any decisions made about new approaches to solving those problems.”

The economic dissatisfaction comes after Xi’s strict Covid Zero policy undermined investor confidence in China, and sparked an exodus of foreigners and citizens. That misstep was emblematic of the “information cocoon” the president is operating in, said Yun Sun, director of the China program at Washington-based think tank Stimson Center.

“People cater to Xi’s preference for information and policies, which make objective assessment really difficult,” she said. While his abrupt decision to reverse course after rare nationwide protests against Covid lockdowns showed China’s top leader can pivot, “sudden policy turns usually carry a significant cost,” Sun added.

Chinese citizens have since become more active in protesting economic policies, although directly criticizing Xi remains rare. Nearly a quarter of demonstrations last year took aim at regional leaders in some 1,450 cases where a target was identified by China Dissent Monitor. A group of US-based researchers wrote in a recent report that fear of government repression discourages some 40% of Chinese citizens from participating in anti-regime protests.

Xi Jinping, center, at a Spring Festival reception at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Feb. 8.Photographer: Shen Hong/Xinhua/Getty Images

“Citizens also understand the party controls government at all levels, so failure to solve localized problems can reflect on the larger system,” said Kevin Slaten, who leads the China Dissent Monitor project. “Local grievances can certainly morph into larger movements that take on new meaning.”

Grassroots officials have been left trying to contain the discontent. The principal of a school in southern China warned staff against criticizing Xi or the party before a month-long national break began in January, according to an employee, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive topics. Even during the pandemic no such message had been handed down, the person added.

In a lengthy essay published in December, China’s security czar Chen Wenqing detailed the benefits of reviving a Mao-era style of grassroots governance to contain local unrest. As China witnesses a “large amount of social conflict and disputes that are difficult to discover, prevent and handle” it’s important to mobilize ordinary people to stabilize society, wrote the former spy chief.

In eastern Anhui province, that system — known as the “Fengqiao experience” — has seen one party chief instruct unhappy villagers to talk directly to him as unemployment grips the local population. After layoffs at a state-owned enterprise in China’s northeast Liaoning province, a committee was tasked with visiting affected families, ensuring handouts were made on time to minimize unrest.

Xi Probed Record Number of Top Officials for Graft in 2023

Campaign targeted more retired senior cadres than ever

Source: Central Commission for Discipline Inspection

As Xi’s corruption campaign rolls on after more than a decade of purges there’s a growing reticence to take chances among officials increasingly focused on security and studying Xi Jinping Thought. Bureaucrats “lying flat” is a problem even recognized by the top leader. At a key economic meeting in December, Xi criticized local officials for procrastinating or misinterpreting the party’s orders.

“Sometimes you have to give people the room to make mistakes. But right now that’s not there,” said Liqian Ren, director of Modern Alpha at WisdomTree Inc., a New York-based asset management firm. “That’s a problem for China. You need the local officials to be willing to try things.”

Xi’s overarching mission is to meld enhanced Communist Party control with an economic model that minimizes dangerous forces unleashed during the reform era, according to Joseph Torigian, a research fellow at the Hoover History Lab in Stanford University.

“Xi isn’t giving up on the economy,” he said, but the Chinese leader wants people to accept that some suffering is needed as he pursues the nation’s bigger goals. “Whether the Chinese people are ready to go on that merry-go-round or not, I guess we’ll see.”

— With assistance from Philip Heijmans, Ben Westcott, and Colum Murphy

22. Naval Academy Names Special Warfare Officer as 90th Commandant of Midshipmen

Bravo Zulu.

Naval Academy Names Special Warfare Officer as 90th Commandant of Midshipmen

military.com · by Capital Gazette | By Natalie Jones Published February 29, 2024 at 5:30 pm · February 29, 2024

Capt. Walter H. Allman III will take the helm as the U.S. Naval Academy's 90th commandant of midshipmen this summer, the academy announced Wednesday.

Allman, a 1997 graduate of the Naval Academy, will return to Annapolis from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, where he currently serves as director of Targeting and the Fires and Effects Center for the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Allman will assume the role from current Commandant of Midshipmen Col. James "J.P." McDonough III, who has served in the position for three years.

McDonough will retire after 30 years of service in the U.S. Marine Corps, a spokesperson for the academy said.

The commandant of midshipmen is responsible for day-to-day conduct, military training and professional development of more than 4,400 midshipmen at the academy.

Allman is a career naval special warfare officer. His previous assignments include SEAL Teams 1 and 3 and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1. He also served with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, where he completed several combat deployments and contingency operations in support of Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

His command tours include Tactical Development and Evaluation Squadron 4 and Naval Special Warfare Groups 3 and 8.

While a midshipman at the Naval Academy, Allman was named an honorable mention All-American for the academy's sailing team in 1996 and 1997.

Allman earned a master's degree in defense analysis from the Naval Postgraduate School. He later researched concepts for the Navy's future of undersea warfare operations and served a staff tour as a naval special warfare officer detailer in Tennessee.

He is a recipient of numerous military awards, including the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star with Combat 'V' and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal.

Allman isn't the only recently announced change in leadership at the Naval Academy.

In January, Vice Adm. Yvette Davids became the academy's 65th superintendent -- the first woman to occupy that role. Davids took the reins from Rear Adm. Fred Kacher, who served as acting superintendent for five months following Vice Adm. Sean Buck's retirement in September.

"I am honored for the opportunity to lead the Brigade of Midshipmen and to mold our next generation of Navy and Marine Corps leaders," Allman said in a news release. "The enthusiasm and dedication demonstrated by the Brigade, staff, and faculty are inspiring. Our family looks forward to returning to the Naval Academy and joining a team committed to supporting the mission and facing the challenges of today."

Visit at capitalgazette.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

military.com · by Capital Gazette | By Natalie Jones Published February 29, 2024 at 5:30 pm · February 29, 2024

23. Anduril, Hanwha team up to bid for Army’s light payload robot

Anduril, Hanwha team up to bid for Army’s light payload robot

c4isrnet.com · by Jen Judson · February 29, 2024

Anduril Industries and Hanwha Defense USA said they are teaming up to submit a bid for the U.S. Army’s Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport robot competition.

Anduril, serving as the prime contractor, plans to deliver “a modified, autonomy-ready Uncrewed Ground Vehicle (UGV) based on Hanwha’s proven Arion-SMET platform, which has already demonstrated its performance in highly-relevant and varied environments in the Indo-Pacific, including the latest Foreign Comparative Testing with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in Hawaii,” the companies said in a Feb. 29 statement.

The Army chose General Dynamics Land Systems’ Multi-Utility Tactical Transport, or MUTT, for its SMET unmanned ground system in a first increment of the program. The $162.4 million contract, awarded in October 2019, would wrap up at the end of October 2024. GDLS won another follow-on contract in 2020.

Now the service has opened bids for the second increment of the program intended to carry gear and light payloads to decrease the burden to soldiers in the field. The Army is pursuing two major robotic combat vehicle platforms simultaneously: the Robotic Combat Vehicle meant to fight alongside Stryker and Bradley vehicles, and the SMET, which is likely to accompany lighter formations.

Anduril and the U.S. arm of South Korean defense firm Hanwha will also be working with Forterra, formerly RRAI, to incorporate its AutoDrive vehicle autonomy solution “to enable complex on and off-road maneuvers,” the statement reads.

“By combining Anduril’s electronics and software, Hanwha Defense USA’s proven hardware, and Forterra’s proven off-road vehicle autonomy stack, the partnership will bring speed, flexibility, and advanced capabilities to dismounted infantry,” Zach Mears, head of strategy at Anduril, said in the statement. “With a simplified user interface powered by Lattice, users will be able to quickly and easily command and control the S-MET to support lethal effects at the tactical edge.”

Lattice is Anduril’s software originally designed to counter drones and other threats, but has wider applicability for sharing battlefield information and data at a tactical level. Anduril is also teamed with American Rheinmetall Vehicles in the XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle competition underway to eventually replace the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, bringing its Lattice capability to that effort as well.

The capability, Anduril states, will allow soldiers to operate the vehicle, manage payloads and communicate simultaneously in “complex environments.”

The team is focused on load-carrying, power generation capacity, reduced sustainment, survivability and a modular architecture for a wide array of payloads, the release details.

The robotic vehicle will have a low acoustic signature, “ensuring that it serves as an asset, not liability on the modern battlefield,” the statement adds.

Other expected competitors are Teledyne FLIR, GDLS, Rheinmetall, with teammate ST Engineering, and HDT.

Teledyne FLIR announced its bid in October at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

The Army has tightly held details on the competition such as the timeline for evaluating and choosing winners and what comes after and has not posted any solicitations on the public domain for federal contract opportunities, Sam.gov.

The service is focused on rigorous experimentation with robots and emerging technology to develop integrated fighting formations of both humans and robots. The Army calls it “human-machine integration” and is evaluating exactly how robotic technologies can be coupled with the best of what humans can bring to the table on the battlefield.

About Jen Judson

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

24. Opinion | Three island nations show how America is failing to stand up to China

Excerpts:

Democrats and Republicans both supposedly agree that the strategic competition with China is the United States’ top long-term priority, but examples like this show a lack of follow-through where the rubber meets the road, according to Michael Sobolik, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.

“The burden of proof is on Washington to demonstrate that our system is actually better,” he told me. “Failing to renew economic assistance and services to COFA partners in the Pacific does the opposite.”

Without swift action, Congress risks abandoning long-standing partners, weakening the U.S. strategic position in Asia and inviting Beijing to expand its influence. In short, Washington will have done Xi Jinping’s work for him.

Opinion | Three island nations show how America is failing to stand up to China

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · February 29, 2024

As Congress continues to struggle to pass national security funding, there’s plenty of concern about the impact for Ukraine and Israel. But Asian and Pacific allies are also watching anxiously as Washington dithers. For three small but important island countries in the northern Pacific, U.S. neglect could be a push into China’s waiting arms.

Most Americans don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. But although these countries have less than 1 million residents put together, they make up hundreds of islands that span a strategic and increasingly contested part of the Pacific Ocean. Their importance was demonstrated during World War II, when U.S. troops fought to free them from Japanese control. After they became independent, they struck agreements with Washington, called Compacts of Free Association, whereby the United States gives them economic assistance and provides for their defense.

The Biden administration wisely negotiated renewals of these COFA agreements last year. But Congress has yet to appropriate the roughly $2 billion needed to fulfill the terms of the new 20-year deals — and by September, all three of the previous agreements will have expired (two have expired already). Ambassador Joseph Yun, who led the negotiations as a special envoy for the State Department, told me the delay is undermining U.S. relationships there at the worst possible time.

“For all three of them, they know the benefits of having a relationship with us, they want the relationship with us, but they are quite frustrated,” Yun, now retired, said in an interview. “Every day we don’t do this, our credibility takes a hit.”

Meanwhile, China is expanding its influence in the Pacific islands using various tactics, such as financing local politicians, offering military support and pushing development projects with strings attached. Last year, Beijing signed a security cooperation agreement with the Solomon Islands. In January, China convinced Nauru to dump its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. Just this week, Chinese police were reportedly spotted operating in Kiribati, one of the Pacific islands closest to Hawaii.

“China has been very aggressive in the Southern part of the South Pacific … and now they have started playing in our backyard,” Yun said. “We must not take our eyes off of what we are trying to do in the Indo-Pacific. Our attention is drifting.”

The president of Palau told senators this month that China is eagerly waiting for Washington to stumble. The Chinese government has promised to “fill every hotel room” in the country and provide other financial incentives, if Palau switches allegiances. When economic incentives fail, Beijing turns to uglier tactics. The president of the Marshall Islands wrote to senators that after his previous stance to oppose Chinese encroachment, Beijing bribed members of his parliament to attempt to topple his government.

This funding has broad bipartisan support in Congress. Forty-eight members of the House wrote last week to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), urging him to include the funding in the next possible legislative vehicle. “Failing to ratify these agreements negotiated in good faith would be the most self-destructive gift the United States could give to the PRC in the Pacific,” the letter said.

The Pentagon’s top Asia official, Ely Ratner, said this month that securing COFA funding was one of the most important things the U.S. government must do this year in the region. “This is something that matters,” he said. “We just have to get it done.” The Australian and New Zealand ambassadors to Washington also wrote to congressional leaders last week, warning that failure to pass the funding “would have severe consequences” in the region.

If everyone in the U.S. government and both congressional parties agrees that this is important, what explains the delay? Conversations with several lawmakers, administration officials and congressional staffers revealed an all too familiar story of Washington bureaucratic intransigence.

The administration initially tried to add the money to the emergency supplemental bill now slowly moving through Congress, which already has billions of dollars earmarked for the Indo-Pacific. But Republicans wanted the money to come from the regular appropriations part of the budget and wanted it offset by other spending reductions. The standoff persisted for months.

Now, as Congress scrambles to avoid another government shutdown, supporters of the funding are working behind the scenes to include it in whatever legislation emerges from negotiations. If that doesn’t work, it could mean months more of delay.

Democrats and Republicans both supposedly agree that the strategic competition with China is the United States’ top long-term priority, but examples like this show a lack of follow-through where the rubber meets the road, according to Michael Sobolik, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.

“The burden of proof is on Washington to demonstrate that our system is actually better,” he told me. “Failing to renew economic assistance and services to COFA partners in the Pacific does the opposite.”

Without swift action, Congress risks abandoning long-standing partners, weakening the U.S. strategic position in Asia and inviting Beijing to expand its influence. In short, Washington will have done Xi Jinping’s work for him.

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · February 29, 2024

25. Opinion | How can one suicide protest be heroic and another crazy?

In discussion with a friend yesterday he wondered why more has not written about the self immolation of the airman this week? A quick Google search revealed that other than initial reporting there has not been much reporting about this incident. Why is that? This may offer some insight. But "it's complicated" (my initiial thought) is not sufficient.

Opinion | How can one suicide protest be heroic and another crazy?

The Washington Post · by Shadi Hamid · February 29, 2024

Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in D.C. He died from his wounds hours later.

We are a divided country, not least over the war in Gaza. And so it seems unavoidable that we would look at the same facts — a man burning while shouting “Free Palestine” — and interpret them in very different ways. Some of the early reactions to Bushnell’s suicide were dismissive, even indignant. Why would he do something so silly — or crazy?

Michael Starr of the Jerusalem Post attributed the suicide protest to a “state of hysteria,” while journalist Mark Joseph Stern patronizingly intoned that “people suffering mental illness deserve empathy and respect, but it is wildly irresponsible to praise them for using a political justification to take their own life.” Mental illness was assumed without evidence.

The rush to pathologize Bushnell’s act suggests a double standard. After a Tunisian street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, self-immolated on Dec. 17, 2010 — the start of the Arab Spring — I don’t recall anyone wondering whether he was mentally ill. President Barack Obama hailed him as a hero, comparing him to America’s own Boston Tea Party patriots and civil rights icon Rosa Parks. We knew little of Bouazizi’s political views or his family life, and few cared to ask. His death was rarely described as a suicide in Western media. After all, his cause was just, and it became more just because of the revolutions it spawned.

What made one act noble and another unhinged? How do we judge what is reasonable and what isn’t? Unlike Bouazizi, who was reacting to the confiscation of his goods and police abuse, Bushnell appears to have thought carefully about his actions, alerting news outlets to his impending protest hours before. As he doused himself, he acknowledged the “extreme” nature of what he was about to do. And indeed it was. As the philosopher Michael Cholbi dryly notes in his book on suicide, “killing oneself is hard.” The vast majority of attempts fail. Self-immolation, in contrast, has a fatality rate of more than 70 percent, according to one study.

Bushnell’s politics were extreme. Many if not most of us would find his various views, which he posted regularly on Reddit, to be absurd, silly and reprehensible. He dabbled in the kind of dorm-room Fanonism that saw the world through the simplified lens of colonized and colonizer. He believed that it wasn’t his place, as an American White man of privilege, to question how Palestinians and other oppressed groups respond to their oppression, even if it means resorting to violence.

For some of Bushnell’s detractors, this privilege was a source of irritation in the other direction. One critic pointed out that where Bouazizi was protesting his own government, the 25-year-old Bushnell was concerning himself with a “distant ethno-religious conflict.” He had no familial connection to the region. Why should he feel so intensely about other people’s problems?

This gets at a fundamental divide over how Americans interpret the war in Gaza. It’s not just another foreign conflict in which tens of thousands have been killed. It’s not “distant.” The United States is Israel’s chief military patron, providing the emergency weapons and supplies needed to prosecute its war. What’s more, the U.S. Air Force has provided intelligence for offensive targeting in Israel’s massive aerial bombardment of Gaza. The United States is directly implicated in a way that it isn’t in other conflicts.

Bushnell didn’t perceive the conflict as distant. He said:

“I’m an active duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

One doesn’t have to like Bushnell’s reasoning — or his use of the term “genocide” — to comprehend his perspective. To understand is not to justify. To cite a relatively frivolous analogy, the political philosopher Santiago Ramos recently noted that “To explain why your uncle voted Trump in 2020 is not the same as voting for Trump yourself.” To think in this way requires what the author Robert Wright calls “cognitive empathy,” a conscious effort to adopt the perspective of other people, even people you think are bad.

Based on the information we have, rather than speculation about a dead man’s mental state, Bushnell was increasingly despairing of the United States’ role in a war that has killed some 30,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. An exhaustive Washington Post investigation concluded that Israel’s war in Gaza has been one of the most destructive — possibly the most destructive — of the 21st century so far: Israel has “destroy[ed] more buildings, in far less time, than were destroyed during the Syrian regime’s battle for Aleppo from 2013 to 2016 and the U.S.-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in 2017.”

It might be unreasonable or even crazy to think of doing what Bushnell did, but it is not unreasonable that Bushnell — and millions of other Americans — have felt a growing sense of powerlessness over their government’s facilitating the mass killing of a largely defenseless people. That, too, is unreasonable. It is worse than unreasonable.

The Washington Post · by Shadi Hamid · February 29, 2024

26. USING ALTERNATIVE HISTORY TO THINK THROUGH CURRENT AND FUTURE PROBLEMS

USING ALTERNATIVE HISTORY TO THINK THROUGH CURRENT AND FUTURE PROBLEMS

https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/alternative-history/

(WARGAMING ROOM)

D. SEAN BARNETT , ROB CITINO , YVONNE CRANE , GIAN GENTILE , ADAM GIVENS MARCH 1, 2024 8 MIN READ

Considering historical scenarios that are counter to the facts—how things “might have been”— is a natural human tendency.

History cannot be relived or rerun as one might conduct laboratory experiments in the physical sciences. However, we can use history to help us understand what happened (and why) as a starting point for considering what might have occurred if things had turned out differently. Known as counterfactual historical analysis or alternative history, this approach allows us to use our imaginations to create laboratories of the mind, testing inputs to seek alternative results.

Considering historical scenarios that are counter to the facts—how things “might have been”— is a natural human tendency. From entertainment films like It’s a Wonderful Life and Back to the Future to more serious contemplations of the nature of reality like Philip K. Dick’s novella The Man in the High Castle and Amazon Prime Video’s streaming adaptation of the book, counterfactuals allow us to contemplate things, not merely as they are, but how they might have been different with a tweak here and there in the timeline.

But beyond its entertainment value, counterfactual analysis has practical benefits when considering national security and defense matters for decision makers to plan for what is to come. Above all, they can be useful in putting policy makers and planners into the shoes of those who have gone before them, facing them with the same kinds of time-space dilemmas, resource limitations, and political constraints faced by the real historical actors. Standard history can often devolve into a form of determinism, enumerating a list of reasons why the historical event had to turn out the way it did. Indeed, so prevalent is this problem in historical writing that professional historians have coined the neologism “over-determined,” for cases in which the author leads the reader in a teleological fashion to the inevitability of the actual historical outcome.

Counterfactual analysis shatters the envelope of “over-determination” by making (often subtle) changes in the historical situation, either providing something that was missing or taking away something that was present. When done carefully and thoughtfully, the change can help bring the deeper reality of the situation into sharper focus. An earlier start to an operation or different weather or a particular weapon system arriving a decade or a generation sooner than it actually did allows participants in an exercise to develop deeper insights into the planning process (in the case of an operation’s start time), the vagaries of chance on the battlefield (the weather), or the nature and importance of technology and innovation (in the case of a new weapon system). Counterfactuals let the true nature of historical contingency shine forth—in which small events can combine, “snowball,” and eventually develop into mighty outcomes.

While historians are interested in the past, policy makers have a different charge: they are trying to analyze the present to gain as much insight as possible into the elusive future. As historian Niall Ferguson sees it, conclusions about the future “are usually based on weighing up the potential consequences of alternative courses of action,” so it is useful “to compare the actual outcomes of what we did in the past with the conceivable outcomes of what we might have done.” In such laboratories of counterfactual analysis, alternative pasts can offer present-day participants a way to think differently and more deeply about present and future problems, the complex factors that go into shaping a given problem, and the myriad ways thoughtful individuals can approach and solve them.

The Utility of Wargames

In a similar way to using counterfactuals, military organizations plan to fight future battles by relying on war games or simulations that consider possible outcomes on the battlefield before they occur. These wargames have historically provided valuable observations and insights for military organizations preparing for battle. Nineteenth-century Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army, General Helmuth von Moltke, used wargaming to motivate critical thinking about upcoming battles during the Franco-Prussian War that led to Prussia’s victories in the Wars of German Unification.

Other examples illustrate the creative thinking that wargames can elicit. As depicted in the movie The Longest Day, just before D-Day in 1944, German corps commander General Erich Marcks is involved in a wargame in France to predict when and where the invasion will occur. He imagines an alternative future relative to how his fellow senior officers were thinking, avoiding the simple and obvious. As a result, General Marcks successfully anticipated the Allies’ intentions for landing locations along the Normandy coast.

Combining Historical Counterfactual Analysis with Battlefield Staff Rides

The aim of using a combination of counterfactual analysis with a battlefield staff ride is first to understand what happened in the battle and then to explore alternatives during the conduct of that battle that are distinct from what occurred in reality. Integrating alternative counterfactual mechanisms that were not present facilitates players’ thinking about the implications of these counterfactual devices. Just as with historical actors and present decisionmakers, a custom-made wargame with counterfactual levers forces players to approach past battles in a way distinct from how they occurred, permitting participants to think differently about current and future problems.

The overall aim of combining a staff ride and counterfactual wargame is to create a laboratory of learning by using otherwise thinking about a given battle and applying that otherwise thinking to creative and innovative approaches to current and future problems.

The purpose of the staff ride (either virtual or in the field) is to help participants understand what happened in the battle. The wargame component enables players to employ counterfactual alternatives to explore how they might have affected the historical battle. The overall aim of combining a staff ride and counterfactual wargame is to create a laboratory of learning by using otherwise thinking about a given battle and applying that otherwise thinking to creative and innovative approaches to current and future problems. Hence this combination produces a futures program based on history and historical counterfactual analysis.

A Battlefield Futures Program

RAND Arroyo Center’s Battlefield Futures Program does just that.

We carried out a futures program using the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. On the first day of the Futures Program, we conducted a traditional staff ride of the battle. During the staff ride portion of the program, specific themes and events from the battle were highlighted with the idea that this would inform the players thinking when they refought the battle the following day using the custom-made wargame. The game allowed players to refight the battle with technologies that were available at the time but not used at Gettysburg in 1863—balloons for aerial observation, field telegraphs for commanders down to corps level for command and control, and increased firepower through repeating rifles and Gatling guns.

The player teams used their technologies differently to accomplish their missions. In one game, the Confederates started the game by making information advantage their overall operational goal and built their plan around it. They kept one of their balloons hidden so as not to give away their positions and maneuvered out of the observation range of the Union balloons. In that game, the Union built their plan around their observation capabilities— “fighting for information.” They used their cavalry to try to deny situational awareness to the Confederates.

The two sides explored the same technologies but came up with different approaches for their use based on their different operational situations. Combining historical counterfactual analysis with a traditional battlefield staff ride can be used to gain insights about the adoption of technologies, the cost-benefits of modernization, and the impacts that different approaches and choices have on the battlefield. Combining counterfactual analysis and staff rides in this way exposes participants to the interactions of these issues within a given operational environment from the past. However, the past and the counterfactual levers applied to it to change the outcome of a battle are purposeful ways to cause the participants to think through current and future problems.

For example, today’s military may face hard choices about prioritizing certain weapons or communications technologies over others. Or they may be facing hard decisions about what types of surveillance systems to invest in. Organizational change may also be something that a current military is considering. But thinking through these problems of the present often comes with personal, leadership, or organizational biases. The program described above can provide an atmosphere for fresh thinking about current issues by using counterfactual history to enable otherwise thinking about the present and future.

Possibilities for Other Counterfactual Analyses with Battlefield Staff Rides

Using counterfactual analysis in the way described in this essay is battle-agnostic. Or in other words, for example, it could use the World War II Normandy Campaign to question what might have occurred if Allied air power had not debilitated the Luftwaffe in the lead-up to D-Day, leaving open the question of air superiority over the beaches, drop zones, and English Channel during Operation OVERLORD. Another program might use the Korean War and the Inchon Landings to analyze how the use of alternative airpower technologies by the United States, Chinese, or North Koreans might have affected the Allied operational objective of reaching the Yalu River, unifying all of Korea under South Korean writ, and confronting the Chinese intervention into the war in October 1950. A more current battle could also be used as the premise for a futures program, such as the initial months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from February to March 2022.

The Futures Program’s main purpose is to harness history to create thought laboratories. It can be adapted to a wide range of historical battles in the different domains of land, sea, or air, depending on the interests of the participants. History is not predetermined, just as the future is not. Counterfactual analysis in the Battlefield Futures Program offers a way to better understand both.

D. Sean Barnett is an adjunct engineer at RAND Corporation. He is a defense analyst, nuclear engineer, and attorney, with over 30 years of experience leading research in the fields of national security, energy, and law. At RAND, most of his work has involved military operational assessments and wargaming.

Robert Citino is a senior historian at the National World War II Museum. He is a leading authority on modern German military history, with an emphasis on World War II and the German influence upon modern operational doctrine.

Yvonne Crane is a research communications analyst at the RAND Corporation. She has over 20 years of experience in strategic communication and outreach development for both Fortune 500 corporations and the national security sector. Yvonne has collaborated with civilian and military leadership to create data-rich visualizations of complex research and analysis that includes creating research communications for senior officials that translate to the Executive and Legislative branches of the U.S. government.

Gian Gentile is a retired U.S. Army colonel who served many years as a history professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point and did two combat tours in Iraq. He currently is a senior historian and Associate Director of the Army Research Division at the RAND Corporation.

Adam Givens is an Associate Policy Researcher at RAND. He received his PhD in military history from Ohio University. His research focuses on U.S. Army Aviation and the helicopter industry during the Cold War.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

Photo Credit: Created by Bing AI image creator

27. My Son’s Example in Fighting for Ukraine

My Son’s Example in Fighting for Ukraine

Andrew died on the battlefield after giving his American protective gear to another soldier.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/andrew-webber-fighting-for-ukraine-88ca2833?utm

Feb. 29, 2024 1:06 pm ET

Andrew Webber, right, and a fellow soldier. PHOTO: SERVICE TO SCHOOL

In her op-ed “Western Weapons Are Ukraine’s Only Hope” (Feb. 16) Jillian Kay Melchior quotes Mykola Bielieskov: “You either fight with modern weapons or you fight with men. That’s it.” I agree.

In July 2023, before our son Andrew Webber died on the Ukrainian battlefield, he gave his American-made protective gear to another soldier. Andrew didn’t curse that decision, or the lack of medical equipment, as he lay mortally wounded in an area previously protected by his gear. In this battle against tyranny and oppression, Andrew’s story is, unfortunately, a common one due to the lack of modern weaponry and other resources.

Andrew was a husband and father, a West Point graduate with a law degree from Northwestern. A former infantry officer, he served three deployments, held two commands and received many awards and medals, including a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Holding American ideals dear, he believed the Russian government was the greatest threat to freedom and democracy world-wide and felt he had to act. He planned, on his return from Ukraine, to ask U.S. lawmakers to act urgently and provide the resources desperately needed.

On behalf of Andrew and the American ideals he embodied, I ask lawmakers to keep the emergency military-aid spending package alive to ensure the lack of modern weaponry and other resources is no longer a common cause of death for those fighting this war.

Karla Stephens-Webber

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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Opinion | Three island nations show how America is failing to stand up to China

Opinion | How can one suicide protest be heroic and another crazy?

USING ALTERNATIVE HISTORY TO THINK THROUGH CURRENT AND FUTURE PROBLEMS

https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/alternative-history/

(WARGAMING ROOM)

My Son’s Example in Fighting for Ukraine

Andrew died on the battlefield after giving his American protective gear to another soldier.